Last night on Savage I was listening to someone espouse their belief that Iran's government is stoically committed to annihilating Israel, and vice versa. He believed Iran is committed to obtaining nukes, and Israel is committed to preventing that, to the point that he was reasonably certain that the whole region could quickly be drawn into a large-scale conflict.
Now, after researching this topic I have found belief in an Iran-Israel war to be ranging from doubtful to definite.
One thing that is for certain is that neither Israel nor Iran believe in the "mutually assured destruction" doctrine that has kept the U.S. and Russian nukes safely underground since their advent.
So how does a nuke work? Your run of the mill nuclear warhead is about the size of a small car, and fits snugly on top of a large missile. Each warhead contains 8-10 nuclear devices, which will separate and enable the single missile to strike multiple locations...making defense more difficult.
The two main ingredients in a nuclear warhead are uranium-235 and plutonium.
Think of the warhead inside a nuclear weapon as a propane tank, like the one on your gas grill. The inside wall of the tank is lined with explosives, and the core of the tank is filled with enriched uranium with a plutonium center. When the warhead detonates, the explosives along the outside edge of the device explode, which provides intense pressure inward on the uranium core. This compression triggers the nuclear reaction.
The nuclear reaction is caused basically by the fact that the uranium hates being close to itself, so much so that when pushed together, it will decay into smaller atoms that are less "claustrophobic", as well as a couple neutrons. This is the key to the chain reaction. The uranium decays into smaller pieces and ejects a couple neutrons...and these two neutrons travel to other uranium atoms and cause their decay...which releases four neutrons...etc. etc.
The reason that this is such a massive explosion is that the release of neutrons gives of a huge amount of heat energy.
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