What are the columns of smoke that are shown in images of nuclear blasts?
344025
For some detonations, they wanted to learn how the air around  the blast moved.  Just before the bomb was detonated, they launched small rockets with smoky trails.  Then, when the bomb went off, the smoke trails showed how the air moved.
628990
www.iapws.jp/Proceedings/Symposium03/200Yamaguchi.pdf\nwww.er.doe.gov/production/bes/chm/96sumbook/cesoff.html \nflux.aps.org/meetings/YR98/BAPSMAR98/abs/S3150.html
159405
Conventional bombs are essentially a very violent chemical reaction, usually a very fast oxidation or a rapid decomposition of a very unstable compound.  In any case, a tremendous amount of heat is generated that causes a very fast expansion.  Aside from the heat generating a potential fireball, the rapid expansion creates shockwaves through the air and whatever other matter is in close proximity to the bomb.  It is this shockwave which does the most damage.\n\nAtomic/Nuclear weapons are a bit more complex, though the principles are essentially the same.  The chemical reaction is replaced by a nuclear chain reaction known as fission.  This produces a truly astronomical amount of heat, resulting in a mammoth shockwave.
1127312
It was a 63 megaton bomb dropped by the Soviets from a Bear bomber onto the island Novaya Zemlya in the 1960s. The shock wave from the explosion traveled around the entire planet three times.
159888
the Notorious Cherry Bombs \n http://www.thenotoriouscherrybombs.com/home.htm
518413
pass a lighter or a match near to it, the smoke will make it look old, I tried that for a History assignment it looked cool =)
285280
convection, radiation due to uranium levels (nuclear)
789352
smoke, smoking smoke.
35015
http://images.google.com/url?q=http://st.fatih.edu.tr/~mkocali/cigarette/Pictures/Lung_Black.gif\n\nhttp://www.besttreatments.co.uk/btuk/images/lung_cancer_xray.jpg\n\nhttp://drjohng.com/images/lung_cancer.jpg
429296
I'm not sure exactly what information you need, so I'm giving you the search result I got, and I hope you can find what you are looking for:\nhttp://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=1954+68th+bomb+wing+656+bomb+sqdn+2nd+A.F&spell=1
1148968
If you mean the giant towers that have come to symbolise Nuclear plants then those are cooling towers and actually disperse the extra heat from the superheated water into the atmosphere. These towers are also found in huge thermal power plants which burn coal or oil to make electricity.
1086274
Yes.  I have seen it.  Furthermore, I recommend it to any and everyone.  Many may see in it what they want to, but where there is smoke, there is some fire.\nYou are right about the buildings coming down in a suspicious fashion, as well.  While I am not a demolisions expert, it appears to be a "controlled" drop.
336779
Carbon monoxide \nLead \nNitrogen dioxide \nOzone \nSulfur dioxide\nand also particles (eg dust).
229638
My guess is that a convection cell tends toward a "preferred" ratio of height to width, which yields the greatest volume rate of convective circulation. Too low a ratio would require long sections of horizontal transport with no bouyancy driving the motion; the natural tendency of the flow after reaching the ceiling would be to rotate downward to the base of the fire again rather than travel to the end of the room and back unaided by thermal bouyancy. So the smoke layer takes a long time to spread from the region of the fire to the edges of the room.\nConversely, too high a ratio, while generating high vertical convective speeds, would also create a shear situation where two adjacent columns of oppositely moving air turbulently interfere with each other, reducing circulatory volume rate. \nI don't know what the height/width ratios are in the example you gave, but I hope this ratio of formation time to height doesn't hold over all dimension ratios. If they do, I'm wrong.
215171
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
591626
Like rotary guy noted, when jet fuel (or what’s close to what you and I know as Kerosene) burns, or oxidizes, it creates water, which at higher altitudes freezes and turns to solid water vapor (ice, effectively) making it visible from the ground... a trail of icey "condensation" is left behind each burning engine and that’s where the term con-trail is derived and that’s what those white trails are behind airplanes.  You don’t see them all the time because an important factor in the making of these things is the ambient atmospheric temperature...  Higher temps, no con trails…  incidentally, solid rocket fuel, like on the space shuttle, may look similar to con trails but mostly contains burned sulfites and tiny (totally solid) carbon particles, a little different from the water vapor of the con trail...but it looks the same…too easy!
855367
http://www.sacbee.com/359/story/76597.html#more_images\n\nthis is the best picture I could find that fit your description,\nhope this helps