Questions tagged [nuclear-weapons]

Devices designed to create extremely large explosions by exploiting nuclear processes within atoms. Fission devices use energy released by slitting large nuclei; fusion devices use the energy released by merging small nuclei. Many devices use fission to trigger fusion.

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In July 2022, did China have more nuclear weapons than Domino's Pizza locations?

China, Russia, and Pakistan are the only countries in the world that have more nuclear weapons than they do Domino's Pizza locations. 8 Solid Minutes of Useless Geographical Facts!, YouTube (6m45s), ...
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Did Robert Brownlee express a belief that a manhole cover was launched into space by a nuclear test?

According to Snopes: the above-mentioned Brownlee doesn't believe the metal cap launched into space. However Business Insider states: Robert Brownlee, an astrophysicist who designed the nuclear ...
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Has China stated that their no-first-use policy for nuclear weapons doesn't apply to countries that possess territories that China claims as its own?

According to an Indian journalist: China had asserted before that its NFU would not apply against countries that are in possession of the Chinese territory. That means that China’s NFU does not apply ...
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Can Russia's Poseidon nuclear underwater drone create a 500 meter tidal wave?

According to TheTimes.co.uk, "Russian ‘nuclear tsunami’ will wipe out Britain, Kremlin-backed media threatens" In his Sunday evening primetime show, the Channel One anchor Dmitry Kiselyov ...
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Did Oppenheimer quote the Bhagavad Gita after the Trinity test?

There is an often repeated story that Robert Oppenheimer, one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, quoted the Bhagavad Gita after witnessing the first nuclear test. One version of the story is ...
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Did India plan to get Pakistan's nuclear facility destroyed by Israel in the mid-'80s?

A 2010 article by Shahid R. Siddiqi in Dawn (a major Pakistani English newspaper) states: After successfully destroying the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, Israelis planned a similar attack on ...
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Was the crew dropping the "Tsar Bomba" nuclear bomb given only a 50% chance to survive?

Background The Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created. On 30 October 1961 the Soviet Union experimentally detonated the bomb after dropping it from a plane above Nova Zembla. A ...
William H. Fields's user avatar
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Did Ahmadinejad say that enriching Uranium to 20% made no economic sense?

A Foreign Policy "argument" article from January 2012 contains this part What has raised the world’s suspicions is that Iran continues to produce 20 percent enriched uranium despite the fact that ...
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Did Netanyahu's recent presentation on Iran's nuclear program contain no new information?

"Arms Control Wonk" Jeffrey Lewis claims in Foreign Policy: There was nothing new in Netanyahu’s presentation ... Moreover, the archive contains little or no information that wasn’t already ...
mart's user avatar
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Is the silence of BBC Radio a key test for UK (submarine) nuclear response?

A comment under a WorldBuilding.SE answer to the question What's the quickest way to tell if most of the people on Earth have disappeared? refers to the BBC Newsbeat article Trident: What are the ...
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Was there a nuclear explosion in Germany during WW2?

According to this article at dailymail.co.uk and this article at news.com.au a declassified document "APO 696" (purportedly in the U.S. National Archives) includes testimony that indicates a possible ...
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Is the illegal nuclear waste at the Coldwater Creek Nuclear Landfill a risk to public health?

NOTE: This is not a copy of: Is the illegal nuclear waste at The Westlake Nuclear Landfill a risk to public health? which is a different nearby nuclear landfill that has a different issue of a ...
RustlerSteakHouse's user avatar
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Is the illegal nuclear waste at The Westlake Nuclear Landfill a risk to public health?

This Question refers to the 1 of 3 the nuclear landfill sites in residential/commercial areas in the St. Louis, MO area. These landfills are a result of the leftovers from the Manhattan Project ...
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Were nuclear weapons not effective in ending WWII? [closed]

The claim: The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie? Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision...But in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz ...
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Did the fallout from American nuclear tests kill hundreds of thousands of American civilians?

A recent paper has been making the social media rounds, that estimates the number of American deaths due to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing to be between 340,000 and 690,000 between ...
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Could a single nuclear EMP kill 90% of Americans within one year?

From the latest doomsday scenario: At a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on October 12th, experts warned that the greatest existential threat to the country may come from the detonation of a ...
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Does plutonium exist in the world, apart from being manufactured?

