What would happen on the planet if a nuclear war breaks out? This is how an atomic bomb works and the catastrophic consequences for humanity

During World War II, humanity was able to verify the disaster that this physical reaction can unleash. In the summer of 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The conflict ended in the most horrendous way, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and devastating consequences for both populations.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict once again put the threat of the use of nuclear weapons on the table, which is extremely worrying.

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How an atomic bomb works?

It is nothing more than the energy that is released when the nucleus of an atom is hit by a neutron. Certain atoms, such as plutonium or uranium, are very heavy and unstable and release a large amount of energy when this process occurs. For this reason, these elements are the ones used in nuclear reactions, according to Squire.

When a neutron bombards a uranium nucleus, for example, it splits into two more nuclei. We call this process nuclear fission.

During the fission bombardment, more neutrons are released, which in turn collide with more nuclei, which release even more neutrons, causing a chain reaction. An enormous amount of energy is then released, leading to a catastrophic explosion.

An atomic bomb needs a large amount of enriched uranium to get the desired reaction. According to the popularizer Alfredo García, known as Nuclear Operator, a reactor uses 2-5% of uranium-235, while an atomic bomb needs 90% of enriched uranium.

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Consequences of a nuclear explosion

When detonating an atomic bomb, the first and immediate consequence would be a great explosion, which would instantly carbonize every living being that is in its radius of action, what we know as ground zero, which can be several kilometers.

Fires would break out tens of kilometers around further, due to the explosion’s dramatic rise in temperature. The fires would affect not only fields, forests and organic matter, but also buildings.

Many potentially toxic substances could be released from fires and rise into the atmosphere, poisoning clouds and rain, which in turn could seriously contaminate crops and waters. If this were to happen, the wind could cause these clouds to move from one side to the other, carrying this rain to other places on the planet.

The release of one or several nuclear bombs not only has an immediate destructive effect, but also contamination. Nuclear radiation is a type of radiation known as ionizing.

Radiation is capable of penetrating our cells and its frequency can make it reach our cells, in whose nucleus is our DNA. If this happens, failures in our organism and mutations such as cancer would occur.

Nuclear winter it is the most silent consequence, but at the same time the most catastrophic, because it would occur in the long term and throughout the planet. There would be no place on Earth to hide in a nuclear winter. In a scenario of several detonations in different parts of the planet, the cloud of dust and ash would cover a good part of the planet, which would block sunlight, causing a drop in global temperature.

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This also includes the destructive phenomena mentioned above (fires, radiation, contamination of farmland by radioactive fallout), which would cause a desolation capable of ending human civilization as we know it.