Thanks for writing this. There’s been some strange tendency of late to conflate the weapons effects of nuclear or thermonuclear explosions with those of “reall

Thanks for writing this. There’s been some strange tendency of late to conflate the weapons effects of nuclear or thermonuclear explosions with those of “really big amounts of conventional high explosive”. While that may even hold true at a sufficiently great radius, the proximate effects due to the near-instantaneous radiated energy is something that has no comparable analogue in the conventional world. These effects are not really militarily useful, which is why even in the realm of small tactical nuclear weapons there has been a tendency towards minimising or not emphasising them, but... The power of a nuclear weapon, intended properly as energy released per unit time, is in a league of it’s own. Aside: for all the horror, at least this happened at the quayside and half the explosive force radiated away almost harmlessly over the sea. That basically halved the actual destruction at the outset. If it had been in the middle of the city, there would have been twice the damage. EDIT: A startlingly worse case would have been if the explosives had been slightly interred, coupling the blast more closely to the ground and enhancing amplitude of the p-waves and providing plenty of really substantial debris raining down after basically ‘earth-quaking’ the buildings. NOTE: Took the last paragraphs and placed them into their own comment, with logical conclusion. Apologies for the duplication.