Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Voge bomb here. On October nine,
Speaker 1: one especially equipped Soviet t U nine bomber flew toward
Speaker 1: a remote chain of islands in the Arctic Ocean that
Speaker 1: the USS are frequently used as a site for nuclear tests,
Speaker 1: accompanied by a smaller plane equipped with a movie camera
Speaker 1: and instruments for monitoring air samples. But this wasn't just
Speaker 1: a routine nuclear test. Attached to the underside of the
Speaker 1: plane was a thermonuclear bomb that was so big it
Speaker 1: wouldn't fit inside the normal interior bomb bay. The cylindrical
Speaker 1: device was twenty six ft that's eight meters long and
Speaker 1: weighed nearly sixty thousand pounds or twenty seven metric tons.
Speaker 1: The device had the prosaic official name of Item six
Speaker 1: O two, but it's gone down in history with the
Speaker 1: nickname of the Czar Bomba, the Russian way of calling
Speaker 1: it the Emperor of bombs, and that name was no exaggeration.
Speaker 1: Czar bomba's yield is estimated to have been roughly fifty
Speaker 1: seven megatons, about thirty eight hundred times the power of
Speaker 1: the fifteen kiloton atomic bomb that the US used to
Speaker 1: destroy Hiroshima in on that day in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: Czar Bombo was released on a parachute in order to
Speaker 1: slow its descent and give the bomber and its crew
Speaker 1: a chance to escape. When the giant bomb finally detonated
Speaker 1: about thirteen thousand feet or four kilometers over its target,
Speaker 1: the blast was so powerful that it destroyed everything within
Speaker 1: a nearly twenty two mile or thirty five kilometer radius
Speaker 1: and generated a mushroom cloud that towered nearly two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand feet or sixty kilometers high. In Soviet towns a
Speaker 1: hundred miles or a hundred and sixty kilometers from ground zero,
Speaker 1: wooden houses were destroyed, and even brick and stone structures
Speaker 1: suffered damage. After being largely forgotten for many years, Zar
Speaker 1: Bombo was back in the news in August when the
Speaker 1: shan State Nuclear Power Company posted on YouTube a vintage
Speaker 1: film that showed an aerial view of the explosion and
Speaker 1: the towering cloud it created. One of the cameramen who
Speaker 1: recorded the event described the bomb as creating quote, a
Speaker 1: powerful white flash over the horizon, and after a long
Speaker 1: period of time, he heard a remote, indistinct and heavy
Speaker 1: blow as if the Earth had been killed. The blast
Speaker 1: was so powerful that its shock wave caused the tin
Speaker 1: to immediately drop three thousand feet or a kilometer in altitude,
Speaker 1: though the pilot regained control and got the plane back
Speaker 1: to its base safely. So why did the Soviets want
Speaker 1: such a humongous bomb? Czar Bomba's test was symbolic of
Speaker 1: escalating tensions between the Soviets and the United States. After
Speaker 1: a June nine summit in Vienna between Soviet leader Nikita
Speaker 1: Khrushchev and US President John F. Kennedy went badly. Kruschev
Speaker 1: apparently decided to take out his frustrations by showing off
Speaker 1: Soviet military progress, including ending the informal moratorium on nuclear
Speaker 1: testing that both countries had maintained since the late nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: The resumption of testing gave Soviet weapons researchers a chance
Speaker 1: to try out an idea that they had had for
Speaker 1: building a giant H bomb, one that was far bigger
Speaker 1: than the most powerful weapon in the U s Arsenal
Speaker 1: and the frightening logic of all out nuclear war. Having
Speaker 1: a high yield H bomb did make some sense theoretically
Speaker 1: at the time, missiles capable of striking distant countries were
Speaker 1: still in their infancy, and the Soviet Union didn't have
Speaker 1: many strategic bombers. The US, in contrast, had a variety
Speaker 1: of aircraft that could strike from bases conveniently close to
Speaker 1: Soviet territory. We spoke by email with Nikolai Sakov, a
Speaker 1: Vienna based senior fellow affiliated with the James Martin Center
Speaker 1: for Non Proliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies
Speaker 1: at Monterey in California. He said, hence, if you can
Speaker 1: deliver only one, two or three bombs, they better be
Speaker 1: very powerful. But the Soviet researchers pushed that idea to
