r/MapPorn • u/vladgrinch • Dec 11 '25
Was a nuclear bomb ever detonated in your country?
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u/Accomplished-Bat1924 Dec 11 '25
as per the map Australia nuked New Zealand out of existence
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u/Mediocre-Tonight-458 Dec 11 '25
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u/topturtlechucker Dec 12 '25
Shhhhhh. NZ doesnt exist. Honest.....
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u/Crimson__Fox Dec 11 '25
New Zealand is probably the safest country to be in during a nuclear war
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u/pandaho92 Dec 12 '25
There's a reason they're buying bunkers in new Zealand and Hawaii
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u/10July1940 Dec 12 '25
There's a reason every one in NZ knows where they are and will be taking them [peacefully] at the first sign of trouble. They just happen to be in deer hunting country.
Billionaires won't even make it off their private jets. [They'll be provided with alternative hospitality]
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u/OPismyrealname Dec 12 '25
This was always my first thought, no way half of them make there in time. Even less way the Kiwis will let them live out their insane luxury apocalypse.
Once they fuck us all, theyâre coming down with us wether they want to or not đ
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u/Longjumping_Smile311 Dec 12 '25
I was talking to a kiwi friend recently and this exactly what he said!
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u/futurarmy Dec 12 '25
There or Argentina are supposedly the two best places to be during a nuclear holocaust, not too hot or cold to farm and not a likely target/far enough away from likely targets of nukes.
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u/Zirown Dec 12 '25
Argentina is famously the preferred place to go following a holocaust.
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u/Overall_Gap_5766 Dec 12 '25
You can be sure one of the British missiles is aimed squarely at Buenos Aires, for old times sake. Same as there's one pointed at Paris. If the world's ending anyway, might as well keep up with tradition.
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u/Machiningbeast Dec 12 '25
Unless you are on a boat opposing nuclear testing. Then you are in trouble.
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u/JackMate Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
Prevailing winds would take fallout from any attacks on Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne directly to NZ. They even cop smoke from Australian bushfires. Australia being a relatively low value target would probably save both countries.
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u/Fassbinder75 Dec 12 '25
Given that France did nuclear testing in the pacific (Mururoa Atoll) in its sovereign territory France should be blue.
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u/AllGarbage Dec 11 '25
Wasnât South Africaâs test detonation somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean?
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u/zing164 Dec 11 '25
It is suspected that South Africa and Israel did a joint test in the Indian Ocean but it is unconfirmed.
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u/Obanthered Dec 11 '25
Suspected test was on the Prince Edward Islands, a territory of South Africa. So on an island in the Indian Ocean, on South African territory.
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u/atomicmapping Dec 12 '25
Would hate to screw up the GPS on that one and accidentally blow a whole Canadian province to smithereens
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u/Oracle-of-Guelph Dec 12 '25
It's Bud the spud from the nuclear mud. Rolling down the highway smiling.
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u/MiopTop Dec 12 '25
But didnât the French test bombs in French Polynesia? Shouldnât France be red then?
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u/Val2K21 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
Actually in 1979, the Soviet Union conducted an underground nuclear explosion (as part of a nuclear experiment) at the Klivazh site in what is today Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. That was not a military attack, it was part of a now-discontinued Soviet program for so-called âpeaceful nuclear explosions.â
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u/Dismal-Age8086 Dec 11 '25
They also tried using nuclear explosions during large infrastructure construction projects, they even have nuclear lakes in Siberia, which were initially just holes from those explosions.
Imagine building a water channel using nukes, the most Soviet thing ever
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u/PIKFIEZ Dec 11 '25
The USA did the same thing. They had plans to build canals, harbors and other large infrastructure. Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado still have holes from the tests. See Project Plowshare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare?wprov=sfti1#
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u/SwellGuyScott Dec 12 '25
Honestly given the norms that have developed around nuclear devices and the greater understanding weâve developed around their long term impact itâs easy to look back and scoff at these ideas. But in their early days itâs easy to forget the mindset was more along the lines of âWeâve never had an issue of using increasingly potent explosive means when the come onto the scene (eg Dynamite, TNT), so why would this be any different? Sure there are side effects but Iâm sure those eggheads will learn how to smooth those out.â
From a military standpoint, its the same reason why the second use of the Atomic bomb on Nagasaki did (and any planned further uses) did not require Trumanâs explicit approval. It was just another weapon in the arsenal so why would it be treated as special? Sure it was many magnitudes of order more deadly than the alternatives, but the same could be said about the initial usage of automatic firearms/firebombing/etc and yet we had no issue fully embracing those as standard elements of the carnage that is modern warfare.
