How many nuclear weapons have been exploded on earth?

Two? Not even close. OK, including tests how about 40? More …

Nuclear Tests Statistics for the Period of 1945 - 1996:

United States: 215 atmospheric tests + 815 underground tests = 1,030
USSR: 219 atmospheric tests + 496 underground tests = 715
UK: 21 atmospheric tests + 24 underground tests = 45
France: 50 atmospheric tests + 160 underground tests = 210
China: 23 atmospheric tests + 22 underground tests = 45

The grand total of global atmospheric tests = 528

Source

Number in atmosphere = 528
Number in total = 2045

Yes 2045 nucler weapon explosions on earth. I knew it was into the hundreds, I didn’t know it was so high.

Google for more sources, they don’t vary by much if at all.

What got me on this was the post on neatorama, taken from wikipedia, about the biggest known nuke ever dropped:

The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen 1,000 km away. The heat could have caused third degree burns at a distance of 100 km. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high and 30–40 km wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the earth.

Since 50 Mt is 2.1×1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was a power of about 5.3×1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1% of the energy output of the Sun during the same fraction of a second. The detonation of Tsar Bomba therefore qualifies, even to this day, as being the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity.

YouTube link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cewjeqNdw

Link

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