The AN602 nuclear bomb, aka the Tsar Bomba

The casing of the AN602 bomb

After my post on the Cannikin nuclear bomb test, there seemed to be interest in the Tsar Bomba I mentioned, so here is a post about it. The bomb itself weighed roughly 27 tons. The design was capable of a yield of 100 megatons, roughly 20 times the yield of every conventional explosive used in the entirety of World War 2, combined. However, because of the immense blast, the fallout would have been catastrophic. (It is estimated that the 100 megaton detonation would have been responsible for one quarter of ALL nuclear fallout since the invention of the nuclear weapon.) Thus, the design was intentionally modified to cut the yield by about half. Initial estimates placed the yield at 55 to 60 megatons, but all Russian sources state it had a yield of 50 megatons. Officially, only one such bomb was ever built. Regardless, it is the largest detonation of any kind caused by mankind in history.

This is the fire ball from the detonation of the Tsar Bomba.

On October 30th, 1961 the Tsar Bomba was dropped over Sukhoy Nos, part of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago north of the Russian mainland, at the extreme northeast of Europe.

The fireball, shown in this picture, was about 8km in diameter. It was projected to reach the ground, as the bomb was detonated at an altitude of 4km, however, the bombs own shockwave reflected back and kept the fireball from hitting the ground. It still almost reached the height of the bomber that dropped it at 10.5km altitudes, and the bomber and it's accompanying observation plane are considered to be lucky that they escaped unharmed.

The destructive power was immense. The effect of the bomb is shown overlaid on this map of Paris for some perspective.

The fireball alone was visible some 1000km away, and the mushroom cloud that it caused peaked at roughly 95 kilometer high, almost 11 times the height of Mt. Everest.

On the map, the yellow circle is roughly the size of the fireball, while the red circle shows the area of total destruction. The heat of the blast would have given observers 3rd degree burns as far away as 100 or so kilometers. Area's hundreds of kilometers from the blast had wooden structures destroyed, while stone structures lost their roofs, doors, and windows, and radio communications were interrupted for more than an hour. An observer of the test reported seeing the blast through darkened goggles and feeling the thermal pulse from the bomb more than 270km away from ground zero. The atmospheric shockwave was observed more than 700km away, and partial breakage of windows was reported as much as 900km away. Atmospheric lensing even led to the breakage of windows as far away as Norway and Finland.

This is the drop plane releasing the bomb

The parachute was there to slow the fall of the bomb to the 4km detonation altitude and allow the drop and observation planes time to vacate the area of the blast.

I will let the blast speak for itself.