Tsar Bomb (RDS-220)

The Tsar Bomb was the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated by humans. It was eight meters long, 2.1 meters in diameter, and weighed 27,000 kg.

Its official designation was RDS-220, but its codename was AN-602. It was also known by the names Big Ivan and Kuzmina Mat ("Kuaka's Mother"). The Tsar Bomb was the most popular name. The Tsar Bomb had an explosive yield of 50 to 58 megatons. 

The Tsar Bomb was 1,500 times the combined yield of the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and ten times the combined yield of all the bombs used in the seven-year-long Second World War. The actual yield of the Tsar Bomb was 100 megatons. It  Before detonation, its power was reduced by about half.

The Tsar Bomb was detonated on October 30, 1961. Location: Mityuzhikha Bay Test Range, Novaya Zemlya. Novaya Zemlya is an island in the northwestern corner of Russia, with an area of ​​90,650 square kilometers. A narrow strait across the island divides Novaya Zemlya into north and south. The Tsar Bomb was detonated over the Mityuzhikha Bay Test Range, which is adjacent to this strait, known as the Matochkin Strait. Although Novaya Zemlya is larger than our West Bengal, its current population is only 2,429. West Bengal has 90 million. 

In 1961, before the Tsar Bomb was detonated, the entire population of Novaya Zemlya had been evacuated.

The lightning that struck the Tsar Bomb was a thousand kilometers away  It was visible even from a distance. Although the Tsar bomb exploded four kilometers above the ground, the explosion caused a shockwave on the ground. The impact was equivalent to an earthquake of about five on the Richter scale. The pressure generated when the bomb exploded circled the globe three times. Windowpanes were shattered as far away as Norway and Finland, 900 kilometers away.

It has been mentioned above that the explosion of the Tsar bomb produced an explosive force equivalent to fifty to fifty-eight megatons of TNT. This was ten times the combined explosive force of all the explosives used in World War II, and it is estimated that this was more than ten times the combined explosive force of all the explosives used in World War II.

Excluding China, India, and the United States, just one such Tsar bomb would be enough to wipe out humanity from any of the remaining 243 countries. If it had exploded in the United States, only 14 percent of the population would have survived.  Suppose the Tsar Bomb had exploded in Russia, as happened to Bhasmasura: the entire human race in Russia, with a population of less than 150 million, would have been reduced to ashes.

That is just a theoretical statement. Even a bomb as devastating as the Tsar Bomb would only cause damage within a radius of five or six hundred kilometers. The entire population of Russia, which has an area of ​​13.4 million square kilometers, cannot be killed by a single bomb, of course. The same is true of China and the United States, which have an area of ​​about ten million square kilometers. India, which is 3.3 million square kilometers, cannot be destroyed by a single Tsar Bomb.

Suppose a nuclear war were to break out, and all the countries that have nuclear weapons were to use them indiscriminately. What would happen then?

It is estimated that there are 10,144 nuclear bombs ready to be used in the world today.  Most of these are five or six megatons each. Some are ten or twenty megatons. But for the sake of simplicity, let's assume that they are all one megaton each. So the total power of today's nuclear arsenal is 10,144 megatons. If 36 kilotons killed 200,000 people, how many people would be killed by 10,144 megatons?

The answer is 56.35 billion people! The current population of the Earth is only 7 billion. Today's nuclear arsenal is enough to wipe out humanity eight times over.