#tsar bomba

[catgirl-kaiju]

FUN FACT!

the first ever hydrogen bomb detonated (Operation Ivy: Shot Mike) completely vaporized the island it was detonated on, leaving a giant undersea crater in its place. there was an island there, and now it's just fucking gone.

The island was Elugelab in the Enewetak Atoll

Before the Ivy Mike test:

After the Ivy Mike test:

the thing about the Ivy Mike test, though, is that the bomb was too big, impractical, and heavy to carry in an airplane, afix to a rocket, or fire from a canon. still, the blast had a yield of 10.4 megatons, rivaled only by the infamous Castle Bravo test (US 15 megatons), the B-41/ Mk-41 Bomb ( US 25 megatons), and the Tsar Bomba test (USSR 50 megatons).

The rest of these bombs can be dropped from airplanes. The Tsar Bomba design was, however, never put into production as a practical weapon and was simply intended to be a one-off exercise with the goal of creating the largest yeild atomic weapon in history. (it succeeded)

#world history #us history #atomic testing #hydrogen bomb #castle bravo #ivy mike #tsar bomba #infodump #spin #special interest

[magicaldragons]

binbin's last sacrifice.

i think this series showed us, intentionally or not, how powerful love can be.

we see binbin as a child, sacrificing meals for si-o, taking care of him, giving him hope for a future.

after years spent away from ryu si-o — years filled with punishment, tests, and manipulation under pavel's hand — he returns with one mission: his first mission. Ryu si-o.

Kill Anton, or you will be killed.

and ryu si-o smiles, happy to meet his one and only friend, and says once, quietly: don't betray me. let me die with atleast you having been on my side.

and binbin, even under threat of death, and knowing that there is no other outcome for ryu si-o, still decides to give his best friend control over his own death.

binbin's final sacrifice.

#tsar bomba #it's very 'the winter soldier' coded #marvel #ryu si-o was not pavel's in the end. #after a life of seeking freedom and autonomy – this was a small mercy #strong girl nam soon #ryu sio #byeon woo seok #binbin

[errorx429]

Did one of those art of the year thingies I don't know

#indigo cadaver #error sans #into the unknown error #valentine error #carnivore drayton #cerulean cadaver #carmine cadaver #mermaid carmine #olivia slimeball #drake carnellie #crash skelesona #crash skeleson mermaid #tsar bomba #error429 art #digital art #artwork #artists on tumblr #skeleton #skelesona

[nicklloydnow]

“Hard times make strong men. Strong men make nuclear weapons and good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men and nuclear weapons make End Times. And people have to stop this “Fourth Turning” nonsense.” - Eric Weinstein, ‘The Rubin Report’ (7 November 2023)

#putin #nuclear #nuclear weapons #nuclear war #end times #eric weinstein #fourth turning #rubin report #tsar bomba

[thenuclearmallard]

Novaya Zemlya, Russia

Nuclear Weapons Test Site

From 1954 to 1990, the islands of Novaya Zemlya were used by the Soviets to conduct atmospheric and underground nuclear tests. Decommissioned nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines were also scuttled around the islands, turning the entire region into an environmental disaster zone.

Photo: Radioactively contaminated lichen causes high strontium levels in reindeer, which are a dietary mainstay of the local Nenets and Sami populations. © TOYOSAKI Hiromitsu

History

In July 1954, the two islands of Novaya Zemlya (“New Land”) on the Russian Arctic coast were designated a nuclear weapons test site. The indigenous Nenets population was forcibly resettled and the islands were divided into different testing zones. Between 1955 and 1990, Novaya Zemlya was the site of 130 nuclear detonations, including the “Tsar Bomba,” the biggest nuclear device ever detonated, with 50 megatons of TNT equivalent, almost 4,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The “Tsar Bomba” detonation caused severe destruction of the island within a radius of about 100 km and spread nuclear fallout all over the Northern Hemisphere.

