Today, let’s talk about the biggest, baddest, most powerful man-made explosion in the history of the human race. No, I don’t mean the experience you have whenever you bite into one of Taco Time’s Crisp Meat Burritos when they’re hot with that unbelievable salsa they serve (though that would be mighty close). I’m referring to an actual explosion…and it’s a doozy.
On October 30, 1961, the Russians detonated the largest nuclear device ever…Tsar Bomba. The hydrogen bomb was huge in physical size, weighing 27 tons. It dwarfed the 5-ton device dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. And in terms of explosive force, nothing really came close, either. 50 megatons: 100,000,000,000 pounds of TNT. For a point of reference, the 1989 San Francisco earthquake released about 27 megatons of energy. This was a huge bomb and it could have been “huger”, but the yield was halved (yeah, this beast was capable of 100 megatons) for the test in order to keep radioactive fallout to a minimum.
Dropped from a heavily-modified Tupolev Tu-95 Bear, the bomb was set to detonate at 13,000 feet above the ground of Novaya Zemlya, a remote island just below the Arctic Circle. In order to the give the plane time to get away, a massive parachute slowed the bomb’s descent. And at 11:32am, the planet took a big bite of a piping hot Crisp Meat Burrito…almost.
YouTube has a few of the videos, and they’re pretty awesome. Check them out.
The fireball from the explosion touched the ground, which means it was nearly six miles in diameter. The light from the blast could be seen more than 600 miles away (find a map and locate a place 600 miles from where you’re sitting…you could see the light from there), and the mushroom cloud rose to (are you ready?) 210,000 feet (Mount Everest is 29,000 feet tall). The thermal pulse was felt 170 miles away. Windows were broken at 550 miles. Buildings were completely flattened 35 miles away. Anyone within 60 miles would have received 3rd degree burns…and likely died. And a measurable shockwave circled the planet…3 times. Had this been a full-yield explosion, the results would boggle the mind still more.
Of course, Tsar Bomba was completely impractical. It was too large and heavy to really carry on a bomber, required all kinds of special handling equipment, and frankly, a much smaller device (or a multi-warhead ballistic missile) would effectively destroy any city. But it was the 60’s, and the Cold War was in full swing. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev needed a way to intimidate the West, so what better way to scare the nuclear powers than with the single most powerful nuclear weapon ever? The bomb was designed and built in a matter of months, and there would only be two examples built. The one we know about. The other, a model, was put in a Soviet museum.
But now my mind is on those Burritos, even though I just had some yesterday…
Recommended Activity: Find a Taco Time restaurant and eat Crisp Meat Burritos – Nearly the same explosion of flavor as you’d get from Tsar Bomba…way less fallout to rot your teeth.
Today's History Lesson 