The Insane Design of Soviet Nukes

this is little boy the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima this is the hbomb Castle Bravo the most powerful nuclear weapon the United States has ever detonated and this this is RDS 220 also known as SAR bomba the Emperor of all bombs it was built in the Soviet Union and here it was called Big Ivon Russia recently Declassified secret footage of its 1961 detonation [Music] at 50 megatons SAR bomba is the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated it yielded the most powerful human M explosion in history about 3,800 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima

if dropped over a major city the consequences would be unimaginable and if it weren't for a last minute decision it would have been twice as powerful and perhaps twice as catastrophic the lead physicist who engineered it was so unsettled by his creation that he devoted the rest of his life to campaigning against the nuclear arms race this is the surprisingly unknown terrifying story of SAR bambba Fern it's the end of the 50s the Soviets and the Americans are neck and neck in the nuclear arms race but the Americans are winning and Nikita Kev leader of

the Soviet Union knows it tensions between the two superpowers have cooled down a bit in recent years kusf and US President Eisenhower have recently met and both expressed a desire for more Harmony in 1958 they both agreed to a voluntary Test Ban moratorium on nuclear weapons worldwide many are hopeful that a peaceful coexistence is on the horizon in May of 1960 the Soviet Union and the United States are scheduled to meet in Paris for a summit one of the main points of the agenda is disarmament they hope to formalize a testband treaty of nuclear weapons

both leaders and the World At Large are well aware of how existentially dangerous nuclear warfare is but just a few days before the summit it all go south tensions bubble to a rolling boil when an American spy plane is shot down from deep within Soviet territory the Americans claimed that it was just a weather plane that's been blown off course but the Soviets are able to present evidence that the plane was indeed used for Espionage the captured pilot admits he works for the CIA the americans' LIE turns into a PR disaster for the Eisenhower Administration

kushev opens the Paris Summit with an enraged rebuke of the United States He demands an apology from Eisenhower the US president refuses and kushev storms out no treaty is signed kushev thinks he needs to show the world how tough and formidable the Soviet Union is he's famously prickly impulsive and aggressive a few years ago he told Western Powers history is on our side We will bury you now is the time to put his money where his mouth is because of the temporary ban on testing Innovation efforts on both sides of the arms race have slowed

they're both focused on steadily growing their supply building more bombs instead of developing new tech not all breakthroughs have to be destructive sometimes technology is being developed to help us like udo's all-in-one platform giving you everything you need to manage your own business for example Udo offers a great website builder app no Tech skills don't worry you won't need any simply follow these four steps what type of website do you need what colors match your style which Pages or feature should it have what overall design do you prefer udoo takes care of the rest you

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start building your own website for free in 1961 the Americans inaugurate John F Kennedy as their new president kushev has no respect for him he sees him as young inexperienced and weak this might be the perfect moment to show the world what the Soviet Union is capable of so he summons scientists from Aras 16 the Soviet Los Alamos to the Kremlin he tells them it's time to break the test band moratorium and start testing nukes again one of these scientists is Andre sakarov he's a star physicist for the Soviet effort he led the creation of

a stage thermonuclear weapon independently of any intelligence gathered from the Americans his called the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb but sakarov has become uneasy with his role in the arms race he's found that even testing the weapons is catastrophically lethal even if no human is within the blast radius he has calculated that for every megat ton of nuclear weapons detonated there would be over 6,600 premature deaths worldwide due to the cancers and genetic abnormalities produced by the radioactivity even if these deaths occur very gradually over thousands of years his conscience still can't take it

so so he tells kushev that it's unnecessary to test anymore isn't it enough to have built the bombs and only use them in an absolute Last Resort scenario they already know their Tech is good kushev is furious sakov don't try to tell us what to do or how to behave we understand politics I'd be a jellyfish and not chairman of the Council of ministers if I listen to people like sakarov kushev demands that the scientists make suggestions what kind of bombs should they develop there's not a lot of new ideas ready to be tested due

to the recent focus on stockpiling over innovating so someone simply suggests going bigger why not 100 megatons kushev loves the idea and latches onto it 100 megatons is an absurdly high number up until that point the most powerful bomb ever detonated was Castle brao a 15 Megaton bomb the Americans tested in 1954 the total blast power expended in all of World War II is 3 megatons and that includes the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki previous plans to test bombs in this Megaton range have been halted because the effects of such a large weapon were

unknowable scientists weren't able to reliably predict meteorological conditions at the time which would affect the severity of the radioactive fallout and how far the particles could travel for all they know such an enormous blast could engulf Moscow in a cloud of poisonous radiation what could even be gained from testing 100 megatons for kushev it's obvious the Soviet Union would assert its dominance let the 100 Megaton bomb hang over the capitalists like a Sword of Damocles and so the race to build the biggest deadliest bomb the world will ever see is underway sakarov is still uneasy

