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It’s really a negative thing, this warhead was EXTREMELY heavy. America’s biggest thermos were 10 - 20 times lighter in weight and didn’t have to be dropped from a plane. In fact the only reason the Russians beat us into outer space is because in order for the Russians to put this warhead on a icmb, they needed a huge rocket (largest at the time). In doing this they realized by removing the heavy warhead from the rocket and putting on a much lighter cabin for personnel, they would be able to achieve terminal velocity and put a man in outer space, you need to be going roughly 16000 mph to break out of the atmosphere, and that rocket helped them do it. So the reason the Russians went to space before the US, is because of the US. Oh 1 more thing, tsar bomba was just Russians being Russians. Trying to 1 up the US and world. I’d rather be attacked by tsar bombas 50 megatons rather than 10 10 megaton nukes, which is the direction the US went. Smaller, faster, better
@ArmchairWarrior correct. I think this is the one thing I dislike about the US the most. This guy would probably say Im jealous or something😂 if he had the brain cells to actually respond logically
@Welp Welp "chinas overpopulation is worse than their nuclear arsenal" stupidity and racisme are worse... nuclear arsenal are not used on friendly guy...
05EVORS China and Israel didn’t make first Nuclear ☢️ bomb by themselves totally.They both have major scientific researches break through helped.China by the Russian and Israel by the American.Both for their first invention of for their Nuke tests.
There new Nukes that were released just after Trump was president are way worse. They fly into space, and the video they show is it dropping onto Florida. Which with CoVid19 idiots might be a good idea! Lmfao America, the land of undereducated idiots!
And then a random, ostensibly irrelevant statement for the third reply to this comment lol, weird. It almost seems like the vid was re-uploaded some time over the last year or so with an incorrectly edited version, judging by the timing of the comments, but who knows?🤷♂️
Not so fond memories of those times - my parents were dairy farmers in Northern Minnesota. Fallout levels of I believe strontium 90 were measured to be high in our area. The fallout had a short half-life but it was detected to be high in the milk we farmers produced. As a result, it was dictated we could only feed our dairy cows hay that had been stored longer than 30 days. So during the middle of summer when our herd would be on pasture supplemented with hay, we needed to keep them confined eating only hay remaining from the previous season and tracking hay storage to insure we did not ship milk with higher radiation levels - which would be discarded and along with it our check from the bottling company. This bomb was blamed as the trigger.
@@bluegregory6239 It was not widely publicized, probably due to fear. My father was a dairy farmer. The isotope had a short half life but could be dangerous to infants, so we needed to feed old hay at the time of year when we would normally have highest production from fresh pasture and newly cut premium hay. Likely only producers knew. I am not aware of any of the local farmer's milk being tested and rejected.
I've seen papers that claim if the initial estimate of 100 Megatons was reached, the explosion could have set off earthquakes and volcanoes all over Asia. Literally it could have ripped the planet apart
@@cmd31220 no? We have a lot of volcanoes with eruptions multiple times the size of the tsar bombas explosion. Nuclear bombs are nothing compared to mother nature. No way its gonna rip the planet apart thats just dumb.
@@ifalm4274 oh obviously I'm not saying the bomb itself would have torn the planet apart. I'm saying the resulting seismic activity would. A blast that size would trigger all these much larger events that, you correctly point out, are orders of magnitude more powerful
@@cmd31220 again, how? 100 megatons is nothing compared to eruptions that are scaled vei 7 or more. Like the 1815 tambora eruption was equal to around 800 megatons. And the worst that it did was triggering tsunamis on the surrounding islands and dropped the global temperature by 3 degrees celcius. A mere 100 megatons nuclear bomb wouldnt set off volcanoes and earthquakes all over the continent. Or even rip the whole planet apart.
@@ifalm4274 it's a domino effect. Put a puppy in front of a moving car, and the puppy's just gonna get run over. But make that puppy knock over a trash can, that falls into a car, and the lid knocks the gearshift into neutral final destination style, and that car rolls into the road in front of the moving car......well that's a different story. 100 Megatons dropped on the right location could start a chain reaction, especially when you consider the seismic makeup of eastern Russia
no the next thing is the coming major earthquake of June 2020. Over 8.0 check the date on this after the fact and be like whoah how did he know? Oh and covid is not done yet either expect a 1918 level event this fall.
@@Morristown337 how exactly does anyone, you in particular, accurately PREDICT a possible future earthquake, especially almost 2 months in advance? Your world altering earthquake prediction ability, while hard to take seriously on it's own, becomes substantially less credible/believable with the addition of your "2nd, extremely deadly, world ending wave of killer covid-19 infections" prediction. Covid-19 is mostly hype, and has been blown WAYYYYY out of proportion by lots of people who actually have little to no knowledge of the subject material on which they speak, but because their words get blasted around the world by the equally as ignorant media giants, people assume that the words are coming from credible, intelligent people. This is simply not the case, and is the complete opposite of the truth, more times than not. I don't watch/read ANY main stream news/media for this very reason, and I live a much more enjoyable and stress free life because of it. There's so much more value in putting in the time/effort to educate yourself with a variety of subjects (with FACTUAL material and research, not politically correct pseudo science) and forcing yourself to make logical assessments of people/situations/problems by using the knowledge that you have gained to come to your own conclusions. Stop letting OTHER people think for YOU and decide what actions YOU should take. That's a horrible choice of how to live your life, because trust me, NOBODY has your best interest in mind, that's your job to do. But it's harder than just letting other people, such as the media, tell you what to think and do, and takes time away from focusing on stupid shit like facebook/twitter/celebrities/shopping/etc.. so very few people are willing to take responsibility for themselves these days. I say fuck that noise, I'll think for MYSELF, and I'm so glad my family instilled that mentality into me, and I'm doing the same with my son!
Imagine if the guy who had to record the event forgot to hit the record button... Cameraman: "Comorads I forgot to hit the record, we need to do it again."
To put in another perspective, the bomb had a blast yield of 50 megatons, Krakatoa had a yield of 200 megatons. This thing was 1/4th the power of Krakatoa.
When Krakatoa's final explosion occurred on August 26th-27th, 1883, it did so with the force equivalent to a 200-megaton hydrogen bomb. The explosion was heard nearly 3,000 miles away on Rodriguez Island in the extreme Southwest Indian Ocean and sent a shock wave that circled Earth 7 times. The pressure wave was so powerful that it ruptured the eardrums of sailors that were on a ship 40 miles away. About 70% of Krakatoa Island was blown apart, 2 of the 3 volcanoes that were on it disappeared while the largest of the 3, Rakata, lost about 1/3 of its mass.
Hey! My grandpa on my dad’s side was stationed on Novaya Zemlya. He was in the Russian navy. My dad spent a few years of his childhood on the island. He has some stories. Here’s a fun one. My grandpa’s best friend decided to go fishing one day. He had a backpack with him. As he was standing on the shore, fishing, he saw a white shape slowly appear on the surface of the water. He figured it must be one of the northern dolphins, whatever they are called. The next thing he saw was a giant polar bear lumbering out of the water and heading straight for him. He dropped everything and ran back to the base, or town, as fast as he could, without looking back. The next day he went back for his backpack, and he found it torn into pieces. An empty can of condensed milk was lying on the ground, with holes clearly made by the teeth of the animal. The bear literally bit into the metal can and sucked the milk out of it. I know it’s not a story related to the military doings on the island, but I always found it funny. The local newspaper even wrote about it.
There's a photograph of Soviet soldiers alongside a tank sharing a can of condensed milk to a polar bear back in the day. The creatures must've gotten acquired to the taste of it.
Funny thing about Castle Bravo, it was only meant to be 5mt. Teller had assumed the lithium-7 in the bomb's tamper was effectively inert and failed to take what the radiation bombardment would do to it into account, because they thought it would become lithium-8 and break down into a pair of alpha particles on a timescale of a few seconds, which was too slow to have any meaningful effect on the explosion. In fact, the lithium-7 became a tritium ion and an alpha particle. The tritium was an ideal fusion fuel and massively multiplied the expected amount of fusion fuel available.
@@klauskarpfen9039 you can't just fill a bomb hull with compressed hydrogen, so the alternative way is to use lithium deuteride, that breaks down into fusion fuel
@@xenos_n. The Earth has survived asteroids KMs long, supervolcanos, etc, it can survive a small, human-made poot. And yes, this is small compared to those..
@@Lambzalot He didn't kill anyone. He developed an object. It was their military that had the responsibility for clearing the people before they pressed the button, or perhaps not pressing it at all.
instead, we should create some awesome vehicles that could break free from the atmosphere. U.S.A.: Truce? U.S.S.R.: Truce. Thus the space race was born
From what I have seen, the last US Bikini blast was a mistake in yield. They where using Lithium [ (I think) it and only had about 1/3 reactive isotope in the material rather than being fully enriched] instead of hydrogen but a nuclear reaction feature they did not know about, was during the reaction the blast stripped off the outer electron making more of the material fusionable. So the bomb had three times more explosive power than they expected. In that situation their bombproof shelters were not as bombproof as they expected. Everyone had a very large "Oh Sh%^" moment. Later large underground tests in Alaska caused so much seismic events they quit trying for bigger.
