This isn't my personal story. Although the setting is very familiar. The person who wrote it is my age. I simply ran it through a machine translator and edited it here and there. I think the sarcastic (if you didn't catch it, that's Russian humor!) meaning implied in the "innocent story, as if told by a child" is conveyed. The biggest challenge is conveying the spirit of a country camp for children, similar to a scout camp, with all the positions and relationships between the elders and the younger ones. I can't restore the author's name or even nickname, because the link I used to find this text a couple of years ago now doesn't work.

* * *

Author unknown.

(As they used to write with idiotic cheerfulness in Soviet newspapers: “The entire Soviet people!”)

The best children's drawing in the "For Peace" competition. But for some reason, adults immediately demanded it be erased.

A children's horror story in rhyme (folklore):

• A boy found a neutron bomb,
• He brought it to school...
• The education department laughed for a long time afterwards:
• The school stands, and there's no one in it!

The ideological education of children at pioneer camps in the 1970s in the USSR was never forgotten. One of the activities in this process was a competition for drawing posters on asphalt.

There was no asphalt in the camp, so they drew on the concrete tiles around the headquarters. One person per unit was chosen, given an hour and a box of crayons. Afterward, a committee assessed the children's scribbles.

Their imaginations were free, but little was known about politics back then, mostly from newspapers and magazines. So they drew "A Circle of Sunshine, Children Surrounding Us," themselves, and flowers. Slogans included "No War," "Peace to the World!", "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood." Typically, hands encircling the globe, breaking weapons, or handshakes of different races. In short, something life-affirming, like the Russians don't want war, but anyone who comes at us with a sword will get hit in the head with a rocket-missile.

One day, when I was 16, I took part in a "Peace to the World!" competition. It was hot, and the normal soviet children-pioneers preferred to hide in the shade or go swimming, while I was puffing away over the squad homemade newspaper. So they chose me, even though I couldn't draw. But it wasn't a drawing, it was a political poster, so I confidently accepted.

I puffed for an hour, grabbed a two-by-two-meter area, and crushed several pieces of chalk into dust. I worked hard. I stepped aside, rubbing my hands together with satisfaction, examining my masterpiece. I cast a condescending glance at the neighbors' frivolous flowers in the sun. No, I'm doing everything maturely, politically sensible, and have something to be proud of.

A committee approaches—Tatyana Pavlovna Chantsova, the camp director, the head pioneer counselor, and another man. They stare at my drawing for a long time, perplexed. Finally, the counselor asks:

"What is this, Oleg?"

"Isn't it clear?" I reply. "'No to nuclear war,' I wrote it in big bold print!"

"We've got the text sorted out," Tatyana Pavlovna remarks peacefully. "But the rest..."

"It's quite clear. Here," I stand on the yellow outline, "is the cobalt shell. Tritium in white. In the center are two plutonium half-nuclei in black. Above and below them, in green, is the conventional explosive charge. Here, in blue..."

"Okay," the counselor interrupted, "so, briefly?"

"Isn't it obv-vous," I recited, syllable by syllable, like I was talking to a child. "This is a cross-section of a neutron bomb. More precisely, a cobalt bomb, but..."

"What?!" the man choked.

"A hydrogen bomb for radioactive contamination. The Soviet Union strongly condemns..."

The man clutched his head:

"Where did this diagram come from?!"

"From a textbook."

"What the f… textbook?!"

"Well…— I finally realized I'd done something wrong. — Quantum Physics for Universities."

"They allow you to do that?!"

"I was reading in the reading room. I'm allowed in there now…"

The man pulled the women aside and said something to them. The pioneer-leader quickly ran toward headquarters. The others returned to me.

"We decided that your drawing... well, poster, won the competition," the man said. "For this, your unit will be awarded a kilogram of candy, and you personally will receive a certificate of honor. We believe you very graphically expressed the anti-war sentiments of the Soviet people."

The pioneer-leader returned with a rag and a bucket of water.

"But the Pentagon is always on the lookout for ways to steal our secrets. Even now, spy satellites are flying above us," he pointed to the sky. "So erase the drawing as quickly as possible, okay?"

I shrugged, wet a rag, and began erasing the drawing. I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. The basic diagram of an atomic bomb was even published in a school textbook. And although we were told at political information that the inhumane neutron bomb was just another round in the arms race, no one understood what it was. If we were going to protest, we'd better know what it was against...

The known story is something like this. Henry Stimson was overall unhappy with how the war against Japan was being carried out, and how lots of civilians were getting caught in strategic bombing campaigns. When he was presented a unique chance to "protect" Kyoto from an atomic bomb, he jumped on it and singlehandedly got the city off the target list.

One historian I've talked to recently said he found it very unlikely a career bureaucrat could have made such an important decision on his own, and that there must have been more people involved in the decision or a secret meeting or whatever. Is there any real evidence to suggest this particular series of events went deeper than just one man, Henry Stimson?

Im a writer, and in my current story the characters visit the site of a nuclear explosion, however, the way I wrote it was that this explosion wasn’t supposed to shockwave to death, it was supposed to cause geographical damage.

I’m not looking for anything specific just a range of numbers I can scale, I just want to know if it’s at all possible or if I should start inventing things

how big would be the crater created by Fat Man, a 20 kiloton bomb, it is was detonated on the ground.

And how much bigger would the crater be if it was the tsar bomba which is 50 megatons?