The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba

The Tsar Bomba test, which involved the Soviet Union testing a hydrogen bomb that was the most potent nuclear weapon ever built and tested, was conducted in the early hours of October 30, 1961.

Over 50 megatons, or the equivalent of 50 million tons of ordinary explosives, were put into the Tsar Bomba. That is more than 1,500 times stronger than the combined force of the atomic bombs detonated on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is 10 times more potent than all the weapons used in World War Two.

The Tsar Bomba had a number of other monikers and code names, including Big Ivan, Project 7000, JOE 111, or Kuzka’s mother (a Russian expression that essentially means “we’ll teach you a lesson in a brutal way”). Its official designation was the Soviet RDS-220, which roughly translates as “the King of Bombs.”

The test was documented in never-before-seen video in 2020 by Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, albeit the video has since been taken down from YouTube. A portion of it can be seen in the video player below.

The bomb was dropped above Severny Island’s tip in the northern Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya. To give the crew ample time to avoid the subsequent detonation, it had to be dropped from an aircraft with a parachute attached because it was so strong. Even then, the crew’s survival was not guaranteed.

A blaze 8 kilometers (5 miles) broad and a mushroom cloud 64 kilometers (40 miles) high were produced by the bomb in a burst of white light.

According to a Soviet videographer who witnessed the explosion, “the huge flare lit up the clouds beneath the airplane and in the distance.” Even the clouds started to glow and turn translucent as the sea of light under the hatch spread. A large bright orange ball was erupting from the gap below our airplane as it emerged from between two cloud layers at that same moment.

“Like Jupiter, the ball was strong and haughty. It climbed silently and slowly. After piercing the dense cover of clouds, it continued to expand. The entire earth appeared to be sucked into it, they continued.

The show was spectacular, unbelievable, and supernatural.

Surprisingly, the bomb was dropped within 34 miles, or 54 kilometers, from Severny, a supposedly populated town. It was reported that the town’s wooden and brick structures were all instantaneously destroyed. The number of fatalities among humans has never been made public. Even reports of windows being broken in Norway and Finland were made. Despite the blast’s strength, the bomb’s design resulted in surprisingly little fallout.

Practically speaking, the Tsar Bomba was too large and unwieldy to ever be used. In fact, the astounding size of the explosion is frequently mentioned as one of the impetuses for the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, in which the US and USSR decided to halt nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space, and underwater.

Unfortunately, people are still gathering these horrific weapons all throughout the world. As of March 2022, there were roughly 12,700 nuclear warheads deployed worldwide. Around 1,200 of them are in the possession of the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, while the remainder almost 90% are the property of just two nations: the United States and Russia.