The world's largest atomic bomb explosion 54 years ago

The thermonuclear bomb AN606 nicknamed Tsar Bomba - Tsar bomb is one of the most feared explosive devices in history, showing the unlimited destruction of nuclear weapons.

Test the world's most feared bomb

The three-stage bomb of the Tsar was built in the Soviet Union with the equivalent of 50 megaton bombs, equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT, destroying more than 3,800 bombs dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. The largest atomic bomb ever built and exploded.

On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union exploded the Tsar bomb test at an altitude of 4000m on an island in the Arctic Circle called Novaya Zemlya (new land). The bomb is carried by plane.

Gas bombs are bombs that use hydrogen fusion reaction, which has much greater destructive power than atomic bombs. Pure fission and fusion weapons (one stage) have the equivalent of hundreds of kiloton explosions, and when there are 3 explosive stages, the weapon's destructive power increases several times.

"Mushroom cloud (after the explosion) is as high as 60 km," said the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). "There may be a 3rd degree burn at a distance of hundreds of kilometers. The destructive ring has a total radius of 35 km."

In fact, the original desired bomb by Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev is equivalent to 100 megaton. But the researchers found that such a device would produce dangerous emissions that polluted areas away from the test site. The new bomb dropped 97% of the emission.

The mushroom-shaped cloud with a 56km diameter created from the Tsar bomb explosion looked from a distance of 161km.(Photo: Wikipedia).

According to Nuclear Weapons Archive, the bomb's design has nothing new about technology. It uses a thermonuclear explosion to trigger a larger explosion, which can create a chain of explosions that have increased incessant power.

The Tsar bomb test was conducted when the United States was trying to create a thermonuclear weapon that could be transported by air, and conducted Castle Bravo on the Pacific in 1954. Castle Bravo was the codename of America's most powerful hydrogen bomb, with an explosive equivalent of a third of the Tsar bomb.

The Tsar Bomb is how the Soviet Union and the late General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Khrushchev displayed strength in the most intense period of the Cold War, when the Berlin Wall was being built and the US possessed capable missiles. Intimidating Moscow, according to Michael Fitzgerald and Allen Packwood, the book's author "Out of the cold: The Cold War and Its Legacy".

Krushchev proved that the Soviet Union could build weapons with scary abilities. A BBC report on the explosion said British officials immediately recognized the Soviet Union had made an unprecedented big explosion.

However, the size of the Tsar bomb has little practical application. It was so large that it was difficult to transport by ballistic missiles, on the battlefield it not only destroyed the enemy but also destroyed the comrades. For atomic bombs, which are small and light enough to be contained in ballistic missiles, it is more important to create an explosion with a fireball as big as the city.

The Cuban missile crisis and the removal of nuclear warheads on the Soviet Western hemisphere occurred a year after the Tsar Bomba test. The United States and the Soviet Union found that making bombs that could not be transported by missiles was meaningless, and transporting by airplanes was difficult, the two sides did not conduct a test of the Tsar bomb size afterwards.

This shows that people can build powerful equipment with technology levels from decades ago, although it lacks applications, and there are no technological barriers to making more powerful weapons, more alarming.