How big a hole
 

A question for the Nuke Pukes out there: How big a hole would a 100kt surface burst make? Info that seems hard to find on the Internet... Thanks.

Perhaps surprisingly, the crater would not be very deep as most of the kinetic energy would go into the atmosphere and not into soil compaction. This site should give you the information you need to properly scale the effects of air, surface, and underground detonations.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Libr...ndEffects.html

100Kt surface burst

Crater Inside Radius : 90 m (0.03 km2)
Crater Depth : 40 m
Crater Lip Radius : 180 m (0.1 km2)

Fireball Radius : 500 m (0.79 km2)
Air Blast Radius 20 psi : 1.01 km (3.21 km2)
Radiation Radius 500 rem : 1.82 km (10.5 km2)
Air Blast Radius 5 psi : 2.12 km (14.2 km2)
Thermal Radiation Radius (3rd Degree Burns) : 3.9 km (47.9 km2)
Air Blast Radius 1 psi : 5.46 km (93.7 km2)

A specific 100 kiloton crater, from an underground blast:

https://youtu.be/DcK3BdrjdiY

--
Michael

Thanks
 

Thanks for the information all. Watching the video of the underground test reminded me of when I was kid (7-10 years old) and remembering the old AEC used a small nuke in Colorado for test for mining purposes and ended up with a good size earthquake from the test because it took place near unknown fault lines. The info from Nuke11 was precisely what I was looking for, and THANK YOU ALL!