Talk:Tsar Bomba/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Why so far north? Why not in Semipalatinsk Test Site?

Probably to avoid local nuclear fallout contaminating inhabited areas. Even Castle Bravo caused a fallout plume that was 280 miles long - and it had only a third to a quarter of this test.--Cancun771 10:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

This page, "Tsar Bomba" says about Hiroshima:

"If detonated at full yield, the force of this bomb would have been approximately 6,500 times the 15-16 kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima."

But the "Kiloton" wikipedia, which points to this page, says:

"The Little Boy weapon dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of approximately 13 kilotons. Thus, a megaton is equivalent to roughly 77 Hiroshima bombs."

Could the authors discuss this and resolve the difference? The person who wrote 13 kilotons may have knowledge no one else on the web seems to.

The estimates of the Hiroshima bomb are all over the map -- I've seen it pegged by relatively reliable sources at ranges from 12 to 18 kt. It was not a controlled setting, obviously, so there are some difficulties in calculating such a figure exactly. Hence, I imagine, all of the "approximately"s. --Fastfission 01:58, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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Does anyone happen to have some image or video material of this bomb, or does anyone know if such material exists?

Video of the bomb's explosion is in Peter Kuran's Trinity and Beyond documentary. --Fastfission 01:58, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There is also a 20 minute film about the bomb, which is where the material in Trinity and Beyond comes from. But I don't know if that film can be found anywhere.

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"Tsar Bomba [...] was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated."

Was or is still the largest? That should be clarified.

Well, it doesn't exist any more, so "is" might not be entirely accurate. :) Bryan 16:16, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It is ridiculously unlikely that anyone will set off a nuclear explosive larger than the Tsar Bomba anytime in the foreseeable future. I don't think it needs to "as of 2005" categorization in there, which implies that this designation is likely to change anytime soon. If someone sets off a +50MT explosive (a weapon larger than any warheads kept by any of the declared nuclear powers and of extremely limited military and political value in today's geopolitical climate), I will personally update the page if I, or Wikipedia, am still around. ;-) In most cases I think the policy would make sense, but in ones which are extremely unlikely to change anytime soon (or if they did, it would be a tremendous and massive world event), I don't think it is necessary to stick with if it makes the entry look awkward. --Fastfission 05:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Don't be so sure. You cannot vouch for all. North Korea, China...

I will personally update the page if I.... Yep. "if". That's the problem. There are some basic rules which are better not to try to oversmart, unless there is a really serious reason. "Awkward" is not one of them. And IMO there is nothing awkward in the entry. Tastes differ. In adition, the date serves as the hint, a red flag for the future editors to recheck, whether the statement is still valid. Mikkalai 07:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. This is not, after all, a discussion of something long-past, like the Roman empire. Because there's ambiguity, I say default to the version that is least likely to cause confusion instead of the shorter one. --Milkmandan 08:06, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Do you guys know how big a 50 megaton blast is? The largest bomb set off by the United States was only 15 MT -- less than a third of that! China has not tested a nuclear weapon for eight years (and nothing anywhere near that large), the North Korea couldn't set off a 50 megaton blast if it wanted to (as the article points out, 50MT is approximately 6,500 times the power of the crude Hiroshima bomb which is closer to the potential capability of North Korea). The Tsar Bomba was not just the largest in history, it was by far the largest in history. My argument is that it is awkward because it implies that this is only a momentary statistic (i.e. "the fastest mile ever ran, as of 2005.." something which is liable to change from year to year) but hasn't changed in 30 years and has no sign of changing anytime in the future. The Tsar Bomba was the result of a particular context in history (the era of bigger-is-better bombs, which was over within a few years; and was meant to be a ridiculous and dramatic show of force as the Soviets broke the test ban), and does not need to be noted with "as of 2005." It will not be changed anytime soon, it will hopefully never be changed. If you do not understand why this is, then you likely do not understand why this was such a unique event.

If you are going to insist on adding such a ridiculous qualifier to this entry, I am going to insist that, for the sake of consistency, you change the entry of Tsunami which states "The magnitude 9.0 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake triggered a series of lethal tsunamis on December 26, 2004 that killed over 160,000 people, making it the deadliest tsunami in recorded history", to have the qualifier of "as of 2005" on the end of it. It's exactly the same situation, except at least the tsunami is a natural disaster which doesn't need political or technological context to happen again--it's even MORE likely to be temporally based! While you are at it, you can also change the line at Mount St. Helens which reads: "It is most famous for a catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980. That eruption was the most deadly and economically destructive volcanic eruption in the history of the United States." After all, it could change tomorrow!

There is no "ambiguity" here. It was the largest nuclear weapon in history, it was the largest nuclear explosion in history. Period.

As for the awkwardness, can you image changing the Tsunami page to reader that it was the "deadliest tsunami in recorded history as of 2005"? Can you see why that is an odd sentence on the one hand, and also qualifies a sentence whose strength is in its being a grand statement? It would be like saying that the Holocaust was the largest systematic killing of the Jews in history, as of 2005. It has a definite effect -- to imply the record is tenuous -- and I don't think it is a good one or necessary in the case of something like the Tsar Bomba. Again, if you don't understand where the Tsar Bomba stands in relation to other nuclear explosions, you really don't understand the issue I'm talking about.

