Planet Earth saw the largest man-made explosion in history on Oct. 30, 1961. It was the middle of the Cold War and the Soviet Union was looking to intimidate America and NATO. America had taken the lead in the nuclear arms race after developing the first atomic bomb. On August 29, 1949, thanks to help from Manhattan Project turncoat Klaus Fuchs, the USSR exploded its first nuke. That event confirmed Pres. Truman’s decision to develop the hydrogen bomb to stay in the lead. The first H-Test was November 1, 1952, but the Soviets matched that on August 12, 1953. The competition moved to making bigger bombs and developing delivery systems. The foes took different approaches. The U.S. decided to use small and medium size bombs dropped from bombers. The B-52 was invented to penetrate the Soviet Union and drop bombs on cities and military targets. While the U.S. concentrated on accuracy, the Soviets went with bigger, so they did not have to be so accurate. The Tsar Bomba was the insane culmination of this strategy.
The bomb was huge – 26 feet long with a diameter of 7 feet. It weighed 60,000 pounds. It was dropped by a TU-95 bomber. A plane that would have been incapable of penetrating American air space. But the idea was to awe the world. The bomb exploded 13,000 feet about deserted islands in the Arctic Ocean. The crew of the bomber were told they had a 50-50 chance of surviving. The explosion was 50 megatons (originally the idea was to make it 100 megatons!). It was 1,570 times bigger than both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. And the explosion was 10 times all the bombs dropped in WWII. The mushroom cloud was 60 miles wide at the top. An eyewitness reported: “It seemed to suck the whole world into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.” Thankfully, the radioactivity was limited because of the height of the explosion. If it had been dropped at the height of the Hiroshima bomb, it would have caused severe damage to buildings within a 150 -mile radius. Although dropped over an uninhabited area, wooden buildings were destroyed in towns 100 miles away.
In planned coincidence, Nikita Khrushchev planned the test to happen the same day that the body of Josef Stalin was removed from its internment with Lenin’s body. He was buried along with other heroes of the Revolution. Khrushchev wanted to distract the Russian public from this ultimate act of destalinization. The unintended result was worldwide revulsion at this threat to mankind. It was not long after that the major powers signed a treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/tsar-bomba-largest-atomic-test-world-history
https://science.howstuffworks.com/tsar-bomba.htm
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