Russia releases previously unseen footage of world’s largest nuclear explosion
The Soviet Union detonated the Tsar Bomba in a test almost 60 years ago.
Russia has released never-before-seen footage of the world’s largest nuclear explosion.
The Soviet Union detonated the so-called Tsar Bomba, a hydrogen bomb, in a test which was carried out almost 60 years ago.
In the footage the bomb, which had the force of 50 million tons of conventional explosives, explodes in an immense fireball and a 60km-high mushroom cloud rises.
It was discharged 4,000 metres over the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago above the Arctic Circle in October 1961.
‘The testing of an exceptionally powerful hydrogen load… confirmed that the Soviet Union is in possession of a thermo-nuclear weapon with power of 50 megatons, 100 megatons and more,’ a narrator is heard telling the audience.
Views in the video were captured from several angles by cameras installed on the ground and on board two Soviet aircraft.
The documentary was published online for the first time by Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom last week as part of events to mark 75th anniversary of Russia’s atomic industry.
The Tsar Bomba – the King of Bombs – was the largest hydrogen bomb ever and was claimed to be 3,300 times as destructive as the weapon that levelled Hiroshima.
It was developed between 1956 and 1961 as part of the Soviet Union’s effort towards the nuclear arms race.
The 30-minute film, which opens with a ‘top secret’ title, features all the test stages – from transportation of a 26-ton weapon in an aviation bomb casing by railway, to post-explosion measurements of the radioactive fallout.
The Tsar Bomba far surpassed the largest explosion the United States has ever conducted, which is a 15-megaton ‘Castle Bravo’ hydrogen bomb detonated on Bikini Atoll in 1954.
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