According to the Marvel wiki on adamantium [1] ,
A sufficient amount is capable of surviving multiple nuclear explosions with no damage.
And an answer on another question here [2] says that Wolverine can regenerate with only his skeleton left (the other, IIUC, says he doesn't even need his whole skeleton).
So, does wolverine have enough adamantium arranged in such a way that he could survive even a nuclear strike? And if even "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" doesn't work, can he be killed?
His organic flesh having no special invulnerability to fire, radiation, radiated energy and blast over-pressure would certainly be destroyed completely at ground zero. His survival at Hiroshima was due to the weapon being detonated 500 meters above ground with the fireball ending only 100 meters from the weapon's detonation.
More detailed answer and comic references: Wolverine's ability to survive a nuclear weapon is directly related to these forces:
The blast from that timeline's Sentinel was sufficient to reduce him to his skeletal remains in the Days of Future Past series of story arcs (X-men #142). The most powerful representative of those Sentinels is the time-traveling X-man enemy, Nimrod [3].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_ManI remembered this comic [1] after mulling over this discussion. Here is a summary from comics.ign.com:
In Brian K. Vaughan's mini-series Logan, the titular hero is a prisoner of the Japanese. He escapes along with a fellow prisoner and finds solace and love in a local girl. Unfortunately, the girl's hut happened to be in Hiroshima, and thus Wolverine became a survivor of the atomic bomb.
From what I remember, this is before Logan had the adamantium skeleton. It is safe to assume that he would survive an atomic bomb after he had obtained his skeleton.
Additionally, In Venom #8, I believe, Venom and Wolverine are in a town called Voici, and a nuclear bomb is dropped. In Venom #9, Wolverine wakes up in the rubble, and his only injury is a missing shirt.
[1] http://www.wolverinefiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/logan-hiroshima.jpgNo.
Wolverine can regenerate from BIOLOGICAL skeleton... Not from Adamantium skeleton. As biological part of his skeleton will be vaporized by Nuclear bomb, there's no point of his regeneration from Adamantium based skeleton.
His mutant power isn't attached with Adamantium part of his body!
Even if you consider Adamantium could block heat to protect biological stuff inside it, its impossible to regenerate from that. If there's no gap for heat to reach there.. means, its fully isolated from rest of body. And, for regeneration to work, there's need to break Adamantium shield which is impossible...
This comic strip [1] attached with linked answer displays temperature of mere 500 degrees C which can't take guarantee to wipe out entire organic lump thru small gap. There's high chance of super burn residues. But, condition of this question is fully different. Heat produced by Nuclear bomb can't leave residue!
[1] http://stlcomics.com/newspics/wolverine43-017-018.jpgYES.
There are many documented cases of ordinary people surviving nuclear bombs [1]; even the military uses probability charts to estimate percentage of people killed as a function of distance to the blast. Therefore, it is certainly possible for Wolverine to survive.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HibakushaI believe he can, if we consider the events of the X-Men movies canon. Jean has the ability to disintegrate matter completely, but when her powers are directed at Wolverine (last battle of X-Men: Last Stand, I believe), he continually regenerates.
While this is not directly supported by canon sources (I confess I haven't read many comics), it appears that Wolverine would begin regeneration even before the nuclear blast has started to subside. Perhaps the organs covering the orifices in his skull (eyes, ears) will continually regenerate as the blast bears down on him, protecting his brain. There should be enough bone marrow inside his adamantium protected skeleton to regenerate the rest of him.
Yes. I believe he has actually but I can't find the reference. Here is a link to an article on i09.com [1] The article is from April 30th 2009 and it goes into more specifics. But basically Wolverine has come back from a single drop of blood before so if just his skeleton was around there would still be marrow. Wolverine has suffered from the same thing that eventually killed interest in Superman, basically his powers keep escalating until he's basically unstoppable.
[1] http://io9.com/5233547/wolverine-eternalIt depends how and where the bomb hits. Wolverine sitting on a bomb when it explodes would destroy him irreversibly, but nukes are usually deployed as air-burst against cities. A few lucky humans can survive that, so Wolverine would probably have a good chance in that case.
Of course, the writers can write anything, so this assumes they don't come up with something ludicrously insane, which violates all physics and logic... as we can see, Wolverines regeneration abilities got already elevated many times in newer and newer versions.
Yes, at one point in the comics Wolverine is reduced to only his metal skeleton, yet he is able to come back from that state. Admuntium is described as several times denser than lead which probably means it hols its radioactivity adsorption. The heat most likely will not last long enough to flash burn his skeleton.