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Outside of my casual knowledge and HS/college intro courses, I'm not too much of an expert on electronics and phsyics. You mentioned that a un-maintained nuclear bomb would still go off, but would cause little damage. Please explain. Is it that the detonator goes off but the nuclear portion doesn't blow? Or that because some of the detonators don't go, due to not being maintained, you don't get the proper nuclear chain reaction?

To set off a nuclear bomb, the first explosion compresses the fissile material which causes the chain reaction. It's like holding an egg in your hands and trying to squeeze it with microspecific pressure on all sides at precisely the same instant. Any variation of pressure from the explosive charge meant to trigger the nuclear reaction(mostly a timing function) results in nuclear dud, but irradiates an area instead.

You mentioned that a un-maintained nuclear bomb would still go off, but would cause little damage. Please explain. Is it that the detonator goes off but the nuclear portion doesn't blow? Or that because some of the detonators don't go, due to not being maintained, you don't get the proper nuclear chain reaction?

At the risk of oversimplifying, the key in a fission nuclear weapon is to slam the fissile components together in a way that causes a chain reaction sufficient to induce most of the core to undergo fission as completely as possible.

The catch is that the chain reaction has to occur pretty much simultaneously throughout the entire core in order to get the biggest "boom", because if any one portion of the core undergoes the chain reaction before the rest of the core (even by a few microseconds), that one portion releases enough energy to blow apart the rest of the core and prevents the bulk of it from reacting fully (or at all), and you get a "fizzle" -- a "pop" when you wanted a "*BOOM*".

Depending on how badly it misfired, you'd get an explosion with the force of anywhere from a hand grenade to a truck bomb, and uranium or plutonium splattered around the immediate vicinity making for a messy cleanup, but nothing like what most folks would consider a nuclear explosion.