This weapon is more dangerous than nuclear bomb, its name is…, it is devastating due to…

New Delhi: When we hear, think or visualise the most powerful weapon in the world, the nuclear bomb, we can easily imagine the massive power and energy it will unleash if it is ever used by any country. The world still shudders at the mere thought of the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 by the United States. The two atomic bombs were resulted in the death of about 246,000 people and left behind a trail of unimaginable destruction.

We have come a long way and the current nuclear weapons are much more advanced, sophisticated, powerful, and destructive than the ones that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now a few countries possess nuclear weapons which are perhaps the ultimate weapons to be used against an enemy.

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions. These reactions could be in the form of either fission or a combination of fission and fusion reactions, producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.

However, there is another weapon system that is significantly more dangerous than nuclear weapons. This weapon system is ‘thermonuclear weapons’, also called hydrogen bombs or H-bombs.

Thermonuclear weapons are second-generation nuclear weapons that utilize both fission and fusion, resulting in vastly greater destructive power, a more compact size, and lower mass, or a combination of these courses. A thermonuclear bomb releases enormous explosive power that is produced as a result of an uncontrolled self-sustaining chain reaction.

Thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs are designed to produce explosions that are hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than atomic bombs. The shock waves, blast, heat, and radiation from a hydrogen bomb have a larger reach than those from an atomic bomb.

A hydrogen bomb could wipe out entire cities and kill hundreds to thousands of times more people than an atomic bomb, according to the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Nuclear Security.

In essence, while both nuclear weapons are devastating, thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs) are designed to deliver significantly more destructive power and have a much wider impact.

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