The latest fiery dialogue between the United States and North Korea has created a new threat. Last Tuesday, during a speech at the UN, President Trump said his government would "completely destroy North Korea" if it was necessary to protect the United States or its allies. On Friday, Kim Jong-un responded that North Korea "would seriously consider the appropriate, highest-ever level of harsh countermeasure."

The North Korean leader did not specify the nature of the countermeasure, but his foreign minister hinted that North Korea could test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific.

"This could be the most powerful H-bomb explosion in the Pacific," Foreign Minister Lee Yong-ho told reporters at the UN General Assembly in New York. "We have no idea what action can be taken as the decision rests with leader Kim Jong Un."

So far, North Korea has conducted nuclear tests in underground chambers and ballistic missiles in the sky. If North Korea follows through on its threat, this test will be the first atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon in nearly 40 years.

Hydrogen bombs are much more powerful than atomic bombs and are capable of generating many times more explosive energy. If a hydrogen bomb is tested in the Pacific, it will explode with a blinding flash and produce its famous "mushroom" cloud. The immediate consequences are likely to depend on the height of the detonation above the water. The initial explosion can destroy most of the life in the impact zone - many fish and other marine life - instantly. When the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, everything within a 1,600-foot radius perished.

The explosion will carry radioactive particles through the air, and the wind will disperse them for hundreds of miles. Smoke can block sunlight and kill marine life that cannot survive without the sun. Radiation is known to destroy cells in humans, animals and plants, causing changes in genes. These changes can lead to mutations in future generations. Eggs and larvae of marine organisms are particularly sensitive to radiation, experts say. Affected animals can pass on exposure through the food chain.

The explosion could also have devastating and long-term effects on humans and animals if the fallout reaches land. Particles can contaminate air, soil and water supplies. More than 60 years after the U.S. conducted a series of atomic bomb tests near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, it still remains "uninhabitable," according to a 2014 report by The Guardian.

Under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which was concluded with the 1996 Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were conducted in underground chambers, above ground and under water between 1945 and 1996. The last above-ground test of a nuclear power was in China in 1980.

This year alone, North Korea has conducted 19 ballistic missile tests and one nuclear test. Earlier this month, the DPRK said it had conducted a successful underground hydrogen bomb test that triggered a man-made earthquake near the test site, which was recorded by seismic activity stations around the world.

After the end of World War II in 1946, the American military arrived in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. They explained to the locals what they were going to spend here nuclear tests for the salvation of mankind. No one then suspected, including the military themselves, what a catastrophe the “rescue” action would turn into. Bikini Atoll, on which the tests were carried out, turned into a dead zone.

For more than 2000 years, local aborigines have lived on Bikini Atoll, which is part of Micronesia - a group of Pacific islands. After the Second World War, the Americans offered 167 islanders to temporarily leave their homes. The US was to start testing the atomic bomb "for the good of the human race, to put an end to all wars." Local residents obediently left their homes. 242 ships, 156 aircraft, 42,000 US military and civilian personnel invaded their territory.

Between 1946 and 1958 on Bikini Atoll, 23 nuclear devices were detonated. About 700 movie cameras were installed on the island, ships and planes - the whole world was supposed to know about the power of a nuclear bomb. Its main target was enemy ships captured during the war and transported to Micronesia. Among them was the legendary Japanese battleship Nagato, one of the most powerful ships of World War II. To test the effect of radiation, 5,000 animals were loaded onto military ships. The first hours after the explosion, the radiation level reached 8000 roentgens, which is 20 times the lethal dose.

In 1954, tests of hydrogen bombs began. One of the explosions was more powerful than in Nagasaki or Hiroshima. Millions of tons of sand, corals and plants were blown into the air. The scale was underestimated by the military, the explosion was three times more powerful than expected. Three small islands disappeared from the face of the earth, and a crater 3 km in diameter formed in the center of the atoll.

Several islands 100 miles from Bikini, whose inhabitants were not warned and evacuated, were covered with a layer of radioactive dust 2 cm thick. Unaware of the danger, the children played in the ashes. By nightfall, the islanders were in a panic - the first signs of radioactive contamination began to appear: hair loss, weakness and severe vomiting. Two days passed before the US government provided medical assistance to the islanders and evacuated them.

