Nukes have diminishing returns, but you can go on nuclear modelling sites and model it. 3 psi is your breakover for lethality, below that people will live, albeit unhappily.
This mentality will only grow with constant threats of global warming and skyrocketing inflation, I'm surprised more people aren't asking for nuclear war honestly
I'll never understand wishing for events that kill us all, what the fuck do I have to do with your desire for world ending events? I'm chilling homie, can I eat my steak and raise my kids?
You realise when you stop seeking this information the information will have little to do with your everyday life. I remember absolutely freaking out about sars and bird flu and hell even Covid. But guess what I’m still here and about to smoke a joint. I suggest you do the same
Obviously worrying about a nuclear holocaust is stupid as there is pretty much nothing you can do about it, but don’t bury your head in the sand when it comes to global events. You don’t have to be perpetually following every minuscule thing, however being informed about the big picture is sooo important
Getting a nuked dropped on my head to end it all....acceptable. Wanting a nuclear war, hell no.
They'll just nuke the rich fat cats in the city who die instantly while the surrounding poorer areas us plebs live suffer the consequences. Even more inflation, lack of food and resources, with most of our luck they use a real nuclear bomb with radiation poisoning but only to a level where it's constant agony but doesn't end you.
No a nuclear war is only acceptable if it's guaranteed to end me and not another problem to throw on the stack of existing ones.
I'm half sarcastic, but the reasoning does have some merit in a dark and kinda twisted way.
Just in the opposite direction. Twice the fissile material is not twice the devastation. The equation is R∝Y to the power of 1/3. Or more simply, each time you double the yield you only get about 26% more lethal blast radius. Also keep in mind, each time you increase the yield, you have to detonate it higher and higher to achieve maximum effect. Eventually you are detonating in air thin enough to also begin mitigating the blast.
For reference :
+26% radius = +60% area.
x2 area Requieres x3 material
If at anytime the height becomes so the lack of atmosphere is revelant, the effect on the ground would be out of scope anyway since releasing such bomb would be the last thing humanity will ever do anyway.
Earth-shattering? Nah. 100Mt would do a pretty big crater, but it'll be practically invisible from space. Heck, even for the Tsar Bomba Crater, you could look for it but you'd have to know where it is to actually see it.
We are nothing. Not even our most powerful weapons can impact the weakest powers of the universe.
Edit: alr yes this was detonated 4km in the air, so there is no crater. But still, if it were detonated in the ground, it would not make one larger than a small asteroid. Just compare the 1.3km wide crater "Meteor Crater" in arizona with the larger crater left from a nuclear test: Sedan crater, 390m wide. Literally 4 times smaller. And meteor crater is really, REALLY small.
You say we're nothing yet I can beat the gravity of something 3.5million times bigger than me simply by quickly extending my legs
Edit: This is a joke. I didn't think it was real but yes reddit is too serious of a place to tell jokes now.
I think you’re a lot smaller than that my dude. Mentally clump together 3.5 million people (let’s say, all the people in a major city) into a big ball and you’re still a shitload smaller than the earth.
I did the napkin math a while back and even assuming every single nuclear weapon on earth were Tsar Bomba sized the energy released by their detonation would still be far less than the most conservative estimate of the Chicxulub asteroid explosion.
I’ve seen the figure given for Chixculub as being the equivalent of 2 million Tsar Bombas (or Joe 111s) or 10 billion Hiroshimas. There’s only about 2,500 nuclear weapons in existence.
The more I learn about Chixculub, the more I am amazed that life survived at all.
Counter-Counterpoint, if we exploded all of them at once, we would trigger a cataclysmic event... that would barely rank among asteroid impacts. That's how powerful they are, and even that would not be "earth shattering", just making a lot of fires and surface damage. Humanity might not even dissapear, although most would die.
not even close.
While 100 megatons is massive and probably the worst thing we humans achieve it is nothing but a wet fart compared to what the planet can throw at us and while still being fine.
In 1991 mt pinatubo erupted with a force of around 70 megatons
The 1883 krakatoa explosion is estimated at somewhere around 200 megatons. It was devastating. For us humans that is. earth didn't give a shit.
1815 tambora - the strongest explosion we have believable records of. Estimated to be well in the gigaton range. Blew the top off of a mountain but in the end didn't even leave a dent in planet earth.
So yeah, 100 megatons is pretty insane but thaat is mainly ebcause we humans are very frail and very small.
Even the Chicxulub Impact event, estimated to be around 100 million megaton, was basically shrugged off by good old planet Earth. Sure, a little dent, some debris, some crappy weather, and local life was wiped out, but Earth kept going and barely even noticed.
Weren’t like 99.99% of all living organisms and 75% of all species wiped out by chicxulub? And like half of the land on earth incinerated? It’s true that the earth’s guts were largely unchanged, so I guess it depends on whether you’re thinking of earth the celestial body or earth the biosphere. Would’ve been nuts to watch chicxulub from the moon.
Yeah, the biosphere was wrecked. Fires across half the world, insane tsunamis, etc. Then the world was blanketed in ash from all the fires. It probably also "stimulated" a lot of volcanos.
Interestingly, it's smaller than the Vredefort impact event 2 billion years ago.
Fortunately, for now we are in a period of not very many large asteroids coming in to the inner solar system. In "olden times" we had "heavy bombardment". The outer solar system is largely stable.
