What If Every Nuke Exploded at Once?

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]I've always wondered what would happen if we detonated all nuclear bombs on planet Earth. Would we be able to survive or would humanity end as we know it? In this video, we will be getting the answer. And I don't know if you want to know what actually happens.

[00:00:17]Many of our viewers have asked us a very serious question. What if we made a big pile of bombs and exploded every nuclear weapon in the world all at once?

[00:00:26]Strangely enough, we couldn't find a good source to answer this question to our satisfaction. So, we gathered together a few scientists to calculate what would happen and find an answer to this extremely important scientific problem once and for all. Currently, there are 15,000 nuclear weapons on Earth.

[00:00:43]>> Oh my god.

[00:00:44]>> The US and Russia both have around 7,000 while France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea own around 1,000 BETWEEN THEM.

[00:00:53]>> WO! WAIT, I KNEW THAT WE ATE A LOT. I didn't know it was like it's us and Russia and that's essentially it >> pretty much. Yeah. I believe that the stockpile started to go up after World War II. There was an arms race between the US and Russia to see who could create the biggest, most destructive explosives. And um luckily we all decided that we're not going to explode them on each other.

[00:01:17]>> Yeah. For now.

[00:01:17]>> Yeah. We're just doing it for fun. We're just just for funies. We're going to make a quazillion of them. My theory is if they all explode out once in the same spot though, the Earth goes bye-bye.

[00:01:26]Later, goodbye, planet Earth. GG. Huh.

[00:01:29]>> It is possible. I do think that there would be some survivors, especially because we have nuclear bunkers that are built to withstand a potential nuclear explosion. So, I do think that the fallout would be catastrophic, but I also do think that humanity would still be able to prevail.

[00:01:46]>> Oh, it's funny.

[00:01:47]>> But how much destructive power is this really? Let's try to put these numbers into perspective.

[00:02:00]>> Shout out Kurt Kazat for getting the answers for us.

[00:02:03]>> On Earth about 4,500 cities or urban areas with at least 100,000 inhabitants.

[00:02:09]Some are bigger than others. So, we'll assume that on average we need three nuclear bombs to completely wipe out one city.

[00:02:15]>> That's fair. This means we could destroy every single city on planet Earth arsenal, killing more than 3 billion people, roughly half of humanity in an instant and we'd still have >> Is anybody else uncomfortable with like how nonchalant they are just talking about this? Like I'm getting a little scared.

[00:02:31]>> Yeah, that was quick.

[00:02:32]>> That kind of felt easy. We are 70 seconds into this video and we have 3 billion people dead.

[00:02:38]>> Yeah, I thought it'd be worse than that to be honest.

[00:02:40]>> Pretty terrifying. Well, he's about to talk about all the ones that they have left over. That was just major cities.

[00:02:44]still have 1,500 nuclear weapons left.

[00:02:47]>> Now, that's what an expert would call overkill.

[00:02:50]>> So, we can say with confidence that we have a lot of nuclear weapons and they can do a lot of damage. But what if we make a huge pile of all 15,000 bombs and >> This is where it gets interesting.

[00:03:00]>> Let's drop our nuclear pile in the middle of the Amazon rainforest just to show nature who's boss. Our warheads, piled half-hazardly, fit into a small warehouse. A typical US warhead has the power of 200,000 tons of TNT.

[00:03:13]>> Does anybody know how many farts that equivalates to?

[00:03:16]>> A couple.

[00:03:16]>> Probably a billion, >> I'd say. A couple >> could be. Yeah.

[00:03:19]>> So, 15,000 warheads would be the equivalent of 3 billion tons of TNT. For scale, this is enough to rebuild the whole island of Manhattan with every building and skyscraper using stacks of TNT.

[00:03:32]>> The closest thing we can compare to the energy gathered here is a volcano. Oh, that's one of the dead volcanic eruptions in recorded history took place in 1883 on the island of Krakato.

[00:03:42]>> Crackow.

[00:03:42]>> The eruption was so powerful that 70% of the island and the surrounding archipelago was destroyed, killing tens of thousands of people. Its effects were felt around the world for days after the event. Our nuclear pile contains 15 times the energy of the Crackkatoa volcanic eruption. So, let's finally push the button.

[00:04:02]>> Three.

[00:04:03]>> You won't.

