Thermonuclear explosion on new earth. The most powerful bombs in the world
October 30, 1961 at the island training ground New Earth The most powerful bomb in world history was tested. The thermonuclear bomb, called the Tsar Bomba, with a yield of 58 megatons, was developed by a group of scientists that included such luminaries as A.D. Sakharov, V.B. Adamsky, Yu.A. Trutnev and others. SmartNews will tell you about five tests of the USSR that made the whole world shudder.
On October 30, 1961, a test took place of a thermonuclear aerial bomb developed by a group of nuclear physicists under the leadership of I.V. Kurchatova. In the world, AN602 is better known as “Kuzka’s Mother” and “Tsar Bomba”. The first nickname appeared because of Khrushchev’s statement: “We will still show America Kuzka’s mother.” But the AN602 was called the “Tsar Bomb” because it became the most powerful and destructive weapon in the entire history of mankind. Thus, during testing, the carrier aircraft, which managed to fly almost 40 kilometers from the explosion site, landed burnt and with melted parts. Is it worth talking about what was happening within a radius of 20 kilometers from the explosion? The most important point in the AN602 test was to demonstrate that the USSR now possesses unlimitedly powerful weapons mass destruction. In TNT equivalent, the power of the Kuzkina Mother was four times more powerful than any US weapon.
On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was successfully tested. The bomb received this name after a government decree in which the bomb was written as a “special jet engine.” People called the bomb " Jet engine Stalin." The power of this weapon was 22 kilotons. During the test, the tower, almost 40 meters high, on which the bomb was installed, was not only wiped off the face of the earth - in its place a crater one and a half meters deep was formed. The explosion killed a fifth of the experimental animals and 10 cars located at a distance of a kilometer from the epicenter of the events. Log houses within a 5 km radius were completely destroyed. In the early fifties, five such bombs were manufactured, which amounted to the entire nuclear arsenal countries at that time.
On August 12, 1953, the first Soviet missile was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. hydrogen bomb, which was developed by a group of scientists led by A.D. Sakharov and Yu.B. Khariton. They managed to get ahead of the whole world and create the first weapon of enormous destructive power that was mobile and lifted by a bomber. For comparison, the best thermonuclear device in the United States at that time was the size of a three-story house. In addition, our scientists were the first to use “dry” thermonuclear fuel, which was a huge breakthrough in the field of technology. The results of the RDS-6s tests exceeded the expectations of even its creators. The recorded power of the explosion was 400 kilotons. Within a radius of 4 km, all brick buildings collapsed. And the heaviest railway bridge, weighing several hundred tons, was thrown 200 m from its original point.
The test of the T-5 torpedo is the first Soviet underwater nuclear test. When the Soviet Union acquired its own nuclear weapons, scientists took up the problem of anti-nuclear protection of ships and the need to conduct nuclear test in marine conditions. The test site was Chernaya Bay. One of the reasons for this choice was that water exchange with Barents Sea in that area is extremely weak, and this could create some kind of obstacle to the release of radiation into the sea. On the appointed day, the torpedo test had to be postponed due to fog. The charge was detonated the next day - September 21, 1955. The explosion occurred at a depth of approximately 57 m. Its TNT equivalent was 3.5 kilotons. Based on the results of the experiment, scientists came to the conclusion that ships become most vulnerable if they are close to each other. If the ships are at the maximum distance from each other, then only one ship can be shot down with one torpedo. The data obtained as a result of the test was taken into account in the subsequent construction of the ships.
First two-stage thermonuclear bomb The Soviet Union, although it had an unprecedented capacity of more than 1 Mt, caused many problems during testing. One of the troubles that happened with the RDS-37 was an emergency situation at the Semipalatinsk test site. When the plane with the bomb had already taken off, the weather turned bad. It took the command two hours to accept firm decision about the plane with the bomb landing back on the ground. It was decided to carry out a repeat test a day later, on November 22, 1955. The second attempt was more successful, but entailed a number of unplanned casualties. So, 36 km from the explosion, six soldiers were buried in the ground, one of whom died. A girl died due to a ceiling collapse in a local village. Dozens of people were injured from broken glass. And various injuries and injuries to people were recorded in almost 60 populated areas located within a radius of 200 km from the explosion.
Panic covered not only the “decaying West”, but also Soviet scientists, horrified by what they had done. “Tsar Bomba”, aka “Kuzka’s Mother”, aka “Ivan”, aka “Product 602”, still remains the most powerful explosive device that humanity has ever experienced.
It took seven long years of research, design and development to wipe the noses of the capitalists terrible weapon. The creation of an unprecedented 100-megaton superbomb (for comparison: the power of the largest American hydrogen bomb at that time reached “only” 15 megatons, which was already thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was carried out by a group of scientists led by Igor Kurchatov.
In fact, they could have tested a superbomb already in the late 1950s, but they were in no hurry to intimidate obvious and imaginary opponents because of the short-term thaw that gripped the cold hearts of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev and American President Dwight Eisenhower. Blizzard in the early 1960s cold war swirled with renewed vigor: a U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down near Sverdlovsk, there was unrest in divided Berlin, the revolution in Cuba led to an acute confrontation with the United States.
