3 ms·
> Modern nuclear bombs are ~20Mt, with the biggest at 100Mt. IIRC US (and other Western ones as well I guess) ICBM warheads are about 300Kt, Russian ones about
by jabl 9y ago
> Modern nuclear bombs are ~20Mt, with the biggest at 100Mt.
IIRC US (and other Western ones as well I guess) ICBM warheads are about 300Kt, Russian ones about 1Mt.
The Russian did test a 50Mt device (Tsar Bomba) during the cold war (technically, there's apparently no upper limit how big you can make them), but such large devices are not really militarily useful to the point of justifying their bulk/weight/expense.
- sqeaky 9y agoI thought Tsar Bomba was designed to have 100Mt yield, but they dialed it back (by using less fissile material I think) because there was no reason to set on of that large and because of safetey. It was my understanding that the nearby towns wouldn't be threatened by a 50Mt bomb and but a 100Mt was expected to break windows and stuff. Also the time for the pilots to get away was improved.