Hey guys, it's Mike Chen after the global nightmare
that was World War II the United States of America inevitably became a nuclear superpower,
went and destroyed a couple of cities in Japan
using its newly developed atomic bombs and because of that it became clear to the rest of the world how
technologically superior the Americans have been compared to any other powerful country when it comes to warfare and
regardless of whether they were affiliated with the Allies or the Axis, these nations grew very weary of the
possibility that the US would be the next one to attempt to lord over everyone else. Using this technological edge at making seriously
devastating military weapons. So because of this and many other reasons, the USSR, once an ally of the US during the war became
a fierce and
competitive rival after the global conflict was won. The relations between the two countries had gone cold and it became crucial for the Soviets to
prove to the whole world that they were just as strong a force to be reckoned with and that others should also
tremble at their might. This meant that the Soviet Union had to immediately catch up to the US,
sparking a nuclear-armed race between the two countries. So for the next decade the Soviets
aggressively pursued nuclear research. Determined to create nuclear weapons more
powerful and destructive than anything the US had come up with. And so the
USSR detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1949 and from then on they managed to test over 80
nuclear devices. And among the nuclear bombs that the Soviets detonated was the infamous Tsar Bomba
a monstrous weapon that was so powerful and destructive that even the Soviets made sure not to unleash it at its full capacity
So what is the Tsar Bomba? The official name of the Tsar Bomba is the Soviet RDS-220
hydrogen bomb. It is also popularly referred to as the Kuzkina mat or Kuzma's mother.
This monstrous nuclear device was created by Soviet scientists at the urging of the first secretary Khrushchev who had made a public declaration
to display Soviet technology in its full force. And it truly lived up to his expectations as the Tsar Bomba
earned the title of being the most powerful nuclear bomb to be detonated to date. The Russian physicists designed the Kuzkina mat as a
three-stage bomb with a yield of 50 megatons. That's around
1,500 times greater than the combined energy produced by the
Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs which were dropped and detonated by the Americans on Japan, but originally however
they intended to build the Tsar Bomba with a maximum yield of a hundred megatons
and theoretically they would have achieved this by layering every stage of the bomb with uranium
238. Had they chosen to go in this direction, the bomb would have been around three
thousand times more massive than the two bombs that destroyed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
But scientists saw testing a nuclear device with this much power was far too dangerous
Duh! And had the potential to cover the northern territory of the USSR with a nuclear fallout
Moreover, it would be difficult for a plane to carry and deliver the bomb of this size to its intended destination
and even if that was
accomplished it would be deemed a
suicide mission as it would be highly unlikely that its courier would have enough time to establish a safe distance before the bombs exploded
Hence, in order to limit the scope of the fallout it would cause, it is believed that the Tsar Bomba was layered with lead instead of
uranium. Doing so would have significantly weakened the power of the nuclear reaction and would have explained why the bomb
yielded only half of its theoretical capacity. So the Soviet Union decided to put the
RDS-220 hydrogen bomb to the test on the 30th of October in 1961
A Soviet TU-95 bomber plane was selected to carry the colossal nuclear device from the airfield of Kola Peninsula
all the way north to the target location in the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya
several miles away from the villages of Vernie. The massive bomb it carried had a diameter of 7 feet and weighed heavier than
27 tons. In an effort to ensure the survival of the two bomber planes, it was decided that the Tsar Bomba
would be deployed via a big parachute from the height
of around 34,000 feet, and only when it reaches the height of
13,000 feet would the bomb be detonated, at which point the planes would already be 30 miles away. Now while this is typically a safe
distance, it was determined that the plane had nothing more than 50% chance of surviving the blast. So at
11:32 in the morning Moscow time the Tsar Bomba detonated forming a
fireball that exploded up to five miles in a mushroom cloud that rose as high as 40 miles. The flash of the
explosion was visible over 600 miles away and while it must have been a
jaw-dropping sight to see, the aftermath of setting off the nuclear bomb was utterly
catastrophic. According to sensor data gathered from the blast, the blast wave of the Tsar Bomba was so intense that it orbited the Earth
three times
consequently this knocked off radio communications for an hour or so. The explosion also caused significant damage to various structures within
Soviet districts situated several hundreds of miles away from ground zero
And as for the village of Severny which was more than 30 miles away from the blast zone
nothing was virtually left. The bomber plane managed to survive the explosion
but not before plummeting more than three thousand feet toward the earth
But fortunately the pilot was able to regain control of the plane. Another fortunate thing was that the Tsar Bomba
fireball did not reach the ground. As such the nuclear fallout was not as massive as the bomb's colossal yield and radiation it produced was
unexpectedly low. Now as bad as this bomb was it was not the last time that the USSR or any other country tested nuclear
weapons
However the Tsar Bomba was certainly the first and last time a nuclear bomb that scale was ever
detonated at least so far. It is fortunate that a bomb twice as powerful as that was not the one used. And really why do
we need such a destructive weapon? I mean, is there ever a scenario where a country is thinking?
You know what?
I just want to obliterate an entire
country off the face of the planet, and then go home and sleep pretty well at night. And just as I said that I realized
Yeah
there are actually people crazy enough to use something like this or something stronger than this. So it is truly scary that a bomb as powerful as
this does really exists and right now living in this crazy world who knows? Am I the only one who has this
impending sense of doom about about the whole world right now?
Let me know if you have that same feeling in the comments. Anyway guys, thank you all so much for watching. I'll see you later.