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The Real Mother of All Bombs, 46 Years Ago

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-that-go-boom dept.

vaporland writes "Tsar Bomba is the Western name for the RDS-220, the largest, most powerful weapon ever detonated. The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961, in an archipelago in the Arctic Sea. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons. Its detonation released energy equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun for 39 nanoseconds of its detonation. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout. The Tsar Bomba qualifies as the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity."

30 of 526 comments (clear)

  1. I respectfully disagree... by TobyRush · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Tsar Bomba qualifies as the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity.
    I don't know... my money's still on the pen.
    --
    Sam! If you will let me be,
    I will try them.
    You will see.
    1. Re:I respectfully disagree... by raphae · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know... my money's still on the pen.

      It was heartening to see such encouraging words after watching that horrific video which made me want to cry just thinking about how profanely humans have abused this ancient, loving Earth we have inherited.

      I also believe "The pen is mightier than the sword" and that, indeed, one day righteousnes, wisdom, and courage will prevail over ignorance, fear, and greed.
    2. Re:I respectfully disagree... by KDR_11k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The pen is mightier than the sword: Often propaganda will work better than overt force. Shackle a man's hands and he will try to break free, shackle his mind and he will never consider it.

      This is the reason I consider false or sensationalist news more dangerous to the wellbeing of society than terrorism.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    3. Re:I respectfully disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was heartening to see such encouraging words after watching that horrific video which made me want to cry just thinking about how profanely humans have abused this ancient, loving Earth we have inherited. Ancient, loving Earth that we have inherited? Are you kidding me? You could argue the first point, but the last two are absurd. There is no Gaia, and the Earth does not have a soul. The Earth is only a very big rock with a layer of pond scum on it. It doesn't love you any more than your pet rock does. And we haven't inherited the Earth any more than the pond scum have inherited a rock they happen to be clinging to.

      Enough with this stupid Gaia superstition and quasi-religion! The planet Earth does not care whether you exist or not. It will not protect you. And it is not holy. It is just a rock. The real loss if we hurt the environment of this planet is not some spiritual entity. It is the potential loss of knowledge for us humans. But once that level of knowledge is reasonably complete and humans can survive without the Earth, this planet will only have sentimental value and it will not matter whether we mine it to the core or use it as a testbed for nuclear weapons.
    4. Re:I respectfully disagree... by kamapuaa · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Rome pre-Christianity was not unified by a single religion, it was a melange of different religions. And Rome was more of a "spoils of war" based society when it was a Republic, not when it was led by an all-powerful emperor - at least after AD 100 or so. If you say it's all-powerful - all the constant assassinations showed that emperors had a check on their power from angry mobs and the military, whereas despotic Chinese leaders could rule with relative impunity for long stretches of the Chinese Empire.

      The idea that the fall of the Roman Empire started with Constantine is completely ludicrous and obviously is more influenced by your anti-Christian beliefs than an honest view of history. He expanded the empire, consistently beat back Germanic tribes, and led to the empire's split into halves, with the Eastern half lasting a thousand years longer.

      Writing = civilization? While there's an obvious correlation, not quite. All the Germanic tribes by the fall of Rome had adopted scripts of their own. Anyway the judgment obviously had a lot more to do with 19th century ethos than anything else.

      Christianity was employed against the enemy - Rome pursued a policy of converting Germanic tribes to a Rome-centered Christianity, to make them more dependent towards Rome. So in that sense, Christianity probably prolonged the empire.

      It seems you read history books for the sole purpose of re-enforcing your own prejudices, and don't actually absorb any of it. Why do you even bother reading?

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    5. Re:I respectfully disagree... by Nazlfrag · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is it really that hard to grasp that the Gaia concept is a metaphor for our incredibly complex and precious biosphere. It bloody well is holy because this rock is our symbiote, our petri dish. Fuck it up and we're toast. So yeah, anthropomorphising the planet makes perfect sense. Sentimental value my arse, if we keep poisoning and harvesting the planet to extinction life as we know it will cease to exist. Mining it to the core or testing nuclear weapons is literally killing the planets lifeforce. The only stupidity is your ignorance in thinking humanity can survive outside of the fertile lifestream that birthed it.

    6. Re:I respectfully disagree... by smilindog2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I basically agree. An uncensored Internet has to be the greatest gift to mankind during my lifetime to date, if not all of history. The battle for freedom of speech, and thus free people, will be waged here, in the form of censorship. Too bad Google and others actively support censorship.

      --
      Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
    7. Re:I respectfully disagree... by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I took the parent as taking issue with the 'loving' part than with the anthropomorphic tone of the OP.

      My favorite 'mother earth' quote, from someone who was out in it quite a bit:

      "...nature is a stern, hard, immovable and terrible in her unrelenting cruelty. When wintry winds are out and the mercury far below zero she will allow her most ardent lover to freeze to her snowy breast without waving a single leaf in pity, or offering him a match; and scores of her devotees may starve to death in as many languages before she will offer a loaf of bread."

      That from Nessmuk.

