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Rosatom releases previously classified documentary video of Tsar Bomba nuke test
- osipov 6y agoThe launch and the detonation start here: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1309 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1309 Clips of nuclear "money shots" are at the end of the documentary: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1779 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1779 Makes you wonder how many unreleased "Top Secret" documentaries from the Soviet Union are still on tapes someplace.
- mhh__ 6y agoA lot. I'm more interested in Espionage than the Space Program (I imagine if you asked nicely Roscosmos might give you footage), but to this day there is more material from the KGB from defectors than official sources (and this includes material going back a century). The biggest single dump of KGB archives was from Mitrokhin, who in the burst of freedom after the union dissolved walked off with a few hundred thousand papers he'd copied (The book version is a good read). It will likely remain that way for many years, the Russian Federation is still chekist just as the Soviet Union was before it - those who criticize Putin do not live long.
- nowandlater 6y agoThe biggest single dump of KGB archives was from Mitrokhin, who in the burst of freedom after the union dissolved walked off with a few hundred thousand papers he'd copied (The book version is a good read). If possible, could you point me to the book you're referring to. I'm really interested in reading this.
- mhh__ 6y agohttps://www.penguin.co.uk/books/253/25373/the-mitrokhin-archive/9780141989488.html https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/253/25373/the-mitrokhin-arch... The original Russian is classified (Make of that what you will - the British establishment very much did not leave no rock unturned when it came to soviet infiltration), the English is (I think) available online somewhere, and the aforementioned book is a summary of his papers.
- nowandlater 6y agoThanks very much. Finding a copy from the states seems to be hit or miss. Some searching brought me here though: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/52/mitrokhin-archive https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/52/mitrok... Would you call this a legitamite/equivalent source?
- mhh__ 6y agoYes. The Andrews book should he available on Amazon or other retailers although you might get raped on the shipping.
- sbhn 6y agoAnything russia is capable of, that scares america, is promoted by the american administration since, well, that is there job security, ie, saving you from the enemy. Maybe its fake news, but the money to be made from validating it, ie converting public money into a private monet, is to good an opportunity to refuse.
- ceejayoz 6y agoI don’t think an impractical nuke from 1961 is gonna move the needle much.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoThis was released by Rosatom, which the US administration does not control.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoAccording to some members of the Congress, the US administration is controlled by us Russians. 4d chess you know.
- chromedev 6y agoYes, but they aren't scared of bombs but instead hidden tapes.
- mhh__ 6y agoAt the near-height of the Cold War, the US had a spy called Adolf Tolkachev. He has - somewhat romantically - been called the "Billion dollar spy", because he handed over strategically important information about Russian military capabilities (RADAR ceilings and the like). This allowed the US to change course, and spend the money on the right things. He was later betrayed by Aldrich Ames and/or Robert Hanssen. It's not quite that simple.
- akmarinov 6y agoThey wanted it to be a 100 megaton bomb, but that meant sacrificing the crew of the plane that dropped it.
- trhway 6y agoin USSR it meant sacrificing the plane. Anyway, looking at those explosions these days it usually reminds me that the total produced nukes by both sides - 100K+ - was sufficient to send an Orion style space ship to the closest star with 1-3% of the speed of light.
- cbfrench 6y agoDetonation footage begins just after 22:40 for those (like me) looking for the big boom.
- archsurface 6y agoLove the cheerful music.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoIf you like cheezy cheerful music accompanying nuclear destruction, watch https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?t=210 https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?t=210
- dTal 6y agoThat's much more sinister - especially the part at the end where they show the warhead landing in a densely populated area and caption it "Mission Accomplished" with a triumphant musical flourish. Sadly it's standard military contractor stuff. It's a sick culture.
- nemo1618 6y agoLess cheesy -- actually one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Rr4xIUYr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Rr4xIUYr4
- liability 6y agoA North Korean take on this theme: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ADN0H6MREHA https://youtube.com/watch?v=ADN0H6MREHA
- sudosysgen 6y agoA North Korean pop song about the nuclear destruction of the US is not something I expected to be seeing today. It was quite disturbing. The song itself wasn't bad, though.
