Who dropped the Tsar Bomba? (2023)

What plane dropped the Tsar Bomba?

Although officially known as RDS-220, it acquired numerous nicknames, most notably Tsar Bomba in the West. A Tu-95V bomber was modified to carry the weapon, which was equipped with a special parachute that would slow its fall, allowing the plane to fly a safe distance from the blast.

It's theoretically possible to build a nuclear bomb more than 100 times as powerful as Tsar Bomba, but it wouldn't at all be practical. Thanks to bans on nuclear testing and an enlightened realization that nuclear weapons existentially endanger all life on Earth, it's unlikely that we would ever see such a thing.

Official estimates of the Russian tactical nuclear stockpile range from 1,000 to 2,000.

That's interesting, but if enough Tsar Bombas were dropped into the Challenger Deep, there would be half-a-mile-high waves and a fracture that digs all the way to Earth's mantle. The explosive force would throw rock and water nearly to the Karman line.

The project was ordered by Nikita Khrushchev in July 1961 as part of the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing after the Test Ban Moratorium, with the detonation timed to coincide with the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Though the bomb detonated nearly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above ground, the resulting shockwave stripped the island as bare and flat as a skating rink. Onlookers saw the flash more than 600 miles (965 km) away, and felt its incredible heat within 160 miles (250 km) of Ground Zero.

In the United States' current nuclear arsenal, the most powerful bomb is the B83, which has a maximum yield of 1.2 megatons, making it 60 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. According to the Nuclear Weapon Archive, 650 B83s are in “active service.”

The Tsar Bomba's yield was 50 megatons: ten times more powerful than all of the ordnance exploded during the whole of World War II. The mushroom cloud was 25 miles wide at its base and almost 60 miles wide at its top. At 40 miles high, it penetrated the stratosphere.

A new study sponsored by the American Physical Society concludes that U.S. systems for intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles cannot be relied on to counter even a limited nuclear strike and are unlikely to achieve reliability within the next 15 years.

Russia's Tsar bomba: World's most powerful nuclear weapon of mass destruction. The Tsar bomba exploded about 4 km above the ground and reportedly produced a mushroom cloud 60 km high.

Where is Tsar Bomba located?

The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 a.m., located approximately at 73.85° N 54.50° E , over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea.

A single 10-megaton bomb, though, could destroy entire metro areas, subjecting over a thousand square miles to a crushing blast wave and searing heat, easily producing casualties in the millions. The radioactivity produced would also be multiplied many hundreds of times, creating the possibility of vast contamination.

Tsar Bomba posed other challenges, as well. To give the pilot of the bomber a chance of surviving -- calculated by the Soviets as no more than a 50 percent probability -- a special parachute weighing nearly a ton was attached to the mega bomb to slow its decent.

Tsar Bomba was tested at half its yield, 50 Mt. Still the largest detonation ever (3,333.33 Hiroshima sized bombs).. The seismic shock (and keep in mind it was an atmospheric detonation) was around a 5.25 earthquake and was still measurable on its third pass over the entire planet.

But assuming every warhead had a megatonne rating, the energy released by their simultaneous detonation wouldn't destroy the Earth. It would, however, make a crater around 10km across and 2km deep. The huge volume of debris injected into the atmosphere would have far more widespread effects.

Yielding an explosion of 50 megatons the "Tsar Bomba," as it is sometimes called, was about 3,300 times more powerful than the 15 kilotons nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima.

Because fast fissioning was eliminated, thermonuclear fusion accounted for as much as 97% of the yield. Thus, despite its huge yield, Tsar Bomba did not actually generate much nuclear fallout.

From 0.2 to 3 seconds after detonation, the intense heat emitted from the fireball exerted powerful effects on the ground. Temperatures near the hypocenter reached 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius.

The "black rain" that fell after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been generally believed to contain radioactive materials. During 1949-1961 the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission conducted surveys that included a query about exposure to the rain that fell a short time after the bombings.

With the dismantling of the last B53 bomb in 2011, the B83 became the highest yield nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. In 2022, Biden administration declared that they plan to retire B83.

What is America's strongest weapon?

Boeing AH-64 Apache. The best weapon in the United States military inventory is the AH-64 Apache helicopter. It also might sound ironic that a helicopter is the best weapon of the land forces. However, airpower is the most decisive factor in the conflicts where the United States military has recently been involved.

Thus 1 bomb with a yield of 1 megaton would destroy 80 square miles. While 8 bombs, each with a yield of 125 kilotons, would destroy 160 square miles. This relationship is one reason for the development of delivery systems that could carry multiple warheads (MIRVs).

A nuclear bomb.

Decibel meters set 250 feet away from test sites peaked at 210 decibels. The sound alone is enough to kill a human being, so if the bomb doesn't kill you, the noise will. Fun fact!

There is no theoretical limit to the number of stages that might be used and, consequently, no theoretical limit to the size and yield of a thermonuclear weapon.