@elite13 there's actually a creepypasta about the mysterious nuke tests at the pacific and it really shows the human element and not just monsterkaiju terror.
Clicked on this not knowing this was another of your channels, was worried it was a boring narrator and was waiting to potentially click off and soon as I saw you Im like no way!!! Thanks for ur videos man they help me alot and are informative.
I had forgotten that detail until you reminded me: the Tsar Bomba was intentionally reduced in yield, out of fear of the unknown of what a bomb that size could unleash. While there is a ceiling limit for mushroom clouds, the nightmare a Tsar Bomba of full yield could sow was real... and unproven.
As the video points out, the bomb's yield was halved by eliminating the final stage of fissionable uranium. This was done to drastically reduce the radioactive fallout, an effect the Soviet physicists were well aware of, thanks to the US experience with the Castle Bravo shot.
You should do a Geographics episode on your studio: “We now take you to the place where a thousand youtube channels were born. This little 4x4 room produced over 186,000 episodes, in just 4 years”.
It is mildly reassuring to me to have found out that the bombs have quite short "best before" dates at which point they must be stripped down and remade from the constituent raw material level up. This is complex work, so those bombs that may have been spread out as a result of the collapse of the USSR are likely largely useless by now. Even the fissile material degrades significantly enough to be requiring of re processing to achieve critical mass once again. Love them, or hate them, they kept a sort of peace for sixty years based almost entirely on the unimaginable futility of there offensive use. Arguably an ironic twist on the legacy that their inventors feared for them. Rest in peace Oppenheimer and Sakharov.
Don't feel overly reassured, the "stripping down and remade" is akin to changing the oil filter and a flat tire on an car for those whom have the knowledge.
yeah man after like 50/60 years any explosive that has been sitting is for sure no longer safe to use. Bump into it wrong and it blows up or you try to use it and its non functional. At least thats what i assume
Then you realise there is no limit to how big they could build this. You wouldnt need to deliver such a bomb anywhere. 1000 megatonne bomb underground in your own country, and anyone who attacks you is signing thier own death sentence, along with the whole worlds.
There all too busy arguing over trivia and minutiae in the replies to the top comments. People that argue for weeks in the comments section are so numerous and humorless.
I'm no scientist but I thought it would be like hitting the earth with a hammer. However somebody else in the comments who sounds like they know it better than me, said most of the extra load would probably go upward and there would be more radiation but not so much more of an explosion.
@@jamescarter3196 Sounds about right. It would indeed be like hitting the Earth with a hammer, but that is usually the case with any significantly large bomb or impact. - the rigidity of the crust will help those seismic waves along. However, earthquakes can regularly output more power than the world's entire nuclear arsenal combined and hurricanes are pretty up there too. I'd think the worry about detonating that many nukes in one place would be more the pressure wave and intense heat upsetting weather systems and wildlife for weeks to years - ignoring the obvious radiation hazard from ejecta scattered on the jet stream and other cross-planet winds.
@@cucumber623 Nah mate, that requires much more extreme mesuares, not even the detonation off the Worlds entire nuclear arsanal blown up in one point, would be able to do that. Not even the largest astoroid can do it. Remeber the Earth is massive and have a lot of momentum through Space, so you would have to lob another planet at it, to change it's orbit.
When I first heard of the Tsar Bomba in the early 2000's literally no one was talking about it, it was hard to find info on it, several sources even stating that it was a myth and had never happened, and now it's famous with numerous videos on YT, I mean this chappy done at least 2 videos on the subject. I mean it's hardly surprising as it's such an interesting topic.
What country are you in? Here in the United States, it was s easy to find information on cold war history. we learned about this back in college in the '90s. I grew up in Seattle, and we don't sugarcoat history. When I was in 11th grade my teachers history curriculum for that year came from the book "A People's History of the United States", written by Howard Zinn. That was back in 97.. I had a great teacher back then!
I remember reading a story in some magazine in the mid-60s saying that a Russian attack with just 3 Tsar Bomba type bombs detonated over eastern PA, central IL and northern AL would start fires that'd burn out the eastern half of the USA. Living in Champaign, IL at the time, it scared the hell out of me.
I've heard these measurements before Simon, but it's difficult to imagine. When you described distance from popular cities, I got appropriate chills down my spine hearing about this for the first time. Well done.
1:35 - Chapter 1 - A land of ice & fire 5:50 - Chapter 2 - The scientist & the bomb 9:20 - Chapter 3 - The nuclear race 13:55 - Mid roll ads 15:25 - Chapter 4 - Building the bomba 18:40 - Chapter 5 - Detonation day 22:30 - Chapter 6 - Aftermath
It’s quite literally how it happened. In 16th century there was a great expedition to the east, where army was just marching across the land and was saying “join or get bonked”. Some joined, some got bonked, the result you can see on the map.
An interesting tidbit about Tsar Bomba: the nuclear fallout was actually better measured far from the detonation downwind, due to the bomb detonating 3.9 km off the ground. The _Ivy Mike_ and _Castle Bravo_ tests had far more immediate fallout because both bombs were essentially tested at ground level, blowing up radioactive soil and coral from the island.
Simon, I love your videos. You're one of the only channels (meaning all of the channels you have) that I can binge watch and never get bored, upset, or worried about current events all while learning something. Thanks for all that you do.
Did you have it Muted, Jody? If forced labor, transplantation of indigenous people and thermonuclear annihilation don't ruffle your feathers, what does?
Fun fact: the Castle Bravo test inspired the original movie “Godzilla” because of the tragedy of the Japanese fishermen that got caught in the fallout. It went far beyond projected ‘safe zone’ and killed them all. Maybe not so ‘fun’ but still a fact.
In 2015 I camped on the Tersky coast, with a bunch of motorcyclist, and discovered it was on the flight path of that flight...that was after I was told it was ok to ignore the signs that said no foreigners, in English in the middle of nowhere, said it was from Soviet Times...then got interviewed by the head of the local governent (really nice lady) for a radio show. Turns out I was the 1st American tourist there - ever. I sure didn't know that, was invited back. beautiful place, just might...
I had so many nightmares about them during the 80's .They all settled down when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed . It didnt help when a lot of movies and shows came out with that theme
Rusty Gold that’s the thing though, they are just as real today. Take the presidential football for example, it is supposed to give the impression that only the president can launch a nuclear attack, it’s not true, it makes absolutely no strategic sense to have a nations capability of retaliation based on the continued health of one man. In the case of the United States and Russia, there is a certain amount of automation involved, so if systems believe an attack is happening wheels will be set in motion automatically, likewise there are plenty of people who can initiate an attack who aren’t the leaders of The country in case they are taken out. That’s why it’s called mutually assured destruction, because it is set up to destroy your enemy no matter what you do pre-emptively. And that’s not even taking into account the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India, Pakistan , China and North Korea. It’s a matter of when, whether it’s an accident or intentional, it will likely set off a chain reaction of retaliation from countries who can’t take the chance that it wasn’t intentional. And then we all die
@@conors4430 Only the president can do so if he is well and alive, just with all the things he can do. Same goes for the russian "Dead hand" system, it will only be in charge if no one is left to give orders. MAD is ment as deterrent, and if you are in charge of what you believe to be the 2nd strike arsenal, which is in any case well protected, you have time to verify if an attack has taken place or not.
Me too. They were talking about atomic bombs on tv and mum had nightmares about them and told me (a child with an anxious mind already). I had a very real nightmare inspired by On The Beach series (about effects of nuclear war when people were going to die of radiation) later in life.
@@conors4430 theatre commanders have launch authority, 4 star colonel generals/vice admirals who are directly empowered by the president. HOWEVER the Corporation is who actually design n build them. SO the heads of the Corporate have the codes also, altho you'll never hear them admit it. It always amazes me when people actually think "the government" runs US foreign policy
If he was to check out all the facts small details you wouldn't be seeing a 25 minute UA-cam video, but having a 2 hours History Class... And there are actually places for that... It's just a informative "broad stroke" about what lead to the creation of the Tsar bomb and where it happened.
Hm. If not for Russia, there would be no Finland after all. And Finland volunteered into the war, although taking only the land it decided was theirs. And Finland instituted mass cleansings Hitler was shocked by, for example, killing half of population of Vyborg in one day.
That the detonation was so clean just points to how much energy they were able to squeeze out of that thing. The sloppier you make a nuke the more fallout you get, generally.
No, not really. The highest pusher for fallout is the amount of fission done in the bomb - fission of the primary core, it's tamper, the secondary sparkplug and it's tamper; the radioactive materials in fallout is 95% the fission products. The only "stuff" left to make fallout was the neutron activated vaporized bomb case, spread to hell and gone. The fallout was simply bomb materials still close enough together to condense into dust grains. Serious fallout comes when the mushroom is able to suck up dirt and coral and whatever else from the surface to mix with the fission products - that dilutes the radioactive materials but also makes it much more plentiful. The difference between a dirty weapon and a clean one is the presence of the final uranium tamper in the design
Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park “Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.”
Severniy (feminine is "Severnaya") is "Northern" in Russian language - a fitting name for this place. Edit: I accidentally translated Severniy as "North" instead of the correct adjective "Northern."
Well now that at the end of the video you talked about how clean the Tsar Bomba explosion was, you need to make a video about Castle Bravo and it's lithium-7 miscalculation....