In addition, the practice of dumping nuclear waste around the islands contributed greatly to the current environmental catastrophe around Novaya Zemlya. Together with fallout from nuclear weapons testing and the continuous discharge of nuclear waste from the reprocessing plants at La Hague and Sellafield, nuclear waste dumped near Novaya Zemlya added to the radioactive contamination of the North Sea and Arctic Ocean. Thirteen decrepit nuclear reactors, along with spent fuel from nuclear submarines with a total radioactivity of 37 Peta-Becquerel (Peta = quadrillion), were dumped along the coast of Novaya Zemlya and into the Barents and Kara seas. Two of the most contaminated sites on Novaya Zemlya are the Abrosimov and Stepovogo Fjords in the southern part of the island.

Health and environmental effects

Scientific expeditions found increased levels of cesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60, and plutonium-239 and -241 in sediments close to the fjords, which were used as radioactive waste dumps. A 1992 Russian study found that in 67–72 % of all underground tests, radioactive gas had leaked through in the rock formation. Together with fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing, radioactive gases from underground leaks resulted in increased levels of radiation across Europe, most notably in Finland, where radioactive iodine-131 was measured in concentrations of up to 5 mBq/m³, and in Norway, with cases of radioactively contaminated milk and iodine-131 concentrations of up to 1.37 megabecquerel (mBq/m³ Mega = million). Iodine-131 is a known cause of thyroid cancer, especially in children.

The indigenous population of the region around Novaya Zemlya received even higher radiation doses. Most notably affected by radiation exposure were the semi-nomadic Sami people of the Arctic region and the former inhabitants of Novaya Zemlya, the Nenets people. The Vepsians, Karelians and Komi people, living along the Northern Russian coast, however, were also affected. Radioactively contaminated lichen caused high strontium levels in reindeer, which are a mainstay of the local diet. As was the case with other indigenous populations affected by fallout and radioactive contamination, no epidemiological studies were ever performed to assess health effects on the people living around Novaya Zemlya.

Outlook

As Norway is only 900 km away from Novaya Zemlya, the Norwegian government is very concerned about the radioactive waste catastrophe taking place on and around the islands. The Barents Sea, which is important for Norway’s fishing industry, has been severely polluted by radioactive fallout from Novaya Zemlya and is in constant danger of being further contaminated by leaking radioactive waste dumps, submerged spent nuclear fuel rods, nuclear submarine wrecks, dumped nuclear reactors and radioactive waste from bases and naval yards. Monitoring and management of the huge region affected by nuclear pollution has become an international responsibility, yet little has been done to contain this danger up to now, let alone investigate the long-term health effects on the local population. They, too, are casualties of nuclear weapons – they, too, are Hibakusha.

References

“The Soviet Union’s Nuclear Testing Program.” Website of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization CTBTO, http://ctbto.org/nuclear-testing/the-effects-of-nuclear-testing/the-soviet-unionsnuclear-testing-programme/

Bøhmer et al. “The Arctic Nuclear Challenge.” Bellona Report Volume 3, 2001. http://bellona.org/assets/sites/6/The_Arctic_Nuclear_Challenge.pdf

Koivisto K. “Nuclear Waste Storage Facility on Novaya Zemlya.” Helsinki Hufvudstads bladet, April 1, 1997. www.fas.org/news/russia/1997/drsov04021997000220.htm

Matzko JR. “Physical Environment of the Underground Nuclear Test Site on Novaya Zemlya, Russia.” U.S.-Department of the Interior, Geological Survey, 1993. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1993/0501/report.pdf

“Indigenous People and the Nuclear Age – USSR.” Critical Will

#indigenous #indigenous russian #culture #indigenous russia #russia #important #colonization #fypシ #fypage #landback #decolonize #tsar bomba #Nuclear bomb #Nuclear test #Soviet Union #Displacement #Nenet #Nenets #Nenet tribe #Nenet people

[ripplequest]

CHEESETESTANT #03: Tsar Bomba

#ripplequest #cheese tournament #tsar bomba #art #ocs

[cyruspavels]

In case you had forgotten, There's a huge chance % That us human-beings Set the world off into massive tectonic movements.

That would be because of things like the atom bomb.

The largest atom bomb ever setoff by humans was the Tsar Bomba.