In 1968, it was announced that Bikini Atoll was safe for life and that the locals could return. It wasn't until 8 years later that they were informed that "higher levels of radiation than originally expected" had been recorded on the island. As a result, many residents died from cancer and other diseases. Today, Bikini Atoll is still considered uninhabitable.

And today they earn money on the tragic facts of history - for example, they arrange

More than 60 years ago, the United States began nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.

Today, only the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands themselves know and remember this, whose whole life was destroyed - "in the name of peace and security on earth." It was this wording that justified the "devilish", as the islanders called them, tests of American atomic bombs. In the United States itself, according to American anti-nuclear activists, there is no interest in this chapter of history. “However, this year,” UN Peace Ambassador Jane Goodall and Koprus Peace volunteer Rick Essetla write in the San Francisco Chronicle, “we hope the anniversary will perhaps open the eyes of people in America and around the world. We must talk about the damage done to the islands in the past and get rid of our uncertainty that such a nightmare will not happen again.”

For the first time, the Americans tested an atomic bomb in the atmosphere on July 16, 1945 - on their own territory, near the town of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Then - on the inhabitants of Japan: everyone knows about the nuclear apocalypse of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Probably, after such deadly - in the literal sense of the word - results, the US authorities decided to test new weapons away from their own territory. The choice fell on the sparsely populated, lost in the Pacific Ocean Marshall Islands, which by that time had already been captured by the United States, and later transferred under the care of the UN.

The first test was carried out here on June 30, 1946. This was followed by another 67 deadly tests over the course of 12 years on the islands of Bikini (Bikini) and Iniviteyk (Enevetak) with a total capacity of 108 megatons - this is the equivalent of more than 7000 Hiroshima! Once, a high power bomb was dropped on 73 warships (an entire decommissioned US flotilla) directly into the sea. On July 25, 1946, an underwater explosion was already carried out near one of the islands. In 1952, at Iniviteika, the military tested the first American hydrogen bomb with a yield of 10.4 megatons, which is 750 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

And on March 1, 1954, a secret test was conducted on Bikini, codenamed "Bravo" ("Bravo"), the results of which stunned even the military. The island was practically destroyed by a hydrogen bomb, which was a thousand times (!) More powerful than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. “On the eve of this test,” say Jane Goodall and Rick Esselta, “weather conditions deteriorated, and the morning of the test, the wind blew directly onto US warships and several inhabited islands, including Rongylap (Rongylap) and Utrik (Utrik). However, despite the fact that such a wind direction posed a danger to people living on these islands, the bomb was detonated. Huge clouds of sand, white ash settled on several atolls, hitting people, including a small number of Americans stationed there.

The "nuclear" history of these unfortunate Pacific islands and their inhabitants is an example of a crime against humanity, which was sanctified by the "struggle for peace" with the help of the latest nuclear weapons, which required testing and improvement. People on the islands of Rongylap and Utrik suffered skin burns and hair loss. In a US Atomic Energy Commission report to the press, it was said that several Americans and Marshallese “received a small dose of radiation. But there were no burns. Everything went well." Perhaps that is why two days later people from Rongilep Island and three days later from Utrik Island were evacuated.
In the closed report of the authorities, it was indicated that 18 islands and atolls could be contaminated with radionuclide fallout as a result of tests within the framework of the Bravo project. A few years later, a US Department of Energy report noted that, in addition to the 18 mentioned, other islands were also contaminated as a result of testing. Moreover, five of them are inhabited, people live on them.

It is ironic that a few years later, the islanders from the atolls of Rongilepa and Utrik were allowed to return to their native places, which, according to the US authorities, "were only slightly polluted and quite safe." But immediately upon their return, the Brookhaven National Laboratory gave the settlers a cold shower. Scientists have published a conclusion that here "the level of radioactivity is higher than anywhere else in the world", therefore... "the life of these people on the island will provide the most valuable information about the effects of radiation on humans." In general, the islanders were frankly invited to become free and dumb guinea pigs.

