On October 30. 1961, the Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba as a test in Mityushikha Bay. The Tsar Bomba currently holds the record for the most powerful nuclear weapon ever built and tested, weighing in at 60,000 pounds with a yield equivalent to approximately 50 megatons of TNT (though the design of the weapon could theoretically be capable of yielding 100 megatons). For comparison, the force of the Tsar Bomba was over 1,500 times that of the Fat Man and Little Boy combined, the atomic devices used to destroy the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. To deploy the weapon, a specially-modified Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber was used and the bomb was fitted with a large parachute to slow its descent in order to provide the bomber enough time to clear the blast radius. Even then, there was still an approximately 50% percent chance of the aircraft and its crew being destroyed in the process.
Dropped at a height of 34,000 feet (10 km), the bomb fell to a height of 13,000 feet (3.9 km) before detonating. The ensuing mushroom cloud soared to over 40 miles high, the blast caused the Tu-95 to plummet some 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) before the crew could regain control, and destroyed the village of Severny entirely even though it was located 34 miles (55 km) away. The heat from the explosion was estimated to be able to inflict third-degree burns as far away as 62 miles (100 km). The fireball itself, however, never reach the ground as the force of the blast itself blocked it. The detonation was met with condemnation from the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In August 2020, Rosatom, a Russian state corporation in the nuclear energy industry, released declassified footage of the Tsar Bomba test. A link to the footage can be found below:
They were willing to sacrifice a crew just to test it. It wouldn't surprise me if the final design had been the Son of Bomba Flying Nuke. It's probably better it never went further.
They were willing to sacrifice a crew just to test it. It wouldn't surprise me if the final design h