And trust me, if someone sets off something larger than 50 MT, this page will be flooded with people who are just aching to update it with the fact that it is the #2 nuclear explosion in history. If you can't see why this is ridiculous, perhaps you don't understand the history of nuclear testing very well, and should defer to someone who does (which is conveniently, in this case, me). --Fastfission 19:02, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you stand that we don't understand the nature of nuclear testing, then I must say that you don't understand a principial difference between the wikipedia and a printed encyclopedia. The printed one has a natural timestamp: the date of print. And when Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) says that Sir Brillinghat caught the largest fish ever in history, I understand that it could be quite possible that in year 1956 Abu Farhun ibn Gurqamzai could have caught an even bigger fish. Wikipedia does not have this natural time reference, and exactly for this reason the rule is established to keep statements independent of the current moment. And I see nothing outrageous in your proposal about tsunami. Thanks for the hint, I will go and edit it accordingly. Mikkalai 20:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As for "flooded", please allow me to be sceptical. The most recent example. The articles about the history of the Soviet Union are an arena of heated editing. Nevertheless, until yesterday not a single one said anything about the moment of the declaration of the state. What is more, the main article contained a ridiculous date of July 4 1924 (or something), and no one flooded to fix it. And the examples abound. Soon there will be half million articles. But the number of non-occasional editors hardly exceeds several thousand. (I am not sure; may be I am too pessymistic; I will recheck). Mikkalai 20:40, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point about the magnitude of the event if this record were to be surpassed. This is not the "largest fish ever in history," something which is an event which is restricted to a certain amount of natural serendepity and variation. My argument is that the likelihood of this changing in the next 50-100 years is extremely low, and if it were to change it would be so large of an event that if anybody still gave a damn about Wikipedia, this would be the obvious page to look at for all of the many contributors who know anything about the history of nuclear weapons. It is not worth putting a silly "as of 2005" qualifier in there for this reason, and stylistically qualifying a sentence like that in such a way implies that it is a tenuous record. It was not a tenuous record, it was a one-time event undertaken for a specific purpose. It is not reasonable to assume it will change anytime soon; I think if you understood the issue a bit better you'd see that is true. It is on the level of changing a sentence which said, "The automobile is a primary method of conveyance in California," to say "as of 2005." Sure, it might change, but if it does, it will be dramatic. It doesn't need the qualifier which would imply it is a very tenuous thing. (if you've been to California, you'll understand this) --Fastfission 01:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Also, I wouldn't be so skeptical that people wouldn't change this if it changed. The magnitude of the event would be quite large: if a country set off a bomb which was even half the size of the Tsar Bomba it would be reported on the front page of every newspaper in the west. If someone set off a weapon which bypassed the size of the Tsar Bomba, you can be guaranteed that such a comparison would be made by the endless stream of commentators in the world. There wouldn't be any way to ignore it--that's the size of the event I'm talking about. It's not only extremely unlikely for this record to change, but if it did change it would be an event so large that there would not be reasonable to assume that future Wikipedians would be able to ignore this page.--Fastfission 02:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that because these entries are all GFDL, this page is legally copied—and, in fact, there exist a number of different versions scattered around the web. [1] [2] [3] [4] are a few examples, and Google shows at least three more pages of this! [5] While it's likely that these pages will get automatically recopied from the Wikipedia, it's certainly possible that one of these will remain unupdated despite all the work that may occur here when events change the facts. I'm not saying that we have a responsibility to cater to a need like this, but including some time of temporal qualifier fixes all of these problems simultaneously. --Milkmandan 00:57, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)

I hardly think we are obgliated to make sure that other pages update their information. If they cared about ti (they don't, I am sure) they'd put timestamps of their last database dumps on their pages. In any event, I don't find such a concern compelling when talking about something as fanciful as this record changing anytime soon. With things where there is at least a small reasonable chance of it changing soon, I agree with the principle completely.--Fastfission 01:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is why we have a "last modified" note at the bottom of each page. Think about it: a person might die any time but we write "born 1950" in biographies, not "born 1950 and still alive as of 2004". The "as of XXXX" links should be reserved for information that changes continuously -- for example the GNP of a nation, as an aid in editing. Fredrik | talk 02:35, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Soviet Union article had this last mod thingy changed every 27 minutes, yet for about a year it contained the D.O.B. of 1924. Mikkalai 02:43, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, count me convinced. Mikkalai 02:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is rather like saying that "The Second World War was the deadliest war in history, as of 2005". Booshank 17:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, there is a remote possibility that a relatively large asteroid will be detected on an Earth-crossing orbit. We cannot rule out existence of such objects. In worst case, we may have only something like 1 month left before impact. It's possible that governments wouldn't want to take any chances and will launch several 100+MT nuclear tipped missiles in order to destroy/deflect the thing. Yes, not very likely to happen, but is not impossible.

We don't have 100MT warheads which could fit on the head of the missile, so that's actually not very possible at the present. --Fastfission 14:53, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Pointless, anyway. There is no blast in a vacuum - just a dirty big (silent) flash. You just give the asteroid a suntan on one side and don't deflect it one inch :-)(ChrisR UK 12Aug05)

Well, "Tsar Bomba was designed and constructed in only 14 weeks" and "bomb itself weighed 27 tonnes". I think if we (I am from former SU, thus... :) could make it in 14 weeks just because Nikitka wanted it, I'm sure it can be done again, especially if in dire need. Present-day Delta IV Heavy lifts 25 tons to LEO. On-orbit docking of ~25 ton,~100MT warhead and boost stage gives you an asteroid buster. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No, I don't think so. -- Denis Vlasenko

Well, I'm not saying it's impossible in an ultimate sense. If one is moving it into space then there's no reason one would be limited to the weight problems of an ICBM anyway -- you could easily bring up the materials neccessary to construct bombs greater than 100MT and just make your shuttle into a massive hydrogen bomb. (Of course, whether that would be desirable is another question -- depending on the type of asteroid in question, explosives wouldn't necessarily do very much good). --Fastfission 17:05, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

100Mt surface blast may fail to fracture nickel-iron asteroid, and unlikely to fracture asteroid of any composition if it is large enough (like ~70 km diameter Chiron). However, blast is going to evaporate a huge amount of material and expel it with speed of tens of km/s in space. This will alter orbit of the object.

--An asteroid 70 km in diameter falls to earth with the force of approximately 2000 MEGATONS. One hundred megatons does not make a difference. It's a simple calculation, my astronomy professor completed it in class. He also illuminated what would happen in an "Armageddon" type situation, where humans drill a hole in an asteroid and pump hundreds of megatons worth of explosives. The asteroid explodes, but its gravity forces it back together. It basically just eats up the explosion and re-accreates into the same object. Sad but true. We don't have to worry about it though, they only happen once every 100 mil years or so. On the hundred year scale, we only have to worry about 40m objects, which can act like a humongous nuclear bomb. Mikkalai should know about this, one fell on Siberia sometime at the beginning of the twentieth century. Leveled a whole forest. Moo.

Wrong my friend. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and this goes for physics. What your astronomy teacher neglected to calculate was the fact that if you were to blow up say, 200megatons of nuclear explosives (multiple warheads, we have thousands) near an asteroid, the impulse could easily be enough that it could be nudged of course enough to miss us greatly. If an object is millions of miles a way a little goes a long way.

I question the force of a 70km asteroid only having the power of 2000 megatons (2 gigatons). The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs is speculated to only being 10km. Compare this to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake which is estimated to have released the equivalent of 100 gigatons.

Your calculations are completely off I'm afraid.

If detonated at full yield (~100 Mt), the force of this bomb would have been approximately 6,500 times the 15-16 kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima and would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%.

Rather than speculative "if", I would like to see the actual comparison. There is no limit for "if"s. What if they have made it 200Mt?, etc. This is good for a newspaper, but not for encyclopedia about the particular instance of a device. I am prepared to delete this phrase, especially the second half. No one knows what qualitative effects would have kicked in after duplicating the yield. And by the way, what was learned from the blast besides "it was visible 1000 km away"? Mikkalai 02:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No, the Tsar Bomba was designed to be 100Mt with a full load of fissable fuel. Thus, it is reasonable to comment on the maximum design capacity. Rsynnott 02:28, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Further investigation

http://www.vce.com/tsar.html, which is the souce of the statement, is full of incorrect details, and therefore lacks credibility. The phrase removed.