The last, active phase of work on superweapons entered in the summer of 1961, after the Soviet leader learned about the possibility of creating a 100-megaton thermonuclear bomb by a group already headed by Andrei Sakharov. The leader could not ignore the unprecedented prospects and gave the go-ahead - give them a bomb by the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, that is, by October.
Today, physicists who participated in those events claim that with their work they wanted to stop nuclear war. It is unknown what motives they were really guided by then, but Sakharov wrote a note to Khrushchev in which he spoke out against carrying out the tests super powerful bomb during the current moratorium on testing nuclear weapons. The First Secretary called all the fears and doubts “slobbering,” and at the end of the summer he could not stand it and threatened his capitalist enemies with a 100-megaton bomb. They didn’t make a secret of it.
The Western world shuddered at the mere statement of Nikita Khrushchev. A wave of anti-Soviet movements swept across the US; a series of videos about protective measures during nuclear attack, newspapers were full of headlines with accusations of a rehearsal for the Third World War.
Meanwhile, the creation of “Kuzka’s Mother” went on as usual. Weapons were developed in a closed city, in different times known as Kremlev, Arzamas-16 and Sarov. The secret settlement, in which only nuclear physicists lived, was closed from outside world and reminded us of that very communism that they were so threatening to build all over the planet. They didn’t turn it off here even in the summer hot water, shops were filled with raw smoked sausages, and each family was entitled to spacious free housing almost in heaven. True, the Soviet paradise was strictly guarded by soldiers and barbed wire - it was impossible to come here or leave without permission.
While practical physicists were puzzling over how to make the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind, theorists were coming up with scenarios for its use. And “Ivan,” of course, was intended primarily for the destruction of the “evil empire” represented by the United States.
The question was how to deliver the Tsar Bomba to the territory of the hated enemy. A submarine was considered as an option. The bomb was supposed to be detonated off the coast of the United States at a depth of 1 km. The power of the explosion of 100 million tons of TNT should have generated a tsunami half a kilometer high and 10 kilometers wide. After calculations, however, it turned out that America would have been saved by a continental shelf - only structures at a distance of no more than 5 km from the coast would have been in danger.
Even today it sounds fantastic, but physicists seriously considered the possibility of launching a bomb into Earth orbit. It could be directed at the United States directly from space. They say that theoretically the project was quite feasible, although it would have been incredibly expensive.
However, all these were questions of the distant and gloomy future. In the meantime, it was necessary to assemble the bomb itself. “Product 602” had a three-stage design. The first stage nuclear charge had a power of one and a half megatons and was designed to launch a thermo nuclear reaction in the second, the power of which reached 50 megatons. The third stage provided the same amount for the fission of uranium-238 nuclei.
Having calculated the consequences of the explosion of such a charge and the area of the subsequent radioactive contamination, they decided to replace the uranium elements in the third stage with lead. Thus, the estimated power of the bomb was reduced to 51.5 megatons.
Khrushchev explained this with his characteristic humor: “If we detonate a bomb with a capacity of 100 million tons where it is needed, it can break our windows too.”
The results of the scientists' work are impressive! The length of the weapon exceeded 8 meters, the diameter was 2, and the weight was 26 tons. There was no suitable crane to transport Ivan, so a separate railway line had to be built directly to the workshop where the bomb was assembled. From there the product set off on its penultimate journey - to the harsh polar Olenegorsk.
Not far from the city, at the Olenya airbase, a Tu-95 specially modified for it was waiting for the “Tsar Bomb”. The weapon did not fit on the plane, so part of the fuselage had to be cut out. To bring “Kuzkina-Mother” under the bomb bay, a pit was dug under it. The bomb still could not completely hide in the bowels of the ship and two-thirds of it was visible outside.
The crew was in great danger. The probability that he would remain completely unharmed as a result of the tests was only 1%. To increase the pilots' chances of survival, the plane was painted with white reflective paint, which was supposed to prevent the Tu-95B from catching fire (this is the name, the first and only, given to the aircraft adapted for transporting Ivan). A parachute the size of half a football field was placed in the tail of the bomb. His mission was to slow down the fall of the projectile to give the crew as much time as possible to escape the affected area.
On the morning of October 30, 1961, on the penultimate day of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a plane with a terrible cargo took off from the Olenya airfield towards test site"Dry Nose" on Novaya Zemlya. At 11:32 a.m. the bomb was dropped from a height of 10.5 km. The explosion occurred at an altitude of 4 km. In the few minutes that the crew had, the plane managed to fly a distance of 45 km.
This, of course, was not enough to avoid feeling the wrath of the “Tsar Bomba” at all. A second after the explosion, a man-made sun blossomed above the earth - the flash could have been seen with simple binoculars even from Mars, and on Earth it was observed at a distance of 1000 km. A few seconds later, the diameter of the dust column of the nuclear mushroom grew to 10 km, and its top entered the mesosphere, rushing upward to 67 km.
Flash explosion
According to the pilots, at first it became unbearably hot in the cockpit. Then the plane was overtaken by the first shock wave, spreading at a speed of more than 1000 km/h. The ship, as if hit by a huge club, was thrown half a kilometer. Radio communication was lost throughout the entire Arctic for almost an hour. Fortunately, no one was hurt from the explosion - the pilots survived.
