Misty Picture

Misty Picture
Information
Country	United States
Test site	White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico
Date	May 14, 1987
Number of tests	1
Agency	Defense Nuclear Agency
Explosive	ANFO
Configuration	Segmented hemisphere
Yield	3.9 kilotons of TNT (16 TJ)
Test chronology
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Misty Picture was a test conducted on May 14, 1987 by the United States Defense Nuclear Agency (now part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency) involving the detonation of several thousand tons of conventional explosives to simulate the explosion of a small nuclear bomb.

From the test report:^[1]

MISTY PICTURE was the fourth test in the MISTY CASTLE series of large-scale High Explosive (HE) tests sponsored by the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). The test was run on 14 May 1987. The explosive consisted of 4685 tons of an Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil (ANFO) mixture loaded in bulk into a 44-foot (13 m) radius fiberglass hemisphere. This is equivalent to 3900 tons of TNT. Detonation of this charge provided an airblast and ground motion environment which was used by numerous agencies to collect basic explosive environmental data and to test a variety of systems and equipment in a simulated nuclear environment. The resulting overpressure from the detonation simulated the approximate equivalent airblast of an 8 kilotonnes (7,900 long tons; 8,800 short tons) nuclear device.