@@CrazyDiamnd76 No, it would not. Its a very minor power compared to asteroids and volcanic eruptions. 'could very well destroy the entire planet".. LOL. Perhaps a little country, but nothing more than that.
Brett Hazelton dude who pressed you buttons in the wrong way? Socotra is an intresting place, in Quaran folklore they say that the “false prophet” lives there... i dont believe that stuff but that tells me there is not even a small sign of SJW idiots over there
Thank you for this comment. I didn’t know about this magnificent place, and I’ve really enjoyed researching and seeing the unique animals and plant life❤️
The cleanliness of the explosion is actually rather interesting. As far as outside observers can tell, fusion weapons are typically wrapped in a X-ray reflective material. In most weapons during the cold war, this was U-238, the "stable" isotope of uranium. The intense environment of a fusion explosion was sufficient to cause the U-238 to itself fission, doubling the weapons' yield. Essentially, a small amount of the power would come from the initial fission explosion used to ignite the fusion fuel, about half the power from the fusion explosion, and the remainder from the casing fissioning. Since there is a substantial amount of material in the casing, this forms the vast majority of the fallout generated from H-bombs. The yield of the initial fission device is tiny, even compared to the WW2 era weapons. The fusion explosion itself generates little in the way of long-lived radioactive fallout. Fusion generates a tremendous amount of radiation (electromagnetic and neutrons) while the reaction is happening, but the byproducts are short lived (the reason it's considered the holy grail of power - if it's not running it's not emitting radiation). The main byproducts are things that were "activated" (stable isotopes which became radioactive because of neutron bombardment). An alternative was to replace the uranium casings with lead, which is also a good x-ray reflector. This about halves the yield but reduces the long-lived fallout by >95%. Why didn't they do that more regularly? Getting a larger blast out of a smaller weapon was desirable (increasing ICBM effectiveness), and the area denial was considered a useful feature. Probably a good thing too - if they had been perceived as not having long lasting effects, counties would have probably felt less guilt about deploying them and they may have actually been used.
I agree that potential area denial is probably the true reason for not limiting fallout by the largest degree possible. Talk about "salting the earth".
Thank you Simon and everyone at Geographics. I had requested Novaya Zemlya and you guys delivered. This was fascinating and terrifying. You have brilliant researchers and Simon did a great job telling the story of this mysterious place. Спасибо!
I’d watch the HBO version of this story in a heartbeat! Everything in the story of Severny and the Tsar Bomba is Epic in the true sense of the word. From the landscape, to the race to build it, to the detonation, quick escape, massive blast and aftermath, I keep coming back to it time and again and this is a video I’ve been waiting for.
“Welcome everyone to the Party Congress! We truly... truly, and deeply appreciate all of you for coming tonight. We know that the- oh? Is.. is that it? Well. Good night folks! We look forward to the next Party Congress!”
My grandparents were travelling around Lapland(A northern area that is spread throughout Finland, Sweden and a bit in Norway and Russia)at the time of the experiment/experiments. Years later(10 or so), doctors found out that my grandmother had a cancer tumor. She recovered eventually, but died years later of natural causes. Still the death was far too soon and probably the recovery process from the tumor had weakened her a lot. My dad still suspects that it was the radiation that came from THE bomb and the other experiments nearby of my grandparents, that caused the tumor in her.
My grandparents saw the Tsar Bomba's detonation from Finland. They described it as there were two suns and few trees at our family ranch died on the radioactivity which came with wind towards Finland. Those trees are still standing, but has been dead since 60's. If they woulda gone with that 100 megatons, Nordic countries as well as Russia would still suffer from the consequences of that demonstration of power.
@@greenockscatman I seem to have used wrong word seemingly 2 years ago. Not radioacticity but fallout. How it was explained to me it was how the rain brought down fallout which killed those trees.
Fun fact: during the Cold War when the Rosenbergs were convicted of spying on the USA, my great aunt worked as nanny in over watching the houses and babysitting children out in Los Alamos. She was the person who reported the suspicion of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of spying on the USA.
Stop making up things, c'mon, and even if it were true, which I'm sure it's not, the Rosenbergs are widely believed to have been innocent, and yet my country tis of thee cooked them so bad, some witnesses of the execution threw up. So why would that be something to be psyched on? It's just a bizarre lie
Everyday DormRoomCliché I mean my great aunt got a certificate from the US Government for her actions and I can show it to you just to validate my point.
It's worth noting that some 60% of Castle Bravo's yield was an accident - it was only supposed to go off with five megatons, but scientists at Los Alamos underestimated the speed of neutrons in a H bomb when it came to the supposedly inert Lithium-7 in its fusion core.
The Tsar bomb was a three stage radiation implosion design not a 'layer cake' as stated here. The layer cake design was inferior to the Teller-Ulam concept (staged radiation implosion) that was used in Castle Bravo. Sakharov also quickly hit upon the same idea as Ulam and USSR thermo-nuclear weapons after the first few used radiation implosion.
@@UnchainedAmerica No, he kept referring to layer cake throughout the video. Although he doesn't literally state that the Tsar Bomba was layer cake, he strongly implies it, and never mentions that it was a Teller-Ulam design ("third idea", in Sakharov's terminology) like all other successful H-bombs.
@@beeble2003i wouldn't call the layer cake design "unsuccessful" - it was much less powerful than a true multi-stage hydrogen bomb and not scaleable, but it was an actually deliverable, battle-ready weapon. Ivy Mike was a science experiment that was way too heavy and cumbersome to be delivered by anything smaller than a battleship. Had a war broken out right then and there, the Soviets would have had more powerful weapons in their arsenal.
@@Ludvigvanamadeus Ivy Mike wasn't a bomb -- in the jargon, it was a device, not a weapon. Maybe it's harsh to describe the Soviet RDS-6 series or layer-cake designs as "unsuccessful"; they were, as you say, a deliverable hygrogen bomb, seven months before the US had one. But they were a dead-end, and all design work on them was abandoned after they got the Teller-Ulam design working.
There is a mix-up between the original "layer cake" Sakharov design idea and the Teller-Ulam scheme. The latter was scalable, unlike the former, and was the one used in the test in question as well in the first Soviet megaton-range test in 1955.
Yeah, the videos on this channel seem to contain a lot of mistakes like that. "Layer cake" went out in 1953, precisely because it _couldn't_ scale. You can't just add more layers to get a bigger bomb whereas, in principal, you can add arbitrarily many stages to a Teller-Ulam design.
Sakharov did indeed invent the Sloika (a Russian layered pastry), which was tested with the RS-27, generating 400 kT. It was a disappointment to the Soviets who were expecting something to rival the US's thermonuclear tests. The test "a year later" was the RS-37, and it was no layer cake. Sakharov had worked through the American test and independently discovered the same principle that Teller and Ulam had used for the US bomb - the use of radiation rather than physical force to contain and pressurize the secondary long enough to burn the fusion fuel. To say that Sakharov 'balked" at 100 MT is not realistic. What actually happened was that the Politburo became alarmed about fallout and the PR fallout from the immolation of the bomber crew; they ordered the yield to be lowered. As it was they only barely made it when the shockwave caught up with them 85 km from the drop site.
Manny Jhutti ... compared to the munitions being discussed here, like it or not, the Hiroshima & Nagasaki weapons were were just really big fire-crackers.
That was the moment Simon said: "I wish they did not half the power of the Tsar bomb, so it would've been over and done with humanity. Bunch of suckers!" They cut that out.
Most of the explosive energy would be lost into the stratosphere. If anything, the Tsar Bomba was a case study that 'bigger isn't always better' when it comes to offensive strategic weaponry. 25-50 megaton warheads are what you'd want to use to try and crack Cheyenne Mountain open like a coconut, but if you want to lay waste to a large metropolitan area, you're better off putting 20+ 150 kiloton MIRVs on top of an SS-18 and scatter-shotting an area with the world's most destructive version of buckshot.
Reading/watching about nuclear explosions always moves me to tears, really Usually it's about the destruction and torment of people then and for years/decades to come, a literal divine judgment of a fate of doom and torment Right now I'm having have this nihilistic revelation that no matter where you are and what you're going in the city or even country, from the lowest squatter to the mayor or governor or CEO signing papers in office, nothing, nothing matters in the face of this explosion People who see nuclear bombs and treat it as an awesome flex of power, have also forgotten that it's a symbol of utter ruin
Size can be a bit confusing, because they expand into three dimensions. Roughly 10 megs twice as powerful as 1 meg. This is why they use smaller multi warhead weapons.
Agreed, energy output goes up immensely but the actual "footprint" of the explosion increases much slower since a lot of that energy is going straight up into the sky.
Andrew Francis yeah not many people get that and just think that the superpowers would have kept developing larger and larger weapons. Also at this size delivery is an issue. Castle Bravo (US largest) was basically just a scientific experiment and was a large ground based device (the shrimp) which was in no way tactical, unless you could persuade all your enemies to come and stand next to it. The Tsar Bomba was so heavy that the plane carrying it struggled to fly and it almost caused the plane to crash because of the sudden change of mass when it was released. Not only that but the pilots barely escaped before the fireball filled the sky.