Observing the first consequences of the explosion, some Soviet physicists were afraid that an irreversible nuclear reaction had begun in the atmosphere - the fiery glow had been blazing for a very long time. Perhaps no one could predict the exact results of the tests. Serious scientists expressed the most ridiculous fears, even to the point that Product 602 would split the planet or melt the ice in the Arctic Ocean.
None of this happened. But the power of the explosion would have been enough to wipe out Washington and a dozen surrounding cities from the face of the Earth, while New York, Richmond and Baltimore would have suffered. Any metropolis could disappear, the center of which would completely evaporate, and the outskirts would turn into small rubble blazing in fire. It’s scary to imagine what the consequences could have been if the power of the explosion had been the initially planned 100 megatons...
Zone total defeat explosion over Paris
The rehearsal for the end of the world was a great success. The Tsar Bomba was never put into service: in order to use it in combat conditions, they did not come up with a suitable invulnerable carrier - you cannot install such a huge thing on a rocket, and the plane will be shot down long before approaching the target.
After the test was completed, everyone involved received what they deserved. For some - the title of Hero of the USSR, for the military - promotion, for scientists - recognition and generous bonuses. Exactly a year later it broke out Caribbean crisis, which almost pushed the fragile world into the mouth of another world war. A year later, the American president would be shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, and in the fall of 1964 it would come to the removal of Nikita Khrushchev.
What about the people? The people who learned about some kind of “Tsar Bomb” later than the Americans still went to work, saved money and stood in line for Moskvich, got used to casseroles made from crackers, bread cards and other delights of the food crisis. Soviet Union threatened the world with a nuclear club and asked America to sell tens of millions of tons of grain for food.
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Atomic weapons are the most terrible and majestic invention of mankind. The power of destruction nuclear wave so great that it can wipe out from the face of the earth not only all living things, but even the most reliable structures and buildings. Only one nuclear stockpiles in Russia is enough to completely destroy our planet. And it is not surprising, since the country has the richest reserves atomic weapons, after the USA. The Soviet “Kuzkina Mother” or “Tsar Bomba”, tested in 1961, became the most powerful atomic weapon of all time.
The TOP 10 included most powerful nuclear bombs in the world. Many of them were used for test purposes, but caused irreparable harm to the environment. Others have become weapons in resolving military conflicts.
Yield 18 kilotons
Little boy(“Baby”) is the first nuclear bomb that was not used for testing purposes. It was she who contributed to the end of the war between Japan and the United States. Little boy with a power of 18 kilotons caused the death of 140 thousand residents of Hiroshima. The device, 3 meters long and 70 cm in diameter, created a nuclear column more than 6 kilometers high. “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” who “followed” him brought considerable damage to two Japanese cities, which to this day remain uninhabited.
Yield 21 kilotons
Fat Man(Fat Man) - the second nuclear bomb that the United States used against Japan. Residents of the city of Nagasaki became victims of nuclear weapons. The explosion, with a power of 21 kilotons, claimed the lives of 80 thousand people immediately, and another 35 thousand died from radiation exposure. Exactly this powerful weapon for the entire existence of mankind, which was used for military purposes.
Yield 21 kilotons
(Thing) - the first bomb that marked the beginning of nuclear weapons testing. The shock wave of the explosion was 21 kilotons and rose 11 kilometers into the air as a cloud. The first nuclear explosion in human history made a stunning impression on scientists. White clouds of smoke with a diameter of almost two kilometers quickly rose upward and formed the shape of a mushroom.
Baker Yield 21 kilotons
Baker(Baker) – one of three atomic bombs, who participated in Operation Crossroads in 1946. Tests were carried out to determine the impact of atomic shells on sea vessels and experimental animals. At a depth of 27 meters, an explosion with a power of 23 kilotons was carried out, which displaced about two million tons of water to the surface and formed a column more than half a kilometer in height. "Baker" brought with it "the world's first nuclear disaster." The radioactive island of Bikini, where the tests took place, became uninhabitable and was considered uninhabited until 2010.
Yield 955 kilotons
"- the most powerful atomic bomb tested by France in 1971. A projectile with a yield of 955 kilotons of TNT was detonated on the Mururoa Atoll, which is a nuclear explosion site. More than 200 nuclear weapons were tested there until 1998.
Power 11 megatons
- one of the most powerful explosions produced by the United States. The operation was accepted for execution on March 27, 1954. The explosion was carried out on a barge in the open ocean, as they were afraid that the bomb could destroy a nearby island. The power of the explosion was 11 megatons, instead of the expected 4 megatons. This is explained by the fact that cheap material was used as thermonuclear fuel.
Power 12 megatons
Mike's device(Evie Mike) was initially of no value and was used as an experimental bomb. The height of the nuclear cloud was estimated at 37 km, and the diameter of the cloud cap was about 161 km. The strength of Mike's nuclear wave was estimated at 12 megatons of TNT equivalent. The power of the projectile was enough to wipe out the small islands of Elugelab, where the test was carried out. In their place, only a crater with a diameter of 2 kilometers and a depth of 50 meters remained. Radioactively contaminated fragments from the reefs scattered 50 km from the epicenter of the explosion.