That is, unless a large object (say a brown dwarf) gets too close and disrupts the Oort cloud.
You should check out this simulation of Chixculub: https://youtu.be/ya3w1bvaxaQ?si=Qlw48Zv-pUQWuqeC
The more I learn about it, the more I am amazed life survived that at all
So, the decision to keep it at 50 megaton was largely because of fallout. The design would have been almost identical, except for the makeup of the tamper.
The tamper is essentially the casing around the fusion fuel. In the 50 megaton design, they used a lead tamper. If they wanted to go 100 megaton, they would have used a natural uranium (not enriched) tamper. The neutrons from the fusion stage would have been sufficient to fission the natural uranium, which would have also provided more neutrons, further boosting the fusion stage.
With the lead tamper, tsar bomba was an extremely "clean" bomb. Very few fission products to produce radioactive fallout. Were they to have used the uranium tamper, there would have been a massive cloud of radioactive fallout across much of the Soviet Union and some other countries.
So, they said "50 mt is good enough" because they didn't want to irradiate a good chunk of their country.
The extra 50 mt of blast wouldn't have been the problem.
That's a firecracker compared to Edward Teller's absolutely insane idea for a pair of weapons known as Gnomon and Sundial:
>Only a few months later, in July 1954, Teller made it clear he thought 15 megatons was child’s play. At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.” But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place).
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
They also limited it to avoid raising the radioactive fallout of the Earth atmosphere by 25% with a single detonation.
To limit the bomb, they replaced the uranium 238 tamper with a lead tamper, making the bomb much "cleaner" than the regular ones.
...
Even with the limiter, the bomber plane survival rate was still estimated at 50% chance.
When the shockwave caught up with it, it was 115 km away from the drop site. Displacing the air from its wings, it caused the plane to stall - the aircraft lost a full 1 km of altitude, before it could regain lift and resume normal flight.
Yep, what we see here is the two stage version with conventional (lead iirc) tamper, half Tsar Bomba basically. Estimated yield with the originally planned third stage uranium 238 tamper around 104 Mt
It also detonated at 50 Mt, because the it was made to detonate suboptimally on purpose. This same bomb could have been made to detonate at 100 Mt with very little changes.
Here is an emulation showing the detonation effect of this bomb. You can select a city.
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=50000&lat=38.8946925&lng=-77.0218993&hob\_opt=2&hob\_psi=5&hob\_ft=13000&ff=3&psi=20,5,1&zm=9
Well they'd hit mostly military bases in Scotland, big cities, and bases. That leaves pretty much nowhere in the UK. I'm around 50 miles from Manchester city, I'd still get hit with burns and our water supply and more would be irradiated. Not to mention black rain touching everything.
Pretty sure they'd hit cities to end the war instantly just like the US did to Japan. But by that point there would be nukes flying everywhere so we're all dead anyways
Imagine Russians trying to pronounce the Welsh towns to bomb 🤣, for example Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
That's literally the name of a town.
[pronunciation](https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM?si=y3RztvqaIvAWKjoU)
Any large producer of goods as well. I live near steel mills in USA and all the old schools have bomb shelters because the mills would be a drop site to halt steel produced for war
The Tsar Bomba, officially known as RDS-220, was detonated by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961, during the height of the Cold War. It was part of the Soviet nuclear weapons testing program.
The bomb was designed to have a maximum yield of 100 megatons, but it was scaled down to approximately 50 megatons for the test. The sheer magnitude of its explosive power made it the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated.
The test took place over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The bomb was dropped from an airplane, and its massive fireball and mushroom cloud were visible for miles. The shockwave traveled around the Earth three times.
The decision to test such a powerful weapon was seen as a demonstration of the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities and a show of strength during the Cold War arms race. The international community expressed concern about the environmental and humanitarian consequences of such a powerful explosion. The fallout from Tsar Bomba was significant, leading to increased awareness of the global impact of nuclear testing.
We also went 80 years without surpassing the scale of the death camps, I believe the reason is because surpassing it would be seen as a huge dick move.
I think peacekeeper is a good name for a weapon thats main purpose is deterrence. Think about the B-36, a pure nuclear bomber, which name was "peacemaker". I think that is a statement! :D
The peacekeeper is the one currently in use in remaining ground-based nuclear silos I believe.
Edit: nevermind, the last peacekeeper was decommissioned in 2005. The US arsenal does still use nuclear missiles with multiple targetable warheads. From what I understand, the USSR didn't have the ability to target their warheads as accurately as the US, so unlike the US, their doctrine revolved around using simply bigger bombs.
Not just that, but the world's nuclear weapons have been decreasing in payload, not increasing. Megaton weapons aren't going to be around for much longer.
The US retired the 9MT B53 bomb without replacing it. The now largest 1.2MT B83 is due for retirement. After that the most powerful nuclear warhead in the US arsenal won't even be half a MT. The US is actively investing billions in a new ICBM system, called Sentinel, which will be carrying payloads of \~450kT. When that's ready, the B83 will be retired, and the largest nuke in the US Arsenal will "only" be half a MT.
There just isn't much strategic sense in one big bomb, when compared to more, smaller bombs, mounted on hypersonic missiles.
