He described his conclusions in a fascinating article recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the test. Wellerstein has analyzed recently declassified documents pertaining to the US response to Tsar Bomba during the Kennedy administration. He also maintains the NUKEMAP, an interactive tool that enables users to model the impact of various types of nuclear weapons on the geographical location of their choice. But US nuclear policy - and, hence, world history - might have ended up looking very different, according to Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, released earlier this year. Kennedy opted for diplomacy, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on October 7, 1963. But the Soviets' successful test lent greater urgency to the matter. The US had conducted the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb (codename: Ivy Mike) in 1954 and had been pondering the development of even more powerful hydrogen superbombs.

The 60,000-pound (27 metric tons) test bomb's explosive yield was 50 million tons (50 megatons) of TNT, although the design had a maximum explosive yield of 100 million tons (100 megatons). Dubbed ' Tsar Bomba' (loosely translated, 'Emperor of Bombs'), it was the size of a small school bus - it wouldn't even fit inside a bomber and had to be slung below the belly of the plane. Less well-known but equally significant from a nuclear arms race standpoint was the Soviet Union's successful detonation of a hydrogen 'superbomb' in the wee hours of October 30, 1961. Soldiers that were as far away as Norway were able to see the flash from the explosion and radioactive fallout was widespread.An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The detonation of the first nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is seared into our collective memory, and the world has been haunted by the prospect of a devastating nuclear apocalypse ever since. When it exploded, Big Ivan emitted a mushroom cloud, with a column of smoke rising nearly 40 miles into the sky, and Richter scales around the world had registered a 5.0 earthquake in the epicenter of the explosion. The Effects of the Biggest Nuclear ExplosionДЇor those who are unaware, besides the intense heat and damage from nuclear explosions, witnesses of these terrifying events described via a video from The New York TimesВ stating that they were asked to cover their eyes with their arms and turn back from the explosion, but despite that, they were still able to see a flash of blinding light, enabling them to see the bones within their arms.Дespite the preventive methods, the pilots and crew of the aircraft that delivered Tsar Bomba and observed it was only given a 50-50 chance of survival, but fortunately, they have survived. The parachute enabled the big bomb to descend slowly before exploding to give more time for the crew to fly away to safety, with both the Tu-95 bomber and the observation plane painted in an anti-flash white to try and minimize the damages to the airframe from the bright flash that was emitted from the nuclear explosion. The aircraft had its fuel tank removed to help increase its payload capacity, while its bomb bay doors were removed and replaced with more robust and larger doors.ДЇurthermore, the massive bomb was equipped with a parachute for the safety of the pilot. It was carried by a modified Tu-95 bomber that was customized specifically for the Tsar Bomba. The massive atomic bomb weighed around 60,000 pounds or over 27,000 kilograms for the record and was over six feet in diameter. The video shows both the initial preparation for Big Ivan, which includes its assembly, followed by the bomb's eventual explosion over the Arctic island in Russia's far north. Read Also: First-Ever 'Space Hurricane' Spotted in North Pole: GPS Satellites in Possible Danger Delivering the Tsar Bomba Now, everyone who has access to the internet could finally see how the biggest nuclear explosion happened and how terrifying it was.ДЄs of writing, the said video has already been viewed nearly 5.2 million times. According to the National Interest, the video footage from the said explosion was previously classified, but in 2020, a video of a documentary pertaining to the Tsar Bomba has been uploaded on a YouTube channelВ after the footage was declassified.

Tsar bomba test