“In other words, you kill more people,” he said. “With the bomb we dropped in Nagasaki, it killed everybody within a mile radius,” Morse told TIME on Friday, adding that a hydrogen bomb’s reach would be closer to 5 or 10 miles. Hydrogen bombs cause a bigger explosion, which means the shock waves, blast, heat and radiation all have larger reach than an atomic bomb, according to Edward Morse, a professor of nuclear engineering at University of California, Berkeley.Īlthough no other country has used such a weapon of mass destruction since World War II, experts say it would be even more catastrophic if a hydrogen bomb were to be dropped instead of an atomic one. witnessed the magnitude of a hydrogen bomb when it tested one within the country in 1954, the New York Times reported. The bombings in the two cities were so devastating, they forced Japan to surrender.īut a hydrogen bomb has the potential to be 1,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb, according to several nuclear experts. dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then another one three days later in Nagasaki during World War II in 1945, according to the Associated Press. More than 200,000 people died in Japan after the U.S. As global tensions continue to rise over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, here’s what to know about atomic and hydrogen bombs: Why is a hydrogen bomb stronger than an atomic bomb?