NY Times, August 25, 2020
New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded
A Russian nuclear energy agency released formerly classified footage of
the Soviet Union’s 1961 Tsar Bomba test.
A still image from a 30-minute, previously secret documentary on the
largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated.
A still image from a 30-minute, previously secret documentary on the
largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated.Credit...Rosatom
ByWilliam J. Broad <https://www.nytimes.com/by/william-j-broad>
* Aug. 25, 2020,12:58 p.m. ET
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Hydrogen bombs — the world’s deadliest weapons — have no theoretical
size limit. The more fuel, the bigger the explosion. When the United
States in 1952 detonated the world’s first, its destructive force was700
times as great as
<https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/03/us/spy-s-role-in-soviet-h-bomb-now-discounted.html>that
of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
And in the darkest days of the Cold War, the Soviets and the Americans
didn’t only compete to build the most weapons. They each sought at times
to build the biggest bomb of all.
“There was a megatonnage race — who was going to have a bigger bomb,”
said Robert S. Norris,a historian of the atomic age
<https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html>. “And the
Soviets won.”
Last week, the Russian nuclear energy agency,Rosatom
<https://rosatom.ru/en/>,released
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbC7BxXtOlo&feature=youtu.be>a
30-minute, formerly secret documentary video about the world’s largest
hydrogen bomb detonation. The explosive force of the device — nicknamed
Tsar Bomba, or the Tsar’s bomb, and set off on Oct. 30, 1961 — was 50
megatons, or the equivalent of 50 million tons of conventional
explosive. That made it 3,333 times as destructive as the weapon used on
Hiroshima, Japan, and also far more powerful thanthe 15 megaton weapon
<https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/02/27/castle-bravo-the-largest-u-s-nuclear-explosion/>set
off by the United States in 1954 in its largest hydrogen bomb blast.
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From several angles and distances, the video shows the development of
the weapon’s gargantuan mushroom cloud, hinting at the bomb’s churning
power and apocalyptic force.
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Russia has previously released photosand video clips
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu88gb1EpmI>of the device,known
officially as RDS-220
<https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170816-the-monster-atomic-bomb-that-was-too-big-to-use>.The
Barents Observer <https://thebarentsobserver.com/en>, a publication in
Norway,earlier reported
on<https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2020/08/rosatom-releases-previously-classified-documentary-video-50-mt-novaya-zemlya-test>the
video’s full release. It features closed captions in English, as well as
surges of triumphal music.
“Top secret,” reads the opening caption.
In an interview,Alex Wellerstein
<https://web.stevens.edu/facultyprofile/?id=2054>, a nuclear historian
at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., called the
release “a nice addition” to the growing body of public information. He
said the bomb’s description in the video documentary was much fuller
than the public would normally receive, but nonetheless carefully
avoided the secret technical details “despite appearing to show the
innards.”
Dr. Norris, the author of “Racing for the Bomb,” cited formerly
classified American documents that revealed the largely dismissive
reaction of American military officials to the colossal blast.
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Roswell L. Gilpatric
<https://history.defense.gov/DOD-History/Deputy-Secretaries-of-Defense/Article-View/Article/585241/roswell-l-gilpatric/>,
the deputy secretary of defense in 1961, said ina speech
<https://books.google.com/books?id=qVUUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA545&lpg=PA545&dq=%E2%80%9Cso+questionable+that+it+was+not+worth+developing%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=QMqKrm0IT5&sig=ACfU3U1mflPOJlwZLzEp0KbmNjPdvMervw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKv77nsrbrAhUWRTABHXluDMcQ6AEwAXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cso%20questionable%20that%20it%20was%20not%20worth%20developing%E2%80%9D&f=false>just
days before the giant Soviet test that American nuclear experts had
judged the military value of such a blockbuster “so questionable that it
was not worth developing.”
ImageThe mushroom cloud from the bomb’s detonation was so large that the
Soviet photographers had a hard time capturing its full dimensions.
The mushroom cloud from the bomb’s detonation was so large that the
Soviet photographers had a hard time capturing its full dimensions.
Credit...Rosatom
A top-secret document written in July 1963, nearly two years after the
blast, noted that “the United States presently has the capability of
designing” a weapon of such destructive force.
It never appeared.
Over decades, the big challenge for the makers of the nation’s nuclear
arsenal (as well as Russia’s) turned out to be devising not big hydrogen
bombs but small ones, which were judged as more useful for targeted
attacks. Miniaturization let hydrogen bombs be made small enough so that
many warheads could fit atop a single missile (putting many cities
simultaneously at risk) or that they could be sent into war aboard
trucks, submarines and other non-aerial platforms.
The secrets of miniaturization proved so remarkably difficult to master
that they eventually becamethe stuff of spy scandals
<https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/07/us/spies-vs-sweat-the-debate-over-china-s-nuclear-advance.html>.
Still, as Dr. Norris put it, history has long credited the Russians for
creating and demonstrating the fearsome power of “the big one” and
providing a terrifying object lesson in why hydrogen weapons, as a
category, are known as unthinkable.
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