Wait a while (free neutrons have a half life of about eleven days) and the radiation has decayed enough to enter the city and claim it as your own. The typical design of the bomb wraps the thermonuclear fuel (lithium dueteride) with a tamper of U238. It’s the blast and winds that destroy buildings. They decay weakly into protons, electrons and electron antineutrinos, and protons and electrons can do enormous damage to human cells and are part of the lethal radiation in nuclear bombs and accidents. The neutron bomb, or "enhanced radiation" device with its supposed promise of a "clean" kill was believed to be the strategic answer to a hole in the Cold War arsenal. A neutron bomb is a fission-fusion thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb) in which the burst of neutrons generated by a fusion reaction is intentionally allowed to escape the weapon, rather than being absorbed by its other components. While neutron capture does occur to an extent, and could possibly create H2 and H2O2, that's not what kills you. Many people feel this is inhumane; they much prefer the old-fashioned humane-type nuclear devices that kill people *and* destroy buildings. Neutron bombs are designed to emit large amounts of neutron radiation. I’ll just add more details and pictures. The bombs incinerated about 2,000 elite Republican Guard troops but left the buildings and infrastructure at the airport intact, he added. In practice, the blast wave typically produced by such a weapon is of a significantly longer duration than that produced by a conventional condensed explosive. Zachary Taylor's answer is correct. Just offhand, the neutron flux from a bomb is not going to be high enough at any distance far enough for the blast not to kill you, and the neutron-capture is too unlikely. A thermobaric weapon, aerosol bomb, or vacuum bomb is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. The simplest example is the decay of neutrons , it is a weak decay , but neutrons from reactors can kill you, and certainly neutrons from a bomb. The neutron bomb controversy exploded suddenly into public notice June 6, 1977, with a headline in The Washington Post: “Neutron Killer Warhead Buried in ERDA Budget.” ERDA, the Energy Research and Development Administration, was the US agency responsible for developing nuclear weapons. A neutron bomb or officially known as one type of Enhanced Radiation Weapon is a low yield fission-fusion thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb) in which the burst of neutrons generated by a fusion reaction is intentionally allowed to escape the weapon, rather than … A thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb) releases copious high energy neutrons during the fusion burning. 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