MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia released previously classified footage of the world’s largest nuclear explosion, when the Soviet Union detonated the so-called Tsar Bomb almost 60 years ago.
A hydrogen bomb with a force of one million million tons of conventional explosives exploded in a test in the October / October archipelago of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, above the Arctic Circle, in October.
The footage shows a massive fireball and a 60-kilometer-high mushroom cloud that soars into the sky after the explosion. These views were captured from several angles by cameras sitting on the ground and in two Soviet planes.
“A test of an exceptionally powerful hydrogen load … confirmed that the Soviet Union had 50-megaton, 100-megaton and so on thermo-nuclear weapons.”
The Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom published a documentary online for the first time as part of events marking the 75th anniversary of Russia’s nuclear industry.
Developed between 1956 and 1961 as the Soviet Union competed in a nuclear arms race with the United States, the Tsar Bomb – King of Bombs – was the largest hydrogen bomb ever and was claimed to be 300 times more destructive than the Hiroshima equivalent weapon. Was. .
Opening with the title ‘Top Secret’, the 0-minute film traces all phases of testing, from the post-explosion criteria of the railwayactive flyout to the transport of 26-ton weapons in the aviation bomb case by rail.
Tsar Bombay surpassed the largest explosion ever carried out by the United States – a 15-megaton “Castle Bravo” hydrogen bomb exploded on Bikini Atoll in 1954.
Reported by Maria Vasilyeva; Edited by Sujata Rao and Giles Elgood
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