[00:04:03]>> Two.

[00:04:04]>> You won't. One. In a second, a fireball 50 km across vaporizes everything in its way and creates a wave that flattens 3,000 km of forest.

[00:04:16]>> Everything 250 km will start to burn.

[00:04:20]>> The explosion will be heard literally around the world. As the pressure wave circles the Earth tens of times over the next few weeks, millions of tons of generated material are catapulted into the atmosphere. The mushroom cloud reaches the outer reaches of the stratosphere, pushing up against space itself. After things have calmed down, a small crater about 10 km across. Small.

[00:04:41]WE'RE CALLING THAT A SMALL CRATER OF 10 KM.

[00:04:44]>> To be honest, I thought it'd be way bigger. Maybe I'm stupid, but like well 15,000 nuclear bombs. Like I thought like I mean I guess 10 km is really big, but that's miles.

[00:04:56]>> I don't really know what I thought. I don't I I thought like the whole world like later everybody >> that's just an initial blast. I think what would kill most people is pro like I want to see how big this radiation >> I was thinking radiation would get most of them but there's also like what are they like the seismic waves or something.

[00:05:12]>> The Grand Canyon for instance is 16 km wide. This is 10.

[00:05:16]>> Let me think about that.

[00:05:17]>> The Grand Canyon Alec the Grand Canyon like the biggest canyon on the entire planet and this is almost as big as that. You mean like like like from one side of the canyon to the other? Like like not the whole Grand Canyon, but just like the like the >> north rim to the south rim from like the this is the largest width of the Grand Canyon is 16 km 10 miles.

[00:05:35]>> Okay. Yeah. No. Well, now that you say it's like that, that seems pretty big.

[00:05:39]That's pretty big. I wonder how deep it is. It's probably pretty deep, too.

[00:05:43]>> Maybe we'll say, man, probably >> left in the center of the worst world fires the planet has seen in millennia.

[00:05:49]spreading throughout South America, burning down forests and cities alike.

[00:05:53]>> I can probably survive it.

[00:05:54]>> And now the unpleasant part begins.

[00:05:56]>> The extremely radioactive material parts very quickly and a large area several kilometers around the crater is now uninhabitable as is everywhere for hundreds of kilome downwind. Much of the fallout is carried high into the atmosphere by the mushroom cloud and carried around the planet.

[00:06:13]>> The amount of material >> guys, are there like some creatures in the Amazonian rainforest that could survive? Like do you think there's like a like a rainforest cockroach that's just like huh just it's just a it's a bad day. Look there's a bad storm.

[00:06:26]>> Remember some of those some of those videos we watched talked about like us drilling into the earth and there was some animals that were that were hundreds of feet maybe even miles underground. I think they would be fine.

[00:06:35]>> Yeah. I mean that's a pretty big range from feet to miles. But I do remember those animals that could survive really deep underground.

[00:06:41]>> Almost like a like an alligator or something.

[00:06:43]>> Yeah.

[00:06:44]>> An alligator go 300 ft. I think it was something insane.

[00:06:47]>> Yeah. something weird like that. But I think uh this is going to make like acid rain. I think that's a thing.

[00:06:53]>> Yeah.

[00:06:53]>> I think a big issue could also get >> Yeah. There's nuclear fallout.

[00:06:56]>> It gets in the clouds.

[00:06:58]>> Yeah. A big issue could also be like with the clouds. Like a big smoke could be blocking the sun. So it kills all the plant life in the world cuz they don't get the photosynthesis.

[00:07:05]>> Yeah. I mean that would need to stay in the air for a while. But yeah, maybe cuz you're saying you're referencing like what happens when like a meteor hits Earth. You're saying pretty much.

[00:07:13]>> Or even a super >> when an asteroid hits Earth. That's what happens. It's like there's >> Yeah. We'd go into a we'd go into an ice age because this the sun wouldn't be able to break through the the huge dust cloud.

[00:07:22]>> But is that the same as a like a nuclear explosion? Would it make that much dust?

[00:07:26]>> I don't know.

[00:07:26]>> You think it would?

[00:07:27]>> I think so. Yeah. Well, it would also like pollute the ozone layer. Like it's not even just about the dust. It's all like the chemicals and stuff that >> Well, yeah. The radiation that's what I think is going to kill everything. But I don't know if it's like if it's going to make the same type of cloud that a meteor would or that a volcano would.