- zkms 6y agoAlternatively there is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDL_pIPScSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDL_pIPScSI about Minuteman III testing -- in which a song called "It's My Life" plays as we see breathtaking video of an unarmed Minuteman III missile climbing its way through the clouds at Vandenberg AFB and the West Coast; followed by footage of the reentry vehicles falling down from the sky at several kilometers per second, visible only as streaks of white light.
- snoshy 6y agoQuite eerie to watch the column of dirt rise so slowly after such a violent explosion. Same for the aftermath, other than perhaps the melted snow exposing the red dirt below, the landscape hardly looks any different after the test. Amazing that the mushroom cloud nearly reached space.
- 01100011 6y agoI think it appears slow because of the scale and the distance involved. It's actually moving quite fast(several km in a few seconds).
- remcob 6y agoNapkin math: That column of dirt went up ~20 km in about 30 seconds. That's almost twice the speed of sound. Incredible how its size makes it look slow.
- trhway 6y ago>That's almost twice the speed of sound. a bit of pedantism - giving that it was air heated by the radiation and shock wave the speed of sound was much higher, so while going up very fast, the dirt being moved up by convection and pressure differential may have still moved subsonically wrt. the local speed of sound.
- remcob 6y agoI put the speed of sound purely as a comparison. The local speed of sound is irrelevant because the dust was moving with the medium and not relative to the medium.
- trhway 6y agoExcept for the situation of being directly impacted by shockwave, the medium - air in this case - can't move faster than the speed of sound, ie the speed with which the pressure differential causing the movement is propagated. Once the fireball expanded and shockwave passed, the mushroom goes up because it's hot and thus it is moved by the atmospheric pressure. For example you wouldn't have mushroom going up without an atmosphere. It is able to go that fast because the whole surrounding volume was preheated by radiation and the shockwave with the resulting speed of sound increase .
- refurb 6y agoThe clip from 250km away looks like the sun on the horizon.
- m0zg 6y agoSimilar physics - it's a fusion bomb, hence the low residual radiation. Wikipedia claims, BTW, that the energy released by this explosion was about 16.6 times all explosive energy released in WW2, and about 1/10th of all energy released by all nuclear testing.
- lmilcin 6y agoThere exists no purely fusion bomb. All thermonuclear bombs are lighted by a fission stage and bomb of such size would definitely have more than one.
- m0zg 6y agoYes, but the initial nuclear charge is comparatively small (1.5MT), and dispersed over a large area, since the bomb is detonated pretty high above the ground. To my knowledge there is only one such charge in this bomb. If its yield weren't limited to 50MT, there'd be two such stages. Andrei Sakharov suggested not using U238, replacing it with some passive material in the secondary module. The yield was limited because if it weren't, there _would_ be a lot of radioactive contamination, and the fireball would touch the ground, exacerbating the problem. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A6%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C-%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B1%D0%B0#%D0%98%D0%B7%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B5_602 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A6%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C-%D0%B... https://www.atomic-energy.ru/files/books/Ukroschenie%20yadra%20(2005).pdf https://www.atomic-energy.ru/files/books/Ukroschenie%20yadra...
- DennisP 6y agoWow, I never realized Tsar Bomba was scaled down. Wiki link says with U238 it would have yielded over 100MT. Also confirms that it was a very clean bomb, with over 97% of the energy coming from fusion.
- liability 6y agoThis film shows a number of what appear to be ordinary off-the-shelf cameras being used to record data, for instance at 5:01 and 12:55. Are those Zorkis?