about the risks of testing nuclear weapons but he's the best of the best so he ends up leading the team of physicists he hopes that this at least will be the last atmospheric test ever required maybe from this one absurdly big blast the Soviet Union would learn what they need to know and move on that unfortunately would not be the case the Project's timeline is grueling kushev insists that from initial conception to detonation the scientists get exactly 16 weeks so sakurovs team is building while still designing in Just 4 months they whip out a design

for an entirely untested yield range they build the bomb they construct the visionable and fusion materials into the correct shapes and formulate a plan for an allegedly safe test they hope for the best the team is forced to skip crucial parts of the design process there isn't even time for mathematical analysis instead they're working with approximations doubts start to creep in will it even work and how dangerous is this really either way they're about to find out in October 1961 1 kushev formally announces to the world that the Soviets are retreating from The Test Ban

agreement he cites us aggression as the reason he hints his scientists are developing bombs in the Megaton range now that the world knows what sakurovs team is up to the pressure is on for the physicists to deliver a viable weapon otherwise the whole point propaganda value would be lost the world reacts with fear outrage and protest in response the Americans abandon the testband moratorium as well and start vigorously testing nukes again themselves the Kennedy administration denounces the SAR bomba as pointless terrorism nothing but a propaganda weapon but recently Declassified documents indicate that Kennedy's Administration considered

emulating it all while denouncing it publicly the UN appealed to the Soviets to cancel the plan but kushev pushes forward at the end of October SAR bomba is ready it is in and of itself enormous a weapon with 100 Megaton explosive power needs a lot of uranium and fision fuel so big ion is roughly the size of a school bus 8 m long and weighs 25 tons the bomb is so bulky that it needs its own specially modified plane to deliver the payload it doesn't really make sense to make bombs this big it's just not

strategic if actually used in battle saroma would be easy to spot lumbering through the sky and could be quickly shot down and it's too bulky to deliver via missile in the decades since SAR bomba the nuclear weapon states have focused on developing smaller Warheads these are far easier to deploy the largest nuclear weapon in the US Arsenal today is about 40 times less powerful than SAR bomba even in 1961 it was generally understood that bigger isn't necessarily better that's because explosive power doesn't correspond one to one with blast damage explosions scaled the cubic route not

linearly so while a 100 Megaton bomb indeed releases 10 times more more energy than a 10 Megaton bomb it will only damage about twice as much area American newspapers at the time characterized kev's experiments as not only horrifying but idiotic pointing out that if five weapons at 5 megatons each are detonated they will cause damage to far more area than a 150 Megaton super bomb and these smaller bombs are far easier to deliver but actual use is not the point of saroma it wasn't Built For War it was built for Glory it's meant to make

the world tremble at the thought of Soviet power it's a city Destroyer to be used only as an absolute Last Resort the blast damage radius could be roughly calculated the remote Arctic Island Nova zamia is chosen as a test site it's one of the main nuclear test sites of the Soviet Union because they figure it's far enough away to not bother any humans but radioactive fallout is more difficult to predict it can vary considerably with weather conditions and weapon design SCI SST have been surprised before the 1954 Castle Bravo test produced far more radioactivity than

anticipated requiring evacuation of the Island's downwind from the test site what is known at the time is that thermal radiation scals better than blast damage in relation to explosive power meaning a bigger blast generally means more radiation sakarov can't stop thinking about all the lives it will take he's taken great care to make the SAR bomba as clean as can be it's designed to minimize the release of radioactive fallout as much as possible but still even a relatively clean nuke like SAR bomba isn't safe according to his calculations the test of one clean 100 Megaton

weapon will release enough radiation that over time will cause 660,000 premature deaths deaths he would be partially responsible for so he makes one last minute drastic change in design right before the weapon test He suggests using an substance like lead instead of uranium 238 this will cut the blast yield down from 100 to 50 megatons crev agrees he's facing a lot of backlash so scaling back might be politically smart as long as the triggering device works and the bomb goes off the world will still know SAR bomba is capable of detonating 100 megatons if the

Soviets ever feel they need to in the future just in case they ever need to take out New York City or Los Angeles all in one go [Music] the pilot carrying big Ivon source to 10 km above the archipelago Nova slia a smaller plane flies alongside him ready to film the blast and monitor the Fallout the engineers believe the crew only has a 50% chance of survival big Evon is designed to detonate midair to give the crew even a chance of Escape the bomb is outfitted with a massive parachute meant to slow The bomb's Descent

it should be enough time fingers crossed at 11:32 Moscow time from 4,000 m above the ground the Bombadier drops the bomb what exactly makes our bomba so powerful is still partially a mystery Russia continues to guard that secret what we do know is that its design is most likely different from other thermonuclear weapons normally a thermonuclear weapon or hydrogen bomb consists of two stages it's a nuclear bomb within a nuclear bomb the first stage uses nuclear fision or splitting atoms to produce immense heat and pressure this triggers the second stage nuclear fusion or combining atoms