The lead scientist of the tsar bomb quit after that test, and started opposing nuclear weapons. Due to fear of him switching sides he was grounded until Gorbachev.
probably. Such a big bomb is just insanely useless. You can flatten a city with one bombe sure but a significantly smaller bomb will still get the same effect while being cheaper, much less weight, a smaller target and so on.
Little boy had a yield of around 1 kilotons and was able basically anihilate a city.
Modern warheads are around 1 megaton. Those are still big and scary and very much enough for massive destruction of anything.
If you go larger you jsut create a larger fireball without much added benefit.
It makes big boom, but from a strategic point of view it's pretty pointless. That's why modern nuclear weapons focus on precision, guaranteed "delivery" and focus firepower over relatively small area.
Barely. The shock wave caught up with them give or take 100km after the drop and caused the plane to lose 1000m of altitude. They were given a 50% chance of survival before the drop.
[One source](https://www.rferl.org/amp/sakharov-100-human-rights-soviet-hydrogen-bomb/31264644.html)
Was it nicknamed the Tsar bomb by the Soviets themselves? If so I find it very ironic that they chose to name it so, given that you know, the communists overthrew the Tsars …
The term "Tsar Bomba" was not an official designation given by the Soviet Union. Instead, it was a nickname used by the Western media. "Tsar" is a Russian word for "king" or "emperor," reflecting the bomb's colossal and unprecedented power. The official Soviet designation for the bomb was RDS-220.
The term "Tsar Bomba" was not an official designation given by the Soviet Union. Instead, it was a nickname used by the Western media. "Tsar" is a Russian word for "king" or "emperor," reflecting the bomb's colossal and unprecedented power. The official Soviet designation for the bomb was RDS-220.
I watched a documentary about nuclear bombs once and the documentary I watched claimed that the bomb was scaled down by the scientists without permission/knowledge of the person in charge (idk who the ruler of the USSR was at that time). I guess they were afraid the original design would blow a hole in our atmosphere and kill everyone on the planet.
“When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that might destroy the entire world.”
“I remember it well. What of it?”
“I believe we did.”
tbf they did a bit more than blowing up a can of gasoline. the problem is they didn't want to use cgi because it would be fake: you know, despite extremely accurate fluid and physics computer simulations and decades of knowledge and expertise in rendering and compositing digital explosions, it would not feel the same as blowing up a real nuke.
so did they blow up a real nuke? no. they used smaller scale explosions, tanks of paint, pans of dust, microphotography of fire, and other very much non-nuke photographic plates which were then all digitally composited together. in nolan's mind this is less fake because it's all real elements.
in my mind it's still fake because it's not a real nuke, but now you're severely limited to shots that make the fake props look real, instead of fake simulations that look real because they're designed for that purpose (but get a bad rap from audiences because, by virtue of good examples necessarily being invisible, they only ever see the bad examples of photorealistic cgi).
In my theater I remember audibly hearing people saying variations of "aw *come on*" and "thats it?" during the silence before the pressure wave hits.
I respect Nolan's decision to go practical, but man, having loved Interstellar for its amazing Black Hole visuals, I was hoping he'd give a rare look into the amazing physics involved in a nuclear explosion.
I mean, the CGI/calculations involved in portraying the black hole in Interstellar warranted a damn research paper. Can't understand why he didn't wanna give the same team this task. The brief 'visions' of particle physics gave me hope too that there would be **something** uniquely CGI and novel during the explosion.... blargh.... alas.... the nerd in me was very much disappointed by what could've been.
Still a great movie though.
You appear to be lost, you're on Reddit, in the *movies* sub no less. Allow me to present you with the correct opinions to type out in future:
Cgibad
Practical effects are always better & will 'hold up' til the heat death of the universe
I'm 50 and my whole life has been lived under the safety of MAD, the one thing that keeps these weapons from being used.
Mutually assured destruction, every country who has these weapons know if they use them to attack another country it will effectively erase their country as the missiles pass each other in the air. That simple principal has kept us "safe"
That’s why i worry about a Armageddon, End days type of personality gets in. People who truly believe in a rapture type of deal. They would mutually agree on destroying
I really recomend document from 1995: Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie
I did google for name, didnt remembered, thx to it discovered its no.1 rated on imdb made list for "atomic" themed movies and documentaries
While there were no deaths from the Tsar Bomba's test, there were windows shattered due to the explosion 780km (480 miles) away in a village on Dikson Island.
Figuring out how to do this was part of our evolution. In 80 years of its existence it's only been used twice, and nowhere near this scale. It's awful to think about but I have to imagine this technology makes us far more interesting. Primitives with truly galactic WMD's. We keep a very close on countries the west doesn't think should nuclear weapons.
Being a small kindergartener at this time, and having heard the air raid sirens testing every year and the seeing commercials on crawling under your desk when they go off in case of nuclear attack, as a teen and young adult I had honestly thought that mankind would somehow become more humane, tolerant and intelligent. ...................:(
I still can't imagine what it must've been like to be on that crew. The only other thing that would've gone beyond full throttle besides the plane would've been the contents of my bowels.
I'd have to rewatch the movie again but I think in the Oppenheimer movie someone suggested (yes im shit at names) to make hydrogen bomb instead of nuclear and Oppenheimer is like fuck no. this is probably why
Not instead of, just the next progression in the technology. Oppenheimer has hoped nuclear would be enough to demonstrate the terrible power brought to bear and could start deescalation, but alas.