[00:07:43]I'm not sure why I think that. I just I just feel that way. The environment doubles worldwide, which still isn't civilization ending, but we may see more cancer for a while.

[00:07:52]>> A portion of the particles will flow to the edge of space for years and cause a nuclear winter that could lower global temperatures by a few degrees for a few years.

[00:08:00]>> So, wait a second. You're talking like if we do this, we solve global warming.

[00:08:03]>> It would be reversed. We wanted it to get hotter. Everything would be snowing.

[00:08:06]Nothing. No solar power.

[00:08:08]>> I think Didn't we just have like the one of the colder winters ever? Didn't that just happen?

[00:08:13]>> I think that just happened. It was >> one of the most uh wintry winters, that's for sure. Lot of snow.

[00:08:19]>> This explosion was pretty bad if you're in South America and especially Brazil.

[00:08:23]The Amazon rainforest is pretty much history. Not great, but human life will go on.

[00:08:30]>> Okay, but what if we explode more nuclear weapons?

[00:08:32]>> What?

[00:08:33]>> Let's suppose humanity decided to mine every bit of uranium on Earth and build as many nuclear bombs as possible.

[00:08:40]>> That's what's been happening. current usage, it's estimated that there are around 35 million tons of uranium in Earth's crust. Enough to power human civilization for over 2,000.

[00:08:49]>> Yeah, let's do that. Let's power civilization of nuclear warheads.

[00:08:52]>> No.

[00:08:53]>> For the sake of argument, let's say we create a pile with the yield of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs, which makes up a cube 3 km high that contains roughly the energy of the asteroid.

[00:09:02]>> Does anybody else see the Empire State Building all the way down there?

[00:09:06]>> Yeah.

[00:09:06]>> Yes.

[00:09:07]>> It's looking really tiny.

[00:09:08]>> Looks like a little rocket ship. This is just like a casual weekend for Dr. Doof and Schmmerch.

[00:09:12]>> What if this just like shoots our planet to like another solar system? Like maybe he doesn't blow up the planet, but instead it just like rocket boosts us like out of the orbit of the sun and then we just like get shot somewhere else. That could be cool. There's one giant propulsion.

[00:09:26]>> Well, I feel like this could be kind of cool. Maybe we don't blow up Earth, but let's let's blow up a different planet, right? Like how cool would it be if we just blew up Mercury or like maybe an asteroid's coming in and we send all the nukes to blow up the asteroid so it doesn't destroy Earth? I heard that we'll use lasers if that ever actually happens. So, we could like chop it up like a like a sushi chef.

[00:09:44]>> Those must be some crazy lasers.

[00:09:46]>> That Yeah, that sounds cool. I didn't know.

[00:09:49]>> Pretty sweet. Um, but yeah, I'm in favor of using 10 billion Hiroshima bombs to blow up Uranus. Thoughts?

[00:09:54]>> That would hurt.

[00:09:55]>> Comment down below.

[00:09:55]>> That ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Except it's also nuclear.

[00:10:02]>> Three.

[00:10:03]>> No, no, no. Hey, that that's a cute little birds in a fireball stretching so high into the sky that it's visible from half of South America. I'm sure we're fine. So much power that the ground just splashes like water forming a crater 100 km across.

[00:10:18]>> 100 km >> bedrock on the scale of whole mountain ranges is vaporized in an instant while thousands of tons of material is catapulted away with such speed that it's ejected into space.

[00:10:28]>> Do you guys think that you could feel that on the other side of the planet?

[00:10:31]Like would it cause an earthwide earthquake?

[00:10:34]>> Yeah. Uh let me think about it. Yeah.

[00:10:37]Yeah. Honestly, this is what I thought was gonna happen with our with our nukes. I thought it was going to be this bad. But this is insane.

[00:10:43]>> Yeah. I'm kind of glad that we don't have enough nukes to do this. I mean I in theory we could is what they're saying that we could mine up all the uranium and make the nukes if we really really really wanted to. But luckily we don't.

[00:10:54]>> I have a fear. Maybe it's irrational. I don't know. But with technology like going so crazy in the last couple years that maybe in like 30 years from now building a nuke is going to be like s so easy that anybody could do it. Like maybe that's super stupid of me, but I just feel >> to get uranium. You got to find it.

