WEBVTT - What Was the World's Largest Nuclear Weapon? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.920 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lauren 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:12.799 Vogel bomb here. On October thirtieth of nineteen sixty one, 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:17.600 especially equipped Soviet long range bomber flew toward a remote 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.959 chain of islands in the Arctic Ocean called Nova Zemia. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:24.440 It was a site that the Soviet Union often used 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.360 for nuclear tests. The bomber was accompanied by a smaller 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.960 plane equipped with the movie camera and instruments for monitoring 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:37.040 air samples and nuclear fallout. But this wasn't a routine 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.159 nuclear test. Attached to the underside of the plane was 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.600 a thermonuclear bomb that was so big it wouldn't fit 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:49.839 inside the plane's interior bomb bay. This cylindrical device was 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.080 roughly the size of a bus twenty six feet long 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.360 that's eight meters and nearly seven feet in diameter a 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.640 little over two meters. It weighed nearly sixty thousand pounds 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:05.759 that's twenty seven metric tons. The nuclear bomb had the 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:09.440 prosaic name of Item six ZHO two, but it's gone 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:13.360 down in history as the Tsar bomba, the Russian term 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:18.880 for the emperor of nuclear bombs. That name was no exaggeration. 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:23.120 Zar bombas yield is estimated to have been roughly fifty 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.600 seven mega tons, which is about one thousand, five hundred 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.800 times the combined power of the two atomic bombs that 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.120 the US used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.600 War II. It's about ten times more powerful than all 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.240 of the conventional explosions put off during World War II. 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.080 On that day in October of nineteen sixty one, it 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.840 was released on a parachute in order to slow its 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.720 descent and give the bomber and observer planes time to escape. 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.480 When it finally detonated about thirteen thousand feet or four 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.720 kilometers above the ground. US was so powerful that it 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:06.200 destroyed everything within a nearly twenty two mile radius that's 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:10.400 thirty five kilometers, and generated a mushroom cloud that towered 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:15.400 nearly two hundred thousand feet or sixty kilometers that's seven 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:20.000 times taller than Mount Everest. Its fireball didn't actually touch 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.080 the ground, but it expanded to a radius of about 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.799 six miles in the air, which is about nine and 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.200 a half kilometers, which would be enough to engulf pretty 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.080 much any major city and out into the surrounding metro area. 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:36.960 In Soviet towns, some one hundred miles or one hundred 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:41.080 fifty kilometers from ground zero. Wooden houses were destroyed, and 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.880 even brick and stone structures were damaged. Quirks of atmospheric 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.920 pressure let the blast shatter windows over ten times that distance, 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.440 thousands of miles away in Finland and Norway. The blast 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.880 was so powerful that its shockwave caused the release plane 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.480 to immediately drop some three thousand feet in altitude about 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.040 a kilometer, though the pilot regained control and got the 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:10.040 plane back to its base safely. A Soviet cameraman who 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.639 recorded the event was later in the nineteen nineties interviewed 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:18.480 for the Cold War International History Project Bulletin. The writers 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.040 of that piece reported that he saw quote a powerful 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:25.840 flash over the horizon, and after a long period of time, 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:30.240 he heard a remote, indistinct and heavy blow, as if 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:36.440 the earth had been killed. Sarbamba's test was symbolic of 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:40.120 the escalating tensions between the USSR and the United States 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.600 at the height of the Cold War. After a June 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.120 nineteen sixty one summit in Vienna between Soviet Premier and 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:51.080 Nikita Khruschev and US President John F. Kennedy went badly. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:55.880 Khruztchev apparently decided to take out his frustrations by showing 0:03:55.880 --> 0:04:01.000 off their military prowess, including ending the informal moreitarium on 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.600 nuclear testing that both countries had maintained since the late 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:10.400 nineteen fifties. The resumption of testing gave Soviet weapons researchers 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:12.600 a chance to try out an idea they had for 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.120 building a giant hydrogen bomb, a one that was far 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.279 bigger than the most powerful weapons in the American arsenal 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:23.640 atomic bombs included in the frightening logic of all out 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.560 nuclear war. Having a high yield h bomb did make 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:32.760 some sense theoretically at the time. Missiles capable of striking 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.839 at distant countries were still in their infancy, and the 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:40.839 Soviet Union didn't have many strategic bombers. The US, in contrast, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:43.880 had a variety of aircraft that could strike from bases 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:49.080 dangerously close to Soviet territory. For the article this episode 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.640 is based on, hastuff Work spoke via email with Nikolaisakov, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.479 a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and 0:04:55.560 --> 0:05:01.000 Non Proliferation. He explained, if you can only deliver one, 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:07.200 two or three bombs, they better be very powerful. But 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:11.400 the Soviet researchers pushed that idea to an extreme. They 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.000 envisioned a hundred megaton weapon with a high level of radiation, 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.120 but settled for testing one with only a little more 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.480 than half of that explosive power. After their political leadership 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:26.520 expressed worries about radioactive fallout from a larger blast. The 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.880 decision to time the explosion a good bit above Earth's 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:34.320 surface also worked in everyone's favor. The bomb's own shockwave 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:39.280 helped repel its fireball further into the sky, Sakov said. 