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This is the story of Tsar Bomba, the emperor of nukes.
Artlist:
Out of Flux - THE LIGHTHOUSE - Creative Cut - Beat
Yarin Primak - Ghost Train - Instrumental Version
Jon Gegelman - Outer Chaos
Tamuz Dekel - My Right Foot
Theatre of Delays - The Conversation
Dan Mayo -Leaving
Andrea Carsenzuola - Horror Nights - Synth Notes Arpeggio Electronic Heartbeat
DaniHaDani - Black Eyes
Artlist Musical Logos - The Truth Is Close
Lens Distortion:
Rematch
Confident Design
Searching Within
Canon
Epidemic Sound:
In The Wrong Place - Bill Ferngren
_____
Armchair documentaries, almost weekly
This is the story of Tsar Bomba, the emperor of nukes.
Artlist:
Out of Flux - THE LIGHTHOUSE - Creative Cut - Beat
Yarin Primak - Ghost Train - Instrumental Version
Jon Gegelman - Outer Chaos
Tamuz Dekel - My Right Foot
Theatre of Delays - The Conversation
Dan Mayo -Leaving
Andrea Carsenzuola - Horror Nights - Synth Notes Arpeggio Electronic Heartbeat
DaniHaDani - Black Eyes
Artlist Musical Logos - The Truth Is Close
Lens Distortion:
Rematch
Confident Design
Searching Within
Canon
Epidemic Sound:
In The Wrong Place - Bill Ferngren
_____
Armchair documentaries, almost weekly
Categoría
😹
DiversiónTranscripción
00:00This is Little Boy, the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima.
00:07This is the H-bomb Castle Bravo, the most powerful nuclear weapon the United States has ever detonated.
00:14And this, this is RDS-220, also known as Tsar Bomba, the emperor of all bombs.
00:21It was built in the Soviet Union, and here it was called Big Ivan.
00:26Russia recently declassified secret footage of its 1961 detonation.
00:40At 50 megatons, Tsar Bomba is the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.
00:45It yielded the most powerful human-made explosion in history,
00:48about 3,800 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
00:52If dropped over a major city, the consequences would be unimaginable.
00:56And if it weren't for a last-minute decision, it would have been twice as powerful,
01:00and perhaps twice as catastrophic.
01:03The lead physicist who engineered it was so unsettled by his creation
01:07that he devoted the rest of his life to campaigning against the nuclear arms race.
01:11This is the surprisingly unknown, terrifying story of Tsar Bomba.
01:23It's the end of the 50s.
01:25The Soviets and the Americans are neck and neck in the nuclear arms race.
01:29But the Americans are winning, and Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, knows it.
01:34Tensions between the two superpowers have cooled down a bit in recent years.
01:38Khrushchev and U.S. President Eisenhower have recently met,
01:41and both expressed a desire for more harmony.
01:44In 1958, they both agreed to a voluntary test-ban moratorium on nuclear weapons.
01:49Worldwide, many are hopeful that a peaceful coexistence is on the horizon.
01:53In May of 1960, the Soviet Union and the United States are scheduled to meet in Paris for a summit.
01:59One of the main points on the agenda is disarmament.
02:02They hope to formalize a test-ban treaty of nuclear weapons.
02:05Both leaders, and the world at large, are well aware of how existentially dangerous nuclear warfare is.
02:13But just a few days before the summit, it all goes south.
02:17Tensions bubble to a rolling boil when an American spy plane is shot down from deep within Soviet territory.
02:25The Americans claim that it was just a weather plane that's been blown off course.
02:29But the Soviets are able to present evidence that the plane was indeed used for espionage.
02:34The captured pilot admits he works for the CIA.
02:37The Americans' lie turns into a PR disaster for the Eisenhower administration.
02:42Khrushchev opens the Paris summit with an enraged rebuke of the United States.
02:46He demands an apology from Eisenhower.
02:49The US president refuses, and Khrushchev storms out.
02:53No treaty is signed.
02:55Khrushchev thinks he needs to show the world how tough and formidable the Soviet Union is.
