On March 1, 1954, the United States conducted a secret test that went horrifyingly wrong. The operation was codenamed Castle Bravo. It was the first field test of a deployable "dry" hydrogen bomb, detonated at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Scientists expected an explosion of about 6 megatons. They were wrong. Due to a miscalculation in how lithium-7 isotopes would react, the bomb exploded with a yield of 15 megatons—more than 2.5 times larger than predicted. It remains the largest nuclea

Castle Bravo, 1954—15 megatons of raw explosive force. The largest U.S. nuclear test ever conducted. What’s wild? That’s the same magnitude as the Tunguska event—a cosmic blast that flattened Siberia in 1908. Nuclear tests gave us more than fallout. They gave us insight into the terrifying power of celestial impacts. | The Randall Carlson

3.7K views · 24 reactions | “Castle Bravo”, the most powerful nuclear...