In reference to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, a mathematician, Peter Lax, described his time working there as "living science fiction". He said: we were told essentially the basic thing: ...
D.Hutchinson's user avatar
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Is this an image of Kim Jong-un with a nuclear warhead?

In April 2016, the BBC News web-site published North Korea nuclear tests: what did they achieve?, which evaluated a March 2016 announcement that had made a nuclear warhead that would fit in a missile. ...
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Did eight Jesuit priests survive the nuking of Hiroshima without serious injury?

It is being frequently claimed by Catholic sources (e.g. Catholic News Agency, Catholic Herald) and even Wikipedia that eight Jesuit priests survived the nuking of Hiroshima with very minor physical ...
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Was the tsar bomb ten times more powerful than all of the explosives used in WWII combined?

This segment from the Discovery Channel makes this bold claim: [The tsar bomb] contained the equivalent of 58 million tons of TNT, or all the explosives used in World War II, multiplied by 10. ...
rootmeanclaire's user avatar
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Did Hillary Clinton give Russia 20% of the United States' uranium?

Donald Trump made this claim in his February 16, 2017, press conference. Did Hillary Clinton give Russia 20% of the US's uranium? What is the source for this claim? Transcript Now tomorrow, you’ll ...
ford prefect's user avatar
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Were the nuclear capabilities of the F-35 decisive in the decision to have it replace the Dutch F-16s?

The Dutch F-16s have been due for replacement for some time. The discussion about which plane should replace it took its course for over a decade and several different Dutch administrations, from the ...
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Is the RS-28 Sarmat missile capable of destroying an area the size of France?

The Daily Mail claims Russia has unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France. Who estimated this level of destructive power? ...
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Is the four minute nuclear weapon response time classified information?

In the the final Trump-Clinton presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said: But here's the deal. The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order, it must be followed. ...
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Do only 49% of Americans know which country bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

From Alternet: Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?, July 1, 2008 (referring to polls conducted over the past three decades): Which country dropped the nuclear bomb? Only 49% [of Americans ...
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Was the ancient Indian city of Mohenjo-daro destroyed by a nuclear weapon?

This Youtube video of the History Channel documentary Ancient Aliens, Season 3 Episode 9 makes the claim that the ancient Indian city of Mohenjo-Daro was destroyed by a nuclear weapon, and that the ...
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198 votes
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Does the President of the United States have the ability to deploy nuclear weapons at will?

I heard this claim back during the Bush years, and recently I've been hearing it again. For example: Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All - The New Yorker I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and ...
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Were the Dene people unaware they had mined ore for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki until the 1990s?

From a web project called The Forbidden Rock Prophecy (elsewhere it claims the atomic bombs were prophesied): Nor did they know what the materials they carried would be used for. So in addition ...
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Are nuclear warheads sold on the black market?

VICE news has published a video where they claim to be following up on a story of a French journalist who set up an arms deal: supposedly he bought (or at least set everything in place so that he ...
fgysin's user avatar
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1 answer
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Do ~25% of Japanese people believe that USSR dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

I have heard this claim a few times from some random people, and recently came across it in pravda.ru as well: from "Japan will never forgive USA" There is such a statistics: 25 per cent of young ...
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2 votes
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Is it plausible that one of the explosions at TianJin was of nuclear origin? [closed]

Geopolitics.co claims that one of the explosions at TianJin was of nuclear origin. So there you have it, the ‘smoking gun’ evidence of a nuke is to be found among the smoking wreckage of those ...
Jan Vladimir Mostert's user avatar
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1 answer
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Is measuring the size of a nuclear cloud with your thumb an approximate indication of whether you're in the radiation zone?

Due to the upcoming release of Fallout 4, I've stumbled upon several claims about the stance of the iconic Vault Boy: Basically, those stated that the Vault Boy was doing the following: If you see ...
Aserre's user avatar
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Did Turkey and Greece attempt to gain control of NATO nuclear weapons to use on each other during the Cyprus crisis of 1963-1964?

The following quote from an article on arstechnica.com, talking about PAL codes required for arming US nuclear missles, states that Turkey and Greece were attempting to gain control of nuclear weapons ...
Mikko Marttila's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
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Is this a video from the Tsar bomb?

