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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Voge bomb here. On October nine,

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Speaker 1: one especially equipped Soviet t U nine bomber flew toward

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Speaker 1: a remote chain of islands in the Arctic Ocean that

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Speaker 1: the USS are frequently used as a site for nuclear tests,

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Speaker 1: accompanied by a smaller plane equipped with a movie camera

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Speaker 1: and instruments for monitoring air samples. But this wasn't just

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Speaker 1: a routine nuclear test. Attached to the underside of the

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Speaker 1: plane was a thermonuclear bomb that was so big it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't fit inside the normal interior bomb bay. The cylindrical

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Speaker 1: device was twenty six ft that's eight meters long and

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Speaker 1: weighed nearly sixty thousand pounds or twenty seven metric tons.

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Speaker 1: The device had the prosaic official name of Item six

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Speaker 1: O two, but it's gone down in history with the

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Speaker 1: nickname of the Czar Bomba, the Russian way of calling

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Speaker 1: it the Emperor of bombs, and that name was no exaggeration.

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Speaker 1: Czar bomba's yield is estimated to have been roughly fifty

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Speaker 1: seven megatons, about thirty eight hundred times the power of

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Speaker 1: the fifteen kiloton atomic bomb that the US used to

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Speaker 1: destroy Hiroshima in on that day in nineteen sixty one,

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Speaker 1: Czar Bombo was released on a parachute in order to

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Speaker 1: slow its descent and give the bomber and its crew

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Speaker 1: a chance to escape. When the giant bomb finally detonated

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Speaker 1: about thirteen thousand feet or four kilometers over its target,

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Speaker 1: the blast was so powerful that it destroyed everything within

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Speaker 1: a nearly twenty two mile or thirty five kilometer radius

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Speaker 1: and generated a mushroom cloud that towered nearly two hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand feet or sixty kilometers high. In Soviet towns a

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Speaker 1: hundred miles or a hundred and sixty kilometers from ground zero,

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Speaker 1: wooden houses were destroyed, and even brick and stone structures

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Speaker 1: suffered damage. After being largely forgotten for many years, Zar

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Speaker 1: Bombo was back in the news in August when the

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Speaker 1: shan State Nuclear Power Company posted on YouTube a vintage

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Speaker 1: film that showed an aerial view of the explosion and

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Speaker 1: the towering cloud it created. One of the cameramen who

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Speaker 1: recorded the event described the bomb as creating quote, a

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Speaker 1: powerful white flash over the horizon, and after a long

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Speaker 1: period of time, he heard a remote, indistinct and heavy

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Speaker 1: blow as if the Earth had been killed. The blast

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Speaker 1: was so powerful that its shock wave caused the tin

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Speaker 1: to immediately drop three thousand feet or a kilometer in altitude,

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Speaker 1: though the pilot regained control and got the plane back

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Speaker 1: to its base safely. So why did the Soviets want

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Speaker 1: such a humongous bomb? Czar Bomba's test was symbolic of

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Speaker 1: escalating tensions between the Soviets and the United States. After

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Speaker 1: a June nine summit in Vienna between Soviet leader Nikita

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Speaker 1: Khrushchev and US President John F. Kennedy went badly. Kruschev

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Speaker 1: apparently decided to take out his frustrations by showing off

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Speaker 1: Soviet military progress, including ending the informal moratorium on nuclear

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Speaker 1: testing that both countries had maintained since the late nineteen fifties.

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Speaker 1: The resumption of testing gave Soviet weapons researchers a chance

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Speaker 1: to try out an idea that they had had for

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Speaker 1: building a giant H bomb, one that was far bigger

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Speaker 1: than the most powerful weapon in the U s Arsenal

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Speaker 1: and the frightening logic of all out nuclear war. Having

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Speaker 1: a high yield H bomb did make some sense theoretically

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Speaker 1: at the time, missiles capable of striking distant countries were

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Speaker 1: still in their infancy, and the Soviet Union didn't have

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Speaker 1: many strategic bombers. The US, in contrast, had a variety

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Speaker 1: of aircraft that could strike from bases conveniently close to

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Speaker 1: Soviet territory. We spoke by email with Nikolai Sakov, a

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Speaker 1: Vienna based senior fellow affiliated with the James Martin Center

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Speaker 1: for Non Proliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies

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Speaker 1: at Monterey in California. He said, hence, if you can