or far more energy is Unleashed Fusion of hydrogen Isotopes under extreme temperatures releases an incredibly powerful explosion far stronger than a single stage atomic bomb like the one dropped on Hiroshima the bomba however is a three-stage hydrogen bomb with an unusual triggering mechanism what sets it apart is that it most likely uses two near simultaneous primary triggers to ignite the third stage more evenly and symmetrically maximizing its explosive power while other three-stage thermonuclear weapons exist the Innovative use of synchronized primary triggers is unusual if not unique it's long been considered extremely difficult to achieve synchronization

of primaries but somehow sakurovs team managed when you detonate a thermonuclear weapon you force something into existence unlike anything else on Earth the first fraction of a millisecond is just a luminous flash it's silent light has no sound but don't look at it directly it could cause blindness from more than 80 km away SAR boma's flash is seen from 1,000 km or 630 M away it lasts for over a minute far longer than any other new clear Flash before or since then tremendous heat the light superheats the air to 100 million de C that's four

to five times hotter than the center of the Sun a high press Fireball reps violently and expands at several million km per hour what follows is a thunderous blast it's likely the loudest human-made sound in history after about 10 seconds SAR Bamba's bright orange Fireball grows to a radius of nearly 5 km the Fireball engulfs everything in its wake the ice covered archipelago is now red and scorched anything in the ring of absolute destruction 35 km is vaporized Ground Zero is completely leveled nothing no trees no buildings no rocks remain 35 seconds pass the fireball

balloons above the earth and the iconic mushroom cloud emerges presiding over the hell unleash below it's 64 km above the Earth 7 times High higher than Mount Everest soaring above the stratosphere and piercing the mesosphere all this creates a shock wave felt all around the world all the way in New Zealand it encircles the globe not once not twice but three times SAR Boma shock wave catches up with the planes that are 115 km from the point of detonation they drop nearly a kilometer and are nearly down but the pilots managed to recover control and

survive 55 km away from ground Z all buildings in the abandoned Village of severni are completely destroyed 1,148 km away in Soviet territories houses collapse and radio communications fail Windows shatter as far away as [Music] Finland but big evon's detonation doesn't kill anyone directly if SAR bomba were dropped on a city as large as New York or Washington DC it would be instantly demolished concrete would explode to vanish Without a Trace metal would evaporate SAR Bamba's Fireball never made contact with the ground and so its radioactive fallout was relatively small compared with its yield it

is considered one of the cleanest nukes ever dropped still its radioactivity was caught in the stratosphere and encircled the Earth for years dispersing all across the globe in 2018 Russian scientists found significantly high levels of radiation trapped in nearby glaciers those Glaciers are melting at record speed into the barren sea a sea that yields up to 4.5 million tons of fish per year for human consumption glaciers that were previously sinks of atmospheric contaminants are now becoming secondary sources of radioactive fallout which environmentalists predict will become increasingly relevant in the coming decades due to saramba and

120 other nuclear detonations and no bya indigenous populations living nearby have been exposed to significantly High radiation levels they experience higher levels of chromosomal diseases and birth defects than other populations in Russia facts that only emerged later because the Soviet Union covered up incidents of radiation sickness some locals call it the archipelago of death just after detonation the SAR bomat test is condemned internationally and domestically sakarov emerges as is a vocal critic of nuclear testing and of Soviet leadership he campaigns vigorously for an end to atmospheric testing for his efforts he receives the Nobel Peace

Prize in 1975 the Kremlin permits him from leaving the Soviet Union to receive the award in response to public pressure the United States and the Soviet Union signed the partial nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 which prohibits atmospheric testing nowadays people often say that if SAR bambba was good for anything at all it would be for catalyzing the this treaty when brought up it's often dismissed both in the United States and the former Soviet Union as a reckless political stun a weapon too impractical and dangerous to ever be attempted by anyone else but kushev is

hardly the only person in history intent on creating the biggest blast possible recently Declassified files from the United States indicate that plans had been underway to build much much bigger bombs in the 1950s Edward Teller father of the US hydrogen bomb was obsessed with creating the biggest bang possible he and his team were working on two secret projects called nman and Sundial nman would be a 1,000 Megaton bomb to set off Sund dial a 10,000 Megaton bomb that's 10 billion tons of TNT 670,000 times the power of little boy dropped on Hiroshima at least enough

to burn all of France and perhaps much worse still nothing close to that scale has been tested and we don't know if the traditional laws will apply at that level when teller first proposed Sund dial at a secret meeting in Los Alamos most of the scientists present expressed horror such an enormous blast could poison the entire planet unbothered teller and his team continued to build nen and even plan to test it and when the US military learned about the project there was considerable enthusiasm for realizing Sund but thankfully the test never occurred