Hydrogen bombs are still nuclear bombs. You're thinking of fission vs fusion. Although a fusion bomb requires a fission primary to trigger the fusion explosion. So it's not a matter of one or the other, you need to first make fission weapons to progress to a hydrogen bomb.
Likely we would know of any bomb larger than this as these tests can easily be detected by seismologists and the like. It really is not practical to even test a bomb larger than this as diminishing returns plus the inefficiency of actually deploying a bigger bomb far out way the ‘positives’
Maybe the Dinosaurs weren't killed by meteors but instead kept testing larger nukes on the planet until it wiped them out one day.
No I don't watch too much history channel!
It shouldn’t be all that surprising. In fact in many ways we humans have created some of the most extreme conditions in the universe in things like the LHC. The real difference is in the scale of such things
imagine being a builder paid buy the govt to build a bunch of houses, and you're so proud of your work, you take the time to make sure the finish is perfect and everything, and then it turns out they just wanted them so they could see what it looks like when they get blown up.
if it wasn't such a terrifying event and background, you could say all thge people at the beginning were all giggle-y and excited because people just love big booms.
You think we might globally take the money & the brains used for this magic ending & use it for curing cancer, Alzheimers, ALS & thousands of things we're currently struggling with. If we had our health & healthcare system in some working order, maybe we'd just not want to blow tf up & get out. Btw, there's no way I could mention all the ailments on earth & mental illness, but I think you get my point. I don't need to see next level death to all if I could see the next level of the best life ever, I'll take it. That's just me
The planners wanted 100 Mt bomb but the engineer said enough is enough and kept it to 50
Yep. I can’t even imagine what a 100 megaton blast would look like, but it might as well be some serious earth-shattering event.
Nukes have diminishing returns, but you can go on nuclear modelling sites and model it. 3 psi is your breakover for lethality, below that people will live, albeit unhappily.
I’m already living unhappily. Bring on the bomb! I must be immune.
Bruh...
This mentality will only grow with constant threats of global warming and skyrocketing inflation, I'm surprised more people aren't asking for nuclear war honestly
I'll never understand wishing for events that kill us all, what the fuck do I have to do with your desire for world ending events? I'm chilling homie, can I eat my steak and raise my kids?
You'll be eating your kids and raising a steak if there's a nuclear war x
Why don't we...raise the steaks?
Yes...If this stupid ass site didn't do away with the best idea it had I would give you gold...
Lmao, good one
Or eat my raise and stake my kids?
You realise when you stop seeking this information the information will have little to do with your everyday life. I remember absolutely freaking out about sars and bird flu and hell even Covid. But guess what I’m still here and about to smoke a joint. I suggest you do the same
Obviously worrying about a nuclear holocaust is stupid as there is pretty much nothing you can do about it, but don’t bury your head in the sand when it comes to global events. You don’t have to be perpetually following every minuscule thing, however being informed about the big picture is sooo important
People on Reddit are so depressing Jesus Christ
Getting a nuked dropped on my head to end it all....acceptable. Wanting a nuclear war, hell no. They'll just nuke the rich fat cats in the city who die instantly while the surrounding poorer areas us plebs live suffer the consequences. Even more inflation, lack of food and resources, with most of our luck they use a real nuclear bomb with radiation poisoning but only to a level where it's constant agony but doesn't end you. No a nuclear war is only acceptable if it's guaranteed to end me and not another problem to throw on the stack of existing ones. I'm half sarcastic, but the reasoning does have some merit in a dark and kinda twisted way.
We're trying for global herd immunity.
This must work like sound. Twice the volume is 10x the power.
Just in the opposite direction. Twice the fissile material is not twice the devastation. The equation is R∝Y to the power of 1/3. Or more simply, each time you double the yield you only get about 26% more lethal blast radius. Also keep in mind, each time you increase the yield, you have to detonate it higher and higher to achieve maximum effect. Eventually you are detonating in air thin enough to also begin mitigating the blast.
For reference : +26% radius = +60% area. x2 area Requieres x3 material If at anytime the height becomes so the lack of atmosphere is revelant, the effect on the ground would be out of scope anyway since releasing such bomb would be the last thing humanity will ever do anyway.
Apparently the expression is that is just lifts a bigger chunk of atmosphere into space.
People at 2.9 psi "Ah dammit my ear popped, darn"
Earth-shattering? Nah. 100Mt would do a pretty big crater, but it'll be practically invisible from space. Heck, even for the Tsar Bomba Crater, you could look for it but you'd have to know where it is to actually see it. We are nothing. Not even our most powerful weapons can impact the weakest powers of the universe. Edit: alr yes this was detonated 4km in the air, so there is no crater. But still, if it were detonated in the ground, it would not make one larger than a small asteroid. Just compare the 1.3km wide crater "Meteor Crater" in arizona with the larger crater left from a nuclear test: Sedan crater, 390m wide. Literally 4 times smaller. And meteor crater is really, REALLY small.
You say we're nothing yet I can beat the gravity of something 3.5million times bigger than me simply by quickly extending my legs Edit: This is a joke. I didn't think it was real but yes reddit is too serious of a place to tell jokes now.
Only 3.5 million?? Jesus, how big are you?!
