Here’s What A Nuclear Bomb Actually Sounds Like – SlashGear

Using footage of the Upshot–Knothole Annie test detonation, in the above video, you can see the foreboding mushroom cloud first before the jarring and incredibly loud sound of the weapon’s detonation. The reason for this is because the varying speeds of sound and light, which means that at a distance, you would see a nuclear weapon’s resulting flash and mushroom cloud before the sound reaches you. After the arrival of this initial sound though, a growing rumbling is heard, which is truly impressive considering the distance from which the above video is being taken.

Speaking with NPR, science historian Alex Wellerstein described the test footage of the very first nuclear bomb by saying, “Murmurs in anticipation; the slow countdown over a megaphone; the reaction at the flash of the bomb; and finally — a sharp bang, followed by a long, thundering growl. That’s the sound of the bomb.”

Most of the energy released by a nuclear bomb is broken down into three categories, which are blast energy, nuclear radiation, and thermal energy. Half of a nuclear bomb’s output comes from the initial blast reaction, while the remaining is 35% thermal energy and 15% nuclear radiation. Nuclear bombs are measured by their yield as it is compared to conventional TNT explosives, meaning that a one kiloton nuclear bomb has the same amount of energy as 1,000 tons of TNT. In other words, even though nuclear weapons utilize nuclear fission as their primary mechanism, the results still sound like a conventional explosion, albeit on a significantly larger scale.