Radioactive Cloud From North Korean Nuclear Test Could Engulf U.S.

If the North Korean nuclear threat isn’t bad enough already, a new simulation shows how a radioactive cloud could engulf Asia and the United States if the hermit nation carries out a nuclear test explosion over the Pacific.

The simulation was shared on Twitter by Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. It shows a hypothetical two-week “atmospheric burst” that could spread out over the globe following a North Korean nuclear test. Zerbo later clarified that the graphic is “a rough simulation of (a) potential cloud that could carry isotopes!”

The simulation doesn’t detail what the yield of the hypothetical explosion would be, nor what kind of threat a “radio-isotope cloud” would pose to humans.

Officials do have some idea of the potential yield of a North Korean nuke, however. Following the country’s sixth nuclear test at the Punggye-ri military site, U.S. monitoring group 38 North determined that the explosion had a yield of “roughly 250 kilotons.” That figure is more than 16 times larger than the 15-kiloton atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima.

However, it should be stated that while that figure sounds scary, it actually pales in comparison to the power and size of the nuclear arsenals of other countries. According to a July estimate, North Korea has just 10 nuclear warheads to the United States’ 6,800. Furthermore, the largest nuclear bomb currently in service in the U.S. arsenal, the B83, has a yield of 1.2 megatons – 75 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

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