The Tsar Bomba was a thermonuclear aerial bomb, and the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. Still, it isn't the only bomb we've set off upon our Earth.

That alone should illustrate how naive we are to believe that we can save a planet we already messed around with and absolutely set into a different course than previously on.

We forget small things like that all of the time. Things that happened in history that we did.

Small things like one of the most successfully historic genocides ever when the newly formed America cleaned out the Natives and pushed them out of all their lands.

Hypocrisy is a disease no governmental system on the planet seems to be rid of.

Godspeed.

CP'23

#spilled thoughts #cp'23 #atom bomb #tsar bomba #plate tectonics

[leapingmonkeys]

The monster atomic bomb that was too big to use

#Tu-95 #Joe-1 #Tsar Bomba

[bucksboobs]

Eh Pell will be fine I just saw Zoro, Sanji, and Chopper survive falls at terminal velocity into solid concrete and the wind barely got knocked out of them

#the plot armor in this show is insane #so what if Tsar Bomba just blew up on him this show works on Looney Tunes lethality #one piece

[cant-happen-here]

She Hiro on my Shima till I...

She Naga on my Saki till I...

#chainsaw man #csm fanart #csm reze #atomic bomb #she bikini on my atoll till i #She oppen on my heimer till i #she tsar on my bomba till i

[tengomilpalabrasparati]

𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓪

Imágenes de prueba de "Tsar Bomba", 1961.

La Tsar Bomba es el arma nuclear más poderosa jamás creada y probada.

#𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓪 #historia #Imágenes de prueba de “Tsar Bomba” #1961.

[the-uncanny-dag]

Remember how Americans spent like a month or 2 a year ago crying throwing up bc they thought that WW3 is gonna happen. Lol. LMAO

#war in ukraine #the most protected from consequences people in the world screaming as if tsar bomba is already falling onto their local mcdonalds

[nicklloydnow]

“The flash alone lasted more than a minute. The fireball expanded to nearly six miles in diameter—large enough to include the entire urban core of Washington or San Francisco, or all of midtown and downtown Manhattan. Over several minutes it rose and mushroomed into a massive cloud. Within ten minutes, it had reached a height of 42 miles and a diameter of some 60 miles. One civilian witness remarked that it was “as if the Earth was killed.” Decades later, the weapon would be given the name it is most commonly known by today: Tsar Bomba, meaning “emperor bomb.”

Designed to have a maximum explosive yield of 100 million tons (or 100 megatons) of TNT equivalent, the 60,000-pound monster bomb was detonated at only half its strength. Still, at 50 megatons, it was more than 3,300 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed at least 70,000 people in Hiroshima, and more than 40 times as powerful as the largest nuclear bomb in the US arsenal today. Its single test represents about one tenth of the total yield of all nuclear weapons ever tested by all nations.

(…)

The Tsar Bomba is not just a subject for history; some of the same dynamics exist today. It is not just the story of a single weapon that was detonated six decades ago, but a parable about political posturing and technical enablement that applies just as acutely today. In a new era of nuclear weapons and delivery competition, the Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless.

(…)

Only a few months later, in July 1954, Teller made it clear he thought 15 megatons was child’s play. At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.”[4] But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place).

All of which is to say that the idea of making hydrogen bombs in the hundreds-of-megatons yield range was hardly unusual in the late 1950s. If anything, it was tame compared to the gigaton ambitions of one of the H-bomb’s inventors. It is hard to convey the damage of a gigaton bomb, because at such yields many traditional scaling laws do not work (the bomb blows a hole in the atmosphere, essentially). However, a study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800 kilometers) in diameter. Which is to say, an area about the size of France.