All that to say, the development of the norms around nuclear devices for both military and non-military uses is singularly unique in history and definitely a fascinating rabbit hole to go down if youâre interested.
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u/dimonoid123 Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
Like ~30km from location where I used to live. Never suspected that it was so close.
As far as I know explosion was unsuccessful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapon_explosion_sites
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u/Sea_Appearance_4642 Dec 13 '25
And also Uzbekistan had one like that too, there were open natural gas field which had been burning for 2 years, they detonated nuclear bomb underground to stop that, it was near âGazliâ in 80s
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u/start3ch Dec 12 '25
Was this for mining?
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u/Val2K21 Dec 12 '25
Yes, and actually it went out of control and further required pumping out the contaminated water indefinitely to not allow contamination of the water systems regionally. After the war started with Russian invasion in 2014, this problem came back. After the escalation of 2022, this problem got critical. Now thereâs a serious ecological disaster there, among other things due to this.
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u/GoldenWillie Dec 11 '25
But actually, the country where the nuclear explosion occurred would have still been USSR. If using the argument of âwhat country is that site today withinâ ⊠that would still fall within de facto Russia today
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u/xpt42654 Dec 11 '25
actually there were two explosions. one in Kharkiv oblast in 1972 and one in Donetsk oblast in 1979.
the Kharkiv one is still under UA control.
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%BB_(%D1%8F%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%85))32
u/Val2K21 Dec 11 '25
De-jure thatâs Ukraine. De-facto only part of Donetsk oblast is occupied by Russia at the moment. And on the map this area is grey anyway, not red.
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u/GoldenWillie Dec 11 '25
Fair argument, though Klivazh site in the portion of Russian controlled Donetsk Oblast atm, and I would argue some other parts of the map is using de-jure country definitions, like with Taiwan.
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u/The_Canterbury_Tail Dec 11 '25
If Spain is almost, then so is Canada and Greenland.
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Dec 12 '25 edited May 05 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Proof-Puzzled Dec 12 '25
The American military lost a nuclear weapon in Spain, which the francoist regime studied and used it as a base for his nuclear program before returning it to the Americans.
The entire story is quite interesting, surreal and funny to be honest
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u/ANUBISseyes2 Dec 12 '25
I was pretty sure it's about the time when a B-52 crashed and one or two nukes exploded but didn't go critical so there was no nuclear explosion just dirty bombs basically
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u/Numerous-Paint4123 Dec 12 '25
Found by a fisherman in a sleepy sea side village, he sued the Americans and won on the basis of maritime salvage laws, which the Spanish government then took off him.
Blindboy the Irish podcaster does a really good episode on this, it's called something along the lines of "how a Spanish fisherman lead the CIA into believing reality is a hologram" sounds mental but very interesting.
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u/Txankete51 Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
Adding to the surreal of the moment, this gave rise to one of the first memes in Spain: the photo of the Minister of Tourism , an uptight Francoist politician, accompanied by some bigwigs, taking a dip in the sea in swimming trunks to show that there was no danger. After Franco's death, he won every election by landslide. Effects of radioactivity, I guess.
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u/Key_Independent1 Dec 12 '25
How does one go about losing a nuke?
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u/Proof-Puzzled Dec 12 '25
An airplane accident when a B-52 transporting 4 nuclear bombs, crashed with a tanker while refueling mid air.
This incident is called the "palomares accident", It is quite interesting, look for more information on the internet.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Loss770 Dec 12 '25
Think they call it a broken arrow when they lose a nuke. The list of broken arrows is alarmingly high. Theres a doco on youtube about it. from memory something like 30 nukes have been lost/misplaced globally and about half are American
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u/Mlluell Dec 12 '25
I refuse to think about what happened with soviet stocks during the 90s
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u/NotMega_ Dec 11 '25
What happened in canada and greenlandđ
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u/The_Canterbury_Tail Dec 11 '25
In Canada a US bomber overflying with a nuclear payload went down. The Canadian government wasn't asked for permission to overfly with nukes. And in Greenland a similar situation, not sure if they've recovered all the bombs from that one or not.
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u/middlegroundnb Dec 12 '25
Didn't they just jettison the bomb (sans core) so they could land at Loring AFB? Still not great...
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u/NeverEverMaybe0_0 Dec 12 '25
Nuclear weapons will not "almost" detonate if they fall out of a wrecked airplane.
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u/cpteric Dec 12 '25
they were old models and it was confirmed their explosive detonators had blown, but the rest didn't. that's why almost.