03:00He's famously prickly, impulsive, and aggressive.
03:03A few years ago, he told Western powers,
03:06History is on our side. We will bury you.
03:09Now is the time to put his money where his mouth is.
03:12Because of the temporary ban on testing, innovation efforts on both sides of the arms race have slowed.
03:17They're both focused on steadily growing their supply,
03:20building more bombs instead of developing new tech.
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04:24In 1961, the Americans inaugurate John F. Kennedy as their new president.
04:28Khrushchev has no respect for him.
04:30He sees him as young, inexperienced, and weak.
04:33This might be the perfect moment to show the world what the Soviet Union is capable of.
04:38So he summons scientists from Arzamas-16, the Soviet Los Alamos, to the Kremlin.
04:43He tells them it's time to break the test-ban moratorium and start testing nukes again.
04:48One of these scientists is Andrei Sakharov.
04:51He's a star physicist for the Soviet effort.
04:53He led the creation of a staged thermonuclear weapon,
04:56independently of any intelligence gathered from the Americans.
04:59He's called the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb.
05:02But Sakharov has become uneasy with his role in the arms race.
05:05He's found that even testing the weapons is catastrophically lethal,
05:09even if no human is within the blast radius.
05:11He has calculated that for every megaton of nuclear weapons detonated,
05:15there would be over 6,600 premature deaths worldwide
05:18due to the cancers and genetic abnormalities produced by the radioactivity.
05:22Even if these deaths occur very gradually, over thousands of years, his conscience still can't take it.
05:29So he tells Khrushchev that it's unnecessary to test anymore.
05:33Isn't it enough to have built the bombs and only use them in an absolute last-resort scenario?
05:38They already know their tech is good.
05:40Khrushchev is furious.
05:42Sakharov, don't try to tell us what to do or how to behave.
05:46We understand politics.
05:48I'd be a jellyfish and not chairman of the Council of Ministers if I'd listen to people like Sakharov.
05:53Khrushchev demands that the scientists make suggestions.
05:57What kind of bombs should they develop?
05:59There's not a lot of new ideas ready to be tested due to the recent focus on stockpiling over innovating.
06:05So someone simply suggests going bigger.
06:08Why not 100 megatons?
06:14Khrushchev loves the idea and latches onto it.
06:17100 megatons is an absurdly high number.
06:20Up until that point, the most powerful bomb ever detonated was Castle Bravo,
06:24a 15 megaton bomb the Americans tested in 1954.
06:28The total blast power expended in all of World War II is 3 megatons,
06:32and that includes the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
06:36Previous plans to test bombs in this megaton range had been halted
06:40because the effects of such a large weapon were unknowable.
06:43Scientists weren't able to reliably predict meteorological conditions at the time,
06:47which would affect the severity of the radioactive fallout and how far the particles could travel.
06:52For all they know, such an enormous blast could engulf Moscow in a cloud of poisonous radiation.
06:58What could even be gained from testing 100 megatons?
07:01For Khrushchev, it's obvious.
07:03The Soviet Union would assert its dominance.
07:06Let the 100 megaton bomb hang over the capitalists like a sword of Damocles.
07:11And so the race to build the biggest, deadliest bomb the world will ever see is underway.
07:18Sakharov is still uneasy about the risks of testing nuclear weapons,
07:23but he's the best of the best, so he ends up leading the team of physicists.
07:27He hopes that this, at least, will be the last atmospheric test ever required.
07:32Maybe from this one absurdly big blast, the Soviet Union would learn what they need to know and move on.
07:38That, unfortunately, would not be the case.
07:41The project's timeline is grueling.
07:44Khrushchev insists that from initial conception to detonation, the scientists get exactly 16 weeks.
07:50So Sakharov's team is building while still designing.
07:53In just four months, they whip out a design for an entirely untested yield range.
07:58They build the bomb.
07:59They construct the fissionable and fusionable materials into the correct shapes
08:03and formulate a plan for an allegedly safe test.
08:06They hope for the best.
