Cold War jingoism at its "most powerful"!

When I first viewd this on “YouTube”, it really shook me, folks. I am very afraid of nuclear war and still I watch films of A-bomb and H-bomb tests. Trying to face my demons and that way defeat them? I don't know. But the Tsar Bomba test pictures and documentaries about it moved my fear up a notch.

In 1961, I believe it was, Nikita Kruschev told his military scientists he wanted a weapon that would show the “Free World” (mostly the USA) what they could do in weaponology. He decreed the building of a testable 100 Megaton hydrogen bomb. This came after he he called for a moratorium on tests by Russian imagine the experts were terrified of working on such a destructive device but it was a far better task than working in some gulag in the tundra.. Actually, the test site was far more to the north, above the Arctic Circle. The test would be performed over an Arctic isle, detonating a few thousand metres above it.

They began building the “device” (which these weapons are as usually referred). Of course it was huge: size of a tractor-trailer, at least, from the pictures I saw, and just as heavy. The scientist early on discovered a problem: an 100 Megaton weapon's mushroom cloud would probably push far into the stratosphere, dispersing radioactive fallout over a tremendous and unpredictable area (a lot of it Russian). So the yield was scaled down by ½, which would make it still the largest yet tested. Still, the mass of the “King of Bombs” was such that it could only be delivered to Ground Zero by one the largest the Soviets had, stripped of all unnecessary materials. Two other planes would accompany the drop-bomber, with cameras and many other types of detecting gear.

The day of the takeoff arrived and the planes took off without any problems. They flew for a few hours to the test island and dropped their ordinance roughly 60,000 metres over the target. The Tsar Bomba had several parachutes to slow it's descent to the firing altitude so that the the planes had a chance to get a safe distance away.

The bomb detonated as planned. The ground observers were several kilometres away. The flash in the daylight was visible over 1000 km away. According to the British documentary I saw, after all the precautions, the pilot of the main bomber was injured, although particulars weren't given. the fireball was large enough to impact the ground but its shock wave prevented this. Parts of the island not disintegrated were melted by the fireball into glass. There was a huge area of fire. 3rd degree burns occurred 50 km away. Buildings were destroyed at long distances by the air and ground shock waves. The seismic waves were detected all over the world and they passed around the Earth several times.

The total yield? 57 Megatons.

I was struck cold after all this information (all from memory and, therefore, not 100% accurate but pretty close, I vow!) I had witnessed. Especially, the last facts: the cloud had pushed past the stratosphere, increasing worldwide radiation levels for years. Then there was my curiosity (I admit, probably morbid) over how they knew about the 3rd degree burns and wholesale building destruction. Then it came to me: indigenous people in the area, like the Eskimos of Arctic Canada. Were they warned? Were they evacuated? Or was it more like dropping a 57 megaton bomb on an ordinary fall day right on Baffin Island?

The Soviets showed little concern for the common folk when they were doing another “Great Leap Forward”. Well, no one's ever made a bigger one...everyone's happy with their ICBMs and MIRVs.

Well, I've drawn my conclusions. Note: on the internet, I've found nothing about casualties involved with that test. The island testing facility has since been abandoned and the Soviets never tried a larger bomb.