- wyoh 6y agoCould be Fed
- ninjin 6y agoGlad I am not the only camera nut out there, my personal speciality is the pre-SLR era that I know far too much about to be healthy. The use of high-end, off-the-shelf cameras for military and scientific purposes does not surprise me that much. The “Luftwaffe Leicas” [1] for example are famous in camera circles and even today I frequently spot Nikon and Canon gear in physics labs when I walk around campus. [1]: https://cameraquest.com/luft.htm https://cameraquest.com/luft.htm My guess for 5:01 [2] is a Zorki 6 with a rigid Industar-50 [3]. The top plate matches the Zorki 6 from what I can tell and the rigid Industar-50 has a very distinct shape when attached as it looks a bit “fat” in the middle. [2]: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=301 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=301 [3]: http://mattsclassiccameras.com/rangefinders-compacts/zorki-6 http://mattsclassiccameras.com/rangefinders-compacts/zorki-6 At 5:08 [4] I think we have a Zorki S [5] based on the top plate. Those familiar with screw-mount Leica cameras can note the striking similarity, more on this later. I have no clue about the lens though, it looks akin to specialist lenses from the era that I have seen. [4]: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=308 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=308 [5]: http://mattsclassiccameras.com/rangefinders-compacts/zorki-s http://mattsclassiccameras.com/rangefinders-compacts/zorki-s For 12:38 [6] we again seem to have Industar-50s, but now with four Zorki S’. [6]: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=758 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=758 A word of warning, I am far far far more familiar with German and Japanese cameras from this era as it is what I have used in the past – corrections are welcome. Also, if you spotted other camera gear (no film cameras though, ask someone else…) do poke me. To end on an interesting historical fact. The Zorki S you saw and plenty more from the era produced both in the USSR (do not say Russia, from what I remember plenty were made in the Ukraine) and Japan (both Nikon and Canon) were “Leica copies” that either looked very much like to their German counterparts, accepted lenses with the same mount (M39 or Leica Thread Mount), and/or had very similar lens designs. This means that lenses/cameras produced during this era tends to be compatible between makers and countries, which leads to a lot of fun if you can muster a little courage and try film. In particular the USSR-made cameras/lenses are dirt cheap these days.
- dTal 6y agoThis whole video is a fascinating window into Soviet engineering culture of the time, with lots of juicy shots of classic oscilloscopes and the like. I would give my right arm to see a similar video of their space program. If, like me, you were confused by the propeller blades being black on takeoff, despite being painted white earlier in the video - only the backs were painted, as the aircraft was flying away from the bomb on detonation.
- trebligdivad 6y agoAll the test equipment, scope cameras, and period radio equipment and radio operation was fascinating.
- Animats 6y agoInteresting. Didn't know it had to be carried outside the drop plane. The control setup is very Russian. The arming and detonation were remotely controlled from the ground. The pilots couldn't go bomb someplace else.
- saagarjha 6y agoI'm sure they'd be shot down if they inexplicably deviated too far from their course as well.
- rsynnott 6y agoWell... yes. I'd think that would be standard practice for any rogue nuclear bomber.
- vl 6y agoTo be fair, the detonation had to be synchronized with the recording equipment start. They were proudly describe analog control system which start recorders at correct time.
- saagarjha 6y agoOh, wow, this is great. Seeing all this in detail is really interesting. It's even better after seeing the static, low-quality pictures on Wikipedia and then watching this and seeing that they are in fact part of a high-quality, video capture of the bomb. I can't wonder how many similar "secret" projects have such good documentation and videos of them that haven't seen the light of day yet… Edit: no, really, go check out the Wikipedia image of the bomb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) and then watch the video. They have the recording they pulled that exact picture on the top of the page from, except the quality is significantly better in every aspect. (If you're impatient: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1780 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1780)
- jbay808 6y agoI'm astonished that they would release this video. Even 60 years onward, this test is still beyond the capabilities of many nations and so it's surprising to me that this wouldn't remain classified. It goes into quite extensive detail on the logistics and planning and even shows footage of the bomb with panels removed. Edit on downvotes - is my surprise at its declassification misplaced? Does every teenager these days know how to plan and carry out a 50 megaton nuclear test by reading Wikipedia?
- csomar 6y agoIt's possible they are releasing it because of the current tensions between US/China/Russia.