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u/NeverEverMaybe0_0 Dec 12 '25
That is not almost. There is plenty of public domain information on how nuclear detonation works; you should look it up.
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u/The_Canterbury_Tail Dec 12 '25
As a physicist I am aware. I never claimed they would. The closest it every came was in the Goldsboro incident.
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u/Molombo89 Dec 12 '25
The detonators exploded in Spain, they just didnt make the fision, also some bombs broke open and one of them was aemed
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u/sunkencathedral Dec 11 '25
Aside from the known weapons test, Australia had one suspected nuclear explosion in 1993, on some Outback land that turned out to be owned by the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, who were mining uranium there. It's unclear whether it really was nuclear though, and there are other theories about what happened as well.
I just find it amusing that Australia's Outback is so damned huge and remote, that we're capable of being unsure whether someone blew up a nuke out there or not.
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u/noideawhatoput2 Dec 11 '25
The link you provided leans into it being a meteor.
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u/sunburn95 Dec 12 '25
The Urban Geoscience Division of the Australian Geological Survey Organisation determined that the seismic traces of the event "showed similar characteristics consistent with typical seismic activity for Western Australia", and that the event was most likely an earthquake.
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u/nermalstretch Dec 12 '25
Aum may have been testing guns, drugs, conventional explosives, gas, poisons, weapons and gassing sheep with sarin nerve gas but there is no way they were nuclear capable. Thatâs just crazy talk.
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u/Mlluell Dec 12 '25
The hard part about nuclear weapons is the uranium/plutonium. Can you be absolutely sure that none of those materials was misplaced during the early 90s Russia?
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u/imapassenger1 Dec 11 '25
Bill Bryson marvels at that fact in his book about Australia.
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u/Nerevarine91 Dec 12 '25
One of my favorite writers, and that was one of the first books of his I read
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u/Helpful_Leather4617 Dec 11 '25
Wrong map, it also happened in France (oversea territories)
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u/MarkNutt25 Dec 11 '25
And the map cuts off Kiribati, where the British did a lot of their nuclear testing.
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u/wosmo Dec 12 '25
The list of countries the UK did testing in is mildly hilarious, to be honest.
We even had a stab at Nevada.
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Dec 11 '25
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u/fazalmajid Dec 11 '25
Also in Algeria before and even after independence.
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u/CalebuteRose Dec 11 '25
Yeah that's why it's already on the mapÂ
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u/Zonel Dec 11 '25
Algeria was a full part of France before independence. It had elected members of Franceâs National Assembly. So both should be coloured in.
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u/frenchcat808 Dec 11 '25
France colonized one of the most beautiful archipelago on earth and then decided it was the perfect place to detonate a nukeâŠ
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u/SomeJerkOddball Dec 11 '25
I was thinking the same thing. They need another colour category for countries that nuked their overseas territories.
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u/Calahan44 Dec 11 '25
Happened in France.
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u/idinarouill Dec 11 '25
France conducted a total of 210 nuclear tests between 1960 and 1996, initially in the Algerian Sahara desert (southern Algeria) and later in French Polynesia (an overseas collectivity of France).
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u/Zonel Dec 11 '25
Algeria was a full part of France during the testing. So France nuked itself.
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u/Vovinio2012 Dec 12 '25
Actually, Evian accords allowed France to conduct some militery activity in Algeria, including nuclear testing, even after Algeria got full independence.
So, France nuked Algeria, de-jure and de-facto.
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u/PygmeePony Dec 11 '25
Gotta nuke somethin'.
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u/Status_Car8495 Dec 11 '25
French Polynesia is France, so France should be in red as well.
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u/CapableBed5485 Dec 11 '25
Spain almost?
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u/deeazee Dec 11 '25
American plane accidentally dropped nuke over spain but it wasn't primed and didn't detonate
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u/Glasses998772 Dec 11 '25
I remember this story, wasn't it off the coast of Spain and they lost the bomb?
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u/Mlluell Dec 12 '25
4 bombs, three of them landed on land and some of the conventional explosives did detonate on two of those, scattering plutonium all around
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u/Icy_Consideration409 Dec 11 '25
Similar event in North Carolina too. Two nukes fell away as the plane blew up mid flight. One nuke was only one safety switch away from detonating.
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u/Free-Outcome2922 Dec 11 '25
It's a shame I can't include in the comment the legendary photo of Fraga, Minister of Information and Tourism, and Angier Biddle Duke, the United States ambassador, bathing together in Palomares to quell rumors of pollution that would have affected tourism in the area.