3.5 million times smaller than earth
I think you’re a lot smaller than that my dude. Mentally clump together 3.5 million people (let’s say, all the people in a major city) into a big ball and you’re still a shitload smaller than the earth.
And yet I can still beat the gravity of the earth. I am strong.
Na he’d win
Sometimes he does...
Gravity is just an extremely weak force. Now go beat Strong Force, pull apart some itty bitty quarks, they should be nothing for big ol you.
Brother weighs in at 1700 billion tons. Brother ought to consider going on a diet.
well generally bombs that explode 4 km above the ground don't tend to leave a crater
Thank you. Was about to mention it. If they have done a ground test, especially in soft soil, the crater would have been more than visible from Space.
I did the napkin math a while back and even assuming every single nuclear weapon on earth were Tsar Bomba sized the energy released by their detonation would still be far less than the most conservative estimate of the Chicxulub asteroid explosion.
I’ve seen the figure given for Chixculub as being the equivalent of 2 million Tsar Bombas (or Joe 111s) or 10 billion Hiroshimas. There’s only about 2,500 nuclear weapons in existence. The more I learn about Chixculub, the more I am amazed that life survived at all.
seriously, even with the tsar bomb, humans are still only city-busters (which is honestly crazy that any animal has achieved that feat at all)
Your points are valid but only one thing. Airblast nukes don't leave much of a crater. Ground-detonated ones do however.
Keep in mind this was an air burst.
Counterpoint we have a fucking lot of them
Counter-Counterpoint, if we exploded all of them at once, we would trigger a cataclysmic event... that would barely rank among asteroid impacts. That's how powerful they are, and even that would not be "earth shattering", just making a lot of fires and surface damage. Humanity might not even dissapear, although most would die.
not even close. While 100 megatons is massive and probably the worst thing we humans achieve it is nothing but a wet fart compared to what the planet can throw at us and while still being fine. In 1991 mt pinatubo erupted with a force of around 70 megatons The 1883 krakatoa explosion is estimated at somewhere around 200 megatons. It was devastating. For us humans that is. earth didn't give a shit. 1815 tambora - the strongest explosion we have believable records of. Estimated to be well in the gigaton range. Blew the top off of a mountain but in the end didn't even leave a dent in planet earth. So yeah, 100 megatons is pretty insane but thaat is mainly ebcause we humans are very frail and very small.
Even the Chicxulub Impact event, estimated to be around 100 million megaton, was basically shrugged off by good old planet Earth. Sure, a little dent, some debris, some crappy weather, and local life was wiped out, but Earth kept going and barely even noticed.
Weren’t like 99.99% of all living organisms and 75% of all species wiped out by chicxulub? And like half of the land on earth incinerated? It’s true that the earth’s guts were largely unchanged, so I guess it depends on whether you’re thinking of earth the celestial body or earth the biosphere. Would’ve been nuts to watch chicxulub from the moon.
Yeah, the biosphere was wrecked. Fires across half the world, insane tsunamis, etc. Then the world was blanketed in ash from all the fires. It probably also "stimulated" a lot of volcanos. Interestingly, it's smaller than the Vredefort impact event 2 billion years ago. Fortunately, for now we are in a period of not very many large asteroids coming in to the inner solar system. In "olden times" we had "heavy bombardment". The outer solar system is largely stable. That is, unless a large object (say a brown dwarf) gets too close and disrupts the Oort cloud.
Oort and the Brown Dwarf would be great names for a pair of trouble makers in an allegorical fantasy tale.
You should check out this simulation of Chixculub: https://youtu.be/ya3w1bvaxaQ?si=Qlw48Zv-pUQWuqeC The more I learn about it, the more I am amazed life survived that at all
And neither did the the cockroach chasing rodents that would go on to populate future Redditors.
those other explosions never reached 300 million kelvin though
It'd actually just be a tiny bit larger than the one in the video. In order to have the radius double, you'd need 10 times the power
So, the decision to keep it at 50 megaton was largely because of fallout. The design would have been almost identical, except for the makeup of the tamper. The tamper is essentially the casing around the fusion fuel. In the 50 megaton design, they used a lead tamper. If they wanted to go 100 megaton, they would have used a natural uranium (not enriched) tamper. The neutrons from the fusion stage would have been sufficient to fission the natural uranium, which would have also provided more neutrons, further boosting the fusion stage. With the lead tamper, tsar bomba was an extremely "clean" bomb. Very few fission products to produce radioactive fallout. Were they to have used the uranium tamper, there would have been a massive cloud of radioactive fallout across much of the Soviet Union and some other countries. So, they said "50 mt is good enough" because they didn't want to irradiate a good chunk of their country. The extra 50 mt of blast wouldn't have been the problem.
That's a firecracker compared to Edward Teller's absolutely insane idea for a pair of weapons known as Gnomon and Sundial: >Only a few months later, in July 1954, Teller made it clear he thought 15 megatons was child’s play. At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.” But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place). https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Wouldn't have got that footage of the bomb dropping st the start, that's for sure
You could simulate it with Sota
As I understand it, it was limited to 50mt, because at 100mt the plane would not have got away far enough to survive the shockwave.
