Hydrogen bombs All modern nuclear weapons make some use of D-T fusion. Even pure fission weapons include neutron generators which are high-voltage vacuum tubes containing trace amounts of tritium and deuterium. However, in the public perception, hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs, are multi-megaton devices a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima's Little Boy. Such high-yield bombs are actually two-stage thermonuclears, scaled up to the desired yield, with uranium fission, as usual, providing most of their energy. The idea of the hydrogen bomb first came to public attention in 1949, when prominent scientists openly recommended against building nuclear bombs more powerful than the standard pure-fission model, on both moral and practical grounds. Their assumption was that critical mass considerations would limit the potential size of fission explosions, but that a fusion explosion could be as large as its supply of fuel, which has no critical mass limit. In 1949, the Soviets exploded their first fission bomb, and in 1950 President Truman ended the H-bomb debate by ordering the Los Alamos designers to build one. In 1952, the 10.4-megaton Ivy Mike explosion was announced as the first hydrogen bomb test, reinforcing the idea that hydrogen bombs are a thousand times more powerful than fission bombs. In 1954, J. Robert Oppenheimer was labeled a hydrogen bomb opponent. The public did not know there were two kinds of hydrogen bomb (neither of which is accurately described as a hydrogen bomb). On May 23, when his security clearance was revoked, item three of the four public findings against him was "his conduct in the hydrogen bomb program." In 1949, Oppenheimer had supported single-stage fusion-boosted fission bombs, to maximize the explosive power of the arsenal given the trade-off between plutonium and tritium production. He opposed two-stage thermonuclear bombs until 1951, when radiation implosion, which he called "technically sweet", first made them practical. The complexity of his position was not revealed to the public until 1976, nine years after his death. When ballistic missiles replaced bombers in the 1960s, most multi-megaton bombs were replaced by missile warheads (also two-stage thermonuclears) scaled down to one megaton or less.
nuclear weapons produce a very distinct signature on helicorders earthquake detectors.
That is how all the governments on earth knew that Pakistan had detonated a nuclear weapon and that it was not an earthquake.
Nuclear detonations at strategic locations far below the surface, they suggest, could be used to keep earthquakes under control. The theory is based on the inherent characteristics of quakes.
Although their science is still in its in fancy, seismologists know that earth quakes are caused by gradual shifts of the earth's crust. As long as such movements are small and unimpeded, there is little danger of a quake. But strains inevitably build up along the fault line ―the zone where the crust has moved from the rock adjacent to it. If these pressures become great enough, the crust suddenly breaks loose again, lurches violently and sends out shock waves in all directions.