The following phrase contradicts recent Russian sources.

The Tsar Bomba had its yield scaled down by replacing the uranium fusion tamper (which amplifies the reaction greatly) with one made of lead to eliminate fast fission by the fusion neutrons.

Mikkalai 07:52, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[6] also supports it, however, and is filled with a great deal more detail and references for them. I'll go through it tomorrow to compare and expand this article based on it. Bryan 08:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If it'll make everyone happy, I'll look into what the scholarly sources (Holloway) say about this. I'm under the general impression that the above line is the common understanding though. Replacing the tamper with the non-fissile lead would have cut down on the yield quite dramatically, and most of the "dirty" aspects of hydrogen weapons come from their final fission stage (the natural uranium tamper). Most sources say that Sakharov said it was designed to have been at least 100MT at full yield (though yields are apparently often not something which can be realiably predicted ahead of time when you start getting into such complicated reactions as a multi-multi-multi stage weapon like this would require). I'm fairly sure that Kuran's Trinity and Beyond says this as well, but that's not much of a scholarly source (though he obviously consulted some degree of literature on it). Impractical for war; primarily a political symbol. I'm fairly sure little was learned from the blast -- it was not an experiment, it was a symbol: "Look what we can do." As a technical trick it is only impressive to a certain degree -- it was just a scaling up of what could already be done with thermonuclear weapons by the late 1950s. The real question is why to make them that big, and the answer (Soviet politics) is fairly localized. At least, that's how it is depicted in English-language sources, though they are often notoriously off in terms of the Soviet nuclear program (the only one I trust almost unconditionally is Kojevnikov because his Russian is the best and he is notoriously suspicious of simple explanations).

Which recent Russian sources are you referring to?--Fastfission 23:44, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So here's the second Google hit, then: [7]. It lists the following reference for that specific bit of trivia: Thomas Reed and Arnold Kramish. 1996. Trinity at Dubna, Physics Today, November 1996, pg. 30-35. Bryan 07:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate your diligence in proving your point. Nevertheless I have to disagree. For an industry to be disrupted it must exist in the first place. The person who produced this funny trivia had no idea how Soviet lingerie in 1960s looked like. Silk and nylon stockings were considered luxury, and their production was negligible, since in Soviet Union the production decisions were not made by market, but by state planners that controlled state-owned plants. Nylon stockings were considered waste of country's efforts. Moreover, only naive person can think that parachute nylon is of the same quality as the one used in stockings. This was a totally separate industry, and always under good care, being of military purpose. It is well-known now that a significant amount of military production was carried out in a disguised way at civil enterprises, so in a sense parachute industry could have disrupted Soviet hosiery indeed, but this was the whole state policy, rather than an occasional glitch. Mikkalai 16:20, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If the Soviet hosiery industry was of negligible size, then that just makes it easier to disrupt. And the quality of the nylon doesn't matter because they both use the same precursor chemicals. If the fact is well-supported, why are you so insistant on removing it from the article? Sorry, I reacted before I checked the latest diffs - you didn't remove it in the most recent edits, and in fact mentioned the same caveat I just did. I suppose I'm reacting so strongly because one of the things I like most about Wikipedia is the idiosyncratic little bits of trivia one can find about topics like these, so I like to preserve them where I find them. Bryan 20:35, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I finaly found out what material was used for parachutes in Soviet Union at these times. It was acetate rayon and percale. Removing this nylon bullshit, probably invented by some paparazzi. Mikkalai 00:26, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Could you please source that? Bryan 01:30, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I forgot to mention silk. I just run google search in russian languages for various combinations of "parachute", "material", "manufacturing", and besides the sites related to parachutes I have found quite a few factories that manufactured parachute fabrics. And by the way, these were not from hosiery industry, but from bed clothes industry. And also now I see that I am mistaken. The synthetic parachute material was called "капрон" ("kapron") in Russian. For some reasion I thought that "kapron" is kind of rayon. Now I double checked, and in fact kapron is polyamide, i.e., basically kind of nylon. Mikkalai 03:18, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for double-checking. I hate to seem like I'm obsessing over this, especially after jumping to conclusions in the lines I struck out earlier and relying on a low-quality source right at the beginning. I really should have done more source-checking myself. I promise to do more of the work next time, if I can (don't know Russian, alas). As penance, I'll see if I can add some detailed material to a nylon-related article somewhere. Bryan 05:53, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no knowledge of the veracity of the claim, but maybe we can make everybody happy if we change the line to:

It has been said (though the story may be apocryphal) that the fabrication of this parachute required so much raw nylon that the negligible Soviet nylon hosiery industry was noticeably disrupted.

?? -Fastfission 22:22, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think a more appropriate solution might be to just stick the reference I dug up earlier in as a footnote, though I'll accept your compromise proposal if nobody else thinks so too. I may not have actually read the source document myself yet (I expect it'll be hard for me to dig up), but I nevertheless consider the reference's existence to be a lot more weighty than an anonymous editor's unsupported opinion that he finds this implausible. Mikkalai at least disputed it by raising good questions with verifiable answers that could have disproved the claim had they gone another way. Bryan 22:56, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't care either way, but I'm betting the there won't be any specific reference in the Trinity at Dubna article, which I'm betting was just compiled from interviews with former physicists (who are as prone as anyone else to just circulate such funny stories/rumors). Physics Today articles on nuclear history are not bad per se but they are not the most reliable historical source, IMO. --Fastfission 22:27, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The "possibly apocryphal" parenthetical probably is indeed the right one to go with, in that case. A second-hand account is better than nothing (and fine for an encyclopedia IMO) but I would have hoped for actual nylon production and usage numbers. Bryan 00:42, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ehm, don't forget that USSR boasted some of the most developed (and numerous) airborne troops on this planet. With all the parachutes made for the VDV and others, an additional one for the bomb would make no difference whatsoever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.137.194.104 (talk • contribs)

Directly relevant. Necessary for google search, to verify info etc. Who knows when individual articles will be created Mikkalai 05:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since 50 Mt is 2.1x1017 Joules, the power produced during the explosion was around 5.3x1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This represents a power just greater than one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (386 yottawatts).

Over what period of time is this "entire power output of the Sun" measured? Ground 22:26, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since the power (more specifically luminosity) of the sun is being expressed in watts, it doesn't require a unit of time (or more accurately, it already includes one). It's not a total amount of energy, but a measure of energy flow per second (which is to say, power). It might be better to replace "entire" with "average", since I think that's what's being expressed with the 386 yottawatt figure (which is perhaps from this article). The 5.3 yottawatt figure is also an average, being apparently back-computed from the total energy output and an estimated duration of the explosion.

"Since 50 Mt is 2.1x1017 Joules, the power produced during the explosion was around 5.3x1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This represents a power just greater than one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (386 yottawatts)."

