![]() Novya Zemlya, a sparsely populated archipelago in the Barents Sea, above the frozen northern fringes of the USSR. The Tupolev, painted bright white in order to lessen the effects of the bomb’s flash, arrived at its target point. It was more than a metal monstrosity too big to fit inside even the largest aircraft – it was a city destroyer, a weapon of last resort. It was the result of a feverish attempt by the USSR’s scientists to create the most powerful nuclear weapon yet, spurred on by Premier Nikita Khruschchev’s desire to make the world tremble at the might of Soviet technology. Now it is better known as Tsar Bomba – the ‘Tsar’s bomb’. The bomb had become known by a myriad of neutral technical designations – Project 27000, Product Code 202, RDS-220, and Kuzinka Mat (Kuzka’s Mother). It was, physically, very similar in shape to the ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ bombs which had devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a decade-and-a-half earlier. The bomb was 8m long (26ft), had a diameter of nearly 2.6m (7ft) and weighed more than 27 tonnes. The Tu-95 carried an enormous bomb underneath it, a device too large to fit inside the aircraft’s internal bomb-bay, where such munitions would usually be carried. ![]() The pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jetīut nothing the Soviet Union had tested would compare to this. ![]() The secret nuclear bunker built as the UK’s last hope In the intervening years, their test programme had surged in leaps and starts, detonating more than 80 devices in 1958 alone, the Soviet tested 36 nuclear bombs. On 29 August 1949, the Soviets had tested their first nuclear device – known as ‘Joe-1’ in the West – on the remote steppes on what is now Kazakhstan, using intelligence gleaned from infiltrating the US’s atomic bomb programme. And the Soviets, presented with a rivalry against the world’s only nuclear superpower, had only one option – to catch up. World War Two had placed the US and USSR in the same camp, but the post-war period had seen relations chill and then freeze. The last decade had seen enormous strides in Soviet nuclear research. ![]() The Tu-95 was a specially modified version of a type that had come into service a few years earlier a huge, swept-wing, four-engined monster tasked with carrying Russia’s arsenal of nuclear bombs. On the morning of 30 October 1961, a Soviet Tu-95 bomber took off from Olenya airfield in the Kola Peninsula in the far north of Russia. This story is featured in BBC Future’s “Best of 2017” collection.Therefore, Russia has a weapon that is almost twice as deadly as the Tsar Bomba, as well as an ICBM to use it. The UR-500 ICBM was successfully tested but never deployed, with it being further developed into the famous Proton rocket. The remaining two AN602 packages were used in the 8F117 warheads, and these were set to be placed on top of the UR-500 Gerkules ICBM. However, the Soviet Union developed three AN602 physics packages at 101.5 megatons (Mt) and these are more powerful than the Tsar Bomba, which was downscaled to 51 Mt before being used RDS-220 Vanya. This is a bit of a difficult question to answer, as other nuclear weapons have not been tested in practice, even if it has been 50 years since the Tsar Bomba was detonated. Is the Tsar Bomba still the most powerful nuclear weapon? Then, on October 7, 1963, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which forbade tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater.Īs such, with the signing of this treaty, these countries ensured that no one would detonate a Tsar Bomba-style weapon ever again. Kennedy managed to convince the Soviet Union to limit nuclear testing to underground sites. However, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, then- US president John F. While there were no deaths from the Tsar Bomba's test, there were windows shattered due to the explosion 780km (480 miles) away in a village on Dikson Island. The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated, as no other bomb as strong has ever been tested. The thermonuclear bomb was dropped over Novaya Zemlya Island, deep in the Arctic Ocean, in the most extreme north-eastern part of Europe. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to a sense of panic around the world, with many harbouring memories of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba and the impact this had back on October 30, 1961.
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