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.680 As a result, fallout was very limited, much more limited 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:47.760 than one could expect. The shockwave was really strong, however, 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:55.440 it circumnavigated Earth three times. Even so, Japanese authorities found 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.080 the highest level of radiation in rain water that they 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:01.200 had ever detected, as well as an invisible cloud of 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.160 radioactive ash that drifted eastward across the Pacific and then 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:10.040 crossed Canada and the Great Lakes region. American scientists reassured 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.760 the public that most of the radioactive fallout from Zar 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:16.320 Bomba would stay high in the stratosphere and gradually lose 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:20.159 its radioactivity by the time it fell to Earth. The 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.920 Soviets informed the US beforehand of their intention to test 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.919 day fifty megaton nuclear bomb. In a speech just a 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:31.760 week before the blast, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.560 Gilpatrick suggested that the bomb wasn't intended to intimidate the 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.360 United States, but to send a message to the Soviet 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:43.599 Union's restless ally China. He said, perhaps this is also 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.120 the Soviet Union's answer to the discordant voice from its 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:52.480 populous neighbor to the south. Zar BOMBA made headlines in 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:56.200 the US, but government officials didn't seem impressed by the 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:02.000 nightmarish display of nuclear destruction. The US had concentric rings 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:06.080 of defenses, from early warning radar to fighter aircraft and 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.240 surface to air missiles that would have made it difficult 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.040 for a Soviet bomber to succeed in a first strike, 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:16.520 and a device as massive as the Zar BOMBA was 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.720 dangerous to the aircraft that dropped it, so much so 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.320 that the bomber crew had only been given a fifty 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:27.840 to fifty chance of survival. Theoretically, there is no limit 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:32.840 on how big hydrogen bombs can be. Hastuffworks also spoke 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:35.880 via a mail with Robert Standish Norris, a senior fellow 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.880 for Nuclear Policy at the Federation of American Scientists. He 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.520 explained that the US a quote, looked into the big 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:48.520 bomb option and decided no, if ever used, zar BOMBA 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:52.760 would clearly kill a lot more people. Accuracy became an option, 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.320 and if you improve it by half, you can cut 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.280 the yield by a factor of eight. This is what 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:02.520 we did, and the Soviets fall in that way. Tsar 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:07.640 BOMBA ended up being a macab curiosity of the nuclear age. 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:12.040 Hastiff Works also spoke by email Pavel Podvig, now a 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:15.480 senior researcher in the Weapons of Mass Destruction program at 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:20.960 the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. He said, everybody 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.200 understood that it is too big to be a practical weapon. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.640 From the point of view of destructive power. It's more 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.160 efficient to use several smaller weapons than one large one. 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:37.440 No additional devices of this kind were built. Instead, the 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:40.880 Soviet Union went in a different direction. A few years 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.560 after the SARBOMBA test, the Soviet missile designers achieved a 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:48.560 major breakthrough with liquid fuel, opening the way to produce 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:51.560 strategic missiles that could be kept ready for launch for 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:56.200 extended periods and hidden in protected silos. No aircraft needed. 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.000 By the nineteen seventies, only five percent of the Soviet 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.760 nuclear arsenal was in the form of bombs that could 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:08.160 be dropped by aircraft, Sakov said. About nineteen sixty four 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.920 nineteen sixty five, the Soviet Union decisively turned toward an 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:16.680 emphasis on ICBMs, or intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can carry 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.520 several warheads, each of which will strike a different target, 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.640 which typically amounted to about two thirds of its strategic 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.679 force until about the mid nineteen nineties, when it declined 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:32.839 to roughly fifty percent. After Zarbamba's detonation, the head of 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:37.400 the Soviet nuclear weapons program, physicist Andrey Sakrov, went on 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.240 a personal campaign against the use and even testing of 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:45.600 such weapons. He was exiled by his government, and in 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:49.080 nineteen seventy five awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:55.040 work in global human rights. Today, researchers still operate organizations 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.880 like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to help educate 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:03.200 and equip everyone one, from the public to policymakers about 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:07.360 how to understand the existential threat that nuclear weapons represent. 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:12.400 To learn more, check out the Bulletin dot org. They're 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:20.520 not a sponsor, just a good organization. Today's episode is 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.199 based on the article zarbomba the most powerful nuclear weapon 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.640 ever built on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Higer. 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:30.880 Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:34.280 HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.440 more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:40.840 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.