I absolutely love how in the few videos I've watched he talks about awful situations then uses those situations to slip in his sponsor. This isn't sarcasm I think it's very fun
Thanks to Dollar Shave Club for sponsoring. Go to DollarShaveClub.com/geographics to get your first starter set for $5. After that, full price products will ship at regular prices.
Be your own barber and you don't have to worry about finding one! And it is waaay cheaper..
Simon im waiting to see you give us a show using that shaving equipment on that crome dome. Lol. (im bald too btw.)
Lol gotta correct the last seconds of the video!
Been waiting for the newest Geographics. What took so long?
thanks for putting the icon in the corner while doing sponsor
You start to get some perspective when you hear 'the parachute weighed a ton'.
It’s really a negative thing, this warhead was EXTREMELY heavy. America’s biggest thermos were 10 - 20 times lighter in weight and didn’t have to be dropped from a plane. In fact the only reason the Russians beat us into outer space is because in order for the Russians to put this warhead on a icmb, they needed a huge rocket (largest at the time). In doing this they realized by removing the heavy warhead from the rocket and putting on a much lighter cabin for personnel, they would be able to achieve terminal velocity and put a man in outer space, you need to be going roughly 16000 mph to break out of the atmosphere, and that rocket helped them do it. So the reason the Russians went to space before the US, is because of the US. Oh 1 more thing, tsar bomba was just Russians being Russians. Trying to 1 up the US and world. I’d rather be attacked by tsar bombas 50 megatons rather than 10 10 megaton nukes, which is the direction the US went. Smaller, faster, better
@@breakink9396 you realize that your comment is basically just a way to "1 up russia and world".
@ArmchairWarrior correct. I think this is the one thing I dislike about the US the most. This guy would probably say Im jealous or something😂 if he had the brain cells to actually respond logically
@@med4nel russia bad, us best. Clear summary of the US.
johnathan pety ... you mean escape velocity.
UK, USA and USSR: *stop building bombs for a time in the 1960’s*
France: “hey guys look what I did”
well, France wasn't part of the nuclear club at that time so they maybe didn't received the memo
China and Israel made there own and nobody thinks about them
@@kalzhae "memo" from french scientific in manathan project ?
@Welp Welp "chinas overpopulation is worse than their nuclear arsenal" stupidity and racisme are worse... nuclear arsenal are not used on friendly guy...
05EVORS China and Israel didn’t make first Nuclear ☢️ bomb by themselves totally.They both have major scientific researches break through helped.China by the Russian and Israel by the American.Both for their first invention of for their Nuke tests.
Soviets: "Hey everyone! Our super bomb works!"
Literally everyone: "Yeah, we could hear it from "
🇬🇧
Inserting Washington D.C
I wouldn’t say that, that’s what they would’ve wanted to hear
There new Nukes that were released just after Trump was president are way worse. They fly into space, and the video they show is it dropping onto Florida. Which with CoVid19 idiots might be a good idea! Lmfao America, the land of undereducated idiots!
Where are you from genius.
"A bomb, that could make God tremble."
*the sun farts and we all die.*
Lol. Best comment on here
Yeah, God wouldn't even notice the blast. The smallest supernovae are utterly enormous in comparison.
Oh come on it's just a metaphor and hyperbole
Sun farts? Is that the technical term? :)
@Gregory Hagen Solar Flatulence is the proper terminology lol
"Today it's famous for it's wildlife, like the 6-legged Arctic Foxes and two-headed Polar Bears"
I hear the walrus men are willing to trade during the summer months
Walrus miner
@@jessicaraye1119 yes and we are not being serious aswell so ?
@@jessicaraye1119 OK Karen
See - what a great effect it had on evolution. But Americans banned that subject from schools.
absolutely horrifying that Tsar Bomba was HALF of its core's originally planned power- ive never heard that fact about it before
Now imagine over so MANY years passed that now RUSSIA might have 300 megatons Bomb?
@@omarwilliams6729 they do they have a 100 megaton torpedo and if that wasn't bad enough it's a salted cobalt bomb
Kruschev wanted it 100 but his scientists managed to convince him to cut it in half.
Like the other claimed weapons they have ?
@@lokomike2911 yes! Have doomsday device. Putin get 'sniffles' or piles or similars, west go bang....😆
the sound doesn't match the video for most of this one
why has no one else pointed this out
noticed this as well, thought it was the player mucking up again
"The USSR tested the biggest nuke at Novaya Zemlya because apparently, they wanted to see if they could find the Northern Lights switch."
And then a random, ostensibly irrelevant statement for the third reply to this comment lol, weird.
It almost seems like the vid was re-uploaded some time over the last year or so with an incorrectly edited version, judging by the timing of the comments, but who knows?🤷♂️
@@CptH0vvDy6:55 this is where it gets clipped off track
Not so fond memories of those times - my parents were dairy farmers in Northern Minnesota. Fallout levels of I believe strontium 90 were measured to be high in our area. The fallout had a short half-life but it was detected to be high in the milk we farmers produced. As a result, it was dictated we could only feed our dairy cows hay that had been stored longer than 30 days. So during the middle of summer when our herd would be on pasture supplemented with hay, we needed to keep them confined eating only hay remaining from the previous season and tracking hay storage to insure we did not ship milk with higher radiation levels - which would be discarded and along with it our check from the bottling company. This bomb was blamed as the trigger.
Glow in the dark milk!
I did not know that its effects were so far-ranging. I grew up in Minnesota as well.
@@bluegregory6239 It was not widely publicized, probably due to fear. My father was a dairy farmer. The isotope had a short half life but could be dangerous to infants, so we needed to feed old hay at the time of year when we would normally have highest production from fresh pasture and newly cut premium hay. Likely only producers knew. I am not aware of any of the local farmer's milk being tested and rejected.
Luckily it wasn't 100MT.
Cottage cheese
I can't get over the fact that they were warned that this type of explosion could possibly burn the atmosphere off the planet, and they went ahead .
Twats
There is a mission of America trying to blow the ozone layer away as well lol an they tried it.
The same warning came up from the US by the H-Bomb at the Bikini atoll
Because they're trash
Edward Teller thought the Trinity test might cause the hydrogen in the atmosphere to go into some sort of catastrophic fusion reaction.
Its extremely worrying to imagine what would have happened had that bomb been as big as originally planned
I've seen papers that claim if the initial estimate of 100 Megatons was reached, the explosion could have set off earthquakes and volcanoes all over Asia. Literally it could have ripped the planet apart
@@cmd31220 no? We have a lot of volcanoes with eruptions multiple times the size of the tsar bombas explosion. Nuclear bombs are nothing compared to mother nature. No way its gonna rip the planet apart thats just dumb.
@@ifalm4274 oh obviously I'm not saying the bomb itself would have torn the planet apart. I'm saying the resulting seismic activity would.
A blast that size would trigger all these much larger events that, you correctly point out, are orders of magnitude more powerful
@@cmd31220 again, how? 100 megatons is nothing compared to eruptions that are scaled vei 7 or more. Like the 1815 tambora eruption was equal to around 800 megatons. And the worst that it did was triggering tsunamis on the surrounding islands and dropped the global temperature by 3 degrees celcius. A mere 100 megatons nuclear bomb wouldnt set off volcanoes and earthquakes all over the continent. Or even rip the whole planet apart.
@@ifalm4274 it's a domino effect. Put a puppy in front of a moving car, and the puppy's just gonna get run over.
But make that puppy knock over a trash can, that falls into a car, and the lid knocks the gearshift into neutral final destination style, and that car rolls into the road in front of the moving car......well that's a different story.
100 Megatons dropped on the right location could start a chain reaction, especially when you consider the seismic makeup of eastern Russia
“A bomb bigger than Tsar Bomba”
May: Write that down, write that down!
no the next thing is the coming major earthquake of June 2020. Over 8.0 check the date on this after the fact and be like whoah how did he know? Oh and covid is not done yet either expect a 1918 level event this fall.
@@Morristown337 expect covid to piss off like SARS did instead of coming back like the Spanish Flu. It's much more like the former than the latter.
@@jaspersen219 Tell that to the Millions infected. Lol
@@ninjabiatch101 you mean the millions of infected who have recovered? 99% survival rate 'lol'
@@Morristown337 how exactly does anyone, you in particular, accurately PREDICT a possible future earthquake, especially almost 2 months in advance? Your world altering earthquake prediction ability, while hard to take seriously on it's own, becomes substantially less credible/believable with the addition of your "2nd, extremely deadly, world ending wave of killer covid-19 infections" prediction. Covid-19 is mostly hype, and has been blown WAYYYYY out of proportion by lots of people who actually have little to no knowledge of the subject material on which they speak, but because their words get blasted around the world by the equally as ignorant media giants, people assume that the words are coming from credible, intelligent people. This is simply not the case, and is the complete opposite of the truth, more times than not. I don't watch/read ANY main stream news/media for this very reason, and I live a much more enjoyable and stress free life because of it. There's so much more value in putting in the time/effort to educate yourself with a variety of subjects (with FACTUAL material and research, not politically correct pseudo science) and forcing yourself to make logical assessments of people/situations/problems by using the knowledge that you have gained to come to your own conclusions. Stop letting OTHER people think for YOU and decide what actions YOU should take. That's a horrible choice of how to live your life, because trust me, NOBODY has your best interest in mind, that's your job to do. But it's harder than just letting other people, such as the media, tell you what to think and do, and takes time away from focusing on stupid shit like facebook/twitter/celebrities/shopping/etc.. so very few people are willing to take responsibility for themselves these days. I say fuck that noise, I'll think for MYSELF, and I'm so glad my family instilled that mentality into me, and I'm doing the same with my son!