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Speaker 1: deliver only one, two or three bombs, they better be

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Speaker 1: very powerful. But the Soviet researchers pushed that idea to

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Speaker 1: an extreme. Originally they envisioned a one hundred megaton weapon

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Speaker 1: with a high level of radiation, but settled for one

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Speaker 1: of slightly more than half that much explosive power after

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Speaker 1: the USSRS political leadership expressed worries about contamination from such

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Speaker 1: a blast, Sokov said, as a result, fallout was very limited,

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Speaker 1: much more limited than one could expect. The shock wave

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Speaker 1: was really strong, however, its circumnavigated Earth three times. Even so,

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Speaker 1: Japanese authorities found the highest level of radiation and rain

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Speaker 1: water that they had ever detected and a quote invisible

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Speaker 1: cloud of radioactive ash that drifted eastward across the Pacific

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Speaker 1: and then crossed Canada and the Great Lakes region of

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Speaker 1: the US, but US scientists reassured the public that most

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Speaker 1: of the debris from the Czar BOMBA would stay high

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Speaker 1: in the stratosphere and gradually lose its radioactivity by the

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Speaker 1: time it fell to earth. The Soviets informed the US

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Speaker 1: forehand of their intention to test a fifty megaton nuclear bomb.

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Speaker 1: In a speech just a week before the blast, The

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Speaker 1: U s Deputy Secretary of Defense suggested that the bomb

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Speaker 1: wasn't intended to intimidate the US, but to send a

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Speaker 1: message to the Soviet Union's restless ally China. Whatever the case,

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Speaker 1: although the Czar BOMBA made headlines in the US, government,

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Speaker 1: officials weren't that impressed by the nightmarish display of nuclear destruction.

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Speaker 1: The US had concentric rings of defenses, from early warning

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Speaker 1: radar to fighter aircraft, and surface to air missiles that

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Speaker 1: all would have made it difficult for a Soviet bomber

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Speaker 1: to succeed in a first strike, and a device as

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Speaker 1: massive as the Tzar BOMBA was dangerous to the aircraft

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Speaker 1: that dropped it, so much so that the t U

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Speaker 1: crew had been given only a fifty fifty chance of survival.

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Speaker 1: But we also spoke via email with Robert Standish Norris,

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Speaker 1: a senior fellow for Nuclear policy at the Federation of

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Speaker 1: American Scientists. He said that the US quote looked in

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Speaker 1: the big bomb option and decided no. He explained that theoretically, quote,

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Speaker 1: there is no limit on how big a hydrogen bomb

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Speaker 1: can be. If ever used, zar BOMBA would clearly kill

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Speaker 1: a lot more people. Accuracy became an option, and if

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Speaker 1: you improve it by half, then you can cut the

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Speaker 1: yield by a factor of eight. This is what we did,

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Speaker 1: and the Soviets followed. We also checked in with Pavel

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Speaker 1: Podvig via email. He's a long time nuclear weapons analyst

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Speaker 1: who has worked with the United Nations and National Security

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Speaker 1: Studies programs at Princeton and Stanford Universities, and operates the

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Speaker 1: website Russian forces dot org. He said, everybody understood that

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Speaker 1: it's too big to be a practical weapon. From the

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Speaker 1: point of view of destructive power. It's even more efficient

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Speaker 1: to use several smaller weapons than one large one. Zara

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Speaker 1: BOMBA ended up being a Maccab curiosity of the nuclear age,

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Speaker 1: Podvig said no additional devices of this kind were built. Instead,

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Speaker 1: the US SAR went in a different direction. A few

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Speaker 1: years after the Czar bomba test, Soviet missile designers achieved

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Speaker 1: a major breakthrough with liquid fuel, opening the way to

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Speaker 1: produce strategic missiles that could be kept ready for launch

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Speaker 1: for extended periods and hidden in protected silos. Sokov explained,

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Speaker 1: about nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty five, the Soviet

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Speaker 1: Union decisively turned toward an emphasis on intercontinental ballistic missiles,

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Speaker 1: which can carry several warheads, each of which will strike

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Speaker 1: a different target, which typically amounted to about sixty six

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Speaker 1: of its strategic force until about the mid nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: when it declined to roughly fift By the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: only five percent of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was in

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Speaker 1: the form of bombs that could be dropped by aircraft.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of

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Speaker 1: other topics, visit House to works dot com. Brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio. Four more pie cast

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