Despite the fact that US nuclear tests in the Pacific are closed to the media, information about them nevertheless appeared in the press. A wave of protests swept across the world. It was then that the powerful anti-nuclear Pugwash movement (Canada) arose, decades later receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. (A year ago, at the age of 96, the famous physicist, the long-term head of the Pugwash movement, Sir Joseph Rotblat, with whom the author of these lines had the honor of knowing and collaborating, died.) At the same time, the world-famous scientists Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell spoke out with their famous Manifesto against nuclear weapons .

In 1955, at the height of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, a group of well-known nuclear physicists initiated the establishment of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.
There was also a wave of protests in the United States itself. More than two thousand American scientists in 1957 demanded that the authorities immediately stop nuclear weapons testing. About ten thousand researchers from more than four dozen countries sent a letter of protest to the UN Secretary General.

However, in response to the legitimate demand of the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands (they wrote a letter to the UN Trusteeship Council) to stop nuclear testing and destruction of the islands, Great Britain, France and Belgium proposed an agreed draft resolution, which cynically stated that the United States had the right to conduct nuclear tests on Trust Territory... "in the interest of world peace and security".
However, there is nothing strange in this. By that time, both Great Britain and France were already conducting their own nuclear tests with might and main, and a ban on such tests by the United States would automatically put an end to their own nuclear developments. Therefore, despite the protests of the world community, the United States continued nuclear explosions in the Pacific Ocean.

The Soviet Union, which tested its own atomic bomb in August 1949, also took part in the campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific. In 1956, the USSR announced a moratorium on testing, apparently believing that the few nuclear countries as yet few would follow suit. (It is clear that a full-scale nuclear race was beyond the power of a country bled dry in World War II.) But instead of sitting down at the negotiating table and deciding whether to stop testing, or at least a temporary moratorium on them, the US and UK carried out 30 new explosions , including the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The last "nuclear mushroom" soared over them in 1958.

11 years later, the US authorities announced that the island of Bikini is quite safe for living, and its indigenous population can return. However, people who survived the nuclear nightmare were in no hurry to return. And, as it turned out, not in vain. Six years after being invited to return, the US Department of the Interior released its report noting that Bikini had "higher levels of radiation than previously thought." Above ground buildings were still dangerous, food problems remained - some types of local products were forbidden to eat. After such a recognition, even those few families who returned to their native land, having been examined and found that the level of cesium in their bodies had increased by 75%, were forced to leave their homes for the second time.

The first thyroid tumors appeared in the inhabitants of Rongelap in 1963, 9 years after the testing of one of the most powerful hydrogen bombs. Due to nuclear testing, about a thousand inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, according to independent international experts, died of cancer and other diseases.
Only 1,865 people have been officially recognized by the US authorities as victims of American nuclear tests. They were paid compensation in the amount of more than millions. More than 5,000 islanders have not received any compensation because the US authorities did not consider them victims of a nuclear attack or radioactive contamination.

But the tests, terrifying in terms of consequences for humans and the environment, could well not have happened. And in general, the whole world history could have gone differently if the UN had adopted the International Convention on the Prohibition of the Production and Use of Weapons Based on the Use of Atomic Energy, proposed by the USSR in June 1946 (even before the start of the first nuclear test on the Marshall Islands), for mass destruction." But this document remained a draft. Neither the US nor its allies were ready for such a turn of events. They hurried their other development - an unprecedented race of new nuclear weapons began. And some of the islands and their inhabitants (not Americans, moreover) did not matter to the authorities of the emerging superpower.

Only five years later, in July 1963, after exhausting negotiations between the USSR and the United States and Great Britain, the unprecedented "Treaty on the Ban on Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water" was signed. According to Russian experts, published in the Bulletin on Atomic Energy, by this time about 520 nuclear tests in the atmosphere had already been carried out on the planet. The US and USSR each detonated more than 210 atomic and hydrogen bombs, Great Britain 21, France 50 and China 23. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and China until 1980.

It is hard to believe, but even today, many decades after atomic explosions in the atmosphere, long-lived radioactive isotopes from the Cold War era still continue to fall to the earth and oceans from the stratosphere.

American physicist Robert Oppenheimer (Robert Oppenheimer), who is also the "father of the atomic bomb", was born in New York in 1904 in a family of wealthy and educated Jews. During World War II, he led the development of American nuclear scientists to create the first atomic bomb in the history of mankind.

