For more, read @wellerstein.bsky.social’s superb 2021 article, which contains many new details about the development and testing of the “Tsar Bomba” and explains how for a time it spurred some US weapons scientists and military leaders to seek to build and test even larger thermonuclear weapons.

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In 2020, Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation posted a declassified 30-minute documentary about this unprecedented nuclear weapon test online. This remarkable propaganda film shows preparations for the test (incl. details of the bomb’s construction), the test itself, and its aftermath.

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The resulting mushroom eventually cloud grew to be 25 miles wide at its base and 59 miles wide at its top.

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Here are some additional striking photographs of the 1961 Tsar Bomba test:

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In Severny, 34 miles from ground zero, the blast destroyed every wooden and brick structure. Even hundred of miles away, wooden homes were demolished while those made of stone were damaged. Windows in buildings as far away as Finland and Norway shattered by the powerful shockwave.

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