Atomic Breath Showdown: Can Legendary Godzilla Burn a Tunnel to the Core?

 

Among all versions of Godzilla across the multiverse of films, the Legendary MonsterVerse Godzilla stands as one of the most famous — and certainly one of the most overpowered. His feats of strength, resilience, and sheer destructive force cement his title as the true King of the Monsters.

But today we’re not here to analyze his battles against MUTOs, Ghidorah, or Kong as a whole. Instead, we’ll dive deep into his signature weapon: the Atomic Breath.

More than just a beam of radiation, this attack is the very essence of Godzilla’s nuclear might, a weapon that has evolved into one of the most devastating forces in cinema. And there’s no better example of its overwhelming power than the scene in Godzilla vs Kong where he literally blasts a hole straight through the Earth’s crust into the Hollow Earth.

So grab your Geiger counter, because we’re about to break down the science, the spectacle, and the sheer madness behind Godzilla’s most iconic move.

Can Godzilla’s Atomic Breath Really Drill to the Hollow Earth?

According to the official stats shown in the intro of Godzilla vs. Kong, Legendary’s Godzilla possesses an Atomic Breath with a staggering temperature of 20,000 ºC and an energy output of 315 terajoules per second (3.15e14 J/s) — the equivalent of 75 kilotons of TNT every single second. That actually places him above the energy estimates made for Shin Godzilla’s beam.

But here’s the real question: could this beam actually drill all the way down into the Hollow Earth, as seen in the movie? Let’s run some simple physics to find out.

Step 1: The Material to Melt

We’ll assume Godzilla is blasting granite, with a density of 2700 kg/m^3, and that it takes about 4.5 MJ (megajoules) to melt 1 kg of it

Step 2: The Tunnel Dimensions

To estimate how much material needs to be melted:

• Tunnel diameter: 10 m (cinematic size, big enough for kaiju traffic).
• Depth to Hollow Earth: ~50 km (roughly the continental crust).

That gives us:

• Tunnel volume: ~3.9e6 m^3
• Mass of granite: ~1.06e10 kg

Step 3: Energy Required

If all that granite must be melted: Ereq​=1.06e10kg ×4.5 MJ/kg ≈ 4.77e16 Joules.

That’s about 11.4 megatons of TNT.

Step 4: Godzilla’s Output vs. the Task

With his 3.15e14 J/s beam:

• Material melted per second: ~70 million kg
• Volume destroyed per second: ~26,000 m^3
• Time needed to drill 50 km at 10 m diameter: ~151 seconds (≈ 2.5 minutes)

So in theory, if Godzilla held his breath continuously for a couple of minutes, his beam could melt a tunnel straight down into the Hollow Earth

Even this is actually a lowball estimate, because the tunnel shown on screen is clearly large enough for Kong to fit through — and he’s way wider than just 10 meters. Plus, the Hollow Earth isn’t just 50 km down; it’s portrayed as being much deeper. So we have to keep a few things in mind:

1. Cinematic time doesn’t count. In the movie, Kong travels through the tunnel in under 3 minutes. If we take the more “realistic” fan-estimates of ~5000 km for the distance drilled, that would mean Kong is moving at a speed over 250 times faster than the speed of sound — which is pure kaiju movie magic.
2. Tunnel size and length. Instead of a 10 m wide tunnel and 50 km deep, some estimates place the tunnel at about 50 meters wide and over 1000 km long, which increases the energy requirements by several orders of magnitude.

With those updated numbers, we can run the calculations again — and see whether Godzilla’s Atomic Breath could realistically blast such an insanely huge tunnel.

Recalculation: What if the Tunnel Is 50 m × 1000 km?

Let’s run the numbers for a much larger, movie-scale tunnel: diameter = 50 m, length = 1000 km (1,000,000 m). We use the same baseline assumptions as before (granite, density 2700 kg/m³, 4.5 MJ/kg to melt).

Geometry and mass

Cross-sectional area:
$\mathrm{A }= \mathrm{\pi *}(25\text{ m}{)^2}^{}\approx 1,963.5{\text{m^2}}^{}$

Volume = (V = A × L): (1,963.5*1,000,000)
$V\approx 1.9635e9{\text{m^3}}^{}$

Mass of granite:
$m=$ (≈ 5.3 trillion kg)

Energy required to melt that mass

$E_{req}= m*4.5\; MJ/kg\approx \; 2.386e19\; Joules$

In TNT terms: $\approx \mathrm{5,701 }\text{Megatons of TNT}$ 

• For context: that’s roughly 114 Tsar Bombas (50 Mt equivalent) or 5,701,000 kilotons.

What Godzilla’s beam (3.15e14 J/s) can do

Energy output used in the film: Q = 3.15e14 J/s (315 TJ/s).

Melted mass per second (idealized):
$\text{mass/s}=\; 315\; TJ/s\frac{{\mathrm{ }}^{}}{}$

Melted volume per second: ≈ 25,926 m³/s.

Time to drill the whole 1000 km tunnel (if all beam energy melted rock)

$t=$ ≈ 1,262 minutes ≈ 21.0 hours.

Conclusion (realistic vs cinematic)

Under the stated Legendary numbers, Godzilla’s beam would need ~21 continuous hours to melt a 50 m × 1000 km granite tunnel — assuming every joule is perfectly used to melt rock (no losses, no vaporization overhead, no debris removal).

If the movie expects Kong to traverse that tunnel in < 3 minutes, cinematic reality and physics diverge massively. To achieve the same melting in 180 s, the beam would need a power of:
$\approx 1.33e17\text{ Watt}$ ≈ 132.5 PW (petawatts) — about 31.7 megatons of TNT per second.
In short: physically impossible at the displayed beam power.

Caveats that make the real requirement even larger

Vaporizing rock requires considerably more energy than simply melting it — the above uses the melting energy only (4.5 MJ/kg).

Expelling molten or vaporized material (clearing the tunnel) costs extra work.

Beam absorption inefficiencies, plasma losses, atmospheric interactions, and fracturing dynamics will drastically raise the required energy.

Read More:

• From Battleship to Tokyo: Calculating the Fury of Godzilla’s Atomic Breath (Minus one)

• Shin Godzilla’s Purple Atomic Breath Explained: Power, Heat, and Nuclear-Level Destruction.