Yield 13.5 megatons
- the second most powerful nuclear explosion produced by American tests. It was expected that the initial power of the device would be no more than 10 megatons of TNT. As it turned out, the nuclear explosion had great strength and was estimated at 13.5 megatons. The height of the stem of the nuclear mushroom was 40 km, and the cap was 16 km. Within four days, the radiation cloud reached Mexico City, which is located 11,000 km from the site of the operation.
Power 15 megatons
Castle Bravo(Shrimp TX -21) - the most powerful atomic bomb ever tested in the United States. The operation was carried out in March 1954 and had irreversible consequences. The explosion with a power of 15 megatons caused the strongest radiation contamination. Hundreds of people living in the Marshall Islands were exposed to radiation. The stem of the nuclear mushroom exceeded 40 km, and the diameter of the cap was estimated at 100 km. The explosion caused the formation of seabed a huge crater, 2 km in diameter. The consequences that resulted from the tests became the reason for limiting operations carried out with nuclear projectiles.
Yield 58 megatons
(AN602) is the most powerful Soviet nuclear bomb in the world of all time. An eight-meter projectile with a diameter of two meters was used as a test in 1961 on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. It was originally planned that AN602 would have a power of 100 megatons, but fearing global destructive force weapons, agreed that the force of the explosion would not exceed 58 megatons. At an altitude of 4 km, the Tsar Bomba was activated and gave stunning results. The diameter of the fire cloud reached about 10 km. The nuclear pillar was about 67 km in height, and the diameter of the pillar cap reached 97 km. Even being at a distance of 400 km from the epicenter of the explosion was extremely life-threatening. A powerful sound wave spread over almost a thousand kilometers. On the island where the test took place, there were no traces of life or any buildings left; absolutely everything was leveled to the surface of the earth. The seismic wave of the explosion circled the entire planet three times, and every inhabitant of the planet was able to feel the full power of nuclear weapons. After this test, more than a hundred countries signed an agreement to stop this type of operations both in the atmosphere, under water and on land.
50 years ago, on October 30, 1961, an epoch-making event took place at the test site on Novaya Zemlya in the USSR - a bomb with 58 megatons of TNT equivalent was detonated. This is more than has been used in the entire history of mankind, including previous atomic and hydrogen bombs. And, most likely, that explosion will remain a world record for all subsequent times. Not because there are technical and physical limitations on the power of the explosion, but because such power is completely meaningless.
The anniversary bomb was named AN602, but in official correspondence of that time it was simply called “product B”.
These markings were forgotten. Remained "Ivan" ( Soviet name), “Big Ivan”, “Tsar Bomba”, “Kuzka’s Mother” - assigned to the bomb in the West.
The development group included many dozens or even hundreds of people, but the main ones were Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trutnev, Yuri Smirnov.
Work on the bomb began a long time ago, back in 1954. In 1959, before Khrushchev's trip to America, work was suspended - détente was planned. But on May 1, 1960, the U-2 spy plane of the American pilot Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk. The Americans were unpleasantly impressed by Khrushchev’s words “we will bury you.” Trust but verify, President Eisenhower decided. Nikita Sergeevich was seriously angry, canceled Eisenhower’s return visit and promised to show America “Kuzka’s mother.” The highest order was received: to speed up the development of the bomb.
At a meeting with the developers and creators of Soviet nuclear weapons, Nikita Sergeevich said: “Let this product hang over the capitalists like the sword of Damocles...”.
In September 1961, the bomb was almost ready. Nikita burned with righteous anger against imperialism. So much so that, despite all the traditional Soviet secrecy, I told one person about it American politician, who came to see him with his adult daughter. The story about this meeting appeared on September 8, 1961 on the pages of the American newspaper " NY Times", which reproduced the words of Khrushchev: "Let those who dream of new aggression know that we will have a bomb equal in power to 100 million tons of trinitrotoluene, that we already have such a bomb, and we only have to test explosive device for her". The newspaper reported that the politician’s daughter, having heard about Khrushchev’s such intention, burst into tears right in his office.
The Soviet people learned about such an epoch-making event a little later - on October 17, on the first day of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, when Khrushchev, in the report, stopped reading the text, switched to falsetto, nailed his fist and almost shouted: “... I want to say that We are also testing new nuclear weapons very successfully. We will complete these tests soon. Apparently at the end of October. Finally, we will probably detonate a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons of TNT. (Applause.) We said that we have a bomb containing 100 million tons of TNT. And that's true. But we will not detonate such a bomb, because if we detonate it even in the most remote places, then even then we can break out our windows. (Stormy applause.) Therefore, we will refrain for now and will not detonate this bomb. But, having detonated the 50-millionth bomb, we will thereby test the device for detonating the 100-millionth bomb. However, as they said before, God grant that we never have to explode these bombs over any territory. (Stormy applause.)"
The stormy applause of the congress delegates showed that the people were awaiting the promised explosion with jubilation as the apotheosis of the struggle for peace.