You can find several videos showing the detonation of the Tsar bomb, a Soviet nuclear weapon (strongest ever tested). Most of them are bad quality and look very old. But also you can find this video: ...
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Is this tweet about classes one month after the Hiroshima bombing, and the 2011 tsunami accurate?

https://twitter.com/TheKnowledge/status/593936133358276609 Japan. Top: One Month After Hiroshima, 1945. Bottom: One Month After The Earthquake and Tsunami, 2011. Incredible. Are the images ...
Andrew Grimm's user avatar
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12 votes
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Did Hiroshima change the layout of its streets subsequent to the war?

The following anecdote has gone viral, seen as a gaffe by someone ignorant of the atomic bombing of the city. From The morning catch-up: a Battlebus poll, a surprising secrecy advocate and a majestic ...
Andrew Grimm's user avatar
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3 votes
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Does nuclear deterrence work? [closed]

A commonly held theory and an often-used argument in favour of the possession of nuclear weapons is that it deters foreign states from military threats against vital interests. For example, see ...
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9 votes
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What do we know about red mercury?

My friend, known as a liar, came to me two days ago and told stories about red mercury, something I never heard about. Could do magic, the pharaohs used it. 1 kg worth 30 million dollars, used in ...
1 vote
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Is nuclear winter a doomsday scenario like the media depicts it? [duplicate]

While a nuclear war will obviously cause significant environmental harm to the earth, after doing some research on the subject I'm starting to find facts that make me question whether it would ...
DrinkJavaCodeJava's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
684 views

Did Khamenei issue a fatwa banning development of nuclear weapons?

According to Obama: Iran’s Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. However, according to a Middle East Media Research Institute report entitled Renewed Iran-...
ike's user avatar
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Was American intelligence caught by surprise by every nuclear test since 1949?

I read this over here. American intelligence has been caught by surprise by every successful test of a nuclear device since the Soviet Union in 1949. Is this correct?
ike's user avatar
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22 votes
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Was the US nuclear missile launch code set to 00000000 for 15 years of the Cold War?

Drudge Report had a headline on 12-1-2013 that claimed that the PAL security protocol was illegally bypassed from 1962 through 1977 by setting the launch code to 00000000 on all Minuteman missiles. ...
Chad's user avatar
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15 votes
1 answer
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Was Truman told that the first atom bomb was going to be used on a military target?

In his diary entry for July 25, 1945, US President Harry S. Truman wrote: This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so ...
ike's user avatar
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28 votes
1 answer
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Is plutonium the most toxic substance known to man?

According to "The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity" by Bernard L. Cohen: Plutonium is constantly referred to by the news media as ``the most toxic substance known to man.'' Ralph Nader has said that a ...
Cees Timmerman's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
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Is a clean, well painted house more likely to survive a nuclear attack than a dirty, unkempt one?

This article links to a film that claims: a clean, nicely painted house is more likely to survive a nuclear attack than its dirty, run-down neighbors. Is there any truth to this claim, or were the ...
John Bensin's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
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Does Israel have nuclear weapons?

According to Wikipedia's page on Israel and weapons of mass destructioni: Israel is widely believed to possess weapons of mass destruction, and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not ...
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Was the 2003 Bam earthquake caused by nuclear testing?

From New earthquake hits Iran as Khatami denies Bam disaster caused by nuclear test Meanwhile, the Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami on Tuesady brushed aside rumors that a nuclear test in Bam ...
Andrew Grimm's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
556 views

Is it possible to stop a hurricane by nuking it?

To reduce tragedy, loss-of-life and, of course, disaster-relief costs, the idea of somehow stopping a hurricane has been around for some time now. One of many theories is that a nuke in the coldest ...
CosmicGiant's user avatar
9 votes
0 answers
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Could Iran produce a nuclear weapon in under a year if they wanted to?

For over 30 years, politicians from Israel and the US have said that "Iran will have a nuclear weapon in less than a year". [Christian Science Monitor timeline of these warnings] Some more examples: ...
Alex Mor's user avatar
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38 votes
1 answer
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Did a nuclear blast devastate Port Chicago on July 17, 1944?

On July 17, 1944 at the Port Chicago naval base, near the San Francisco Bay area, an explosion of epic proportions occurred on a dock handling munitions. The Evening Independent, Jul 18, 1944, via ...
Paul's user avatar
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