The Tsar Bomba
The USSR was keen to show off its nuclear capabilities and went on to detonate the biggest bomb ever created. The Tsar Bomba weighed 27 tons and had a yield of 50 megatons; 1350 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Details of the Detonation
On the 30th of October 1961, the RDS-220 bomb was dropped by a Tu-95 at an altitude of 10,500 meters (34,449 feet) over Mityushikha Bay.
The blast registered up to 5 on the Richter scale. The flash was seen 1000 km away and lasted 30 seconds. The shockwave flattened an abandoned village 55 km away from the DII test range. In fact, the shockwave circled the earth three times, cracking windows up to 900 km away.
Impact and Aftermath
As for the mushroom cloud, it reached an altitude of 30 kilometers (seven times the height of Mount Everest) before expanding outward, finally reaching a diameter of 95 km.
Plans to detonate similar or even bigger bombs were subsequently abandoned. The Tsar Bomba was already overkill! The explosion was so powerful, part of the blast escaped the planet’s atmosphere. It was therefore deemed a waste of resources.
-RBM.
