The World's Biggest Nuclear Bomb
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2022
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early hours of 30 October 1961, a bomber took off from an airstrip in northern Russia and began its flight through cloudy skies over the frigid Russian Arctic. Hanging below this Soviet plane was a nuclear bomb the size of a small school bus. It was the largest and most powerful bomb ever to be created, and it was about to be tested.
The Tsar Bomba’s gigantic detonation was intended to be secret, but was detected by American intelligence agencies—bringing brewing Cold War tensions to fever pitch. The thermonuclear hydrogen bomb yielded the equivalent of 50–58 megatons of TNT, enough to annihilate a small country. The resultant mushroom cloud reached an altitude seven times higher than Mount Everest, and its 8-km-wide wide fireball could be seen from almost 1,000km away.
This week, James is joined by Alex Wellerstein, an expert on the history of nuclear weapons. Together they discuss their development from WW2 to today, and the terrifying legacy of the largest man-made explosion in history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone welcome back to warfare. I'm your host James Rogers and it's been a big year for the |
| 0:10.0 | podcast. Thanks to your suggestions over the last 12 months, we've investigated the history of the Red Devils, the Parachute Regiment, dug deep into the real reasons where the First World War began, revealed the global origins of the Irish Revolution, and even charted our best and worst fighter jets throughout history, all from your listener suggestions. |
| 0:30.0 | So keep them coming in via email on warfare at History hit.com or |
| 0:34.0 | message me on Instagram or TikTok at James Rogers History. |
| 0:38.2 | So this just leaves me to say a happy new year to you all wherever you are around the world from us at the |
| 0:44.4 | warfare team and to send us off we have one of my favorite episodes from |
| 0:48.0 | 2022 it's Alex Wellestine on the world's biggest nuclear bomb, the Tsar bomber. Enjoy. Hi Alex, welcome to the History Hit Warfare Podcast. How you doing today? |
| 1:08.0 | I'm doing very well James. I'm glad to be here. |
| 1:10.0 | It's great to have you on the podcast. This has to be if I had to choose a topic that I had to do |
| 1:16.2 | podcast on for the rest of my life then surely it has to be nuclear bombs nuclear strategy |
| 1:22.1 | and that core period of hot nuclear tension between the 1950s and the 1960s. |
| 1:28.5 | I'm sure you're going to agree. |
| 1:30.1 | Well, it's a lot of what I do with my life, So it's exactly the rationale of what I study, what I study is. It never gets boring. |
| 1:37.0 | Okay, so I'm literally preaching to the choir here. That makes sense. |
| 1:40.0 | So I think it's going to be a good conversation. I'm really excited this one. |
| 1:42.6 | Tell us where you are in the world to start with. |
| 1:44.9 | So I am a associate professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. |
| 1:49.1 | So I'm in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is just across the river from Manhattan. |
| 1:53.4 | So think about Manhattan, and then it's a little town |
| 1:56.9 | just visible on the other side of the river. |
| 1:59.6 | I've read your work many times over the years, |
| 2:01.5 | but I read your recent piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic |
... |
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