Mr.S.Marbo
New member
Don\'t take this as entirely true - most I found on wiki which isn\'t always the greatest.... But the largest nuclear explosion seems to be the Tsar Bomba device which was made and then tested by the USSR on 30 October 1961. It seems to take credit for being the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.
It was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT, however the USSR were worried about the fallout effects of detonating such a huge thing so it\'s yield was cut by 50%. It was still estimated to have a yield of about 50,000kt of TNT. The combined yield of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at most would have been about 37kt of TNT. You would need about 1351 bombs with the equivalent yield of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs to create the same yield (or about 3333 Hiroshima type bombs). So the Hiroshima bomb seems really quite small in terms of yield in comparison. The USSR could have doubled the yield of the bomb but it would have simply been far too dangerous but they seemed to have the capability. They could have set off a nuclear device with a yield of 100,000kt of TNT - equivalent to about 6666 Hiroshima type bombs. It\'s still not the 23,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb that you were saying Dave, but I think it shows that we are in theory capable of entirely laying waste to the planet with nuclear weapons. Given enough of them you could destroy pretty much everything.
When the Tsar Bomba was tested, it was detonated 4000 meters above land surface in the Arctic circle. Even though the detonation was 4000 meters above land the result was a seismic shock that was measurable even on its third passage around the earth and its Richter Magnitude was about 5 to 5.25. It broke windows as far away as Finland. The mushroom cloud was higher than Mount Everest and damage was caused up to 1000km away.
It was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT, however the USSR were worried about the fallout effects of detonating such a huge thing so it\'s yield was cut by 50%. It was still estimated to have a yield of about 50,000kt of TNT. The combined yield of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at most would have been about 37kt of TNT. You would need about 1351 bombs with the equivalent yield of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs to create the same yield (or about 3333 Hiroshima type bombs). So the Hiroshima bomb seems really quite small in terms of yield in comparison. The USSR could have doubled the yield of the bomb but it would have simply been far too dangerous but they seemed to have the capability. They could have set off a nuclear device with a yield of 100,000kt of TNT - equivalent to about 6666 Hiroshima type bombs. It\'s still not the 23,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb that you were saying Dave, but I think it shows that we are in theory capable of entirely laying waste to the planet with nuclear weapons. Given enough of them you could destroy pretty much everything.
When the Tsar Bomba was tested, it was detonated 4000 meters above land surface in the Arctic circle. Even though the detonation was 4000 meters above land the result was a seismic shock that was measurable even on its third passage around the earth and its Richter Magnitude was about 5 to 5.25. It broke windows as far away as Finland. The mushroom cloud was higher than Mount Everest and damage was caused up to 1000km away.
