Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Tsar Bomba

Episode Date: October 24, 2020

On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the largest explosion the world had ever seen, before or since. The explosion was so large, that it permanently changed the course of nuclear weapons development. Learn more about the Tsar Bomba, the world’s largest nuclear explosion, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On October 30th, 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the largest explosion the world had ever seen before or since. The explosion was so huge that it permanently changed the course of nuclear weapons development. Learn more about the Tsar Bomba, the world's largest nuclear explosion on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The great awakening is coming.

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on your next trip. To improve your photography and to get better images on your next trip, visit Travel Photography Academy.com or click in the link in the show notes. The United States detonated its first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Test site in New Mexico. The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic device on October 29, 1949. Once the U.S. lost its monopoly on atomic weapons, an arms race began between the Americans and the Soviets. The arms race wasn't just a function of the number of weapons, but it was across a wide range of related technologies, including strategic bombers, nuclear-powered submarines, intercontinental missiles, and the size of the weapons themselves. On November 1st, 1952, the United

States up the stakes with the detonation of the first thermonuclear device, also known as a hydrogen bomb or H-bomb. Using energy from nuclear fusion instead of just fission, which was used in all previous bombs, this explosion was significantly larger than all the others which came before it. The bomb known as Ivy Mike was detonated with the equivalent of 10 million tons of TNT or 10 megatons. In comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only 15 kilotons. In less than a year on August 12, 1953, the Soviets followed suit with an H-bomb test of their own. Dubbed Joe 4 by the Americans, it was a 400-kilaton hydrogen bomb, much smaller than the American device, but much much larger than anything else which the Soviets had previously detonated.

On March 1, 1954, the United States conducted a test called Castle Bravo, which was a 15-megaton device. It was, and remains, the largest nuclear test ever conducted by the United States. A year later, the Soviets detonated their first megaton-sized device with the RDS-37. On November 22, 1955, the device was detonated with a yield of 1.6 megatons. Despite being the largest bomb they had ever tested, the weapon was a weapon. was still an order of magnitude smaller than the bombs the Americans had. By this time, Stalin had died and Nikita Khrushchev had come to power, and the Cold War had gone into high gear. It wasn't just a matter of being militarily prepared, it was also a cultural conflict now. In 1959, Khrushchev had his

famous kitchen debate with Vice President Richard Nixon at a cultural exhibit in Moscow. The two went back and forth about which system was superior, and during the debate, Khrushchev used a Russian expression that really didn't translate well. Khrushchev said that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States and said, quote, we will show you Kuska's mother, unquote. The American interpreter had no idea what he was saying. He knew Russian, but he didn't know the expression. He translated it literally talking about someone's mother. Showing someone Kuska's mother is a Russian expression for saying, I'll show you, or we'll teach you a lesson. I mentioned this because as the Soviets entered the 1960s, they were working on a really big bomb. The code word, which was

used internally for the weapon, was Kuska's mother. The term Tsar Bomba comes from several other things in Russian history, which were really big. The Tsar Bell and the Tsar Canon were a giant bell and cannon, respectively. The equivalent would be calling something the king if it were the largest or the best, sort of how Budweiser is the king of beers. The initial plans were for a 100-megaton bomb. The reason for a bomb of this size was mostly for propaganda purposes. A bomb this large would be impossible to deliver with existing missile technology and extremely difficult to deliver even with a bomber. The test of the weapon was ready to go in 1961. It was a matter of when it would be detonated to maximize propaganda. At first, it was delayed due to a summit between Kennedy and

Khrushchev. On October 17, 1961, Khrushchev announced the bomb to the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And on October 12th, 30th, the test was ready to go. The size of the test was reduced from 100 megatons down to just 50. Just 50 megatons might not really hammer the point home just how big this explosion would be. 50 megatons would still be over three times larger than any other nuclear explosion previously. The test would take place on Novaya Zelma, a remote archipelago located above the Arctic Circle. The bomb would have to be delivered by a TU-95 bomber. The bomb was too large, to be delivered by a missile. In fact, the bomber had to be modified because the bomb was so large.

They removed the Bombay doors and also some of the fuel tanks. The plane was painted with a special reflective paint, so the plane would reflect heat from the blast. The bomber crew was only given a 50% chance of surviving the mission. The calculations put the bomber at a distance of 45 kilometers away when the bomb would detonate. The pilot, Andre Dustanov, actually ignored his orders after the bomb was dropped by increasing his speed away from the bomb and going as fast as he possibly could. If you only have a 50% chance of survival, why not? The bomb was released at an altitude of 10,500 meters and was detonated at 4,000 meters. The explosion was tremendous. The diameter of the fireball was 8 kilometers or 5 miles wide at its maximum. Oddly enough, the shockwave was so powerful

that it bounced off the ground preventing the fireball from reaching the surface. The mushroom cloud from the explosion was 67 kilometers or 42 miles high, or seven times the height of Mount Everest. Despite being detonated four kilometers above the surface, it still registered as a 5.2 earthquake on the Richter scale. A village located 55 kilometers away from the blast was completely leveled. The heat from the explosion would have caused third-degree burns 100 kilometers away. One observer was able to see the flash and feel the heat from 190 kilometers. away. Windows were broken as far as Finland and Norway. The explosion was the equivalent in size of 20% of every nuclear weapon which had ever been detonated up to that point, and was 3,000

times the size of the bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. The bomber, which dropped the bomb, survived, but only after dropping a kilometer in altitude after it was hit by the shockwave. The fallout from this explosion, pun intended, was widespread. The Soviets saw no need for further testing of anything larger. A larger bomb would result in a larger amount of nuclear fallout, the vast majority of which would fall in the Soviet Union. The primary designer of the bomb was a physicist named Andrei Sokharov. The bomb changed his mind about the development of nuclear weapons. He became a Soviet dissident and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1975 for his efforts to stop the spread and escalation of nuclear weapons. The bomb was so large that neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union

saw any point in building larger weapons. They couldn't easily be delivered. and the damage was so great that it could hurt the party which dropped it, not just the recipients. The bomb helped pave the way for the 1963 partial test ban treaty, which banned the surface and space detonations of nuclear weapons. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one particular scientist who had absolutely no problem thinking of even bigger bombs. Edward Teller was unquestionably a brilliant physicist.

Born in Hungary, he studied in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. along with other prominent German scientists to escape anti-Semitism. He worked on the Manhattan Project and was largely responsible for the development of the hydrogen bomb. It earned him the nickname the father of the H-bomb. Teller was far more concerned about the theoretical problems of building weapons and not the practical. His focus was on what could be built, not on what should be built. One of his designs was for a 10,000 megaton bomb, or 10 gigatons. A bomb so stupefyingly large, it's hard to even put into words.

A 10-gagetone bomb couldn't even be practically tested anywhere. It would be the equivalent of all previous explosions, nuclear and conventional, in human history. A bomb of the size couldn't even be delivered. The largest airplane or rocket ever built couldn't carry it. How big would the explosion of such a weapon be? Nuclear historian Alex Wallerstein said, quote, a 10,000 megaton weapon, by my estimation, would be powerful enough to set all of New England on fire, or most of California, or all of the UK and Ireland, or all of France, or all of

Germany, or all of North and South Korea, and so on, unquote. Thankfully, Teller's idea went absolutely nowhere. Not surprisingly, Edward Teller was one of the inspirations for the character Dr. Strange Love. 60 years later, the Tsar Bomba remains the largest explosion in human history, a distinction which it will hopefully keep for the rest of human history. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. Please remember to support the show over at patreon.com, where you can get exclusive merchandise and to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Leave a five-star review to have your review read online.