08:08The team is forced to skip crucial parts of the design process.
08:12There isn't even time for mathematical analysis.
08:15Instead, they're working with approximations.
08:18Doubts start to creep in.
08:20Will it even work?
08:21And how dangerous is this really?
08:24Either way, they're about to find out.
08:28In October 1961, Khrushchev formally announces to the world
08:32that the Soviets are retreating from the test ban agreement.
08:35He cites U.S. aggression as the reason.
08:38He hints his scientists are developing bombs in the megaton range.
08:42Now that the world knows what Sakharov's team is up to,
08:45the pressure is on for the physicists to deliver a viable weapon.
08:49Otherwise, the whole point, propaganda value, would be lost.
08:53The world reacts with fear, outrage, and protest.
08:56In response, the Americans abandon the test ban moratorium as well
09:00and start vigorously testing nukes again themselves.
09:04The Kennedy administration denounces the Tsar Bomba as pointless terrorism,
09:09nothing but a propaganda weapon.
09:11But recently declassified documents indicate that Kennedy's administration
09:15considered emulating it, all while denouncing it publicly.
09:19The U.N. appealed to the Soviets to cancel the plan.
09:22But Khrushchev pushes forward.
09:26At the end of October, Tsar Bomba is ready.
09:30It is, in and of itself, enormous.
09:33A weapon with 100 megaton explosive power needs a lot of uranium and fission fuel.
09:38So Big Ivan is roughly the size of a school bus,
09:418 meters long and weighs 25 tons.
09:44The bomb is so bulky that it needs its own specially modified plane
09:47to deliver the payload.
09:49It doesn't really make sense to make bombs this big.
09:51It's just not strategic.
09:53If actually used in battle, Tsar Bomba would be easy to spot lumbering through the sky
09:57and could be quickly shot down.
09:59And it's too bulky to deliver via missile.
10:01In the decades since Tsar Bomba,
10:03the nuclear weapon states have focused on developing smaller warheads.
10:06These are far easier to deploy.
10:08The largest nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal today
10:11is about 40 times less powerful than Tsar Bomba.
10:14Even in 1961, it was generally understood that bigger isn't necessarily better.
10:18That's because explosive power doesn't correspond one-to-one with blast damage.
10:23Explosions scale to cubic root, not linearly.
10:26So while a 100-megaton bomb indeed releases 10 times more energy than a 10-megaton bomb,
10:31it will only damage about twice as much area.
10:34American newspapers at the time characterized Khrushchev's experiments
10:38as not only horrifying but idiotic,
10:40pointing out that if 5 weapons at 5 megatons each are detonated,
10:44they will cause damage to far more area than a 150-megaton super bomb.
10:48And these smaller bombs are far easier to deliver.
10:52But actual use is not the point of Tsar Bomba.
10:55It wasn't built for war. It was built for glory.
10:58It's meant to make the world tremble at the thought of Soviet power.
11:02It's a city destroyer, to be used only as an absolute last resort.
11:08The blast damage radius could be roughly calculated.
11:11The remote Arctic island, Novaya Zemlya, is chosen as a test site.
11:15It's one of the main nuclear test sites of the Soviet Union
11:18because they figure it's far enough away to not bother any humans.
11:22But radioactive fallout is more difficult to predict.
11:25It can vary considerably with weather conditions and weapon design.
11:29Scientists have been surprised before.
11:31The 1954 Castle Bravo test produced far more radioactivity than anticipated,
11:36requiring evacuation of the island's downwind from the test site.
11:40What is known at the time is that thermal radiation scales better than blast damage
11:44in relation to explosive power,
11:46meaning a bigger blast generally means more radiation.
11:51Sakharov can't stop thinking about all the lives it will take.
11:54He's taking great care to make the Tsar Bomba as clean as can be.
11:58It's designed to minimize the release of radioactive fallout as much as possible.
12:03But still, even a relatively clean nuke like Tsar Bomba isn't safe.