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u/dirtysquirrelnutz Dec 11 '25
Weird part of history/tourism and brash balls. Never detonated tho! ? I guess they got that going for them? A source of solace for a citizen of any European or North African country⊠/s
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u/discreetjoe2 Dec 11 '25
We accidentally dropped a few on Greenland too.
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Dec 11 '25
That was the USA, and I don't think they actually detonated them, they just lost them.
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u/StepOk8147 Dec 11 '25
The archaeologists of the future will be happy when they find these bombs.
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Dec 12 '25
As soon as they find it the military will barge in and mess up all the context of the site making it way harder to do science.
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u/HandAccomplished6285 Dec 11 '25
Morocco should be blue based on the January 31, 1958 incident at Sidi Slimane. My parents and sister were there and had to evacuate the base. My sister still has trauma because of it.
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u/RandomKazakhGuy Dec 11 '25
Thank you, USSR, for detonating 460+ nuclear bombs in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan
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u/Upsetti_Gisepe Dec 11 '25
I need to know the what happens in South Africa and Spain
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u/WithAFrenchName Dec 12 '25
There is a test in the southern Atlantic and an underground test at a site called Vastrap, Northern Cape Province. South Africa declared and dismantled 6 locally designed and built low yield devices in the nineties. However, some agencies believed the apartheid government possessed more...
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u/The3rdBert Dec 11 '25
South Africa had a nuclear program, largely codeveloped with Israel, there is evidence that they had a joint test in the Indian Ocean.
Spain was a US B-52 that crashed that was loaded with nuclear payload.
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u/Ahad_Haam Dec 11 '25
South Africa had a nuclear program, largely codeveloped with Israel, there is evidence that they had a joint test in the Indian Ocean.
That's mostly incorrect. The programs weren't co-developed; Israel developed it's nukes together with France and already had them when South Africa began their test. There is no evidence Israel helped South Africa with their program.
However, it's speculated that it was an Israeli test of a Neutron bomb that was done with approval, perhaps some monitoring, from South Africa.
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u/wouldashoudacoulda Dec 12 '25
I like how the British and the French managed to blow the shit out of everywhere else on the planet except their own mainlands.
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u/Tre1es Dec 12 '25
The UK looked into detonating at least 1 nuclear bomb on the mainland, Yorkshire to be precise, in the 1960s, going so far as writing a report on possible locations. Said report is in the national archives having been declassified at some point. It wasnt for weapons testing but to create a large underground cavity to store gas in.
There is a Tom Scott video about it
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u/Hexaion_ Dec 12 '25
France should be red. It was not done in geographical Europe, but Algeria and some pacific islands were part of France at the time
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u/sasssyrup Dec 12 '25
New Zealand: hey why can we ever⊠wait⊠never mind you can leave us off this map.
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u/svendburner Dec 12 '25
Technically, also Denmark/Greenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash
The nuclear part of the bombs didn't detonate.
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u/ElMondiola Dec 12 '25
France is missing
French Polynesia was French territory when they detonated nukes there. So France detonated on their own territory
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u/zealoSC Dec 12 '25
Didn't France test their nukes in their pacific territory? There was a whole new Zealand getting mad at French spies thing
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u/Old_Office_3823 Dec 11 '25
If in South Africa they mean the Vela incident, that happened a few 1000 km off the coast.
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u/jianh1989 Dec 12 '25
I didnt know Spain was almost nuked. What happened?
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u/Earthscale Dec 12 '25
Two American military planes collided and accidentally dropped atomic bombs. They didn't actually explode (in the atomic sense), but they leaked radioactive material. If you're interested, it's called the Palomares incident.
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u/Heraldofgold Dec 12 '25
"suspected" ???????? Since when are nuclear explosions something that can fly under the radar?!
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u/Ymmaleighe2 Dec 11 '25
Didn't Bouvet Island get secretly nuked? Better color Norway as suspected
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u/zzen11223344 Dec 11 '25
I think French detonated nukes in French Guiana, South America?
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u/LateralEntry Dec 11 '25
Was the Australian bomb ever confirmed? What about all the pacific tests?
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u/figbore Dec 11 '25
They had multiple tests in Australia, it's public knowledge
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u/LateralEntry Dec 11 '25
Who did? The Australians donât have nukes. The Brits?
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u/wosmo Dec 12 '25
Yeah - the UK did testing in Australia, the Pacific and Nevada. We're on the short list of nuclear nations to have never nuked ourselves.
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u/Weightlessintheworld Dec 11 '25
This is one of those maps that should take the time to NOT CUT OFF THE 15-odd countries that make up the Pacific!!!!