[00:11:09]>> Getting too crazy.

[00:11:10]>> Yeah. I mean there are pretty strict regulations on this.

[00:11:13]>> Yeah, that's true.

[00:11:14]>> You can't even buy stuff to build a basic bomb.

[00:11:17]>> Yeah, true. It's easy to detect when someone's got uranium. You could you could find them.

[00:11:20]>> Yeah. I remember um my chemistry teacher would always say that she knew how to build a bomb, but she wasn't going to show us how to do it. What a loser.

[00:11:27]>> Yeah, she she gave me an F.

[00:11:29]>> Some leaves Earth forever, while most of it comes raining down as hot, burning debris that heats up the atmosphere to oven-like temperatures, killing most big animals and causing firestorms all over the world.

[00:11:41]>> Wow. The earth's crust rings like a bell, struck by global earthquakes stronger than anything in recorded history, decimating cities around while hurricane force winds flatten every single tree in South America, and wildfires consume the continent. The abundance of hydrocarbons in the Amazon burn to form ash, are cast into the atmosphere, darting the sky and keeping sunlight from reaching the surface, dropping temperatures to near freezing worldwide. The >> guys, I didn't even think about this, but the International Space Station, that would be fine, right? They would be okay up there.

[00:12:15]>> Maybe.

[00:12:16]>> Have you ever seen the 100? It'd be like the 100.

[00:12:18]>> Yeah, >> more or less. Yeah. I mean, >> oh my gosh. Fell in love.

[00:12:24]>> Global winter may last for decades and results in the extinction of every large animal species, humans included. We could also mention that every corner of the planet is covered with radioactive fallout, but at this point it doesn't matter that much anymore. This is humanity's extinction events space station get to enjoy a great view for a while, but it's not unlikely that the spray of rocks blast into orbit will destroy. Oh, Alex in bunkers or in submarines deep below the ocean surface may survive the longest before they exhaust their food supplies and have to venture out for more.

[00:13:00]They'll find the world a charred freezing radioactive wasteland.

[00:13:05]>> That would be kind of crazy if like for some strange reason this actually happens and they have no clue. Like they're thinking that they're coming back and everything's going to be dandy and then they get out and they're looking around and they're like, "Why is the snow green? What's going on, guys?"

[00:13:20]Like, "Oh my gosh, somebody made an invention that made everything Mountain Dew."

[00:13:25]>> Well, they say you shouldn't drink yellow snow. I mean, eat yellow snow, but what about green snow? I would probably try it.

[00:13:32]>> You get some cool superpowers as you're dying from the uranium poisoning. You would probably get like some superpowers or something.

[00:13:38]>> Maybe one person would turn into the Hulk.

[00:13:40]>> Just one. That's all we need, >> dude.

[00:13:42]>> Yeah.

[00:13:43]>> If you had um a 5% chance to turn into the Hulk from eating that stuff, but the other 95% chance you die, would you do it?

[00:13:51]>> What What are the alternatives? A normal life otherwise, or am I cooked?

[00:13:55]>> Yeah, you could just not do it. You could just not eat it.

[00:13:56]>> Yeah, I'm not doing that. What? Dude, the Hulk seems like it's kind of a curse.

[00:14:00]>> 50/50 chance to be the Hulk, man. Or you die.

[00:14:03]>> That's kind of empty. I don't know.

[00:14:05]>> The flip of a coin, he says. The flip of a coin.

[00:14:08]>> The planet itself doesn't care at all.

[00:14:10]After just a few million years later, the wounds of the explosions and life is thriving. Arguably even more so few million years later.

[00:14:18]>> Wa! What even is that?

[00:14:19]>> If intelligent life emerges again, it might be able to work out what happened.

[00:14:23]When they study geology, they'll find a bizarre and very thin layer of rock covering the entire world, enriched in radioactive elements like uranium and the other nasty things it decays to mixed with rare earth metals and plastics that humans used. They would probably be very, very confused.

[00:14:42]>> And then they would find this video of more Beck Bros and they'd be like, "Wow, those guys are super cool and I want to see more of them." So, they would obviously like the video, they would obviously subscribe, and then they would click this one right here as they are buying our hats all at the same time that are limited edition and selling out quickly. So you should totally get one while you can >> do it or else Alec will nuke your toilet.