What is Fallout?
Everyone knows that fallout is dangerous, but what is it? Fallout is not a gas. It is not radioactive rays. It is physical material which forms within the rising fireball, and which eventually becomes widely scattered and slowly drifts down to ground level to contaminate large areas of land.
The physical material which comprises fallout can come in many different forms, for example:
The physical material which comprises fallout can come in many different forms, for example:
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Where does it come from?
Knowing where fallout comes from is the key to understanding it. It is simply the material from the metallic bomb casing, any unused Uranium/Plutonium metal from the pit, and any other material that happens to be close to the bomb and which ends up vapourizing and becoming part of the fireball (eg the metal tower which is supporting a test weapon, or the vehicle or ship which may be carrying a nuclear warhead when it explodes, any building structures if the bomb was detonated within a building, etc). In the case of underwater detonations, the water in the vicinity of the weapon vapourizes and becomes part of the fireball, and so later becomes fallout.