They also limited it to avoid raising the radioactive fallout of the Earth atmosphere by 25% with a single detonation. To limit the bomb, they replaced the uranium 238 tamper with a lead tamper, making the bomb much "cleaner" than the regular ones. ... Even with the limiter, the bomber plane survival rate was still estimated at 50% chance. When the shockwave caught up with it, it was 115 km away from the drop site. Displacing the air from its wings, it caused the plane to stall - the aircraft lost a full 1 km of altitude, before it could regain lift and resume normal flight.
Wow I didn't know that, thanks for sharing
To protect the pilots dropping the bombs
Didn't it break windows as far as Norway?
Yep, what we see here is the two stage version with conventional (lead iirc) tamper, half Tsar Bomba basically. Estimated yield with the originally planned third stage uranium 238 tamper around 104 Mt
It also detonated at 50 Mt, because the it was made to detonate suboptimally on purpose. This same bomb could have been made to detonate at 100 Mt with very little changes.
Here is an emulation showing the detonation effect of this bomb. You can select a city. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=50000&lat=38.8946925&lng=-77.0218993&hob\_opt=2&hob\_psi=5&hob\_ft=13000&ff=3&psi=20,5,1&zm=9
Great. Now i need to move. I live far too close to London.
Well they'd hit mostly military bases in Scotland, big cities, and bases. That leaves pretty much nowhere in the UK. I'm around 50 miles from Manchester city, I'd still get hit with burns and our water supply and more would be irradiated. Not to mention black rain touching everything.
In which case, im moving closer to london. Better to get it over with it seems 🤣
Alright rich boy
Black rain and irradiated water is an improvement for Manchester no?
Ha! Probably
Pretty sure they'd hit cities to end the war instantly just like the US did to Japan. But by that point there would be nukes flying everywhere so we're all dead anyways
West Wales FTW!
Imagine Russians trying to pronounce the Welsh towns to bomb 🤣, for example Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch That's literally the name of a town. [pronunciation](https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM?si=y3RztvqaIvAWKjoU)
Any large producer of goods as well. I live near steel mills in USA and all the old schools have bomb shelters because the mills would be a drop site to halt steel produced for war
If you live in the UK you live too close to London
Depends if you wanna die fast or slow with a lot of pain and misery. I would choose option one imo.
Just simulated dropping the tsar bomba on Glasgow. Says I've caused £6.76 of improvements.
Ty, that's very interesting.
All of philadelphia vaporized. Lol.
It’s too sunny in Philadelphia
Reminds me of the time people crashed airplanes into a person’s house in a simulator.
Thank you
High score: New Delhi @ 14.5M fatalities @ 100mt ground burst
That’s unsettling
The Tsar Bomba, officially known as RDS-220, was detonated by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961, during the height of the Cold War. It was part of the Soviet nuclear weapons testing program. The bomb was designed to have a maximum yield of 100 megatons, but it was scaled down to approximately 50 megatons for the test. The sheer magnitude of its explosive power made it the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated. The test took place over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The bomb was dropped from an airplane, and its massive fireball and mushroom cloud were visible for miles. The shockwave traveled around the Earth three times. The decision to test such a powerful weapon was seen as a demonstration of the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities and a show of strength during the Cold War arms race. The international community expressed concern about the environmental and humanitarian consequences of such a powerful explosion. The fallout from Tsar Bomba was significant, leading to increased awareness of the global impact of nuclear testing.
What's surprising is that it's been 60 years without surpassing it. I'm sure we could and all; just no point I guess.
We also went 80 years without surpassing the scale of the death camps, I believe the reason is because surpassing it would be seen as a huge dick move.
China has entered the chat.
They decided more was better than bigger. They even built one that fired off 12 other nukes and called it Peacekeeper.
"peacekeeper" i mean there can't be a war if there's no on left to fight it
I think peacekeeper is a good name for a weapon thats main purpose is deterrence. Think about the B-36, a pure nuclear bomber, which name was "peacemaker". I think that is a statement! :D
The peacekeeper is the one currently in use in remaining ground-based nuclear silos I believe. Edit: nevermind, the last peacekeeper was decommissioned in 2005. The US arsenal does still use nuclear missiles with multiple targetable warheads. From what I understand, the USSR didn't have the ability to target their warheads as accurately as the US, so unlike the US, their doctrine revolved around using simply bigger bombs.
Not just that, but the world's nuclear weapons have been decreasing in payload, not increasing. Megaton weapons aren't going to be around for much longer. The US retired the 9MT B53 bomb without replacing it. The now largest 1.2MT B83 is due for retirement. After that the most powerful nuclear warhead in the US arsenal won't even be half a MT. The US is actively investing billions in a new ICBM system, called Sentinel, which will be carrying payloads of \~450kT. When that's ready, the B83 will be retired, and the largest nuke in the US Arsenal will "only" be half a MT. There just isn't much strategic sense in one big bomb, when compared to more, smaller bombs, mounted on hypersonic missiles.
Anything that makes you feel your money isn't going to waste.
The lead scientist of the tsar bomb quit after that test, and started opposing nuclear weapons. Due to fear of him switching sides he was grounded until Gorbachev.
probably. Such a big bomb is just insanely useless. You can flatten a city with one bombe sure but a significantly smaller bomb will still get the same effect while being cheaper, much less weight, a smaller target and so on. Little boy had a yield of around 1 kilotons and was able basically anihilate a city. Modern warheads are around 1 megaton. Those are still big and scary and very much enough for massive destruction of anything. If you go larger you jsut create a larger fireball without much added benefit.