      I'm from the Aldo Leopold school of conservation, I don't want to poison the air and water and cut down all the trees. But I also know, from various somewhat narrow escapes, that regardless of the cartoon face stuck on nature, it wants to crunch up my bones and return them to the soil and only by my wits or by erecting technological barriers do I keep that from happening.

      Entropy and all that. Nature is a big promoter of entropy.

      --
      "Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
    8. Re:I respectfully disagree... by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My favorite pen-sword retort:
      "just because 'the pen is mightier than the sword', that doesn't mean you can win a sword fight with a pen."

      --
      stuff |
    9. Re:I respectfully disagree... by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't know... my money's still on the pen. It was heartening to see such encouraging words after watching that horrific video which made me want to cry just thinking about how profanely humans have abused this ancient, loving Earth we have inherited.

      I also believe "The pen is mightier than the sword" and that, indeed, one day righteousnes, wisdom, and courage will prevail over ignorance, fear, and greed. Oh for God's sake. If you want to survive as a civilisation you need both happy civilised artists and big motherfucking bombs. And you need people who are willing to use those bombs too if there is no alternative like the US and UK did in WWII. Otherwise predatory neighbouring civilisations which have bombs but no artists will take over, enslave all the artists and that will be the end of things.

      It happened to Athens, and it happened to most of the European democracies in WWII. There are probably lots of examples of civilisation that were culturally quite good that got completely eradicated my their militaristic but philistine neighbours.

      Even if your neighbours seem peaceful there's always a risk that their economies may collapse and some Hitler like politician may decide to revive them by deficit spending on a huge military machine. If they do that they pretty much have to use it for armed 'hostile takeovers' of their more peaceful neighbours before the deficit spending causes their economy to collapse.

      And it's hard to imagine many decent books being produced in the sort of empire someone like that would build.
      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    10. Re:I respectfully disagree... by Lord+Ender · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "lifeforce?" "lifestream?" Are you just making up words? Of COURSE we could survive outside this planet, given sufficient technology. All we theoretically need to survive is neutrons, protons, electrons, and energy. With that those four things and enough knowledge, we could build anything we need.

      The GP is right. We aren't there yet, but we will be if we don't kill ourselves first. The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one can not eternally live in a cradle.

      The analogies about nuclear explosions "raping" the Earth are quite stupid and misinformed. There is a lot of life at the sites of former nuclear explosions. Think with your head, not with your emotions.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    11. Re:I respectfully disagree... by hitmark · · Score: 2, Insightful

      hate comes from all kinds of reasons, but they never show up out of the blue.

      more often then not its because its because one side is seen to have a unfair advantage of some kind. or that they but in on topics that they have no reason to. or maybe they claimed, unfairly or unreasonably, resources, including land.

      hate never shows up for no reason. find that reason, and understanding why things happen like they do become much clearer.

      --
      comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
    12. Re:I respectfully disagree... by hey! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Strategy, as always, is a force multiplier. If you aren't expecting it, you are unlikely to mount a credible defense. If you look like you are expecting me to conk you on the head, I don't oblige you by doing that. Instead I walk a bit farther down the street until I get an unsuspecting victim. I don't end up killing many people, but I do it cheaply.

      Really that points out the problem with the deaths per dollar metric, it doesn't take into account the fact you want to kill lots and lots of people quickly. It should really be something like log(deaths achievable in one day)/dollar. We should then use a nominal labor cost of, say, minimum wage, and compare the strategy of hiring various sized gangs of thugs with surplus 2x4s versus dropping the bomb as effective ways to kill people in any particular situation.

      My guess is that under such a more robust metric, nukes would appear more cost effective.

      However even that metric really isn't very good, because really you want to ask how many deaths you need to effect in order to achieve your goal, which is probably political in nature rather than wholesale death per se.

      In that case, you really can't do better than an occasional suicide bomber with a nail filled explosive vest. On the scale of cost and complexity, this is much closer to the surplus 2x4 approach than the nuclear approach, but you get a response that is closer to a nuke scale response. You don't have to kill that any people, you just have to do it visibly and unpredictably. This is especially effective if you can provoke your enemy into expensive and strategically counterproductive responses.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    13. Re:I respectfully disagree... by Xentor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or, as good ol' St. George (Carlin) said...

      "The planet is fine. The planet isn't going anywhere...... WE ARE! We're goin' away! Pack your shit, folks!"

      --
      "The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
  2. Re:Pedantry: ENGAGED by Danny+Rathjens · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Tough one. The sun is certainly a nuclear reactor. Is the defining property of a device that it was created by someone? I guess this is an intelligent design issue. ;)

  3. test? by apodyopsis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    they are always labeled a "test". what exactly were they testing?

    that they can make a bloody big bang?

    what the after effect were?

    ..or they they could go one step further in a foolish session of bloody pointless political brinkmanship?

    I always thought with nuclear weapons, that really after a certain size there were precious little point is making it more powerful.