50 megaton TNT bomb
Why didn’t they detonate 100 megatons, although such a charge was ready? A little about the design of the bomb. "Kuzkina Mother" ("Tsar Bomb") had a three-stage design: the nuclear charge of the first stage (calculated contribution to the explosion power - 1.5 megatons) launched a thermonuclear reaction in the second stage (contribution to the explosion power - 50 megatons), and she, in turn, initiated the nuclear “Jekyll-Hyde reaction” (nuclear fission in uranium-238 blocks under the influence of fast neutrons generated as a result of the thermonuclear fusion reaction) in the third stage (another 50 megatons of power), so that the total estimated power of the bomb was 101 .5 megatons.
Khrushchev named the main reason for refusing such power: there is no place on the territory of the USSR for such a test.
When they began to estimate the scale of damage from a 100 megaton Kuzka mother in an explosion on Novaya Zemlya, equal to a radius of 1000 kilometers, they scratched their heads. Within these limits were the cities of Vorkuta, Dudinka, and the important industrial center of Norilsk. And, let’s say, the port of Dikson was located 500 kilometers from the test site. Some village of Drovyanoy was not a pity, but the Norilsk copper-nickel plant was very taken care of.
In general, no matter how they twisted it and tried it, it turned out that there was nowhere to blow up the monstrous mother. Except in Antarctica. But, firstly, there was no equipment and instruments there, and importing them would have been too expensive - it would have been cheaper to burn down Dikson, evaporate the village of Drovyanoy and destroy Norilsk. And secondly, Antarctica was international territory, and, as they say, the international community would not allow an explosion there.
It’s a pity, but they decided to halve the bomb charge so as not to evacuate the population and equipment of the named cities. The bomb body remained the same, but the charge was halved.
There was another reason. The explosion of the third stage, in which the fission reaction of uranium-238 occurs, would entail extremely high level radioactive contamination, which would make it necessary to evict the entire North, and not only the North. Therefore, about 2 tons of uranium-238 in the third stage were replaced with approximately the same amount of lead. This reduced the estimated total yield of the explosion from more than 100 megatons to 51.5 megatons. Looking ahead, we note that the actual power turned out to be even higher than the calculated one and reached 58 megatons.
What kind of power is this? If such a bomb were detonated over Moscow, then Moscow would simply disappear. Its center would evaporate (namely, it would not collapse, but evaporate), and the rest would turn into small rubble among a gigantic fire. Just as the center of New York would evaporate along with all its skyscrapers. That is, from huge cities there would be a melted smooth surface with a diameter of twenty kilometers, surrounded by small debris and ash.
Test of "Kuzka's Mother"
To deliver the bomb, a Tu-95B turboprop bomber was adapted, in which the bomb bay doors were removed: with a mass of 26.5 tons, including parachute system weighing 0.8 tons, the dimensions of the bomb turned out to be b O Larger than the size of the bomb bay - 8 meters in length and 2.5 meters in diameter. A second Tu-16 laboratory aircraft was also prepared for testing, which contained instruments and cameramen. The planes were coated with special reflective white paint.The bomb was transported from Arzamas-16, where it was assembled, by special train. The train changed direction several times along the way, making wild discounts so that in principle it would be impossible to determine from which station it departed.
At Olenya station everything was ready. The bomb was placed on a heavy-duty vehicle trailer and, under heavy security, with cover vehicles in front and behind, was delivered to a military airfield in a special building.
Marshal, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, Commander-in-Chief arrived for the tests missile forces Kirill Moskalenko and Minister of Medium Engineering Efim Slavsky. They specially flew in from Moscow, where they participated in the XXII Congress of the CPSU.
With great precautions, the bomb was suspended from the belly of the Tu-95 using a powerful lift.
All is ready.
Bomb development team member Yuri Smirnov says:
“A mighty roar was heard, and the Tu-95, running heavily along the seemingly endless concrete strip, followed by the Tu-16, rose into the gray, low, drawn-out overcast sky. We were told that escort fighters soon joined the planes heading for Novaya Zemlya. Once again we found ourselves in the grip of anticipation...
In the room where the day before she met State Commission, several people gathered. We exchanged humorous remarks. But it seems that everyone was overcome by a poorly concealed tension. From time to time there was news that communication with the pilots was normal and everything was going according to schedule. The critical moment was approaching... There was a message that at a given point the bomb had separated from the plane, the parachute had opened, and the crews were leaving the area of the impending explosion...
Finally they told us that at 11:33 am. Moscow time, communication with the crews and observation points for the experiment was completely interrupted. This meant: the explosion took place.”
The head of the bomb development group, Andrei Sakharov, writes in his Memoirs:
“On the day of the “powerful” test, I was sitting in my office near the telephone, waiting for news from the test site. Early in the morning, Pavlov called (a high-ranking KGB official in charge of the tests, in fact the head of the tests) and reported that the carrier aircraft was already flying over the Barents Sea towards the test site. Nobody was able to work. Theorists were milling around the corridor, coming in and out of my office. At 12 o'clock Pavlov called. In a triumphant voice he shouted:
There is no communication with the test site or with the plane for more than an hour! Congratulations on the victory!