Should it not be the total energy output of the sun reaching the earth? Otherwise it seems to me to be a gross exaggeration No matter the answer, it should be elaborated in a way so that it will not be misinterpreted by physics illiterates(like me!) If I read the numbers below correctly you would need roughly two billion Tsar Bombas and not close to a hundred, to emulate the suns energy output for a second!

Energy Output Of The Sun In One Second

Value In Joules: 385 septillion (3.85 x 10e26) Value In Megatons: 92.1 billion (92.1 x 10e10)

"Tsar Bomba" Nuclear Bomb Value In Joules: 209 quadrillion (2.09 x 10e17) Value In Megatons: 50 (5.00 x 10e2) Source: http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/Trunko/energy.html

1 megaton = 4.2 X 10e15 joules 50 megaton = 2.1 X 10e17 joules The Suns output pr. sec. 3.9 X 10e26 joules Thus you need around 1857142800 Tsar Bombas exploding at the same time and not a hundred to compete with the sun for a second.

Please correct my errors or if I am right correct the wikipedia. 

I was wrong. The entire fission-fussion proces takes place in ca. 0.000002 sec. creating an entire different value for watts. But It still think it should be ellaborated so as not to cause misunderstanding. Johan "Apollo" Bressendorff(Denmark)Pietas 22:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Yep, I spotted it. I'm new to wiki and didn't read the discussion first before making an edit. I hope the new wording of using energy instead of power clarifys this! 212.32.83.8 09:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The "1% power output" calculation seems to be correct in my opinion. An interesting aspect in this, is to compare the volume needed in the sun to generate that power with that of the Tsar Bomba. Sun has fusion taking place in a sphere of 20% of it's diameter. The processes in the bomb take place in a region of several meters. Thus the power density must be many times greater in the bomb, than in nature.

That is understandable, because the bomb runs out of fuel much faster than the Sun. In the Sun the power is 0.3 W/m3, or 40 W/m3 in the 20% of its diameter.--Patrick 21:42, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I doubt this was just for propaganda they probably intended these to be used as real weapons. If they wanted to do propaganda they would just dentonate a smaller bomb and make it look bigger Dudtz 7/21/05 1:20 PM EST

"Propaganda" does not always mean "lies"; detonating a smaller bomb and claiming it is in the 50 MT range would be very easy to detect; and the article outlines very clearly why this would have been an impractical weapon (too large in every respect). --Fastfission 17:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

It wouldn't be easy to detect, at lest back then when the bomb was detonated there were no radiation detecting satellites. There wasn't much of any other detecting equipment back then It's not that impractical just wheel it into the back of a cargo plane and drop it out the back door when you're redy. Dudtz July 25th 2005 3:28 PM EST

If you'd read the article, you'd see why it was impractical. Or you can just believe whatever makes sense to you without investigating whether or not it makes sense. Whatever works for you. --Fastfission 01:26, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Physics actually makes it easy to detect faked atmospheric nuclear bomb test results. The nuclear fallout from the blast will contain proportions of transmuted elements in a predictable ratio depending on the overall yield. As fallout from large bombs is detectable worldwide, and both the US and Russia flew aircraft specifically to filter high altitude air and catch fallout particles for analysis, both sides routinely knew exactly (plus or minus ten percent, perhaps) wha the yield was of each other's tests. As a result, nobody lied about it... there was no point. This is also where the confusion over actual yield came from. The US fallout analysis from Tsar Bomba came in at a 57 MT yield estimate, slightly higher than the Soviet stated yield of 50 MT. I don't know that anyone has ever sat down with the two sets of raw data, plus the Soviet ground and air observations, and tried to come up with a more precise number (I don't know that the Russians would make that info available now; I am not aware of anyone having asked for it). Georgewilliamherbert 18:10, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Article has no info on aftermath. Is there a crater? How big is it? Damage to arctic wildlife? etc... -- Denis Vlasenko

I've found some info at http://www.bilderberg.org/hbomb.htm:

Some time after the explosion, photographs were taken of ground zero. “The ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it looks like a skating rink,” a witness reported. “The same goes for rocks. The snow has melted and their sides and edges are shiny. There is not a trace of unevenness in the ground.... Everything in this area has been swept clean, scoured, melted and blown away.”

There are other descriptions (and the same ones) on a more reliable page here. It was detonated 4000 m above the ground so it wouldn't necessarily make a crater per se. --Fastfission 14:44, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

This article seems quite comprehensive. How about a FA nomination? - Fredrik | talk 11:53, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we should put it up on peer review first? They usually come up with good suggestions. My only thought is it could use a little more on the political climate that lead to the creation of the bomb -- there's almost nothing on the motivation for creating it here. I believe Sakharov discusses this quite a bit in his memoirs. It should also be noted that this test was one of those done by the USSR to break the testing moratorium (1959-1961) as well. --Fastfission 14:01, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

According to the USSR statement on the moratorium in 1959, "Soviet Union will not resume nuclear testing provided the Western powers continue to observe a moratorium". So, there were Western countries, which broke the moratorium, namely: France on February 13, 1960. See [8]. Cmapm 01:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic, Halloween 2005. As is often the case in Wikipedia, the prose of this entry could use a good deal of polish, which I have supplied. This topic fascinates me because I can still recall the gloomy fall morning when I came to the breakfast table and saw the screaming headlines in the morning paper about a 100 megaton Russian test in Nova Zemlya. I was 9 at the time. Only a fortnight ago did I discover that that test had been an airdrop, that the Bomba had been designed to minimize fallout, and that its weight and size rendered it hopelessly impractical. I have added a link pointing out that the USA built and deployed a similar weapon in those days.

I have not found one sentence discussing the possible impact on Nova Zemlya wildlife. My atlas also reveals 3-4 tiny settlements along the southern part of that island. Did they exist in 1961? If so were the inhabitants evacuated? Warned in any way?

• The U.S. weapon (MK-17) was about half the size of the pared down version, a quarter of the size of the full version. I also don't see what the B-28 has to do with this. I think the mentions of the weapons of other countries should be included as a comparison for yields, but explicit connections between those weapons (which were deployed as regular weapons) should not be made between this single, giant, show-bomb. --Fastfission 00:56, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic, Halloween. I hasten to correct what I wrote above. The massive USA warhead that "rivaled" the Bomba was the B41, rated at about 25 Mt. Its production began in 1958. The Mark-17 was the first deliverable thermonuclear weapon. Its dimensions were on the same scale as the Tsar Bomba, 7.5 m long, 1.5 m in diameter, 19 metric tons in weight. The only way of delivering the Mark-17 was by a specially modified B-36, the largest warplane ever built. My thrust should be clear. The Tsar Bomba was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a culture of "Doomsday" weapons, pursued willy-nilly even though they required a massive size that rendered them barely barely deliverable.

