Originally posted by Rewmac
That's why I wrote down the real power and date from atomic bomb, I don't think even Superman can survive that....And if we talk about another bomb such as Hydrogen Bomb the explosion power is much bigger...
This topic has been brought up before, wherein I posted the following. It's nice to see, for a change, people realizing what it takes to survive a nuclear weapon, instead of tossing around "and he can survive a nuke" like it's so much cotton candy.
One megaton yields over 4000 terajoules: more energy than the whole Earth will use for hundreds of years, at least. Seems to me, in order to survive a one megaton blast, one would have to counter 4000 terajoules with an equal amount of energy, at least.
Thusly...
- On a sunny day, the amount of sunlight per square centimeter yields 0.1345 joules every ten seconds.
- An adult male has about 1.8 square meters of total skin surface area.
- If Superman were totally naked, he could perhaps absorb about 2500 joules in ten seconds. He needs 1.6 trillion times this amount to counter the energy of a 1 megaton bomb (4000 trillion divided by 2500).
- 1.6 trillion x 10 seconds is about 500,000 years. This is how long Kal El has to sunbathe to absorb enough power to survive 1 (one) "typical" nuclear explosion.
To survive a 20-kiloton A-bomb (like the Fat Man, I believe; about 1/50th the power of a 1-megaton bomb), Superman (eg) would still have to absorb solar energy for about 10,000 years.
The other saving grace you mentioned in your scenario (the first being, you're postulating surviving a much smaller nuclear weapon), is adding distance from ground zero as a factor. This invokes the inverse-square-law effect. As such, because the Hiroshima Bomb was exploded at a height of what? 1000 feet? (more, I think), even directly beneath the blast, the energy has diminished to where the explosive force is equivalent to "only" about 40 pounds of TNT--still hefty to us mere mortals, but something far more manageable for a superhero.
Oh, I almost forgot, another factor to consider: even if you are standing right next to an explosion, since the blast radiates outward in a spherical wavefront, unless you are surrounding the bomb with your body, at least half the explosive energy radiates away from you.