Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The Mike device was unlike any previous bomb. Weighing about 82 tons, it looked more like a small factory than a bomb and relied on liquid deuterium, a rare form of hydrogen, that had to be kept at extremely low temperatures.
It was based on the ‘Teller-Ulam’ design, a revolutionary two-stage configuration that used nuclear fission to trigger nuclear fusion. This allowed for a much larger explosion than conventional atomic bombs.
On November 1, 1952, at Enewetak Atoll, the Mike device was detonated. The explosion produced a staggering yield of 10.4 megatons, around 700 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The blast created a fireball over 3 miles wide, and a massive crater nearly 1.2 miles in diameter and 175 feet deep. The sheer force vaporized the island of Elugelab, leaving nothing behind but a hole in the ocean.
The Mike device was unlike any previous bomb. Weighing about 82 tons, it looked more like a small factory than a bomb and relied on liquid deuterium, a rare form of hydrogen, that had to be kept at extremely low temperatures.
It was based on the ‘Teller-Ulam’ design, a revolutionary two-stage configuration that used nuclear fission to trigger nuclear fusion. This allowed for a much larger explosion than conventional atomic bombs.
On November 1, 1952, at Enewetak Atoll, the Mike device was detonated. The explosion produced a staggering yield of 10.4 megatons, around 700 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The blast created a fireball over 3 miles wide, and a massive crater nearly 1.2 miles in diameter and 175 feet deep. The sheer force vaporized the island of Elugelab, leaving nothing behind but a hole in the ocean.
