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Tsar Bomba: The

Largest Atomic Test
in World History
The combined force of the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombings was minuscule in
comparison to the Tsar Bomba, the most
awesome nuclear weapon ever detonated.

August 29, 2020

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The nuclear arms race that originated in

the race for atomic weapons during
World War II reached a culminating point
on October 30, 1961, with the detonation
of the Tsar Bomba, the largest and most
powerful nuclear weapon ever
constructed.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, placed
the United States in an apparently
unchallengeable position as the world’s
only possessor of nuclear weapons. But
that primacy didn’t last long. The Soviet
Union had made halting progress in its
own nuclear weapons program during the
war, and in 1945 Soviet Premier Joseph
Stalin ordered an intensification of these
efforts. Soviet penetration of the British
and American atomic weapons programs
thanks to the activities of spies such as
Klaus Fuchs aided the efforts of Soviet
scientists to design and construct their
own weapons.

Klaus Fuchs courtesy of National Archives UK.

The Soviets successfully tested their first

atomic weapon on August 29, 1949, after
which both superpowers upped the ante
by working furiously to develop the far
more powerful thermonuclear weapons,
or hydrogen bombs. The United States
got there first, testing their Ivy Mike Test
on November 1, 1952; but once again the
Soviets were close behind. Soviet
scientist Andrei Sakharov, heading his
country’s research into thermonuclear
weapons (thanks again in part to
information provided by Fuchs) oversaw
the detonation of a hydrogen bomb on
August 12, 1953 at the Semipalatinsk test
site in what is now Kazakhstan.

The Ivy Mike thermonuclear test, November 1,

1952. Courtesy of The Comprehensive Nuclear-
Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) photo stream.

From there the United States and the

Soviet Union carried out a further series
of open-air tests of atomic weapons.
Great Britain emulated these with open
air atomic weapons tests in the late 1950s
(France would follow with tests in
Polynesia in the 1960s and
beyond.) While the Americans focused on
perfecting accurate delivery systems for
small to medium size atomic devices,
however, the Soviets concentrated on
building larger and larger devices of
almost unimaginable power. The Tsar
Bomba was the outcome.

The site chosen for testing this device was

Mityushikha Bay on Severny Island in the
Arctic Circle. Sakharov also played a
significant role in designing this weapon,
which incorporated multiple inter-
reacting stages and was 26 feet long,
almost seven feet in diameter, and
weighed almost 60,000 pounds. A
Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber was
designated to deliver the device from
34,000 feet. The bomb would be
attached to a parachute to slow its
descent to detonation at 13,000 feet,
giving the bomber and its escort
additional time to escape at least thirty
miles away before detonation. Even so,
the crewmen were told that they only had
a 50 percent chance of survival (they
barely made it.)

A Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber. Courtesy US

Navy.

The detonation was astronomically

powerful—over 1,570 times more
powerful, in fact, than the combined two
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The Tsar Bomba’s yield was 50
megatons: ten times more powerful than
all of the ordnance exploded during the
whole of World War II. The mushroom
cloud was 25 miles wide at its base and
almost 60 miles wide at its top. At 40
miles high, it penetrated the
stratosphere. Everything within three
dozen miles of the impact was vaporized,
but severe damage extended to 150 miles
radius—enough to entirely annihilate any
modern major city, including suburbs.
Windows in faraway Norway and Finland
were shattered by the force of the blast.

Said one aerial eyewitness: “The clouds

beneath the aircraft and in the distance
were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea
of light spread under the hatch and even
clouds began to glow and became
transparent. At that moment, our aircraft
emerged from between two cloud layers
and down below in the gap a huge bright
orange ball was emerging. The ball was
powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly
and silently it crept upwards... Having
broken through the thick layer of clouds
it kept growing. It seemed to suck the
whole Earth into it. The spectacle was
fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”

Castle Bravo Test on Bikini Atoll, March 1, 1954.

Courtesy of the US Department of Energy.

The resulting radioactive fallout might

have been catastrophic, not just for the
Soviet Union but for its neighbors. And it
would have, if the Tsar Bomba’s original
concept—yielding an almost
inconceivable 100 megatons—had been
pursued. Fortunately, because of the
height at which the device was
detonated, the accompanying five-mile-
wide fireball was repelled away from the
surface by the force of its own shockwave
and did not make contact with the earth,
thus greatly reducing the amount of
fallout. But the results might easily have
been very different.

Andrei Sakharov and President Ronald Reagan

at the White House, 1988. Courtesy National
Archives.

A test of this magnitude could not have

been concealed, and indeed now-Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev had every
intention of shocking the world by the
Tsar Bomba’s power. However,
condemnation was instantaneous—not
just from the United States and its allies,
but from the whole world. Up to this
point, the United States and the Soviet
Union (and Great Britain) had carried out
hundreds of open-air nuclear weapons
tests. Andrei Sakharov, horrified not just
by the Tsar Bomba but by the cumulative
effects of the emissions of all of these
tests, became a strong supporter of
imposing limitations on these tests in
future.

President John F. Kennedy signs the Partial Nuclear

Test Ban Treaty on October 7, 1963. Courtesy John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Perhaps the only beneficial result of the

Tsar Bomba’s world-threatening display
was the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of
August 5, 1963, signed by the United
States, the Soviet Union and Great
Britain. Even today, however, the power of
the Tsar Bomba—and much more—lies
within easy grasp of every nuclear-
capable nation.

From Hiroshima to Human

Extinction: Norman Cousins
and the Atomic Age
In 1945 the American intellectual, Norman
Cousins, was one of the first to raise terrifying
questions for humanity about the successful
splitting of the atom.

LEARN MORE

CONTRIBUTOR

Ed Lengel, PhD
Edward G. Lengel is the former Senior
Director of Programs for the National
WWII Museum’s Institute for the Study
of War and Democracy.

Topics:
Manhattan Project ,
Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War
and Democracy

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