• The Mark 17 was big only because it was primative. The B41 was a large bomb but was deployed. Neither were attempts at making bombs as big as they could be made, and neither were show-bombs. Both were built as deliberate military weapons according to various theories of nuclear strategy, in contrast with the Tsar Bomba which was an earnest attempt to make a big, proud bang. I think it is a bit POV to say they are all part of a "Doomsday" culture. --Fastfission 01:48, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic. A Soviet show bomb was a quick and cheap way to counter much of the deterrent effect of American deployed bombs. And I do suspect that the Mark-17 and B41 had yields about as high as were practical at the time. As for the Doomsday culture, I refer all readers to Dr Strangelove. Sometimes art transcends engineering...

This user is doing a great many edits on this page and I am not sure that he/she is improving it. I have left a message on the user page of this editor and I have yet to recive an answer. Would you rather answer here? DV8 2XL 22:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic. I am the one who has made many recent changes to this article. For reasons beyond my control, I sign on using several names. This is the only Wikipedia article I've worked on that has led to any controversy. Apparently, I am not the amateur Cold War military historian out there! I've heavily edited this article because while the facts fascinate me and I remember the 1961 screaming headlines about a "100 megaton test", the sentences often did not read smoothly, the ordering of facts made my mind stumble, there were repetitions and inconsistencies. Such flaws are not uncommon in other Wikipedia articles on recent military history and technology.

I created the section "Critique" and contributed much of its content. I have no training in nuclear weapons. Rather, I was a precocious teenager during the 1960s, who underwent civil defense training, and who read everything that came my way about such weapons. Later I learned why : war is too important to be delegated to mere generals!

Exposition and organisation are matters of taste, and all of you out there are free to undo what I've done. Those of you more expert than I am are welcome to correct and add to the facts. But I insist on a matter of historical interpretation: the Tsar Bomba was not just one more instance of Soviet "military brutality" or "inhumanity". It is not the USSR that broke new ground here, but the USA. Human civilisation turned a corner when the USA tested the Teller-Ulam (1954 Castle Bravo series) design, then manufactured 200 Mark-17s implementing that design and put them in the bellies of B-36s, all in a matter of months. The Soviets almost surely knew the outlines, if not the details, of the Mark 17 and B41 bombs when the Tsar Bomba was built. Krushchev wanted to show the Americans (and the world) that he could "match and raise". That the yield of the Tsar Bomba was twice that of the B41, and could be raised to four times, is a distinction without a difference. It is also essential to understand why such Doomsday weapons are now obsolete. Power is knowledge. Or as I read decades ago "if a cruise missile could fly down a Kremlin chimney with a fair chance of success, no need for nukes." Improved delivery technology may eventually make all weapons of mass destruction obsolete.

Wow, that sounds like an advert for something, but I'm not sure what. I haven't re-read the article since you worked on it, but I hope it reads better than your message above, because I certainly stumbled lots. I think that some people (including me) have a few objections:

1. You did (and apparently are still doing) a whole lot of different small edits over a long period of time (several days and counting).
2. You did all of these edits under a number (it appears) of different IP addresses and one account. You say this is "beyond your control" but don't offer an explanation as to why.
3. You didn't provide an edit summary for even one (it appears) of your edits. Once may be excused; a dozen times is just rude.
4. You took credit for the existence of the "good article" tag at the top of the talk page, even though it was there before you started your edits.
5. On a slightly more minor note, I for one am confused as to whether or not the messages above are addressed to "Concerned Cynic" or if they are posted by "Concerned Cynic". Convention here dictates you end your posts on talk pages with --~~~~, thereby signing it so that everyone knows who posted it and when.

Because of the extended period over which you are doing all of these edits, you have effectively locked the article; again speaking for myself, I can't go and review your edits until I'm sure you're finished, otherwise there's the distinct possibility you'll just bulldoze over my changes (actually, you did already) and I'll have to go back and do them again. If, instead, you would copy the whole article to a plain-text editor on your own computer, make as many changes as you want in a reasonable amount of time (say, an hour or two), and upload just one edit along with the appropriate edit summary, then other people would be able to take that one edit and carry on and you'd have fewer people criticising you.

Concerned Cynic: It would be nice if my mind worked in the way you think it should... I really do not think that the article is in its current incarnation, is 'locked.' For the record, everything containing 'Concerned Cynic' is authored by the same.

--Craig (t|c) 22:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I have compared the current state of the entry with the version that got the 'good article ' tag and for the record; I do not see an improvment, in fact quite the contrary. DV8 2XL 23:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• The "historical interpretation" is the most problematic part. You might want to review our policies on NPOV and NOR. All interpretations must be attributable to notable sources, not to individual editors, on Wikipedia. --Fastfission 03:06, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic: That assumes a hard operational distinction between "fact" and "interpretation."

• • Something is going to have to be done here. Should I just revert back to the last good edit, or do some of you wish to start from what's here and make piecemeal changes to get it back into line? DV8 2XL 04:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Good question. I am more of a spectator of this article than a participant, and I'm also fairly new to Wikipedia so still haven't figured out all the avenues of appealing for help, intervention, mediation, etc. But I do agree that the current situation can't continue. --Craig (t|c) 05:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

• • • No, just let him finish, and then we'll take another look at it. Most of what he has done is re-organize things a bit, which is perfectly fine. The more speculative things are pretty easy to spot (basically the somewhat unwarranted comparison with US weapons based on relatively superficial characteristics, such as casing size). --Fastfission 17:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic: Not just casing size, but also weight and yield.

Much of the discussion above is stimulating and well-written. I either agree with, or am not competent to challenge, many of the points raised. I would be nice if an Arzamas veteran were to go over the article closely.

Please sign your comments and please start doing edit summarys. Other editors have worked on this item and you owe them the courtesy of making your edits easy to follow. This has been discussed with you on several occasions by me and by others. DV8 2XL 20:10, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic: There's been too much talk about procedure and not enough about content.

Yes, it'd be nice if the surviving ex-Soviet bomb designers would edit our articles. However, I'm not sure we should hold our breath on that. --Fastfission 01:51, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Concerned Cynic: one can always hope.

The rules of Wikipedia are not an option. You are expected to adhere them just like everyone else. Making a statement to the effect that you will not is grounds for suspension. Sign your comments please and tag your edits. DV8 2XL 04:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Humorless and authoritarian talk of this nature should likewise not be an option, especially in a volunteer context wholly distinct from the dreary necessities of a day job. The web, open software, and GNU, the IT context which nests Wikipedia, were all devised in the hope of moving humanity onwards and upwards, by promoting the freedom to think and write, free of constraints whose driving force is bureaucratic ulterior motive. Without that freedom, Wikipedia is pointless, and doomed. I intend to drink freely the cool water from the spring of freedom, for the remaining days alloted to me. Concerned Cynic.

