Oe my \— » mree ~~ ___ yey —~ Brey ___ porn — _ Po =F ” seconds of its life, it would shoot upward at a rate of about 300 miles per hour, rising in one minute to an altitude of 5 miles. bomb's energy would be spent in four different areas. The The first area would be that of thermal radiation accounting for about 35 percent of the total energy yield. The initial thermal pulse of the blast was of heat and X-rays which heat the air near the explosion. The light from this process was visible more than 50 miles away and was brighter than the sun. The fireball momentarily cooled, and then a second thermal pulse was generated lasting for several seconds which vaporized the ocean's surface waters, and seared and scorched, blistered and burned the nearby fauna and soil of the neighboring islands. This immense heat or thermal radiation was so strong that it probably could be felt 100 miles away. In addition to all this, tens of square miles around the blast center would be riddled by 5 percent of the blast's energy in neutron and gamma rays. At least half of the energy of this titantic bomb was expended in a high-pressure blast, or shock wave, The shock front caused by the fantastically fast-expanding fireball cracked outward; like a nearsolid wall of tightly compressed air, it initially sped outward miles ahead of the fireball, at more than 2,000 miles per hour, and even more than a dozen miles from the center it was still the speed of sound. traveling faster than At its beginnings, it exerted pressures of several million pounds per square inch, gradually weakening as it traveled outward to more than twice the normal atmospheric pressure at several 74