    1. Re:test? by Lavene · · Score: 2, Insightful

      they are always labeled a "test". what exactly were they testing?

      that they can make a bloody big bang?
      The word 'test' in this context really means: "Look what we can do!" Nuclear deterrent in practice. The whole idea behind nuclear weapons is to discourage your enemy from attacking so you want them to see exactly what you can do to them. It's a scary tactic but it seem to have worked... so far...
    2. Re:test? by Anspen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's the usual competition reason: China has nukes, so India must have them to protect herself, whereupon which Pakistan must have nukes to protect itself against India (and ironacly gets help from China to do so).

      Plus it like a large population: if you're country isn't doing too well on other measures, nukes are a nice way of rising above the pack.

  4. Is this... by theReal-Hp_Sauce · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Something that we, as a human race are supposed to be proud of? Why do we care? Can't we evolve past this need to make the biggest "exploding" thing? I shake my head in horror.

    -hps

  5. Somethign doesn't add up by eggnoglatte · · Score: 1, Insightful

    OK, so let me get this straight: on the one hand we have the sun, a fusion reactor with a mass of about 2 * 10^30 kg (about a million times the mass of the whole earth). On the other hand, we have a fusion device with a mass of merely 27 tonnes, i.e. 3 * 10^4 kg, or 26 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE lighter.

    I have a hard time believing that the energy output of the latter was anywhere close to 1% of the former, except maybe by some really bogus metric (only counting certain wavelengths of radiation, for example).

    1. Re:Somethign doesn't add up by Neo+Quietus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The key difference is the incredibly short time frame the bomb produces 1% of the energy of the Sun. This is helped by the Sun releasing energy in essentially the slowest possible way. (The sun is self limited, in that when it gets too hot from too much fusion occurring it expands slightly, lowering the rate of fusion until it cools down.) I don't find it odd at all that for a short period of time the largest fusion bomb ever tested produced 1% of the sun's energy. I can produce accelerations in the hundreds of G's simply by smashing my fist into a wall and likewise say that "for less than a millisecond I produced forces hundreds of times stronger than the pull of Earth's gravity" and be technically correct.

    2. Re:Somethign doesn't add up by PineGreen · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Dude, the sun runs its nuclear reactions by quantum tunelling. It is really inefficient. What makes it bright is its size!

  6. Re:thanks by KDR_11k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually we don't even use bombs that size because it's just expensive overkill, doing more damage to the atmosphere and planet than to the target you were aiming at. It's more effective to use a missile with a crapload of small warheads that can be targetted individually so you know you hit what you were aiming for and aren't restricted to placing a circle of damage in one point that has to contain all targets. Also as crappy as modern anti-ICBM weapons are, they're still more likely to take down a single, huge warhead than a swarm of tiny ones, probably with decoys scattered in.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  7. If 1/100 of the Sun suddenly appeared on Earth... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My sense of scale must be off; I would've thought 1% of the Sun's power could instantly reduce the Earth to a barren rock. Surely the Sun is well over 100 times larger than the Earth?

  8. Wholesale slaughter of millions of people by flajann · · Score: 4, Insightful
    You gotta love nuclear bombs. It'll vaporise you no matter who you are. An old grandma, a kid playing in her yard, a dad leaving for work, a mom washing the dishes. A student graduating from college. A bird in a tree. A doctor saving a life. All gone in quite literally a flash.

    Really and honestly, what purpose can a 50-megatonne thermonuclear bomb really serve, except to say, "My power to vaporise millions of innocent people is greater than your power..."? While perhaps impressive from a scientific point of view, there is no practical use for nukes other than to annihilate civilization as we know it.

    Yes, leave it to the governments of the world to protect us and keep us "safe". "Safe" as in safely glowing in your grave.

    --
    Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
    1. Re:Wholesale slaughter of millions of people by Dread_ed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I would rather be vaporised than covered in napalm or thermite. I would also opt for vaporization over beheading or being skinned alive.

      At different times in history, all of the methods of destruction I mention abouve have been applied indiscriminately to kill "innocent people."

      Lets face it, nukes really are the kinder and gentler weapon of war.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  9. but this is war.. by bronney · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But war doesn't have to make sense and it doesn't have to be green. Bombs can also be remotely detonated. World War IV will be fought with sticks and stone buddy.

  10. Re:thanks by alyosha1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is laying nuclear mines a suicide mission? Just a question of a long enough time-delay, surely? You'd only need one sub, working its way along the coast. And as for avoiding detection, Boomers have gotten rather good at that over the last 50 years.

  11. Nuclear weapons get the populace involved by Colin+Smith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the population know they're going to be vaporised when the government goes to war, they'll become far more concerned with the politicians preponderance for going to war in the first place.

    --
    Deleted
  12. Re: "Loving Earth" by Neuticle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bravo, AC, Bravo. I was going to say much the same thing, albeit maybe less bluntly. However, I would add this to the above:

    Everyone I have heard espouse the "loving Earth/Gaia" bit lives a comfortable, relatively modern life. Mother Earth loves you plenty when you have electricity, running water and stores full of food.

    Take that away and get real close to Mother Earth. I've been there: Mother Earth may still love you, but the bitch will try her best to kill you at every opportunity.

    --
    "Cheeze it!" - Bender