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
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