The first four? Much luckier. These guys had no luck at all when this went off:
Castle Bravo, at 15 megatons, was a runaway like all the early fission-fusion-fission devices that weren't duds. The first "dry" thermonuclear device tested, its yield was three times greater than projected. Detonated Feb. 28, 1954 (March 1, local) from an artificial island off Bikini Atoll, Bravo remains the largest US nuclear explosion.
The cloud top rose and peaked at 130,000 feet (almost 40 km) after only 6 minutes. Eight minutes after the test the cloud had reached its full dimensions with a diameter of 100 km, a stem 7 km thick, and a cloud bottom rising above 55,000 feet (16.5 km.).
The crew of the fishing trawler Fifth Lucky Dragon didn't know about the Bravo shot and sailed blithely into the supposedly quarantined area. Bravo's size and a shift in the prevailing wind left the crew and their catch severely irradiated, one crewman died. Their saga inspired this classic of Japanese cinema. US personnel at a weather station 133 miles away were also heavily dosed before being evacuated the next day.
Undeterred, the US detonated Castle Romeo 25 days later, and it too promptly ran away--this time to 11 Megatons, again, triple the estimate...
Castle Yankee, which at 13.5 megatons was the 2nd largest US blast, was detonated two months after Bravo:
That "tritium bonus," it'll get you. Then again, thanks to Obama's EPA, maybe not.
The cloud top rose and peaked at 130,000 feet (almost 40 km) after only 6 minutes. Eight minutes after the test the cloud had reached its full dimensions with a diameter of 100 km, a stem 7 km thick, and a cloud bottom rising above 55,000 feet (16.5 km.).
The crew of the fishing trawler Fifth Lucky Dragon didn't know about the Bravo shot and sailed blithely into the supposedly quarantined area. Bravo's size and a shift in the prevailing wind left the crew and their catch severely irradiated, one crewman died. Their saga inspired this classic of Japanese cinema. US personnel at a weather station 133 miles away were also heavily dosed before being evacuated the next day.
Undeterred, the US detonated Castle Romeo 25 days later, and it too promptly ran away--this time to 11 Megatons, again, triple the estimate...
That "tritium bonus," it'll get you. Then again, thanks to Obama's EPA, maybe not.