The meaning of the phrase about communication was that a powerful explosion creates radio interference, throwing up great amount ionized particles. The duration of the communication disruption qualitatively characterizes the power of the explosion. After another half hour, Pavlov reported that the height of the cloud was 60 kilometers (or 100 kilometers? Now, 26 years later, I can’t remember the exact number).”
The correct number is about 67 kilometers.
Test Details
The TU-95 aircraft was flown by pilots: ship commander A.E. Durnovtsev, navigator I.N. Klesch, flight engineer V.Ya. Brui. The bomber took off from Olenya airfield and headed for Novaya Zemlya.
The main problem was that the bomber had time to leave the affected area before the bomb exploded. The bomb was detonated at an altitude of 4.2 kilometers, and dropped from a height limit for the TU-95 - 10.5 kilometers. The parachutes opened almost immediately, but the bomb flew down quickly at first (due to the low air density), then its speed began to slow down. In total, the crew had 188 seconds left. The plane, descending and with its engines afterburning at the maximum available speed of about 800 km per hour (these were subsonic bombers), began to move away from the bomb drop site and managed to escape to a distance of 39 kilometers before the bomb exploded. The flash of the explosion, which lasted about a minute, filled the cabin with a blinding white light - the crew put on dark glasses in advance. The temperature on the plane rose. The plane quickly continued to leave, but the shock wave overtook it even faster. And it caught up when the plane flew 115 kilometers. This happened 8 minutes 20 seconds after the drop nuclear charge. At the moment of the explosion, a bright flash appeared that lasted about a minute. A white and red fireball grew from behind. That was the real dawn of communism. The shock wave threw the plane down, up, and down again. But nothing happened, although the crew received a still classified dose of radiation. It was a monstrous atomic mushroom, never before seen by any earthling...
The commander of the second Tu-16 laboratory aircraft, who managed to escape 205 km when the shock wave arrived, was ordered to return to the mushroom and carry out detailed surveys and measurements. But the closer the plane flew, the greater the horror that gripped the crew. Orange whirlwinds rushed ahead, huge lightning flashed, the mushroom quickly went into the stratosphere and expanded. A giant one was waiting for them fire tornado, most similar to the entrance to “fiery hell”. The commander did not dare to approach even closer and turned back, not following the order of the party to come close to the cloud. The Tu-95 commander Andrei Durnovtsev would have done it.
I once had a neighbor in Minsk (or rather, his parents were neighbors) named Volodya, who served at the Novaya Zemlya training ground. Once a year he came to his parents on vacation and told me over a bottle his impressions of testing nuclear bombs. Heavy pack ice up to 2 meters thick evaporated in an area fifteen to twenty kilometers in diameter (and it should be taken into account that the explosions were carried out not over the ocean, but over land). Packs of white foam floated on the surface of the water. The testers themselves sat a couple of hundred kilometers away in underground bunkers, and then they were thrown up there, and a low-frequency powerful roar was heard, which chilled the heart, and thoughts about the end of the world naturally came to mind. “At these moments,” Volodya said, “many uttered some words like “Lord, carry me through and save.” But everyone there was atheists, Komsomol members and party members.” There is nothing left of the tanks, buildings and other equipment abandoned for the sake of the experiment closer than 30 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion...
The Nenets, who were resettled beyond the 500 kilometer mark during the testing of the Tsar Bomba, were seen in the sky bright flash, then they heard a powerful roar and boom that they had never heard before. Nenets old people (and old people are considered to be those who manage to live to be 50 years old) said that this roar was made by the local evil spirit Omol, trying to free himself from an underground jug. Local party bodies were instructed not to dissuade them of this error and not to fight the remnants of shamanism in the Nenets tundra.
And then for many days something like Northern Lights. The deer that were closer than 500 kilometers from the epicenter lost their fur and died. Rumor has it that less than half of the 15 million herd remains. Again everything was blamed on the wrath of the Nenets unconscious god.
This is how the operators who were on both planes describe this flight.
“It’s scary to fly, one might say, on top of a hydrogen bomb! Will it work? Although it is on fuses, but still... And there will be no molecule left! Unbridled power in her, and what! Zero! Below the plane and somewhere in the distance, the clouds are illuminated by a powerful flash. This is illumination! Behind the hatch, a sea of light just spread out, an ocean of light, and even layers of clouds were highlighted, revealed... At that moment our plane came out between two layers of clouds, and there, in this gap, from below, a huge ball-bubble of light orange color appeared ! He, like Jupiter - powerful, confident, self-satisfied - slowly, silently creeps up... Breaking through the seemingly hopeless clouds, he grew, grew larger and larger. Behind him, as if into a funnel, the whole Earth seemed to be drawn in. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal... at least unearthly.”
Another cameraman saw a powerful white flash above the horizon, and through big gap felt a dull, heavy blow: “A-ahhh! It’s like they killed the Earth!” - he wrote.
Then, some time after the explosion, they filmed the area of the center of the explosion, the place where the fireball of the explosion (“fireball”) reached a diameter of about 10 km: “The surface of the island was so melted, swept away and licked that not the surface became a skating rink ! There are no traces of any irregularities... We film directly from the air, while circling and hovering... This is the epicenter. The thermonuclear rage raged over this point. Everything has been swept away, licked, cleaned, everything has been melted and blown!”