Trial Name: Trinity
Date: July 16, 1945
Location: Test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

It was the test of the world's first atomic bomb. In a section 1.6 kilometers in diameter, a giant purple-green-orange fireball shot up into the sky. The earth shuddered from the explosion, a white column of smoke rose to the sky and began to gradually expand, taking on an awesome mushroom shape at an altitude of about 11 kilometers.

Trial Name: Baker
Date: July 24, 1946
Location: Bikini Atoll Lagoon
Explosion type: Underwater, depth 27.5 meters
Power: 23 kilotons

The purpose of the tests was to study the effects of nuclear weapons on naval vessels and their personnel. 71 ships were turned into floating targets. This was the fifth test of a nuclear weapon. The explosion lifted several million tons of water into the air.

Challenge Name: Able (as part of Operation Ranger)
Date: January 27, 1951
Location: Nevada Proving Ground

Trial Name: George
Date: 1951

Test Name: Dog
Date: 1951
Location: Nevada Nuclear Test Site

Challenge Name: Mike
Date: October 31, 1952
Location: Elugelab ("Flora") Island, Eneweita Atoll
Power: 10.4 megatons

The device detonated in Mike's test, dubbed the "sausage", was the first true megaton-class "hydrogen" bomb. The mushroom cloud reached a height of 41 km with a diameter of 96 km.

Trial Name: Annie (As part of Operation Upshot Knothole)
Date: March 17, 1953
Location: Nevada Nuclear Test Site
Power: 16 kilotons

Test name: Grable (as part of Operation Upshot Knothole)
Date: 25 May 1953
Location: Nevada Nuclear Test Site
Power: 15 kilotons

Challenge Name: Castle Bravo
Date: March 1, 1954
Location: Bikini Atoll
Explosion type: on the surface
Capacity: 15 megatons

The explosion of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb was the most powerful explosion ever carried out by the United States. The power of the explosion turned out to be much higher than the initial forecasts of 4-6 megatons.

Challenge Name: Castle Romeo
Date: March 26, 1954
Location: On a barge in Bravo Crater, Bikini Atoll
Explosion type: on the surface
Capacity: 11 megatons

The power of the explosion turned out to be 3 times more than the initial forecasts. Romeo was the first test made on a barge.

Test Name: Seminole
Date: June 6, 1956

Power: 13.7 kilotons

Trial Name: Priscilla (as part of the Plumbbob trial series)
Date: 1957
Location: Nevada Nuclear Test Site
Power: 37 kilotons

Challenge Name: Umbrella
Date: June 8, 1958
Location: Eniwetok Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean
Power: 8 kilotons

An underwater nuclear explosion was carried out during Operation Hardtack. Decommissioned ships were used as targets.

Test Name: Oak
Date: June 28, 1958
Location: Eniwetok Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean
Capacity: 8.9 megatons

Test name: AN602 (aka "Tsar Bomba" and "Kuzkin's mother")
Date: October 30, 1961
Location: Novaya Zemlya test site
Capacity: more than 50 megatons

Test name: AZTEC (under the Dominic project)
Date: April 27, 1962
Location: Christmas Island
Power: 410 kilotons

Test name: Chama (as part of the Dominic project)
Date: October 18, 1962
Location: Johnston Island
Capacity: 1.59 megatons

Test name: Truckee (as part of the Dominic project)
Date: June 9, 1962
Location: Christmas Island
Power: more than 210 kilotons

Test Name: YESO
Date: June 10, 1962
Location: Christmas Island
Power: 3 megatons

Test name: "Unicorn" (fr. Licorne)
Date: July 3, 1970
Location: atoll in French Polynesia
Power: 914 kilotons

Trial Name: Rhea
Date: June 14, 1971
Location: French Polynesia
Power: 1 megaton

During the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (atomic bomb "Kid", August 6, 1945), the total number of deaths ranged from 90 to 166 thousand people

During the atomic bombing of Nagasaki (atomic bomb "Fat Man", August 9, 1945), the total number of deaths was from 60 to 80 thousand people. These 2 bombings became the only example in the history of mankind of the combat use of nuclear weapons.