12:08According to his calculations, the test of one clean 100-megaton weapon
12:13will release enough radiation that, over time, will cause 660,000 premature deaths.
12:19Deaths he would be partially responsible for.
12:22So he makes one last-minute drastic change in design.
12:26Right before the weapon test, he suggests using an inert substance like lead
12:30instead of uranium-238.
12:32This will cut the blast yield down from 100 to 50 megatons.
12:36Khrushchev agrees.
12:38He's facing a lot of backlash, so scaling back might be politically smart.
12:42As long as the triggering device works and the bomb goes off,
12:46the world will still know Tsar Bomba is capable of detonating 100 megatons
12:51if the Soviets ever feel they need to in the future.
12:54Just in case they ever need to take out New York City or Los Angeles all in one go.
13:09The pilot carrying Big Ivan soars to 10 kilometers above the archipelago
13:13Novaya Zemlya.
13:15A smaller plane flies alongside him, ready to film the blast and monitor the fallout.
13:20The engineers believe the crew only has a 50% chance of survival.
13:24Big Ivan is designed to detonate midair.
13:27To give the crew even a chance of escape, the bomb is outfitted with a massive parachute
13:31meant to slow the bomb's descent.
13:33It should be enough time, fingers crossed.
13:36At 11.32, Moscow time, from 4,000 meters above the ground,
13:41the bombardier drops the bomb.
13:45What exactly makes Tsar Bomba so powerful is still, partially, a mystery.
13:50Russia continues to guard that secret.
13:52What we do know is that its design is most likely different from other thermonuclear weapons.
13:57Normally, a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, consists of two stages.
14:02It's a nuclear bomb within a nuclear bomb.
14:05The first stage uses nuclear fission, or splitting atoms to produce immense heat and pressure.
14:10This triggers the second stage, nuclear fusion, or combining atoms, where far more energy is unleashed.
14:16Fusion of hydrogen isotopes under extreme temperatures releases an incredibly powerful explosion,
14:21far stronger than a single-stage atomic bomb, like the one dropped on Hiroshima.
14:28The Tsar Bomba, however, is a three-stage hydrogen bomb with an unusual triggering mechanism.
14:33What sets it apart is that it most likely uses two near-simultaneous primary triggers
14:39to ignite the third stage more evenly and symmetrically, maximizing its explosive power.
14:44While other three-stage thermonuclear weapons exist,
14:47the innovative use of synchronized primary triggers is unusual, if not unique.
14:52It's long been considered extremely difficult to achieve synchronization of primaries.
14:56But somehow, Sakharov's team managed.
14:59When you detonate a thermonuclear weapon, you force something into existence unlike anything else on Earth.
15:06The first fraction of a millisecond is just a luminous flash.
15:10It's silent. Light has no sound.
15:13But don't look at it directly. It could cause blindness from more than 80 kilometers away.
15:20Tsar Bomba's flash is seen from 1,000 kilometers, or 630 miles, away.
15:25It lasts for over a minute, far longer than any other nuclear flash before or since.
15:31Then, tremendous heat.
15:33The light superheats the air to 100 million degrees Celsius.
15:36That's four to five times hotter than the center of the sun.
15:40A high-pressure fireball erupts violently and expands at several million kilometers per hour.
15:45What follows is a thunderous blast.
15:48It's likely the loudest human-made sound in history.
15:51After about 10 seconds, Tsar Bomba's bright orange fireball grows to a radius of nearly 5 kilometers.
15:57The fireball engulfs everything in its wake.
16:00The ice-covered archipelago is now red and scorched.
16:03Anything in the ring of absolute destruction, 35 kilometers, is vaporized.
16:08Ground zero is completely leveled.
16:11Nothing. No trees, no buildings, no rocks remain.
16:1535 seconds pass.
16:17The fireball balloons above the Earth, and the iconic mushroom cloud emerges,
16:21presiding over the hell unleashed below.
16:24It's 64 kilometers above the Earth, seven times higher than Mount Everest.
16:28Soaring above the stratosphere and piercing the mesosphere.