The Tsar Bomb effect
On the last day of the party congress, Nikita Sergeevich shone like a polished copper basin. Communists do not waste words. The delegates were delighted. Here it is, a visible sign of communism, the program for the construction of which by 1980 was adopted at the 22nd Congress. Communism cannot be combined with outdated capitalism. They said we’ll bury it, so that’s what will happen. Well, with an amendment, we won’t bury it, but burn it in a crematorium. It's more modern.
On the stage, two “satirical” coupletists Shurov and Rykunin sang cheerfully: “One hundred million tons of TNT, that was enough for us, so that Kondrashka would grab them!” The audience was delighted...
It’s interesting that even now 90 percent of all comments from “ordinary users” about the anniversary of the bomb are filled with pride for the accomplishment, oh, how they were afraid of us then, but now it’s all about... well.
A 20-minute film about the creation of a 50-megaton bomb, its preparation and testing was later shown to the country's top leadership. The film concluded with the narration: “Based on even the most preliminary data, it became obvious that the explosion produced was a record-breaking force.”
The jubilant voice of the announcer lists the deadly effects of the explosion: “The flash was seen at a distance of up to 1000 km, and the shock wave circled the Earth three times! Sound wave, generated by the explosion, reached Dikson Island and was heard as a strong roar at a distance of about 800 kilometers. For the first time in the world such enormous power!..” The announcer's voice trembled with happiness.
After the test, the Pravda newspaper said its word of peace: “50 megatons is yesterday’s day for atomic weapons. Now even more powerful charges have been created.”
They were not created, but the project actually contained a 150 megaton bomb.
In fact, and theorists understood this well, neither the 100 megaton nor the 50 megaton bombs were and could not be weapons. It was a single product for political pressure and intimidation.
Yes, they had an undeniable political impact. It was under the terrifying effect of the explosion that Khrushchev gave the order to bring missiles to Cuba, which led to the most serious crisis in all the millennia of civilization. The world was on the verge of the Third World Thermonuclear War.
“Kuzka’s Mother” clearly advanced negotiations on a ban on testing atomic weapons in the atmosphere and under water - the damage to the environment, as well as to the living conditions of people and their equipment from such experiments became obvious even to outstanding peace activists. This agreement was signed in 1963.
In general, Khrushchev no longer risked exploding the Tsar Bomba. Instead, they began to show Academician Mstislav Keldysh, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who scientifically repeated that Soviet science works exclusively for the good of the world.
Andrey Sakharov
The report on the successful testing of the “product” was first signed by Andrei Sakharov. At the end of the report there was the phrase: “The successful test result of this product opens up the possibility of designing a product of practically unlimited power.”
And then, inspired by success, Sakharov had a conversation with the head of the 6th Directorate Navy engineer-vice admiral Fomin Pyotr Fomich. He was a major commander and a significant figure: all naval personnel were under his authority nuclear weapons, obeyed him nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya. Sakharov shared his secrets with Admiral Fomin. Academician, three times hero of socialist labor Sakharov, came up with a way to effectively deliver a super-powerful charge, albeit 1000 megatons, to a target. He proposed launching a charge on a large torpedo, brought to the enemy’s shores by submarine. And there, off the coast, to explode. Such a charge raises giant wave, which covers the coastal city. Sakharov wrote: “He (Fomin) was shocked by the “cannibalistic nature” of the project and noted in a conversation with me that military sailors were accustomed to fighting an armed enemy in open battle and that the very thought of such a thing was disgusting to him mass murder. I was ashamed and never discussed this project with anyone again.”
Judging by the chronology, it was this reaction of Fomin that became the starting point, the impetus for the academician’s increasing repentance. Creation lethal weapons, the apotheosis of which was the “Tsar Bomba” and the idea of an underwater explosion of a very monstrous charge, became the impetus for his further human rights activities.
It seems, however, that the admiral, with such a gesture of peacefulness, simply turned the academician away from a fruitful idea. An underwater nuclear explosion is exactly his department! So, he should offer it to him. This is exactly what happened later. Fortunately, calculations and experiments showed that nothing would have come of this idea.
The destructive power of which, when exploded, cannot be stopped by anyone. What is the most powerful bomb in the world? To answer this question, you need to understand the features of certain bombs.
What is a bomb?
Nuclear power plants operate on the principle of releasing and trapping nuclear energy. This process must be controlled. The released energy turns into electricity. An atomic bomb causes a chain reaction that is completely uncontrollable, and the huge amount of released energy causes terrible destruction. Uranium and plutonium are not so harmless elements of the periodic table; they lead to global catastrophes.
Atomic bomb
To understand what the most powerful atomic bomb on the planet is, we’ll learn more about everything. Hydrogen and atomic bombs are nuclear energy. If you combine two pieces of uranium, but each has a mass below the critical mass, then this “union” will far exceed the critical mass. Each neutron participates in chain reaction, because it splits the nucleus and releases another 2-3 neutrons, which cause new decay reactions.