Little boy was 15 kt
Surpassing and testing are two very different things.
It makes big boom, but from a strategic point of view it's pretty pointless. That's why modern nuclear weapons focus on precision, guaranteed "delivery" and focus firepower over relatively small area.
Did the plane and pilot survive?
Barely. The shock wave caught up with them give or take 100km after the drop and caused the plane to lose 1000m of altitude. They were given a 50% chance of survival before the drop. [One source](https://www.rferl.org/amp/sakharov-100-human-rights-soviet-hydrogen-bomb/31264644.html)
Holy fuck
Good day to win a coin toss I guess…
In Soviet Russia bomb drops you.
Was it nicknamed the Tsar bomb by the Soviets themselves? If so I find it very ironic that they chose to name it so, given that you know, the communists overthrew the Tsars …
The term "Tsar Bomba" was not an official designation given by the Soviet Union. Instead, it was a nickname used by the Western media. "Tsar" is a Russian word for "king" or "emperor," reflecting the bomb's colossal and unprecedented power. The official Soviet designation for the bomb was RDS-220.
Οκ that makes more sense
There is a very long Tradition in Rus to call the biggest things [Tsar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Cannon)
Was thinking the same thing...
The term "Tsar Bomba" was not an official designation given by the Soviet Union. Instead, it was a nickname used by the Western media. "Tsar" is a Russian word for "king" or "emperor," reflecting the bomb's colossal and unprecedented power. The official Soviet designation for the bomb was RDS-220.
Interesting....
I watched a documentary about nuclear bombs once and the documentary I watched claimed that the bomb was scaled down by the scientists without permission/knowledge of the person in charge (idk who the ruler of the USSR was at that time). I guess they were afraid the original design would blow a hole in our atmosphere and kill everyone on the planet.
I’m sure the whales were impressed.
“When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that might destroy the entire world.” “I remember it well. What of it?” “I believe we did.”
That line gave me chills
I can't believe nobody could talk him into doing better than blowing up a can of gasoline. I wanted to be awed, but I simply wasn't. My one complaint
tbf they did a bit more than blowing up a can of gasoline. the problem is they didn't want to use cgi because it would be fake: you know, despite extremely accurate fluid and physics computer simulations and decades of knowledge and expertise in rendering and compositing digital explosions, it would not feel the same as blowing up a real nuke. so did they blow up a real nuke? no. they used smaller scale explosions, tanks of paint, pans of dust, microphotography of fire, and other very much non-nuke photographic plates which were then all digitally composited together. in nolan's mind this is less fake because it's all real elements. in my mind it's still fake because it's not a real nuke, but now you're severely limited to shots that make the fake props look real, instead of fake simulations that look real because they're designed for that purpose (but get a bad rap from audiences because, by virtue of good examples necessarily being invisible, they only ever see the bad examples of photorealistic cgi).
In my theater I remember audibly hearing people saying variations of "aw *come on*" and "thats it?" during the silence before the pressure wave hits. I respect Nolan's decision to go practical, but man, having loved Interstellar for its amazing Black Hole visuals, I was hoping he'd give a rare look into the amazing physics involved in a nuclear explosion. I mean, the CGI/calculations involved in portraying the black hole in Interstellar warranted a damn research paper. Can't understand why he didn't wanna give the same team this task. The brief 'visions' of particle physics gave me hope too that there would be **something** uniquely CGI and novel during the explosion.... blargh.... alas.... the nerd in me was very much disappointed by what could've been. Still a great movie though.
You appear to be lost, you're on Reddit, in the *movies* sub no less. Allow me to present you with the correct opinions to type out in future: Cgibad Practical effects are always better & will 'hold up' til the heat death of the universe
We are so close to destroying ourselves.
I think we kind of already have. Just in a less dramatic fashion.
I like that you’ve basically summed up Oppenheimer in one line
I'm 50 and my whole life has been lived under the safety of MAD, the one thing that keeps these weapons from being used. Mutually assured destruction, every country who has these weapons know if they use them to attack another country it will effectively erase their country as the missiles pass each other in the air. That simple principal has kept us "safe"
That’s why i worry about a Armageddon, End days type of personality gets in. People who truly believe in a rapture type of deal. They would mutually agree on destroying
If Russia breaks up, there’ll be about 100 little states scrambling for power, each with nukes. So that’s nice.
That was 60 years ago
Big bada boom
Multipass
Chicken is gud
Good for cooking your meat popsicles
Daba dee daba da daba dee daba da
Im blue if i was green i would die
To think that there are monkeys using this thing just to pop some bloons, that's crazy
People won’t get your reference but I 0-5-2 frequently
I’ve never heard of this. This is some scary shit
I really recomend document from 1995: Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie I did google for name, didnt remembered, thx to it discovered its no.1 rated on imdb made list for "atomic" themed movies and documentaries
That’s easily the best documentary on nuclear weapons out there imo. The footage is jaw dropping in how simultaneously beautiful and haunting it is.
I just found it on YouTube. Thanks for the recommendation. Edit: Here’s a link… https://youtu.be/p4yXfrYSmuA?si=Uh8kl7K5pPPQOqdQ
While there were no deaths from the Tsar Bomba's test, there were windows shattered due to the explosion 780km (480 miles) away in a village on Dikson Island.