Would you care to take that statement to RfC.? It will be interesting to see how the other editors (that abide by the rules) think of your attitude. DV8 2XL 19:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Does Tsar Bomba mean "Tsar of the bombs" or "bomb of the Tsar(s)"?

• Well... now that I look at it again, it seems that they are both in the nominative case. Which, if I understand the language well enough (I make no claims to), should mean it means "Tsar Bomb" as two separate nouns. Which is a little strange. On the Russian pages for the Tsar Bell and Tsar Cannon, the "Tsar", when used in the first sentence, seems to be adjectivized, implying that the "Tsar" might be intended as the modifier. So perhaps the proper translation is just "Tsar bomb" in the sense of "Bomb of the Tsar"? I would assume that "Tsar of the bombs" would be Царь бомби? But that "of the bombs" would be possessive, and I'm not sure that is correct (the bombs do not own the tsar). Ack, I give up! --Fastfission 04:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Bomb of the Tsar would be odd, there was no Tsar at that time.--Patrick 13:05, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, it wouldn't be literal, of course. ;-) --Fastfission 18:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Alternatively, couldn't "Bomb" be a name, like "Tsar Nicholas"? I know this sounds stupid, but it's entirely viable, and to me makes more sense - they're both in the nominative. --Charm Quark 10:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

No, the Tsar Bomba does not mean "bomb of the Tsar". In Russian, it is "Царь-Бомба", so the "Tsar of the bombs" is the better translation. (I think, The Lion King is a good analogy). --V1adis1av 01:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

As a Russian, I say, "Tsar of the bombs"

Yes, the meaning that it is a bomb ant it is a Tsar, so logically it's a Tsar of bombs, the same with Tsar Cannon and Tsar bell Alexandre Koriakine 10:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Would that video really be copyvio? I thought things created before 1973 in the USSR were in the public domain in most countries, per {{PD-USSR}}? (Did the Soviet government claim copyright on official produced materials?) --Fastfission 18:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful device ever utilized by humans, as pointed out in the article. User Yooden modified that statement to read most "powerful explosive ever" [9] and then reverted my later removal of that modifier. While the fact that it is the most powerful explosive ever detonated is strictly true, the wider definiton of most powerful device overall is more accurate and useful/interesting to the reader. Also, it appears that Yooden's remark in his edit that "the computer is more powerful" I think demonstrates a gross misconception of the concept of power being talked about here. Measures of computer power and literal physical power are two entirely different phenomena. --Deglr6328 22:48, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

• My text was undisputed, yours not, so you should have discussed the issue before taking action.
• What is interesting to the reader is conjecture. I'm certainly more interested in overall power than in explosive power alone. The concept 'computer' changed the world a lot more than this one piece of hardware.
• The concept of Power we talk about here does in fact leave a lot of possibilities. I was only clarifying.
• I have now clarified in a different way. Not the best the text could be stylistically, but both accurate and emphasising your favorite use of the word Power.

--Yooden

What are you talking about? That response makes about as much sense as you original edit comment. none. My "favorite use of the word" power? Look if you don't understand the difference between computer power and actual energy power I can't help you. The changed sentance now sounds completely ridiculous. --Deglr6328 00:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• As I pointed out above, there is more than one possible use of the word 'Power'. The one you talk about is not the most common one. At best, it's ambiguous. You are invited to find another text that makes it clear you talk about 'work per unit of time', not power per se.
• Just to clarify: I never talked about "computer power" as a unit of CPU speed or similar things. I don't know where that idea came from. See Power for much more likely interpretations.
• The sentence sounds ridiculous as a conseqence of your insistence that 'Power' = 'Work per unit of time'. --Yooden

• Guys... it doesn't really matter either way; we're splitting hairs here. --Fastfission 00:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

• Gladly that is all one can do on many articles in Wikipedia. --Yooden

• Now, wait a minute. The word power is a valid technical term in physics and engineering and the statemnt that it was the most powerful device is technically correct. Just because other fields use power with different meanings doesn't mean we can't use it here. The current phrasing "work per unit time" is terrible: it's clumsy and is expanding to the full definition of a precise and appropriate technical term for no good reason. The current phrasing is a revertable error. I am not reverting it at this instant, to let this debate evolve a bit, but I strongly disagree with letting it stay phrased this way. It's power. Georgewilliamherbert 03:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, whatever, the phrase is still ambigous. Just because other fields use the word with different meanings means that you can't assume everybody knows instantly what you want to say. For kicks, I googled for 'powerful' on Wikipedia: Seven out of the first ten hits used power/powerful in a clearly non-physics way. The other three described weather phenomena and I very much doubt that most people think in terms of "energy transferred per unit of time" when they hear about a powerful storm. Maybe more important, the very page on power itself is a disambiguation page, so in Wikipedia terms, the Tsar might be the most "power(science)ful device", but not necessarily the most powerful.

So I'll revert this to my original phrasing (which is undisputed and nicer than the current one) until you can come up with something that make it unambigiously clear that you talk about physics. --Yooden

VOTE

How ludicrously silly this whole thing is.

Here we shall take a vote then (either oppose or support) on whether we should consider the term power, as used in this science related article as having any reasonable likelyhood of being confused with power (computers), power (communication), power (mathematics), political power, macial powers, power (legal jurisdiction) or power (basketweaving).--Deglr6328 07:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose - There is no chance of confusion to the reader at all so long as he has more than 3 total brain cells.--Deglr6328 07:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose, but of the vote thing, see Wikipedia:Consensus. This is blatantly obviously an ambigous word, see Power, see your new link under 'powerful' not pointing to Power, see my Google search. If you don't give reason (eg. why we should even risk ambiguity) and don't make any attempt to find an unambigious phrasing, just let the whole thing drop instead of starting insults. I am opposed of confusing the users, and so should you. --Yooden

• Whether the possibility of confusion is likely or not, the qualifier makes sure it can't be confused. Precision is always to be preferred, and the way it is now, it's just fine. At least no one will be able to complain about it as it is:

The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful explosive device ever detonated by humans, and its test is the largest detonation ever.

Actually the sentence is superfluous (it could even be deleted), since its content is already in the introduction:

Tsar Bomba (Russian: Царь-бомба, literally "Tsar of the bombs"), developed by the Soviet Union, is the largest nuclear explosive ever detonated, and the most powerful weapon ever employed by humans. It was tested on October 30, 1961 over Mityushikha Bay of Novaya Zemlya, an island in the Arctic Sea. There is no clear evidence that any examples other than the one tested were ever made.