"he was dealing with the complicity of killing a man and a two year old girl... BY THE WAY MY HEAD GETS DRY SOMETIMES AFTER I SHAVE IT"
There was about a minute of talking between those two moments
Capital!
😂😂
"Why did the USSR test the biggest nuke in history at Novaya Zemlya? Because they heard it was the coolest spot for a blast party in the Arctic!"
Imagine if the guy who had to record the event forgot to hit the record button...
Cameraman: "Comorads I forgot to hit the record, we need to do it again."
"let's retry"
Btw the original recordings were published a not long time ago in the original not transmitted at the time documentary
His whole family and everyone he ever talked to would be executed
They would tie him to the bomb next time for better life like footage 🤣
Load up another one we got to get this video boys
He wouldn't be around to complete the second part of his sentence, put it like that.
Imagine if they hadn't halved the Tsar Bomba's yield... Sweet baby Khrushchev.
Yeah, the Russians have always been known for their inability to follow theough with great ideas, its a shame.
@@smoooth7429 I think, could be wrong obvi, but he may have been being sarcastic and knew this, which is why he said that lol
@@DDPTV-gm4ct "Shame" really? Maybe America needs to learn how to even create a better missile than Russians
I can't stop thinking about that. I'm gen-x and the millennials and zoomers I work with have no concept of the fear we grew up with.
Bye bye planet earth 🌎
To put in another perspective, the bomb had a blast yield of 50 megatons, Krakatoa had a yield of 200 megatons. This thing was 1/4th the power of Krakatoa.
Hahaha!
Oh, sh!t. We really did almost cook ourselves, didn't we?
And krakatoa caused another year that we can call the worst year beside 2020... the year without summer
But this is so small compared to krakatoa. Just make it 5 it will be 1/4 more megatons than Krakatoa.
And to think that the Russians were planning on making a 100 mega-ton yielding nuke...
The funny thing is, Russia has now nuclear torpedos with yields of 200 megatons called Poseidon, they have several.
When Krakatoa's final explosion occurred on August 26th-27th, 1883, it did so with the force equivalent to a 200-megaton hydrogen bomb. The explosion was heard nearly 3,000 miles away on Rodriguez Island in the extreme Southwest Indian Ocean and sent a shock wave that circled Earth 7 times. The pressure wave was so powerful that it ruptured the eardrums of sailors that were on a ship 40 miles away.
About 70% of Krakatoa Island was blown apart, 2 of the 3 volcanoes that were on it disappeared while the largest of the 3, Rakata, lost about 1/3 of its mass.
Now there Is our sound R a y s, HE ATR AY a** and a number of other rays that equal or surpass N u k e s
Correction, Now there are
Hey! My grandpa on my dad’s side was stationed on Novaya Zemlya. He was in the Russian navy. My dad spent a few years of his childhood on the island. He has some stories.
Here’s a fun one. My grandpa’s best friend decided to go fishing one day. He had a backpack with him. As he was standing on the shore, fishing, he saw a white shape slowly appear on the surface of the water. He figured it must be one of the northern dolphins, whatever they are called. The next thing he saw was a giant polar bear lumbering out of the water and heading straight for him.
He dropped everything and ran back to the base, or town, as fast as he could, without looking back. The next day he went back for his backpack, and he found it torn into pieces. An empty can of condensed milk was lying on the ground, with holes clearly made by the teeth of the animal. The bear literally bit into the metal can and sucked the milk out of it.
I know it’s not a story related to the military doings on the island, but I always found it funny. The local newspaper even wrote about it.
Thank God it was only the milk
I go there on DayZ for supplies lol
There's a photograph of Soviet soldiers alongside a tank sharing a can of condensed milk to a polar bear back in the day. The creatures must've gotten acquired to the taste of it.
@@raywollesenfortes7014 You know, I always wondered how that bear knew to go for the can, it's not like she could smell it. Makes sense now:)
@@tiadiad the bear absolutely smelled it
Funny thing about Castle Bravo, it was only meant to be 5mt. Teller had assumed the lithium-7 in the bomb's tamper was effectively inert and failed to take what the radiation bombardment would do to it into account, because they thought it would become lithium-8 and break down into a pair of alpha particles on a timescale of a few seconds, which was too slow to have any meaningful effect on the explosion.
In fact, the lithium-7 became a tritium ion and an alpha particle. The tritium was an ideal fusion fuel and massively multiplied the expected amount of fusion fuel available.
Then why did they put the lithium into the bomb?
@@klauskarpfen9039 you can't just fill a bomb hull with compressed hydrogen, so the alternative way is to use lithium deuteride, that breaks down into fusion fuel
@@TrueMechTech This is not what Scribbling said.
They put li7 in because it came with the li6 they wanted
So, that must have been when lithium batteries were invented. But took a long time to reach the ordinary consumer.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
We are mice who spend our lives developing badass mousetraps.
That's a bit reductionist don't you think?
That's great.
@@Chobaca "Reductionist"?
Poetry is reducing prose to its most impactful words.
I think @Jeremiah Guy's words were poetic.
While ignoring the mousetraps we haven't designed
@@miyojewoltsnasonth2159 thank you!
“Naturally, Tsar Walrus Chops wanted a piece of that action”
Well done Simon
They bombed Severny to bury the portal into the Nightmare World which was spewing out all sorts of monsters.
what you even talking about lol
Go on.......
You had me at portal
KGB sekret Dokuments Komrade, how do you know this?
Bf109 G-4 EXCUSE ME ??!
The fact they halved the yield and it was still so powerful is terrifying
That's the most mind-blowing thing. That scientist might have saved the Earth.
@@xenos_n.
The Earth has survived asteroids KMs long, supervolcanos, etc, it can survive a small, human-made poot. And yes, this is small compared to those..
@@cortster12 ikr asteroids have hit with more force than all the nuclear arsenal combines
@@8Maduce50 And caused extinction events in the process or have you forgotten what's in your car's gas tank right now ?
@@clothar23 have we forgotten GRBs?
Nuclear physicist, builds h bomb that kills two people:
Oh no, I feel complicit.
@Loosen yes
He was just following orders.
Because he killed two of his OWN people.
@@monkeyman321 "Just following orders" has been the so-called justification behind untold atrocities. It's not a good excuse.
@@Lambzalot He didn't kill anyone. He developed an object. It was their military that had the responsibility for clearing the people before they pressed the button, or perhaps not pressing it at all.
Nuclear weapons are a technology that once developed can never be forgotten. Once in existence, they will never be extinct.
America: We got the biggest bomb! Castle Bravo!
USSR: Oh yeah? Watch this! TSAR BOMBA
Both: Yeah....let's not do that again.....
instead, we should create some awesome vehicles that could break free from the atmosphere.
U.S.A.: Truce?
U.S.S.R.: Truce.
Thus the space race was born
Except its unlikely, in the extreme, that the Soviets chose to stop for any reason other than running out of money and resources.
From what I have seen, the last US Bikini blast was a mistake in yield. They where using Lithium [ (I think) it and only had about 1/3 reactive isotope in the material rather than being fully enriched] instead of hydrogen but a nuclear reaction feature they did not know about, was during the reaction the blast stripped off the outer electron making more of the material fusionable. So the bomb had three times more explosive power than they expected. In that situation their bombproof shelters were not as bombproof as they expected. Everyone had a very large "Oh Sh%^" moment. Later large underground tests in Alaska caused so much seismic events they quit trying for bigger.
Yes but according to the movie, Castle Bravo was used to try and stop Godzilla. :-)
oh, I've heard so many times that term 'tsar bomba' when growing up in USSR and never knew what it actually was, well, now I know)
I love that the Russians literally called a nuclear device a "layer cake"
Thats the most Russian thing you could possibly come up with.
Maddox Clay mmmmmm medovik. 🤤
Idk...I would have gone with "Matryoshka Bomb"
I mean yellow cake uranium is a nuclear material used in nuclear weapons
Teller's first H-Bomb design (not the one ultimately produced) was called The Alarm Clock
Yes, but it was a deliverable weapon from the start, unlike the first U.S. hydrogen bomb.
The test wasn't a test. They were trying to kill it
PMW3 underrated comment
"We call him... *Gojira*
It failed.
R.I.P Dr. Serazawa
@elite13 there's actually a creepypasta about the mysterious nuke tests at the pacific and it really shows the human element and not just monsterkaiju terror.
Clicked on this not knowing this was another of your channels, was worried it was a boring narrator and was waiting to potentially click off and soon as I saw you Im like no way!!! Thanks for ur videos man they help me alot and are informative.
"Tsar walrus chops"
Sponsored by dollar shave club
That one made me laugh with a mouthful of rice. I had rice coming out my nose! Thanks, Simon.
6:57 odd cut there eh?
@Destroy the child concur !!#;?
Yup
Yeh what?
@@Alygoola I was just pointing out that it was odd.... nothing more.