Neutron force is completely beyond human control. In less than a second, hundreds of billions of newly formed decays not only release enormous amounts of energy, but also become sources of intense radiation. This radioactive rain covers the earth, fields, plants and all living things with a thick layer. If we talk about the disasters in Hiroshima, we can see that 1 gram caused the death of 200 thousand people.
Working principle and advantages of a vacuum bomb
It is believed that a vacuum bomb created by the latest technologies, can compete with nuclear. The fact is that instead of TNT, a gas substance is used here, which is several tens of times more powerful. Aviation bomb increased power - the most powerful vacuum bomb in the world, which is not a nuclear weapon. It can destroy the enemy, but houses and equipment will not be damaged, and there will be no decay products.
What is the principle of its operation? Immediately after being dropped from the bomber, a detonator is activated at some distance from the ground. The body is destroyed and a huge cloud is sprayed. When mixed with oxygen, it begins to penetrate anywhere - into houses, bunkers, shelters. The burning out of oxygen creates a vacuum everywhere. When this bomb is dropped, a supersonic wave is produced and a very high temperature is generated.
The difference between an American vacuum bomb and a Russian one
The differences are that the latter can destroy an enemy even in a bunker using the appropriate warhead. During an explosion in the air, the warhead falls and hits the ground hard, burrowing to a depth of up to 30 meters. After the explosion, a cloud is formed, which, increasing in size, can penetrate into shelters and explode there. American warheads are filled with ordinary TNT, so they destroy buildings. Vacuum bomb destroys a specific object, as it has a smaller radius. It doesn’t matter which bomb is the most powerful - any of them delivers an incomparable destructive blow that affects all living things.
H-bomb
The hydrogen bomb is another terrible nuclear weapon. The combination of uranium and plutonium generates not only energy, but also temperature, which rises to a million degrees. Hydrogen isotopes combine to form helium nuclei, which creates a source of colossal energy. The hydrogen bomb is the most powerful - this is an indisputable fact. It is enough just to imagine that its explosion is equal to the explosions of 3,000 atomic bombs in Hiroshima. Both in the USA and in former USSR you can count 40 thousand bombs of varying power - nuclear and hydrogen.
The explosion of such ammunition is comparable to the processes observed inside the Sun and stars. Fast neutrons split the uranium shells of the bomb itself at enormous speed. Not only heat is released, but also radioactive fallout. There are up to 200 isotopes. The production of such nuclear weapons is cheaper than atomic ones, and their effect can be enhanced as many times as desired. This is the most powerful bomb detonated in the Soviet Union on August 12, 1953.
Consequences of the explosion
The result of a hydrogen bomb explosion is threefold. The very first thing that happens is a powerful blast wave is observed. Its power depends on the height of the explosion and the type of terrain, as well as the degree of air transparency. Large firestorms can form that do not subside for several hours. And yet the secondary and most dangerous consequence, which the most powerful thermonuclear bomb can cause is radioactive radiation and contamination of the surrounding area for a long time.
Radioactive remains from a hydrogen bomb explosion
When an explosion occurs, the fireball contains many very small radioactive particles that are retained in the atmospheric layer of the earth and remain there for a long time. Upon contact with the ground, this fireball creates incandescent dust consisting of decay particles. First, the larger one settles, and then the lighter one, which is carried hundreds of kilometers with the help of the wind. These particles can be seen with the naked eye; for example, such dust can be seen on snow. It is fatal if anyone gets nearby. The smallest particles can remain in the atmosphere for many years and thus “travel”, circling the entire planet several times. Their radioactive emissions will become weaker by the time they fall out as precipitation.
Its explosion is capable of wiping Moscow off the face of the earth in a matter of seconds. The city center could easily evaporate in the literal sense of the word, and everything else could turn into tiny rubble. The most powerful bomb in the world would wipe out New York and all its skyscrapers. It would leave behind a twenty-kilometer-long molten smooth crater. With such an explosion, it would not have been possible to escape by going down to the subway. The entire territory within a radius of 700 kilometers would be destroyed and infected with radioactive particles.
Explosion of the Tsar Bomba - to be or not to be?
In the summer of 1961, scientists decided to conduct a test and observe the explosion. The most powerful bomb in the world was to explode at a test site located in the very north of Russia. The huge area of the test site occupies the entire territory of the island of Novaya Zemlya. The scale of the defeat was supposed to be 1000 kilometers. In the event of an explosion, such people could remain infected industrial centers, like Vorkuta, Dudinka and Norilsk. Scientists, having comprehended the scale of the disaster, put their heads together and realized that the test was cancelled.
There was no place to test the famous and incredibly powerful bomb anywhere on the planet, only Antarctica remained. But it was also not possible to carry out an explosion on the icy continent, since the territory is considered international and obtaining permission for such tests is simply unrealistic. I had to reduce the charge of this bomb by 2 times. The bomb was nevertheless detonated on October 30, 1961 in the same place - on the island of Novaya Zemlya (at an altitude of about 4 kilometers). During the explosion, a monstrous huge atomic mushroom was observed, which rose 67 kilometers into the air, and the shock wave circled the planet three times. By the way, in the Arzamas-16 museum in the city of Sarov, you can watch newsreels of the explosion on an excursion, although they claim that this spectacle is not for the faint of heart.