-- Fyslee 23:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

It happens in a lot of articles that some fact of the introduction is repeated later on. --Yooden

Very true. While it "could even be deleted," I don't think it should be. It fits okay where it is. -- Fyslee 01:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I enjoy Dr. Strangelove as much as the next guy, but I don't think it is a reputable source for the Cold War military mentality which may be related to the development of the Tsar Bomba. In fact I think it has very little to do with the Tsar Bomba at all — it is a comedy about Mutual Assured Destruction and military paranoia in the United States. I don't think it has much to do with a show bomb developed by the Soviet Union and referring to it as a source to look at for further information about the "culture and mindset" which led to the creation of the Tsar Bomba is unhelpful, incorrect, juvenile, and fairly POV (Strangelove is a decidedly anti-military film, one determined to portray to arms race in a completely ridicuous light; I happen to agree with much of the POV but it is still a very strong POV). I don't think including a line in the "Origins" section of this page is at all called for. --22:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the film gives insight about the mindset of the time. It's art, and of course art can give such insights. But I think you are right, the article is about the weapon, not about the mindset. So either move it to a better section or remove it. --Yooden

Just one thing, a few days later: I was surprised to see in the history that you asked me to use the talk page instead of the comments. I think that is what should have been done in the first place. --Yooden

Umm, lasers can be quite 'powerfull' as their energy output is often condensed into very small time frames. Maybe someone should look into this? --John

In Peter Kuran's "Trinity and Beyond (The Atomic Bomb Movie)", this bomb is referred to as "The Monster Bomb". There is nothing in the article about this alias. --Oblivious 23:11, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Could be simply the obvious phrase for this kind of weapon. I wouldn't call this an alias that needs to be included. --Yooden

Probably yeah...! However everything else (including the code-named events), starting from the Operation Crossroads to the Operation Dominic, was mentioned correctly in the documentary. --Oblivious 00:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Personally I have found Kuran's attention to non-U.S. programs to be very poor and often misleading. The last segment with the Chinese testing is actually spliced together footage of a number of different tests, cues to be as menacing as possible, and has replaced the music entirely with more ominous "barbarian" sounds (I happened to see the original Chinese version sometime after I saw Kuran's). Which of course means nothing on the whole but is just an impression I took away from it. Googling "Russian 'monster bomb'" seems to get only about 300 hits, most of which are related to Kuran's film. I've seen "Tsar Bomba" in other historical literature. Anyway, perhaps a small mention and a few redirects is worthwhile down in the article where we mention Kuran's film. --Fastfission 00:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

A user added the following note to my talk page, though it really probably belongs here. --Fastfission 17:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

---

The "Tsar Bomba" is the centerpiece of a new novel about nuclear terrorism, "King of Bombs." The novel's premise is that Al-Qaeda seeks to replicate a duplicate of the Tsar Bomba device, tested by the Soviet Union in 1961, with fusion tampers installed. With the help of Iran, North Korea, the nuclear weapons black market and a former worker at the Arzamas-16 nuclear weapons research facility, Al-Qaeda is determined to fabricate a device that will inflict apocalyptic devastation on the United States. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.161.53.216 (talk • contribs) on 19:37, 29 December 2005

• Without getting into plot details -- the idea that a small terrorist group would bother going to the effort of creating such a wasteful weapon when they could use the same materials and know-how to create an entire fleet of "smaller" weapons is somewhat amusing to me, I must admit, without getting into the fact that neither Iran nor North Korea have shown evidence of having even fission know-how, much less fusion know-how -- what is important in terms of things being mentioned on our article pages is whether they are "notable" or not. Given that the abovementioned book seems to be self-published through Authorhouse, it sounds unlikely it would meet even the most inclusionist notability standards. --Fastfission 17:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Not to mention dumping all these 'rogue states' (and terrorists) together as if they all want the same thing and cooperate all the time is something only silly people like GWB do... Nil Einne 15:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/10/north_koreairan_cooperation_sh.php

Yes, rogue states never cooperate, except that they do. Thanks for your pointless comment, Nil Einne.

When I first read the following, I couldn't believe it:

"Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10^17 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10^-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.3×10^24 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This constitutes over 1% of the power output of the Sun (383 yottawatts) over the same time interval."

I then did the calculation myself and found it to be correct!

However I have a small quarrel with how the information was presented. The comparison should NOT be between a 39 nanosecond quantity of solar energy versus the Tsar Bomba's. It should rather be a comparison of instantaneous power. The Solar Constant is 1.37 kw/m^2. Construct a control surface of 1 AU radius around the Sun. 1 AU = 1.49598x10^11 m. The surface area of the control surface is 4 * Pi * [1.49598x10^11]^2 = 2.812298x10^23 m^2. The total power of the sun is 3.852849x10^26 watts. A megaton is 4.187x10^15 joules. For 50 megatons (50 Mt) at 3.9x10-8 sec, the average power of the Tsar Bomba while burning its nuclear fuel was 5.3679x10^24 watts. The instantaneous power of the Tsar Bomba while burning its nuclear fuel was 1.39% of the Sun!! However, it's inappropriate to compare the Sun's energy against the Tsar Bomba because the Sun is producing energy continuously while the Tsar Bomba only produced energy for 39 nanoseconds, e.g. over a one second period the Sun produced 1.8 billion times the amount of energy produced by the Tsar Bomba. This number is closer to intuition since we and our technology are nothing compared to the Sun.

The 1.39% power rating raises an interesting question. Thermonuclear weapons supposably burn like a match, i.e. the radiation from the fission trigger pre-compresses the thermonuclear fuel in the secondary section while a detonation wave propagates down the length of the secondary section starting from the fission trigger. My intuition tells me that a 25 Mt explosion would have burned for only 1.95x10-8 sec. Is this true? Where did the 39 nanosecond burntime number for the Tsar Bomba come from? Does the burn time scale linearly with weapon yield? At some point the linearity should breakdown, e.g. if the secondary section is too long then it doesn't pre-compress properly or if it's too short, it doesn't have time to pre-compress before the detonation wave passes through. Any nuke experts out there with clues about this?

BTW, it was a marvellous article!

Egg plant 04:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

When describing the test, the author states that "Failing such retardation, the bomb would have either reached its planned detonation altitude soon enough to turn the test into a suicide mission, or crashed into the ground at high speed, with unpredictable results"

Could someone elaborate on the "unpredictable" bit? My physics education stopped at GCE A-levels. What's so special about crashing a nuclear bomb into the ground? I mean, they do carry out underground tests, don't they?

You should sign your questions/comments (use four ~ characters in a row, that creates the name/date signature you see the rest of us using...).

As to the specifics... a nuclear bomb is generally actually pretty fragile. If you deform or crack the explosives in the primary, it probably won't fire properly. If you crack open the outer case around the primary and secondary, even if the primary fires properly then most of the energy will leak out, and you don't get effective compression and effective firing of the secondaries.

