The shocking scale of nuclear explosions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We all know how dangerous nuclear weapons are, but few imagine the true extent of their destructive power. The bombs we have today are so powerful that the explosion of the Kid bomb dropped on Hiroshima can be used as a unit of measurement.

The most powerful explosive device in the history of mankind was and remains the legendary "Tsar Bomba" with an estimated capacity of 50 megatons, or approximately 3333 Hiroshima. The bomb tests took place on October 30, 1961 at the Novaya Zemlya archipelago test site. 2 hours after the departure of the Tu-95V bomber, the Tsar Bomba was dropped from a height of 10,500 meters by parachute system at a conditional target within the Sukhoi Nos nuclear test site.

The bomb was detonated in a barometric manner at 11:33, 188 seconds after being dropped at an altitude of 4200 meters above sea level. The carrier aircraft managed to fly at a distance of 39 kilometers, and the laboratory aircraft - at 53.5 kilometers. The carrier aircraft was thrown into a dive by the shock wave and lost 800 meters of altitude until control was restored. In the airplane laboratory, the effect of the shock wave from the explosion was felt in the form of a slight shaking, without affecting the flight mode. According to eyewitnesses, the shock wave knocked out windows in some houses in Norway and Finland.

The power of the Tsar Bomba explosion exceeded the calculated one and amounted to 57 to 58.6 megatons in TNT equivalent. Later, the newspaper "Pravda" wrote that the bomb, code-named AN602, is already yesterday's nuclear weapons and Soviet scientists have developed a bomb of even greater power. This gave rise to numerous rumors in the west that a new Tsar Bomba is being prepared for testing, twice as powerful as the previous one.

The mythical 100-megaton bomb, if it was created, fortunately, was never tested. Even the most widespread American thermonuclear aerial bomb B83 with a capacity of up to 1, 2 megatons in an explosion forms a mushroom more than the flight altitude of passenger airliners! The video shows the true scale of the destructive power of nuclear weapons.

Alexander Ponomarev