North Korea threat latest: What would happen if a hydrogen bomb hit Washington DC?

Despot Kim Jong-Un has ramped up his war of words with Donald Trump in recent weeks after he tested the regime’s sixth and largest-ever nuclear weapon deep inside a mountain on September 3.

The hydrogen bomb test caused earthquakes of 5.6 and 6.1 magnitude that were felt in South Korea and Japan – and experts suggest the blast could have yielded the energy of at least 150 kilotons worth of TNT.

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And in response, Mr Trump gave a hardline speech to the United Nations this week – warning he would “totally destroy” North Korea if threatened.

Now Express.co.uk reveals exactly would happen if such an attack was carried out on Washington, DC, and how many people would be killed.

According to Nukemap, if a 150Kt hydrogen bomb was dropped on the White House, it would create a huge nuclear fireball with a radius of around 1.09 square kilometres.

The White House itself would be largely vaporised as would the grounds surrounding the famous landmark along with the nearby Freedom Plaza.

The core of a nuclear bomb can reach 150 MILLION Fahrenheit (66MILLION Celsius) many times hot enough to vaporise rock, metal, and humans to nothingness.

The core quickly forms into a nuclear fireball – with a blast which would immediately kill 34,530 people and injure at least 16,640 others.

Huge swathes of land around the White House would also be dramatically affected by the blast, which would wipe out thousands of homes and businesses.

A 20psi blast radius would spread to a 4.2km squared around the Oval Office, leaving nothing standing and demolishing the National Portrait Gallery, the International Spy Museum, the Washington Monument and most of Constitution Avenue.

The radiation radius covers an array of public landmarks, including the Holocaust Museum and Lincoln Memorial – meaning thousands of tourists would also be hit by the strike.

“Heavily built concrete buildings” in this area would be “severely damaged or demolished” in the explosion.

DC Neighbourhoods like Georgetown and Adams Morgan would be instantly levelled – to remain uninhabitable for decades.

Radiation and a devastating blast wave would spread outwards for 11.8 square kilometres of the explosion, taking in suburbs like Bethesda, Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda, and Frederick. Officials could expect to see a 50 to 90 per cent mortality rate – around HALF A MILLION people.

Death could be immediate or take hours, days or even weeks.

Third-degree burns caused by thermal radiation would be felt up to 68.4 square kilometres from impact point, leaving those around monuments such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and JFK’s grave with horrific injuries.

The Pentagon also falls within this range, along with the US Air Force Memorial, Capitol Hill, Mt Pleasant and the US Naval Observatory.

Terrifyingly even passengers at Dulles Airport 25 miles west of DC would suffer severe burns – and to the east, citizens of Anapolis would face a similar fate.

Nukemap says: “Third degree burns extend throughout the layers of skin, and are often painless because they destroy the pain nerves.

“They can cause severe scarring or disablement, and can require amputation.”

Finally there’s the fall-out.

The spread of nuclear fallout is irregular because it depends on the direction of the wind, but it can be carried out over hundreds of miles.

According to the The National Academies and the US Department of Homeland Security, fallout is worst at the explosion’s epicentre, but deadly levels of radiation can be observed even miles away.

When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine suffered a meltdown in 1986, Increased levels of radiation were noted as far as Wales – over 2,300 km (1,400 miles) away.

If a nuclear bomb were to strike Washington, the fall out could affect most of the United States – reaching as far as Dallas, Kansas City, Chicago – along with major cities such as New York and Toronto.

But North Korea’s bomb is expected to be more powerful than the Chernobyl explosion – meaning a strike could even effect as far as San Francisco and Los Angeles on the west coast, as well as Mexico, the Caribbean and even parts of the north of South America such as Venezuela.