Kingggg crimson!
I had forgotten that detail until you reminded me: the Tsar Bomba was intentionally reduced in yield, out of fear of the unknown of what a bomb that size could unleash. While there is a ceiling limit for mushroom clouds, the nightmare a Tsar Bomba of full yield could sow was real... and unproven.
As the video points out, the bomb's yield was halved by eliminating the final stage of fissionable uranium. This was done to drastically reduce the radioactive fallout, an effect the Soviet physicists were well aware of, thanks to the US experience with the Castle Bravo shot.
My DNA test showed some of my ancestry came from Yuzhny Island....am I descended from Arctic Foxes and Polar Bears? LOLOL (human me, not Odin the GS)
More than likely.
I mean, dogs and foxes are from the same family.
Haaaahhaaa
Not funny
@@josephstalin8072 You must be fun at parties.
You should do a Geographics episode on your studio: “We now take you to the place where a thousand youtube channels were born. This little 4x4 room produced over 186,000 episodes, in just 4 years”.
It is mildly reassuring to me to have found out that the bombs have quite short "best before" dates at which point they must be stripped down and remade from the constituent raw material level up. This is complex work, so those bombs that may have been spread out as a result of the collapse of the USSR are likely largely useless by now. Even the fissile material degrades significantly enough to be requiring of re processing to achieve critical mass once again. Love them, or hate them, they kept a sort of peace for sixty years based almost entirely on the unimaginable futility of there offensive use. Arguably an ironic twist on the legacy that their inventors feared for them. Rest in peace Oppenheimer and Sakharov.
I would assume this is due to radioactive decay or an elements half-life
Don't feel overly reassured, the "stripping down and remade" is akin to changing the oil filter and a flat tire on an car for those whom have the knowledge.
yeah man after like 50/60 years any explosive that has been sitting is for sure no longer safe to use. Bump into it wrong and it blows up or you try to use it and its non functional. At least thats what i assume
Bionicle Jackson it's the "those who have the knowledge" bit that's key. Very specialist and not as simple as you might imagine thankfully.
@@robinwells8879 I don't have to imagine, it was my job for the USAF.
"Severny" basically means "northern" in Russian.
The Norwegians call it "Gåselandet" - "The Goose land" (if it be of any interest).
Isn’t North Macedonia also known as Severna Macedonia?
da
So the Test Site is the North End of the New Earth/Land?
_In Russian, "Zombie" means, Zombie._
That.. was... insane.
Then you realise there is no limit to how big they could build this. You wouldnt need to deliver such a bomb anywhere.
1000 megatonne bomb underground in your own country, and anyone who attacks you is signing thier own death sentence, along with the whole worlds.
what was?
Are you not the creator of the Far Cry 3 music? If so, I love your work.
"Made Castle Bravo look like a wet fart"
😂😂😂 internet gold, Simon
It actually made Castle Bravo look like a queef. A dry, fish smelling queef.
@@Biden_is_demented can't believe nobody responded to this. This is actual internet gold lmao
There all too busy arguing over trivia and minutiae in the replies to the top comments. People that argue for weeks in the comments section are so numerous and humorless.
Sounds like a direct quote from Kruschev 🤔 he wasn't a subtle man
"The War to End All Wars"
The Bomb to End All Life.
It didn't end all life though
@@tonyrichards4141 unfortunately not
Nature will live on, far after humans. We are another extinction event. Earth has endured many cataclysmic events.
@@charelpeffer52 what do you mean ,
' unfortunately ' , huh ?
@@sannidhyabalkote9536 unfortunately it didn't end all of those ridiculous, useless lives
I’m somewhat curious what might have happened if he didn’t replace the uranium with lead to half the yield.
I'm no scientist but I thought it would be like hitting the earth with a hammer. However somebody else in the comments who sounds like they know it better than me, said most of the extra load would probably go upward and there would be more radiation but not so much more of an explosion.
@@jamescarter3196 Sounds about right. It would indeed be like hitting the Earth with a hammer, but that is usually the case with any significantly large bomb or impact. - the rigidity of the crust will help those seismic waves along.
However, earthquakes can regularly output more power than the world's entire nuclear arsenal combined and hurricanes are pretty up there too. I'd think the worry about detonating that many nukes in one place would be more the pressure wave and intense heat upsetting weather systems and wildlife for weeks to years - ignoring the obvious radiation hazard from ejecta scattered on the jet stream and other cross-planet winds.
knock the earths orbit out of its route
@@cucumber623 Nah mate, that requires much more extreme mesuares, not even the detonation off the Worlds entire nuclear arsanal blown up in one point, would be able to do that. Not even the largest astoroid can do it. Remeber the Earth is massive and have a lot of momentum through Space, so you would have to lob another planet at it, to change it's orbit.
The Judas Priest Ram it down album cover would have happened
When I first heard of the Tsar Bomba in the early 2000's literally no one was talking about it, it was hard to find info on it, several sources even stating that it was a myth and had never happened, and now it's famous with numerous videos on YT, I mean this chappy done at least 2 videos on the subject. I mean it's hardly surprising as it's such an interesting topic.
What country are you in? Here in the United States, it was s easy to find information on cold war history. we learned about this back in college in the '90s. I grew up in Seattle, and we don't sugarcoat history. When I was in 11th grade my teachers history curriculum for that year came from the book "A People's History of the United States", written by Howard Zinn. That was back in 97.. I had a great teacher back then!
I remember reading a story in some magazine in the mid-60s saying that a Russian attack with just 3 Tsar Bomba type bombs detonated over eastern PA, central IL and northern AL would start fires that'd burn out the eastern half of the USA. Living in Champaign, IL at the time, it scared the hell out of me.
I've heard these measurements before Simon, but it's difficult to imagine. When you described distance from popular cities, I got appropriate chills down my spine hearing about this for the first time. Well done.
Coordinates of the det site:
Latitude: 73° 32' 23.99" N
Longitude: 54° 42' 12.59" E
71.633612, 52.264547
A suspicious amount of off-road traffic for there to be nothing there :P
1:35 - Chapter 1 - A land of ice & fire
5:50 - Chapter 2 - The scientist & the bomb
9:20 - Chapter 3 - The nuclear race
13:55 - Mid roll ads
15:25 - Chapter 4 - Building the bomba
18:40 - Chapter 5 - Detonation day
22:30 - Chapter 6 - Aftermath
i love mid roll adds
Underrated comment!
When you look at Russia on a map it really just seems to be all the land in Eurasia that nobody else wanted.
It’s quite literally how it happened. In 16th century there was a great expedition to the east, where army was just marching across the land and was saying “join or get bonked”. Some joined, some got bonked, the result you can see on the map.
and so much of it is uninhabited its truly mind boggling
Well, many did want and some attempted to take it from Russia but failed miserably.
@@timekeeper2738 it was inhabited, but forgotten genocides and modern day oppression took care of that problem
@@TheJcrist do you mean take back their lands? Cuz yes
An interesting tidbit about Tsar Bomba: the nuclear fallout was actually better measured far from the detonation downwind, due to the bomb detonating 3.9 km off the ground. The _Ivy Mike_ and _Castle Bravo_ tests had far more immediate fallout because both bombs were essentially tested at ground level, blowing up radioactive soil and coral from the island.
Simon, I love your videos. You're one of the only channels (meaning all of the channels you have) that I can binge watch and never get bored, upset, or worried about current events all while learning something. Thanks for all that you do.
Did you have it Muted, Jody?
If forced labor, transplantation of indigenous people and thermonuclear annihilation don't ruffle your feathers, what does?
Fun fact: the Castle Bravo test inspired the original movie “Godzilla” because of the tragedy of the Japanese fishermen that got caught in the fallout. It went far beyond projected ‘safe zone’ and killed them all. Maybe not so ‘fun’ but still a fact.
'History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man'
Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
_"The Tsar Bomba explosion was like nothing the world had ever seen..."_
*TUNGUSKA:* _"WOULD YOU LIKE A REMATCH...?"_
In 2015 I camped on the Tersky coast, with a bunch of motorcyclist, and discovered it was on the flight path of that flight...that was after I was told it was ok to ignore the signs that said no foreigners, in English in the middle of nowhere, said it was from Soviet Times...then got interviewed by the head of the local governent (really nice lady) for a radio show. Turns out I was the 1st American tourist there - ever. I sure didn't know that, was invited back. beautiful place, just might...
Lol that's amazing
I had so many nightmares about them during the 80's .They all settled down when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed . It didnt help when a lot of movies and shows came out with that theme
Rusty Gold that’s the thing though, they are just as real today. Take the presidential football for example, it is supposed to give the impression that only the president can launch a nuclear attack, it’s not true, it makes absolutely no strategic sense to have a nations capability of retaliation based on the continued health of one man. In the case of the United States and Russia, there is a certain amount of automation involved, so if systems believe an attack is happening wheels will be set in motion automatically, likewise there are plenty of people who can initiate an attack who aren’t the leaders of The country in case they are taken out. That’s why it’s called mutually assured destruction, because it is set up to destroy your enemy no matter what you do pre-emptively. And that’s not even taking into account the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India, Pakistan , China and North Korea. It’s a matter of when, whether it’s an accident or intentional, it will likely set off a chain reaction of retaliation from countries who can’t take the chance that it wasn’t intentional. And then we all die
@@conors4430 Only the president can do so if he is well and alive, just with all the things he can do. Same goes for the russian "Dead hand" system, it will only be in charge if no one is left to give orders. MAD is ment as deterrent, and if you are in charge of what you believe to be the 2nd strike arsenal, which is in any case well protected, you have time to verify if an attack has taken place or not.