- pvg 6y agoDoes every teenager these days know how to plan and carry out a 50 megaton nuclear test by reading Wikipedia? Not quite but closer than you might have thought, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
- tyingq 6y agoThe important bit being: "though in such a case the limiting factor in developing such a weapon is not usually design difficulty but rather the procurement of material (enriched uranium)"
- iandanforth 6y agoThey refer to it as a "clean" bomb and let people walk around at the hypocenter immediately afterward, saying the radiation measured was insignificant. How is this possible? Is this a common feature of hydrogen bombs?
- totetsu 6y agoIt's a propaganda film. (Later surrounding countries complained about fallout, and atmospheric testing was replaced by underground testing)
- hinkley 6y agoI was appalled to learn that nuclear weapons testing roughly doubles the radiation exposure of a person living at sea level (the atmosphere blocks a lot from outer space).
- tyingq 6y agoI can't vouch for it personally, since I have no expertise there, but this Quora answer sounds credible: https://www.quora.com/How-did-they-minimize-the-radiation-of-Tsar-Bomba https://www.quora.com/How-did-they-minimize-the-radiation-of... Basically lead instead of uranium tampers. Makes for more fusion, less fission.
- Barrin92 6y agoWell clean is relative. Hydrogen bombs still have a traditional fission stage and that is going to produce fallout. However the bomb was detonated several kilometers above ground which means that fallout would generally be dispersed widely downwind from the source of the explosion. I'm not a 100% sure but it certainly might have been possible that the location wasn't very radioactive afterwards.
- hinkley 6y agoI've I've parsed this properly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon A hydrogen bomb is triggered by a smaller plutonium/depleted uranium device. It's the moral equivalent of a detonator for C4, with a sprinkle of X-Rays and plasma on the side. The punchline is about a third of the way down: > The fission reactions though, especially the last fission reactions, release a tremendous amount of fission products and fallout. If the last fission stage is omitted, by replacing the uranium tamper with one made of lead, for example, the overall explosive force is reduced by approximately half but the amount of fallout is relatively low. The neutron bomb is a hydrogen bomb with an intentionally thin tamper, allowing most of the fast fusion neutrons as possible to escape.
- supernova87a 6y agoWatching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs, making the same preparations (down to the anti-flash white paint on the aircraft), executing the same commands -- all just normal people who were caught up in a terrible arms race. Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition. Makes you think about how, in the age where technological achievement can so quickly outpace the control of individuals, yet also relies on those same individuals to make it happen -- how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. It's no profoundly new sentiment, but in some ways we need to overcome our caveman instincts when we're stocked with nuclear weapons.
- Haga 6y agoFermi said it first.. Not gonna happen. And the panopticon can not prevent the abuse of new exponential. A fine mousetrap to catch a species in..
- yareally 6y agoReminds me of the TV series, The Americans[1]. It did a great job of humanizing people on both sides of the Cold War. Sure, there were those that were blinded by their nationalism, but a majority on both sides we just trying to live their lives in a not so dissimilar way from the other. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans
- narrationbox 6y agoTry the Russian version "Adaptasiya" (Adaptation). We use it for testing speech transcription and machine translation since there are no official English subtitles for it. The show's pretty good. http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/ http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/
- atombender 6y agoWhere can one stream or download this? Who is "we", by the way?
- noisy_boy 6y agoThe equipment looked great - I wouldn't mind return of atleast some shiny steel switches on modern equipment.
- emmelaich 6y agoVideo is weird. It plays a bomb sound at the same time as the explosion is seen. And the sound is just like the classic stock bomb sound found in movies and video games throughout the 80s. https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1720 https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1720
- f0ok 6y agoIt's very clean hydrogen indeed.
