Monday, April 3, 2017
Tsar Bomba
The Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. The test occurred on the 30th of October 1961 and yielded 57 megatons of TNT. The Tsar Bomba had three stages which used a fission bomb primary to compress the thermonuclear secondary, and then caused the third stage to explode from the previous explosion. This three stage design was able to yield about 100 Mt, but that size explosion would have caused too much fallout and would have destroyed the plane carrying it. To limit this the soviets put a lead tamper instead of a fusion tamper in the second stage. The Tsar Bomba was never intended to be used against the U.S, but instead it was Russia basically showing the U.S the extent of their power.
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Why do you suppose the Soviet Union never intended for the Tsar Bomba to be used against the US? I personally think that the concept of mutually assured destruction was what deterred the Soviet Union from attacking the US with it. They probably knew that the US had a nuclear weapons arsenal large enough to have a larger impact. However, they might not have known that the US was aware of the missile gap, making the gap even larger.
ReplyDeleteI also think that the size of the bomb itself contributed to why the Soviets never used the Tsar Bomba as a weapon since it was so powerful that it would effectively capsize tens of megatons of space while exploding and cause radiation poisoning for millions of people. The Soviets probably knew that such a weapon would have a much more adverse effect on their enemies than their traditional nuclear missiles since the Tsar Bomba would essentially wipe out huge portions of people and cities by itself without other bombs being necessary -- Although I guess if the Soviets were to to make a first attack, they would try to make it so that it would be so successful that it would prevent the enemy from being able to attack back in retaliation meaning that the Tsar Bomba could potentially be utilized in such a scenario. So in my opinion, although MAD deterred the Soviets from using the Tsar Bomba in the first place, I think there was still a potential to be used in the case of some sort of nuclear war.
DeleteI agree, the Soviets were definitively more concerned about killing themselves in the collateral damage from such an attack. The chemicals released into the atmosphere was enough to ban nuclear testing above ground in an effort not to poison the atmosphere any further.
DeleteSince this weapon would destroy the plane that dropped it, do you think this limits how big nuclear weapons can be, or do you think that we as humans will come up with bigger badder weapons.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that building a weapon of this size is simply too much? Is it unneeded, or should countries continue to expand weapons?
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