That’s the job of the media, keeping people cowering and complacent
Me too. They were talking about atomic bombs on tv and mum had nightmares about them and told me (a child with an anxious mind already). I had a very real nightmare inspired by On The Beach series (about effects of nuclear war when people were going to die of radiation) later in life.
@@conors4430 theatre commanders have launch authority, 4 star colonel generals/vice admirals who are directly empowered by the president.
HOWEVER
the Corporation is who actually design n build them. SO the heads of the Corporate have the codes also, altho you'll never hear them admit it.
It always amazes me when people actually think "the government" runs US foreign policy
6:56 Why does the sound get out of sync? How do you mess that up without proofreading prior to release?
1:51 Novaya Zemlya literaly translates New Land
P.S it even resembles New Zealand and is similar in size.
Sometimes Google Translator likes to translate it's name into a New Zealand
It's roughly ⅔ of Italy
The prayer he once said after seeing his first H-Bomb test
"Blyat!"
"Dragged into World War 2" ? Simon, I think Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland would like to have a word with you.
Simon doesn't write the scripts, nor is he a historian. He just reads them. Now I do agree with you. However, the blame is not on totally on Simon.
If he was to check out all the facts small details you wouldn't be seeing a 25 minute UA-cam video, but having a 2 hours History Class... And there are actually places for that... It's just a informative "broad stroke" about what lead to the creation of the Tsar bomb and where it happened.
Ww2 is a myth perpetrated by the toy company's to sell GI joes
Hm. If not for Russia, there would be no Finland after all. And Finland volunteered into the war, although taking only the land it decided was theirs. And Finland instituted mass cleansings Hitler was shocked by, for example, killing half of population of Vyborg in one day.
@@nathanhowlett8893 That might wash if WW2 hadn't been going long before America joined.
Thanks!
That the detonation was so clean just points to how much energy they were able to squeeze out of that thing. The sloppier you make a nuke the more fallout you get, generally.
No, not really. The highest pusher for fallout is the amount of fission done in the bomb - fission of the primary core, it's tamper, the secondary sparkplug and it's tamper; the radioactive materials in fallout is 95% the fission products. The only "stuff" left to make fallout was the neutron activated vaporized bomb case, spread to hell and gone. The fallout was simply bomb materials still close enough together to condense into dust grains. Serious fallout comes when the mushroom is able to suck up dirt and coral and whatever else from the surface to mix with the fission products - that dilutes the radioactive materials but also makes it much more plentiful. The difference between a dirty weapon and a clean one is the presence of the final uranium tamper in the design
@@puncheex2 Late but great comment!
“A super weapon to rival God...”
God: Hold my supermassive black hole.
Edit (2 months later): the reply section has gone a really weird direction.
Lewd. >_>
God: Hold my Quazar and Gamma Ray Bursts.
This comment is severely underrated
You can't hold a black hole.
@@r.girouard5886 youre so stupid, created yet doubt a creator
So early, Simon didn't even have a chance to tuck his shirt in......
I didnt even have time to put one on
@@phillipcasyey7313 same
Probably wasn't wearing pants either.
Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park
“Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.”
Severniy (feminine is "Severnaya") is "Northern" in Russian language - a fitting name for this place.
Edit: I accidentally translated Severniy as "North" instead of the correct adjective "Northern."
Brent Granger “northern”, not “north”
Severnaya is also the home of the GoldenEye satellite (just ask Pierce Brosnan James Bond) :)
@@ChungusTheHumongous You are correct! My mistake. I've corrected it. Thanks for the catch.
@@alrox1 That's why I added Severniy's feminine form. I am a fan of James Bond films.
Brent Granger my pleasure sir! Have a great day!
There's a fingerprint on his glasses and it's killing me inside.
"biggest bomb in history, burned faces and set animals on fire a hundred miles away BUT OH SHIT THE FINGERPRINT ON HIS GLASSES IS SO HORRIBLE"
@@jamescarter3196 Shows how in affected a guy who has read the information on every crazy/biarrare thing that mankind and nature has give a try. :-)
Your probably terrible.
I’m sure I’d like you🙂
how bout the wet fart
i smoke ghosts there’s dry farts?
Well now that at the end of the video you talked about how clean the Tsar Bomba explosion was, you need to make a video about Castle Bravo and it's lithium-7 miscalculation....
us certainly had their calculations wrong DONT TELL THE RUSSIANS
The plane wasn't destroyed but windows were broken 700kms away ... OK
The horrible side of me kinda wishes that he didn’t nerf it so it was still at full power
Your horrible side seems very much like my fun side
Agreed, although it very well could've destroyed the entire planet. Incredible power.
Would've been interesting for sure, assuming it didn't kill everybody.
@@CrazyDiamnd76 No, it would not.
Its a very minor power compared to asteroids and volcanic eruptions.
'could very well destroy the entire planet"..
LOL. Perhaps a little country, but nothing more than that.
@@nagjrcjasonbower Why even use the word Communist in this comment? What an odd thing to Fascist.
Please cover Socotra next; one of the most diverse islands in the world.
There are some beautiful tarantulas from there.
Brett Hazelton dude who pressed you buttons in the wrong way? Socotra is an intresting place, in Quaran folklore they say that the “false prophet” lives there... i dont believe that stuff but that tells me there is not even a small sign of SJW idiots over there
How dare you all be diverse enough to think about cool things! Everything should be black and white!
Thank you for this comment. I didn’t know about this magnificent place, and I’ve really enjoyed researching and seeing the unique animals and plant life❤️
Makes sense to do it after... another place we van eliminate! Geez
The cleanliness of the explosion is actually rather interesting. As far as outside observers can tell, fusion weapons are typically wrapped in a X-ray reflective material. In most weapons during the cold war, this was U-238, the "stable" isotope of uranium. The intense environment of a fusion explosion was sufficient to cause the U-238 to itself fission, doubling the weapons' yield. Essentially, a small amount of the power would come from the initial fission explosion used to ignite the fusion fuel, about half the power from the fusion explosion, and the remainder from the casing fissioning. Since there is a substantial amount of material in the casing, this forms the vast majority of the fallout generated from H-bombs. The yield of the initial fission device is tiny, even compared to the WW2 era weapons. The fusion explosion itself generates little in the way of long-lived radioactive fallout. Fusion generates a tremendous amount of radiation (electromagnetic and neutrons) while the reaction is happening, but the byproducts are short lived (the reason it's considered the holy grail of power - if it's not running it's not emitting radiation). The main byproducts are things that were "activated" (stable isotopes which became radioactive because of neutron bombardment). An alternative was to replace the uranium casings with lead, which is also a good x-ray reflector. This about halves the yield but reduces the long-lived fallout by >95%. Why didn't they do that more regularly? Getting a larger blast out of a smaller weapon was desirable (increasing ICBM effectiveness), and the area denial was considered a useful feature. Probably a good thing too - if they had been perceived as not having long lasting effects, counties would have probably felt less guilt about deploying them and they may have actually been used.
I agree that potential area denial is probably the true reason for not limiting fallout by the largest degree possible. Talk about "salting the earth".
If I hadn’t watched Dr. Strange I would’ve never learned to stop worrying and love the Tarsa bomb.
Thank you Simon and everyone at Geographics. I had requested Novaya Zemlya and you guys delivered. This was fascinating and terrifying. You have brilliant researchers and Simon did a great job telling the story of this mysterious place. Спасибо!
I’d watch the HBO version of this story in a heartbeat! Everything in the story of Severny and the Tsar Bomba is Epic in the true sense of the word. From the landscape, to the race to build it, to the detonation, quick escape, massive blast and aftermath, I keep coming back to it time and again and this is a video I’ve been waiting for.
6:43 “The bomb would have to be ready to test by the end of the 20-second Party Congress.” Funny what your brain can make you hear sometimes.
“Welcome everyone to the Party Congress! We truly... truly, and deeply appreciate all of you for coming tonight. We know that the- oh? Is.. is that it? Well. Good night folks! We look forward to the next Party Congress!”
I have read a lot about the Tzar Bomb, but thank you for bringing in more details about it, its development, and eventual test. Thank you
What more details did he bring in?
Just to be clear, the “sloika” design was not the same as the Ulam-Teller design, and it was the Ulam-Teller design the Tsar Bomba had.
Rosenbergs made it possible for Russia to use the Ulam-Teller design.
This would make such a good drama series of the development of the bomb (similar to the Chernobyl series)
That was the smoothest transition into a product placement ad I’ve ever seen lmao.
Fun fact: I live near the place where Sacharov lived, there's a museum now
Might be a fun fact for you, but the rest of us really don't care...
@@buckhorncortez I found it a lil interesting actually.