- aaron695 6y agoWow, the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation is amazing. It's what science used to be in the golden age in the West. https://rosatom.ru/en/ https://rosatom.ru/en/ http://rosatomnewsletter.com/ http://rosatomnewsletter.com/ https://twitter.com/RosatomGlobal https://twitter.com/RosatomGlobal https://www.facebook.com/rosatom.global/ https://www.facebook.com/rosatom.global/ Maybe scientists need to defect to get work done? How exactly does a nuclear icebreaker work ️? We thought you'd never ask. https://rosatom.ru/en/rosatom-group/the-nuclear-icebreaker-fleet/ https://rosatom.ru/en/rosatom-group/the-nuclear-icebreaker-f...
- ciarannolan 6y ago> It's still what science used to be in the golden age in the West. Care to elaborate?
- aaron695 6y agoAfter WW2 it's considered to be an amazing period of science. Here's an article - "GROWING UP IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE - Frank Press" https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ea.23.050195.000245 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ea.23....
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe virus interferes at the moment, but I'd half like to book a cruise on the "50 years of victory" before it becomes redundant, after the next 20 or 30 years of polar warming. (Is it still defection if one migrates from one capitalist country to another?)
- aaron695 6y agoI was about to say I'd join you, but at the prices here I can't this decade :( https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/expedition-ships/50-years-of-victory https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/expedition-ships/50-years-o...
- ranger207 6y agoThe video is surprisingly high quality. It almost looks like a movie set, especially the night scenes. It's really great to watch even for just the cinematography. You can tell they the filmmakers really cared about the details.
- coldcode 6y agoThe music and narration during the explosion reminded me of 1950/1960's sci-fi movies.
- mongol 6y agoI was missing a segment on when they armed the bomb. Given it's absolutely massive explosive power I would assume they wanted to avoid a crash at the airport to detonate it. But perhaps it was armed already when attached to the plane?
- rustoo 6y agoQ: What if this bomb was exploded below the ground, and not above?
- jcims 6y agoThe Cannikin test was 5MT and still pretty mindblowing: https://www.military.com/video/nuclear-bombs/nuclear-weapons/cannikin-nuclear-test-footage/1402452751001 https://www.military.com/video/nuclear-bombs/nuclear-weapons...
- chx 6y agoSmall underground nuclear bombs were used to put out well fires. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/how-soviets-put-out-oil-well-fires-by.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/how-soviets-put-out-oi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Xq03njsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Xq03njsc A few ten megaton bomb would create a very small earthquake, quite probably only detectable by instruments. You'd need to wade into millions-ten of millions of megatons to create an extinction event.
- monkpit 6y ago> The flash dome itself reached 20 km, while the ring of absolute destruction had a radius of 35 kilometers Is there another term for “ring of bsolute destruction”? When I google that, all of the results are either for a book with that in part of the title, or a guitar effect pedal, or this article itself. I’d like to read more about this - can anyone suggest a better search term?
- konart 6y agoI assume this is just a word-for-word translation for "зона полного разрушения". If you "detonate" 100M Tzar Bomb on https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ it tells you that >Moderate blast damage radius (5 psi): 32.6 km So I assume that the “ring of absolute destruction” ~= "Moderate blast damage radius"
- EGreg 6y agoHow was the radioactivity insignificant a few hours after the bomb detonation? I read totally the opposite regarding the radioactive cloud and ash.
- azinman2 6y agoHow could it be that these guys were cleared to go in and measure the radiation? They’re there to get accurate measurements, in which case they could then see themselves that it was astronomical. Did they just knowingly sacrifice themselves? Or does the radiation spread and it really is low at the blast site?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dandanua 6y agoThis documentary looks like a fairy tale with an appropriate storyteller, music and narration. Like a massive nuclear bomb is the happiest achievement of the humankind. How schizophrenic is that??
- tomcam 6y ago> The Tu-95 plane carrying the bomb was far away at the time of detonation. However, the explosion’s shock wave caused the aircraft to instantly lose 1,000 meters of altitude, but it later landed safely. I assume the pilots were fully prepped, but... still seems like a bad day
- bronlund 6y agoSo how big a bomb do you need to take out the entire USA? Asking for a friend :)