There Tsar Bomb (or Tzar Bomba) is the USSR hydrogen bomb most powerful ever made: this device was detonated by Russia on October 30, 1961 during a test and gave birth to a tall mushroom 64 kilometersMeaning what 7 times higher than Everestand its light was visible until 1000 km away. This weapon was so powerful that it released an energy of over 3300 times higher than the one launched on Hiroshima in 1945. Within the scenario of the Cold War, where nuclear deterrence was the only constant to avoid an attack between the USSR and the USA, this test left the entire world terrified.
The Power of the Tsar Bomba
The kiloton It is the basic unit used to measure explosive power and the Tsar Bomba had a value of 50 megatons, that is 50 thousand kilotons: we are talking about a device 6700 times more powerful of what destroyed Hiroshima causing 140,000 victims. In terms of damage, if such a bomb were dropped on Milan not only the historic center would be razed to the ground, not only the neighboring towns, but about half of Lombardy and even a bit of Piedmont and Switzerland, including the cities of Como, Varese, Lecco, Bergamo, Lodi, Pavia and Novara.
Why the Tsar Bomba was created: the project
We are in the midst of the Cold War. The images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still strongly imprinted in the minds of the population and for this very reason the fear of a possible nuclear attack was very high. Fear, I would say, quite justified, given that the Soviet and American elites were about to start a new race to build the most powerful nuclear weapon. This time, however, the Soviets were in the lead, under the pressure of the president Nikita Khrushchev they were the first to obtain the ultimate weapon of destruction, technically called RDS-220 hydrogen bombor Tsar Bomb.
It was a long gun 8 meterswith 2 meters in diameter and weighing approximately 25 tons. As anticipated, the Tsar Bomb is a hydrogen bomb, that is, a fusion bomb. What happens is that at very high temperatures (and densities) the hydrogen nuclei join together, releasing enormous amounts of energy. How are the necessary temperatures reached? With the explosion of a fission device integrated into the bomb.
How the Tsar Bomba Worked
The Tsar Bomb is therefore divided into two parts: one ball where the fission of plutonium (i.e. the division of the nuclei) occurs and a cylinder where the hydrogen fusion takes place. The sphere is made up of several layers of explosive material and at the center of which there is a sphere of plutonium, while the cylinder is made up of a hollow cylinder of uranium in which is inserted one of lithium iodide and one of plutonium. The whole is filled with a matrix of polystyrene (what in colloquial speech is mistakenly called polystyrene).
When the weapon is released and reaches the preset altitude, sensors allow theIgnition of the first spherical bomb. Thanks to the strong pressures that are generated inside it, a nuclear fission reactionand the plutonium sphere: this generates an enormous quantity of heat with temperatures reaching up to 100 million degrees Celsius, hotter than the Sun then! It also produces enormous quantities of x-rays and gamma rays which, together with the heat, allow the polystyrene to be transformed into plasma.
The plasma violently compresses the cylinder. This generates nuclear fission reactions of the uranium and plutonium which in turn further compress the central layer of lithium iodide, finally giving rise to a nuclear fusion reaction. This entire process takes about 0.1 microseconds and culminates in a very violent release of energy. So that’s the theory… but to be really sure of its effectiveness there was only one thing missing: an official test.
The Official Test of the Tsar Bomb
The test would have taken place on October 30, 1961. A point inside the Mityushikha Bay, in the Northern Arctic Circle. Since the test would be conducted on Russian soil, to limit the amount of possible damage and radiation, it was decided to halve the power of the bomb. So in fact the explosion would have generated a power of 50 megatons and not 100. A bomber was used to deliver the weapon to the site. Tu-95V piloted by the major Andrei Durnovstev. Once it reached its destination, the Tsar bomb was dropped at an altitude of approximately 10,000 metres, attached to a parachute.
To the 11:32 the bomb reached the 4000 meters above sea levelgiving rise to a gigantic explosion, the largest in the history of humanity: a wide atomic mushroom cloud was generated 40 km it’s tall 64 kmthat is, seven times higher than Mount Everest, and its summit, 94 km widewas even outside the stratosphere. Contrary to what we might think, the flames did not reach the ground: the shock wave was in fact so powerful that it “bounced” off the ground and sent the flames upwards.
The effects of the bomb on Russian soil
Precisely for the reasons just seen, the ground arrived relatively little radioactive materialobviously little if compared to the power of the bomb… but this does not mean that there was no damage. The shock wave in fact razed to the ground completely an area with a diameter of 55 km and generated a earthquake of magnitude around 5 and all the wooden and brick buildings in the nearby village of t (obviously already evacuated) were completely razed to the ground. Think that even windows were broken in Norway And Finland.
Imagine if the weapon had been dropped in a populated area, 100 km from a distance people would have suffered burns third degree and 270 km they would have heard the heat of the explosion. Fortunately, such a powerful weapon was never used against real targets and it is hoped that this will never happen.
