Written for the last paragraph.
Read the rest first to see why.

Tsar Bomba / "King Bomb" / Big Ivan / RDS-220
Very old and well covered but a fascinating read.

        http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html

World's largest ever nuclear bomb.
This was so large and so heavy that it was (almost 
certainly) never intended as a weapon. It was a political 
statement in a period where such statements tended to be 
made in even louder manners than at present. (India and 
Pakistan arguably come closest to keeping the flag flying).

50 megaton or  maybe 57 (reasons for uncertainty explained 
on page above).
The tamper stages used lead rather than Uranium which halved 
the yield but reduced fallout to less than 4% of what it 
would otherwise have been as 97% of the energy came from 
fusion. At full normal yield it would have added 25% to all 
nuclear atmospheric fallout to date.

In the largest ever US H bomb more of the energy came from 
the fission stages than from fusion.

RDS-220 was air burst at 13,000 feet and achieved a 300 psi 
pressure at ground level.
The drop aircraft and a flying lab plane both survived, but 
the ride would have been "exceeding interesting. The drop 
plane was at 45km away at detonation. Total on the ground 
destruction extended out to about 25 km.

What inspired me to bring this all up was one small piece of 
"information".
The test was at the Soviet Mityushikha Bay test range, 
testfield D-2, Novaya Zemlya Island
(located above the arctic circle in the Arctic Sea). 
Approximately 73.85N, 54.50E

AND

There is reason to believe that a specially modified US 
KC135 Stratotanker, sent to gather data on the explosion, 
was CLOSER to the bomb when it exploded than either soviet 
plane and came home with scorched paint :-). An interesting 
job to have if you can get it. They don't make jobs like 
that these days.



        Russell





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