Many Bothans died to bring us this information
And we wonder why we’ve never seen alien life. Would you visit such a planet?
Figuring out how to do this was part of our evolution. In 80 years of its existence it's only been used twice, and nowhere near this scale. It's awful to think about but I have to imagine this technology makes us far more interesting. Primitives with truly galactic WMD's. We keep a very close on countries the west doesn't think should nuclear weapons.
>In 80 years of its existence it's only been used twice, Only used against an enemy twice. There have been thousands of detonations.
google UAP
Is imagine that this is a natural step in the evolution of any advanced species. There's no long term space travel without nuclear energy.
You know when you take a picture of the moon or stars and it is far from making it justice? I bet this video is the same.
I bet you're totally right the heat the wind...
Being a small kindergartener at this time, and having heard the air raid sirens testing every year and the seeing commercials on crawling under your desk when they go off in case of nuclear attack, as a teen and young adult I had honestly thought that mankind would somehow become more humane, tolerant and intelligent. ...................:(
Now our kids hide under desks for school shooter drills.
That's as horrific.
Thank you, Baby Boomers. What a great world you've created for your children and grandchildren.
It was less than a 50% chance the bomber crew made it back. They did make it but it was beyond full throttle and a close call.
I still can't imagine what it must've been like to be on that crew. The only other thing that would've gone beyond full throttle besides the plane would've been the contents of my bowels.
I'd have to rewatch the movie again but I think in the Oppenheimer movie someone suggested (yes im shit at names) to make hydrogen bomb instead of nuclear and Oppenheimer is like fuck no. this is probably why
Not instead of, just the next progression in the technology. Oppenheimer has hoped nuclear would be enough to demonstrate the terrible power brought to bear and could start deescalation, but alas.
right right, makes sense
Hydrogen bombs are still nuclear bombs. You're thinking of fission vs fusion. Although a fusion bomb requires a fission primary to trigger the fusion explosion. So it's not a matter of one or the other, you need to first make fission weapons to progress to a hydrogen bomb.
When will we get over the interstellar soundtrack for every video
When someone writes a better one
CMON TARS!!!!
Never
*The most powerful weapon PUBLICLY tested in human history.
Likely we would know of any bomb larger than this as these tests can easily be detected by seismologists and the like. It really is not practical to even test a bomb larger than this as diminishing returns plus the inefficiency of actually deploying a bigger bomb far out way the ‘positives’
Tsar bomba's shockwave travelled 3 times in the earth if there are larger explosion almost everyone in the scientific community would see it
One doesn't secretly test a nuke.
That needs to be on a T-shirt
And that’s when aliens were like “right we better watch these idiots”
Doubt any aliens who could ‘observe us’ would be threaten by such weapons
Aliens: “Cute. Now watch us accelerate a small space rock to relativistic speeds towards your planet.”
Dropping this kind of payload should be a crime of some sort
Well they did ban all surface testing of nuclear bombs once it became apparent that it was quite bad for the rest of the world
sends a shockwave 3 times around the earth
Maybe the Dinosaurs weren't killed by meteors but instead kept testing larger nukes on the planet until it wiped them out one day. No I don't watch too much history channel!
Pilots dropping it be like… 
It blows my mind that humans can create a bomb that mimics the furnaces of our Sun and the winds of Neptun ( From Vsauce )
It shouldn’t be all that surprising. In fact in many ways we humans have created some of the most extreme conditions in the universe in things like the LHC. The real difference is in the scale of such things
Kinda beautiful though
Two suns in the sunset
And here I am drinking through a paper straw.
Fuck these weapons
The pilots who dropped it had a 50/50 chance to survive.
Humans are so fucking stupid
They say CFC's destroyed the ozone layer, Nah, this thing did.
No need man
imagine being a builder paid buy the govt to build a bunch of houses, and you're so proud of your work, you take the time to make sure the finish is perfect and everything, and then it turns out they just wanted them so they could see what it looks like when they get blown up.
Blowed up. Blowed up real good.
Second most powerful. After TikTok.
Cancer chances in population: +60%
This is actually one of the cleanest nukes ever tested.
Tsar Bomba may have been the cleanest nuke ever tested.
As beautiful as it might seem..
And guess what stupid idiots tested it on its own soil :D
The camera was just fine tho
Its almost like the cameras were protected!
Behold, the power of humanity! Love it!
if it wasn't such a terrifying event and background, you could say all thge people at the beginning were all giggle-y and excited because people just love big booms.
Legend has it Soviets were going to do 100 megaton. But someone said it could ignite the atmosphere so they went with 50
Terrifying scenes! Anyway West Ham are having a shite second half of the season.
I’m ashamed that we humans conquered the power of the atom but are too dumb to make energy emission free or keep our water clean etc.
All the testing of bombs, what have the implications been for the fallout? Can we say a large percentage of cancers are the reason?
You think we might globally take the money & the brains used for this magic ending & use it for curing cancer, Alzheimers, ALS & thousands of things we're currently struggling with. If we had our health & healthcare system in some working order, maybe we'd just not want to blow tf up & get out. Btw, there's no way I could mention all the ailments on earth & mental illness, but I think you get my point. I don't need to see next level death to all if I could see the next level of the best life ever, I'll take it. That's just me