Nuclear weapons are one of the scariest things that mankind has ever invented. I’m just thankful that I was born at the tail end of the Cold War. Living in constant fear of a nuclear attack must have been pretty unnerving, but I still have respect for the technology and power that the nuclear weapon exemplifies.

I think we’ve all seen a land test for a nuclear weapon. What happens when a nuclear weapon is exploded underwater though? Does it cause a tsunami or something worse? The U.S. military hired a cameraman to film the two underwater nuclear tests. The tests were codenamed Wahoo and Umbrella and were exploded only month apart from each other.

Check out the explosion below. It’s actually pretty awe inspiring. It’s like a god just did a cannonball into the ocean:

The most impressive part about the test is that the waves caused by the test completely covered a nearby island. The typical underwater nuclear explosion causes a spray dome with a height of 900 ft. The waves caused by these explosions can still be pretty dangerous up to 1,000 ft away. The cameramen filming the above explosion had to climb into trees due to the high waves that hit the island.

All nuclear tests today are performed underground for obvious reasons. Performing these kind of tests in the ocean are especially harmful as unexpected consequences can arise. The most famous of which happened at Bikini Atoll where a group of Japanese fishermen were subjected to the nuclear fallout from one of the tests. The event inspired the film Gojira, one of the strongest pieces of anti-nuclear fiction ever created.