My grandparents were travelling around Lapland(A northern area that is spread throughout Finland, Sweden and a bit in Norway and Russia)at the time of the experiment/experiments. Years later(10 or so), doctors found out that my grandmother had a cancer tumor. She recovered eventually, but died years later of natural causes. Still the death was far too soon and probably the recovery process from the tumor had weakened her a lot.
My dad still suspects that it was the radiation that came from THE bomb and the other experiments nearby of my grandparents, that caused the tumor in her.
Very much unlikely
Prich038 What are you talking about ?
So, they were doing laps in Lapland?
My grandparents saw the Tsar Bomba's detonation from Finland. They described it as there were two suns and few trees at our family ranch died on the radioactivity which came with wind towards Finland. Those trees are still standing, but has been dead since 60's.
If they woulda gone with that 100 megatons, Nordic countries as well as Russia would still suffer from the consequences of that demonstration of power.
Yeah we could all be dead if it blew away enough of the ozone etc
If that was true there'd be nobody left alive in Murmansk, a city directly between the island and Finland
@@greenockscatman I seem to have used wrong word seemingly 2 years ago. Not radioacticity but fallout. How it was explained to me it was how the rain brought down fallout which killed those trees.
Isn't that where their sub base is at?@@greenockscatman
Fun fact: during the Cold War when the Rosenbergs were convicted of spying on the USA, my great aunt worked as nanny in over watching the houses and babysitting children out in Los Alamos. She was the person who reported the suspicion of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of spying on the USA.
Stop making up things, c'mon, and even if it were true, which I'm sure it's not, the Rosenbergs are widely believed to have been innocent, and yet my country tis of thee cooked them so bad, some witnesses of the execution threw up. So why would that be something to be psyched on? It's just a bizarre lie
Everyday DormRoomCliché I mean my great aunt got a certificate from the US Government for her actions and I can show it to you just to validate my point.
So your great aunt was a snitch... cool story
@@artiomeasterbrook5831 oh stop the only people that bitch about snitches should be in prison for thier activities
@@g94433 yet somehow you seem proud of it.
It's worth noting that some 60% of Castle Bravo's yield was an accident - it was only supposed to go off with five megatons, but scientists at Los Alamos underestimated the speed of neutrons in a H bomb when it came to the supposedly inert Lithium-7 in its fusion core.
The Tsar bomb was a three stage radiation implosion design not a 'layer cake' as stated here. The layer cake design was inferior to the Teller-Ulam concept (staged radiation implosion) that was used in Castle Bravo. Sakharov also quickly hit upon the same idea as Ulam and USSR thermo-nuclear weapons after the first few used radiation implosion.
Simon was referring to the earlier nuclear tests
@@UnchainedAmerica No, he kept referring to layer cake throughout the video. Although he doesn't literally state that the Tsar Bomba was layer cake, he strongly implies it, and never mentions that it was a Teller-Ulam design ("third idea", in Sakharov's terminology) like all other successful H-bombs.
@@beeble2003i wouldn't call the layer cake design "unsuccessful" - it was much less powerful than a true multi-stage hydrogen bomb and not scaleable, but it was an actually deliverable, battle-ready weapon. Ivy Mike was a science experiment that was way too heavy and cumbersome to be delivered by anything smaller than a battleship. Had a war broken out right then and there, the Soviets would have had more powerful weapons in their arsenal.
@@Ludvigvanamadeus Ivy Mike wasn't a bomb -- in the jargon, it was a device, not a weapon. Maybe it's harsh to describe the Soviet RDS-6 series or layer-cake designs as "unsuccessful"; they were, as you say, a deliverable hygrogen bomb, seven months before the US had one. But they were a dead-end, and all design work on them was abandoned after they got the Teller-Ulam design working.
I guess you couldn’t get a hold of those initial Soviet hydrogen bomb test films, eh?😏
Hmmm imagine that 🤔
I literally found dozens of videos by just typing in the name. Do some of the work yourself.
Me and the boys jump into Severny when we feel tired of Pochinki (;
I actually like Yasnaya better!!!
Finally a pubg related comment
There is a mix-up between the original "layer cake" Sakharov design idea and the Teller-Ulam scheme. The latter was scalable, unlike the former, and was the one used in the test in question as well in the first Soviet megaton-range test in 1955.
Yeah, the videos on this channel seem to contain a lot of mistakes like that. "Layer cake" went out in 1953, precisely because it _couldn't_ scale. You can't just add more layers to get a bigger bomb whereas, in principal, you can add arbitrarily many stages to a Teller-Ulam design.
I guess sakharov independently came up with the teller-ulam design too. But yes, his first solution was the sloika.
@@narujohn6984 Unclear whether Sakharov came up with it independently or the GRU :cough: borrowed it from somewhere :cough:
Sakharov did indeed invent the Sloika (a Russian layered pastry), which was tested with the RS-27, generating 400 kT. It was a disappointment to the Soviets who were expecting something to rival the US's thermonuclear tests. The test "a year later" was the RS-37, and it was no layer cake. Sakharov had worked through the American test and independently discovered the same principle that Teller and Ulam had used for the US bomb - the use of radiation rather than physical force to contain and pressurize the secondary long enough to burn the fusion fuel.
To say that Sakharov 'balked" at 100 MT is not realistic. What actually happened was that the Politburo became alarmed about fallout and the PR fallout from the immolation of the bomber crew; they ordered the yield to be lowered. As it was they only barely made it when the shockwave caught up with them 85 km from the drop site.
The plane would have to be traveling 3100mph to be 85km away in 60 seconds lol
Funny how hiroshima is brushed over like a little event
Vids not about Hiroshima
Compared to this, it was a fraction of the event, roughly 1/3,333 of this event.
Manny Jhutti ... compared to the munitions being discussed here, like it or not, the Hiroshima & Nagasaki weapons were were just really big fire-crackers.
@@ephennell4ever true
@@masonhill5450 🤣😂
6:56 Russian hackers editing this video.
That was the moment Simon said: "I wish they did not half the power of the Tsar bomb, so it would've been over and done with humanity. Bunch of suckers!"
They cut that out.
You forgot Klaus Fuchs providing the Russians with info about atomic bomb design.
Aliens watching us blow tf out of home planet like:👁👄👁🍿”they finally made fireworks”
🤦♂️ they are destroying themselves, humans have weird morals
Andrei really Earned that medal!... But for having a consciousness - one of the very best qualities in any human.
Any "What if" story about what would have happened to known history if he had gone for the full 100 megaton?
Most of the explosive energy would be lost into the stratosphere. If anything, the Tsar Bomba was a case study that 'bigger isn't always better' when it comes to offensive strategic weaponry. 25-50 megaton warheads are what you'd want to use to try and crack Cheyenne Mountain open like a coconut, but if you want to lay waste to a large metropolitan area, you're better off putting 20+ 150 kiloton MIRVs on top of an SS-18 and scatter-shotting an area with the world's most destructive version of buckshot.
@@pbdye1607 plus it's less vulnerable to being shot fown
Just read about Krakatoa eruption.
Estimated yield 200 Megatonns.
Humanity's little toys are nothing compared to Volcano's,Asteroids,Comets,GRBs etc.
This is exactly why aliens don’t want anything to do with us
Reading/watching about nuclear explosions always moves me to tears, really
Usually it's about the destruction and torment of people then and for years/decades to come, a literal divine judgment of a fate of doom and torment
Right now I'm having have this nihilistic revelation that no matter where you are and what you're going in the city or even country, from the lowest squatter to the mayor or governor or CEO signing papers in office, nothing, nothing matters in the face of this explosion
People who see nuclear bombs and treat it as an awesome flex of power, have also forgotten that it's a symbol of utter ruin
I'm in love with nukes because of how devastating they are.
I'd actually start a nuclear war if I could.
@@jokuihmehyyppa and you woud die in that nuclear war like everyone else or did you not think of that?
Size can be a bit confusing, because they expand into three dimensions. Roughly 10 megs twice as powerful as 1 meg. This is why they use smaller multi warhead weapons.
Andrew Francis interesting
Agreed, energy output goes up immensely but the actual "footprint" of the explosion increases much slower since a lot of that energy is going straight up into the sky.
Naked Science did a really good video on explosive force.
Andrew Francis yeah not many people get that and just think that the superpowers would have kept developing larger and larger weapons.
Also at this size delivery is an issue. Castle Bravo (US largest) was basically just a scientific experiment and was a large ground based device (the shrimp) which was in no way tactical, unless you could persuade all your enemies to come and stand next to it.
The Tsar Bomba was so heavy that the plane carrying it struggled to fly and it almost caused the plane to crash because of the sudden change of mass when it was released. Not only that but the pilots barely escaped before the fireball filled the sky.
Don Gately link? Sounds interesting
Tsar bomba *was not* a sloika warhead.
It was tellar/ulam warhead.
They are *very* different.
So yeah, they had just detonated the largest bomb humanity had ever imagined... Dollar shave club is an amazing new service...
I absolutely love how in the few videos I've watched he talks about awful situations then uses those situations to slip in his sponsor. This isn't sarcasm I think it's very fun
Novaya Zemlya: "I'm all good, nobody will ever find me way up here...."
...all covered in ice and at the next moment the hottest place on Earth in human history.
Should this video not be more-appropriately sponsored by _ROUBLE SHAVE CLUB,_ comrade...?
bruh
da
Now with glow in the dark uranium blades