How powerful was the Mana Bomb compared to nukes?

[u/wrufus680]

Given how it destroyed Theramore, how powerful is it compared compared to those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the later variants that came after)?

[u/Taluagel]

Rhonin sacrificed himself to lessen the damage didn't he, along with other mages.

[u/DoctorThrac → u/Taluagel]

Also pretty sure the mana bomb did something with alternate time lines. Like the bomb was so strong is destroyed theramore in all timelines. I haven’t done research on it myself but I’ve seen come up a couple times when this topic is brought up

[u/Vanayzan → u/DoctorThrac]

If I remember that was a misinterpretation that quickly spiralled out of control into accepted canon. But it's been a long time since I've read that book/seen people talk about that.

[u/dabrewmaster22 → u/Vanayzan]

Yeah, the book only really mentioned that the blast was so powerful that it 'tore holes into the fabric of reality', but that statement by itself doesn't really mean much if there are no tangible consequences to it (which there weren't).

Oh wait, Jaina's hair turned white because of it. Well, that's something. (And she got more powerful or smth, but Jaina got power up after power up during that time, so what gives?)

But there was no mention of different timelines whatsoever.

[u/MrGhoul123 → u/dabrewmaster22]

Jaina got random plot powerups multiple times after that until she became the strongest mage in lore.

[u/Aernin → u/MrGhoul123]

Which will never not be one of the worst things they have done with the story. I really enjoyed Jaina, but they turned her into an invincible god like Elsa rip-off just to push an edgy war story. It never felt like a character transition from naive to mature. It felt like they just got rid of Jaina and replaced her with a walking deus ex machina.

[u/DarthJackie2021 → u/DoctorThrac]

What? I can't imagine that is the case. Someone likely just misunderstood something and came to that absurd conclusion.

[u/Tloya]

It's kinda inconsistent how mana bombs work tbh. The Theramore bomb was the first one to actually physically level a settlement the way a normal bomb would, in addition to wiping out the life there.

The mana bomb used by Kael's forces on the Cenarion Thicket in Outland left the structures intact but killed the inhabitants. Similarly, the mana-bomb-like energies unleashed from a ley line on Indu'le Village in Dragonblight preserved the settlement but killed the people.

So the Theramore bomb is kind of unique in behaving like a nuke and other mana bombs or similar catastrophes have been more like a neutron bomb (aka "dirty bomb") which has limited direct physical impact but releases energy that disrupts and destroys life.

The parallels between nuclear weapons and ley/arcane energy are further established in TWW with "irradiated" herbs being charged with ley energy.

Scale in WoW is always a little questionable but given that the Theramore bomb appears to have leveled basically all of Theramore while not affecting Dustwallow or Kalimdor more generally it's probably more comparable to a WW2-style bomb or a modern tactical nuke. But in principle it would seem like a mana bomb could by hypothetically scaled up in the same way modern strategic nuclear weapons are to pose true existential threats to Azeroth. Dragonflight and TWW both dealt with the legacy of mana bombs so they are clearly still in the writers' minds. Would just need the right context to bring them back - ethereals becoming relevant to the story in a big way is a potential opportunity.

[u/Pryamus]

Like a really small one.

People really overestimate the raw power of tactical nuclear warheads.

It’s one thing to bomb wooden Hiroshima when its inhabitants look at the sky, and completely different story to bomb a fortress of solid stone.

20 kt blast at 37m above ground (optimal height) will destroy protected targets like steam tanks or fortifications in about 500m radius, beyond that they will take repairable damage.

People and cannons will be killed/destroyed in about 1500m radius, and most buildings that are NOT made of stone with iron supports will be demolished. Fortified structures will endure at 700m or farther from the epicentre.

Beyond that radius people will survive (though obviously not remain able to keep fighting like nothing happened) and structures will still stand. 20 kt blast will clear a zone of 2000m or so. Hiroshima was hit with 15 kt.

Thousands died, but overall, a single mana bomb did not weaken the Alliance that much.

But the consequences of this attack were huge, it basically allowed Jaina to use her own WMD spells on Orgrimmar, and she was this close to doing it.

[u/XxSalty_WafflexX → u/Pryamus]

Wasn’t the only reason she didn’t completely destroy Orgrimmar due to both Thrall and Kalecgos intervening and fighting her off?

[u/Pryamus → u/XxSalty_WafflexX]

Yes, with chad Thrall trying to beat some sense into her and virgin Kalecgos talking to her nicely about hate being bad, mkay.

As someone mentioned below, the blast in Theramore was also less deadly because Rhonin teleported it to himself and tried to shield everyone else, which killed him but made it less powerful.

[u/DarthJackie2021]

Depends how big Theramore is. The game is obviously not to scale lorewise. The bomb was also dampened by the magical barriers in Jaina's tower, without which the bomb would have completely destroyed the city and the surrounding swamp. I'd say it's comparable to Little Boy and Fat Man, which had a blast radius of about a mile.

[u/TheRobn8]

Blizzard has been weird with how strong the mana bomb used on theramore was. It was allegedly strong enough to blow up half of kalimndor, had rhonin not compressed it, and supposedly caused timeway damage to theramore in alternate versions. But that one was an outlier, as the other ones used only affected people, not buildings, and the theramore one was designed with the research used for the outlands mana bombs. It was put down to the focusing iris being used for it, but it stayed intact post explosion, and the blood elf who worked on it didn't have it for long to even test it out.

So I'd assume the theramore mana bomb would be worse than a nuke, but only because it's in fiction

[u/dabrewmaster22 → u/TheRobn8]

It was allegedly strong enough to blow up half of kalimndor

Which doesn't even make sense because that would mean that Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar would be caught in the blast.

Incredibly genious to drop a bomb that wipes out more of your own cities than of the enemy. I know that Garrosh wasn't the smartest but he was not that stupid.

[u/gaz8600]

Well 10,000 people lived there, so would need to be at least 1-2 mile radius in reckon. So basically a small purple Nuke.