Speaker 1: an extreme. Originally they envisioned a one hundred megaton weapon
Speaker 1: with a high level of radiation, but settled for one
Speaker 1: of slightly more than half that much explosive power after
Speaker 1: the USSRS political leadership expressed worries about contamination from such
Speaker 1: a blast, Sokov said, as a result, fallout was very limited,
Speaker 1: much more limited than one could expect. The shock wave
Speaker 1: was really strong, however, its circumnavigated Earth three times. Even so,
Speaker 1: Japanese authorities found the highest level of radiation and rain
Speaker 1: water that they had ever detected and a quote invisible
Speaker 1: cloud of radioactive ash that drifted eastward across the Pacific
Speaker 1: and then crossed Canada and the Great Lakes region of
Speaker 1: the US, but US scientists reassured the public that most
Speaker 1: of the debris from the Czar BOMBA would stay high
Speaker 1: in the stratosphere and gradually lose its radioactivity by the
Speaker 1: time it fell to earth. The Soviets informed the US
Speaker 1: forehand of their intention to test a fifty megaton nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1: In a speech just a week before the blast, The
Speaker 1: U s Deputy Secretary of Defense suggested that the bomb
Speaker 1: wasn't intended to intimidate the US, but to send a
Speaker 1: message to the Soviet Union's restless ally China. Whatever the case,
Speaker 1: although the Czar BOMBA made headlines in the US, government,
Speaker 1: officials weren't that impressed by the nightmarish display of nuclear destruction.
Speaker 1: The US had concentric rings of defenses, from early warning
Speaker 1: radar to fighter aircraft, and surface to air missiles that
Speaker 1: all would have made it difficult for a Soviet bomber
Speaker 1: to succeed in a first strike, and a device as
Speaker 1: massive as the Tzar BOMBA was dangerous to the aircraft
Speaker 1: that dropped it, so much so that the t U
Speaker 1: crew had been given only a fifty fifty chance of survival.
Speaker 1: But we also spoke via email with Robert Standish Norris,
Speaker 1: a senior fellow for Nuclear policy at the Federation of
Speaker 1: American Scientists. He said that the US quote looked in
Speaker 1: the big bomb option and decided no. He explained that theoretically, quote,
Speaker 1: there is no limit on how big a hydrogen bomb
Speaker 1: can be. If ever used, zar BOMBA would clearly kill
Speaker 1: a lot more people. Accuracy became an option, and if
Speaker 1: you improve it by half, then you can cut the
Speaker 1: yield by a factor of eight. This is what we did,
Speaker 1: and the Soviets followed. We also checked in with Pavel
Speaker 1: Podvig via email. He's a long time nuclear weapons analyst
Speaker 1: who has worked with the United Nations and National Security
Speaker 1: Studies programs at Princeton and Stanford Universities, and operates the
Speaker 1: website Russian forces dot org. He said, everybody understood that
Speaker 1: it's too big to be a practical weapon. From the
Speaker 1: point of view of destructive power. It's even more efficient
Speaker 1: to use several smaller weapons than one large one. Zara
Speaker 1: BOMBA ended up being a Maccab curiosity of the nuclear age,
Speaker 1: Podvig said no additional devices of this kind were built. Instead,
Speaker 1: the US SAR went in a different direction. A few
Speaker 1: years after the Czar bomba test, Soviet missile designers achieved
Speaker 1: a major breakthrough with liquid fuel, opening the way to
Speaker 1: produce strategic missiles that could be kept ready for launch
Speaker 1: for extended periods and hidden in protected silos. Sokov explained,
Speaker 1: about nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty five, the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union decisively turned toward an emphasis on intercontinental ballistic missiles,
Speaker 1: which can carry several warheads, each of which will strike
Speaker 1: a different target, which typically amounted to about sixty six
Speaker 1: of its strategic force until about the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: when it declined to roughly fift By the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: only five percent of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was in
Speaker 1: the form of bombs that could be dropped by aircraft.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit House to works dot com. Brain Stuff
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