Originally Posted by
bekilrwale
3 nukes wouldn't destroy the world. 3 Nuclear missiles have a better shot, but still not close enough. The way modern nuclear weapons works is far different from mere bombs. We have MIRV's which is a ballistic missile, usually intercontinental, which carries multiple nuclear warheads. So a nuclear missile may contain up to 15 actual nuclear warheads, and with plutonium they are about x1000 more powerful, each, than the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima which was a gun type uranium bomb. A nuclear war is a misnomer and never would occur, the point of a nuclear weapon is respect. You never intend to really use a nuclear weapon. A good analogy is the stinger of a bee. If the bee uses his stinger, he dies. But the stinger serves a much stronger use than implementation. The stinger prevents other creatures from attacking the bee altogether. That is what a nuclear weapon is for. If you use one, you will be nuked yourself, assuring mutual annihilation. That is why countries with nukes will never attack countries with nukes. And why countries with nukes will never be invaded altogether. The biggest nuclear bomb the U.S. has dropped was Castle Bravo which, due to a miscalculation, ended up killing hundreds of civilians in the Phillipines. However, more powerful nukes have been developed. Thermonuclear weapons are our current most powerful. They consist of a fission bomb, like your traditional drop and boom. After this fission bomb explodes, the heat and pressure causes a small stash of usually radioactive hydrogen, tritium, to undergo fusion. This is the "real boom" and is hundreds of times stronger than the initial nuclear bomb. Our current nukes can undergo up to 3 stages, each being several hundred times stronger than the previous blast. This is why when you watch the most current nuclear explosions go off you see a flash and then a MASSIVE flash. The first is the incredibly powerful fusion of the plutonium. The subsequent flashes are fusion of tritium or such, and are inconceivably powerful. The explosion of the fusion bomb cant be seen, it moves too fast for the naked human eye. You will see a flash and then a massive fireball with no in-between if you aren't watching a slown down video.
TL;DR: One nuclear missile contains multiple nuclear warheads, which are each thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. No country with a nuke will be invaded, nor will any country with a nuke use it's nuke offensively.