Nuclear weapons designed to land on the ground, or hit the ground and penetrate some distance before detonation, require very special, high strength design to withstand the impact. Other nuclear weapons often have a salvage or impact fuze that will fire them if they start to hit something solid (better early or off target than not firing at all). Georgewilliamherbert 11:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Someone responded to my above comment and changed the article to say:

"The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful explosive device ever constructed by humans, and its test is the largest detonation ever. Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10^17 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.3×10^24 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This constitutes over 1% of the power output of the Sun (383 yottawatts) over the same time interval."

The wording is fine and mathematically correct assuming the burn time was 3.9×10^-8 sec (thanks for making the revision). However there still stands the question of whether or not the average power of a fusion weapon scales with size. Obviously the energy released by the weapon will scale with size. However it is quite possible that a much smaller nuclear explosion would create greater average power. In order to reduce fallout, the Tsar Bomba used a lead jacket as a tamp rather than the usual U-238 tamp. A weapon with a U-238 tamp probably had a greater average power level (the tamp would have been exothermic rather than endothermic). The question boils down to burn time for a given yield.

A question for nuke experts out there: What's the burn time and yield for a modern state-of-the-art thermonuclear weapon?

Egg plant 19:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

The burn time will depend to some degree on size, but not a whole lot. The heating rate initially will depend on the compression and temperature at ignition, and time for the reaction to propogate will depend on the dimensions, but in general will propogate very quickly. The Weapons FAQ entry on fusion weapon physics and engineering indicates an estimate of 20 ns for the fusion burn in a typical weapon. Note however that unlike the time of the core burning, the time over which the energy is effectively released into the environment varys radically with overall yield. Larger devices (multi-megaton) thermal pulses and fireball physics take seconds to evolve, unlike smaller weapons where it's milliseconds to fractions of a second at most. What power you measure (power = energy / time) depends on where you draw the boundary conditions: inside the device or at the device's shell, or effective to relatively far away (outside the fireball radius) observers. Georgewilliamherbert 20:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

• I recommend removing or putting a caveat on the Discovery Channel video posted (twice) at the bottom of the article. It appears either Discovery Channel or the original Russian source fluffed it up, almost completely, with stock footage of Pacific and Nevada Test Site explosions, or from smaller Semipalitinsk tests, some of them fission bombs. It does not look authentic at all. -Rolypolyman 16:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Most photos of the Tsar Bomba explosion I've seen are visible in the discovery Channel video including two from this article. raptor 02:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hyppothetically if such a bomb i.e 60-100 MT were to be detonated over the United States, as in a Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenario what kind of casualties could be expected?

It would depend where in USA ofcourse. From the 100 MT dirty bomb, the radiation alone would keep killing for years after the bomb exploded (not sure how long the radiation would linger, but people would be poisoned, and die off slowly). - Annonomous

I am no scientist, but if, as the Discovery Channel video says, everything within 50km (30 miles) was obliterated, the fireball extended to 180km (110 miles), and it was dropped on New York: several tens of millions surely. The blast would easily reach Philadelphia, and people would probably die in Massachusetts. If it were dropped on a very densely populated country e.g. Bangladesh, maybe 100 million, far more than all the deaths caused by the bubonic plague and Spanish flu put together. That does not count the amount of people killed by a possible nuclear winter. If the bomb was 100 MT, a lot more. Or maybe not. LeighvsOptimvsMaximvs 16:58, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I was testing out some of my Russian today (playing with http://multitran.ru/ and putting in things like "nuclear weapon test" and seeing what that would call up in Google), and found a number of places on the web where Russian websites referred to the Tsar Bomba as "Кузькина мать" -- Kuzka's mother? I don't know what this means, but perhaps someone with better Russian can ferret out whether this is what the Russians call(ed) this bomb. --Fastfission 03:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

In Russian, there is a popular saying "показать Кузькину мать", which literally means "to show Kuzka's mother". Now, Kuzka is a derivative of Kuzma - a male first name. The saying as a whole is rather meaningless but implies that the sayer wants to punish the person towards whom the tirade is directed. I.e. someone would say "я тебе покажу Кузькину мать" (which literally indeed means "now, I'll show you Kuzka's mother").

One of the famous people reported to have used this expression was none other than Ukraine's finest, Nikita Khrushchev. A Russian urban myth has it that during one of his UN speeches, NK took off his shoe and pounded the desk with it while screaming threats towards the imperialists the old boy hated so passionately. "Кузькина мать" was what he was threatening them with, precisely. Oh, the good days they were :)

Since the bomb was detonated short thereafter, an "Кузькина мать" was chosen as the obvious nickname.

Anyway, if you're working on your Russian (and that's a great thing to do), here's an article on the expression (unrelated to politics): http://www.gramota.ru/mag_rub.html?id=145 --Bicycle repairman 19:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I know the German DVD of Trinity and Beyond. But it shows only a short flash of lightning, no mushroom cloud or something like that. Does the US-Version contain more material? However, they also mixed up video clips from Castle Bravo with clips from another Bravo shot (maybe Romeo).', so it wouldn't be a big surprise if the US version used US test videos to illustrate the Tsar shot.--SiriusB 12:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Hmm, I could take a look at it again. Kuran is rather dishonest in his editing in many places through his video -- he happily merges different shots into one if it gives him a better visual effect. (The "first Chinese shot" at the end is in reality two separate shots which have been edited to make them look as barbarous as possible.) --Fastfission 16:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I am russian and Царь means king.

• I don't want to contradict but I'm fairly sure it is derived from Caesar and is more analogous with the English "emperor" than it is "king" (the latter I've usually seen translated as король). In any case, I don't see why we don't just write it as tsar, since that is a well-known word in English as well. --Fastfission 14:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, tsar is not English, but it is familiar enough to be considered a loan word. Personally I would just use it -- clicking on it clearly indicates what it means and puts it into the Russian context a lot better than the word Emperor does. --Fastfission 13:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I think we shouldn't primarily because it's not tsar in Russian (correct?). If Царь is NOT tsar so it would be quite wrong to translate it as tsar. Especially since this is usually called the Tsar Bomba in English but the Soviets definitely didn't think of it as the Tsar bomba for two good reasons (because they didn't like Tsars and because Tsar XYZ is associated with impractical things) Nil Einne 15:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Just out of curiousity, in the phrase from the intro section "Developed by the Soviet Union, the ~50 megaton bomb was codenamed Ivan", would it be advantageous to replace the "~" with a "≈" - a double-tilde? I see that, according to the ~ article, the ~ is fine in English usage as the ≈ isn't usually available, but on Wikipedia, it is available. Might it look a bit more formal to use the ≈? --T. S. Rice 08:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally I think we could just keep the single tilde, since it is clear what it is meant to indicate and the context here is not mathematics (a double-tilde is less commonly known unless you have a scientific education). But I'm not sure it matters much either way. --Fastfission 15:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

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