16:32All this creates a shockwave felt all around the world, all the way in New Zealand.
16:37It encircles the globe not once, not twice, but three times.
16:42Tsar Bomba's shockwave catches up with the planes that are 115 kilometers from the point of detonation.
16:48They drop nearly a kilometer and are nearly downed,
16:51but the pilots manage to recover control and survive.
16:5555 kilometers away from ground zero,
16:57all buildings in the abandoned village of Severny are completely destroyed.
17:011,148 kilometers away, in Soviet territories,
17:04houses collapse and radio communications fail.
17:07Windows shatter as far away as Finland.
17:13But Big Ivan's detonation doesn't kill anyone directly.
17:16If Tsar Bomba were dropped on a city as large as New York or Washington, D.C.,
17:20it would be instantly demolished.
17:23Concrete would explode to vanish without a trace.
17:26Metal would evaporate.
17:38Tsar Bomba's fireball never made contact with the ground,
17:41and so its radioactive fallout was relatively small compared with its yield.
17:45It is considered one of the cleanest nukes ever dropped.
17:48Still, its radioactivity was caught in the stratosphere
17:51and encircled the Earth for years, dispersing all across the globe.
17:55In 2018, Russian scientists found significantly high levels of radiation trapped in nearby glaciers.
18:01Those glaciers are melting at record speed into the Barents Sea,
18:04a sea that yields up to 4.5 million tons of fish per year for human consumption.
18:09Glaciers that were previously sinks of atmospheric contaminants
18:12are now becoming sinks of atmospheric pollution.
18:15Glaciers that were previously sinks of atmospheric contaminants
18:18are now becoming secondary sources of radioactive fallout,
18:21which environmentalists predict will become increasingly relevant in the coming decades.
18:25Due to Tsar Bomba and 120 other nuclear detonations at Novy Azimlie,
18:30indigenous populations living nearby have been exposed to significantly high radiation levels.
18:35They experience higher levels of chromosomal diseases and birth defects
18:39than other populations in Russia,
18:41tests that only emerged later because the Soviet Union covered up incidents of radiation sickness.
18:46Some locals call it the archipelago of death.
18:52Just after detonation, the Tsar Bomba test is condemned internationally and domestically.
18:58Sakharov emerges as a vocal critic of nuclear testing and of Soviet leadership.
19:02He campaigns vigorously for an end to atmospheric testing.
19:06For his efforts, he receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
19:10The Kremlin permits him from leaving the Soviet Union to receive the award.
19:14In response to public pressure, the United States and the Soviet Union
19:17signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which prohibits atmospheric testing.
19:23Nowadays, people often say that if Tsar Bomba was good for anything at all,
19:28it would be for catalyzing this treaty.
19:30When brought up, it's often dismissed, both in the United States and the former Soviet Union,
19:35as a reckless political stunt.
19:37A weapon too impractical and dangerous to ever be attempted by anyone else.
19:41But Khrushchev is hardly the only person in history intent on creating the biggest blast possible.
19:46Recently declassified files from the United States indicate that plans had been underway
19:51to build much, much bigger bombs.
19:53In the 1950s, Edward Teller, father of the US hydrogen bomb,
19:57was obsessed with creating the biggest bang possible.
20:00He and his team were working on two secret projects called Nomen and Sundial.
20:05Nomen would be a 1,000 megaton bomb to set off Sundial, a 10,000 megaton bomb.
20:11That's 10 billion tons of TNT, 670,000 times the power of Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima.
20:17At least enough to burn all of France, and perhaps much worse still.
20:21Nothing close to that scale has been tested,
20:24and we don't know if the traditional laws will apply at that level.
20:28When Teller first proposed Sundial at a secret meeting in Los Alamos,
20:32most of the scientists present expressed horror.
20:35Such an enormous blast could poison the entire planet.
20:38Unbothered, Teller and his team continued to build Nomen, and even planned to test it.
20:43And when the US military learned about the project,
20:46there was considerable enthusiasm for realizing Sundial.
20:50But thankfully, the test never occurred.