(…)

Exactly how the idea of the 100-megaton device came up at this meeting is not entirely clear from the accounts, but it sounds like Khrushchev asked the scientists for proposals for future tests, and somebody (some authors say it was Trutnev) proposed that they build and detonate a 100-megaton bomb. Khrushchev seized upon the idea, reportedly announcing: “Let the 100-megaton bomb hang over the capitalists like a sword of Damocles!”[12]

Later Russian accounts by participants claim Arzamas-16 scientists had been inspired, in part, by speculations about gigantic, gigaton-range bombs in the foreign press in May 1960. The physicist and designer Victor Adamski said that Sakharov and others tried to immediately assess the plausibility of the news reports, and came up with the schema that was ultimately used for the Tsar Bomba. They had initially apparently planned to design a smaller experiment, but they had somehow come across the preserved casing from the aborted RDS-202 bomb from 1956. The vastness of it apparently inspired them to go for a full-size test. But unlike the 1956 plan, they would use the newest Project 49 insights in developing this new bomb, making it far more sophisticated than a simple scaling-up of an old design; it would be over twice as powerful as RDS-202, despite being the same dimensions and weight.[13] Sakharov, in his memoirs, said he had been thinking about “the initiative,” as he called it, well before any formal request was made. It was not just about the megatonnage for its own sake; it would need to be “an absolute record,” so that, perhaps, it would be the last series of atmospheric tests ever requested.[14]

The 100-megaton bomb would be known internally as Project 602. The speed of its development is beyond impressive in retrospect: In a mere four months, the team would have to develop an entirely new weapon design for a totally untested yield range; build the device and fabricate the fissionable and fusionable material into the correct shapes; and devise a plan to safely test it. Sakharov would manage the whole project, with Trutnev and Babaev doing much of the design work, along with the young physicists Victor Adamski and Yuri Smirnov. Little has been released about the details of the design, but a few years ago two longtime participants in the Soviet and Russian nuclear programs revealed that it was what they called a “bifilar” design: There was a “main” thermonuclear unit in the center, with two “primaries” imploding it from either side (with a time difference between the two detonations of no more than 0.1 microseconds).[15] This seems plausible given the documentary photographs of the bomb released by Russia after the Cold War, which definitely show one very compact “primary” bomb at the front end of the case, and hint at another at the back of the case. If this is true, it suggests that the 100-megaton bomb design was quite different from most thermonuclear weapons; there has never been a report of any American bombs, for example, that use multiple, simultaneous primaries.

(…)

Sakharov also made one major change to the test plan. Even though the test bomb was a 100-megaton design, it would not be a 100-megaton detonation. In most thermonuclear weapons designs, at least half the yield comes from a final stage in which non-fissile atoms of uranium 238 are induced to fission by the high-energy neutrons produced by deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. Replacing the uranium 238 with an inert substance, in this case lead, would make the weapon half as powerful (50 megatons), and it would release far less fallout in the form of fission products.

Sakharov was already queasy about the long-term deaths from nuclear fallout, and he wanted to minimize the excess radioactivity produced by the test. In 1958, he had calculated that for every megaton of even “clean” nuclear weapons, there would be some 6,600 premature deaths over the next 8,000 years across the globe, owing to carbon atoms in the atmosphere that would become radioactive under the bomb’s neutron flux.[17]

A few thousand deaths—even the 660,000 that he thought would be the result of a 100-megaton test—would be a tiny amount compared with the billions who would live and die over those millennia, but they were still deaths Sakharov considered himself partially responsible for. Had he not reduced its yield by half, the 100-megaton bomb would have contributed about half as many fission products as were released by all nuclear tests prior to the test moratorium. As it was, even a bomb that was only 3 percent fission wasn’t exactly clean in an objective sense—as it still released almost two megatons of fission products. But in a relative sense (comparing fission yield to total yield), it was one of the cleanest nuclear weapons ever tested. Again, Sakharov would later state that he believed that if this worked, it could essentially end atmospheric nuclear testing: The Soviets would be able to “squeeze everything out of this [testing series] so that it would be the last one.”

(…)

The Soviet hints of 100-megaton bombs provoked furious speculation in American newspapers, which reported unattributed sources saying that the United States could, if it wanted to, build and test 100-megaton weapons of its own, but that it chose not to. Some American scientists chimed in that weapons of such size were “too big” to be practical—that such a weapon would be strategically pointless. The argument, which would come up again and again in discussion of these bombs, was based on the way in which blast damage scales with yield. A 100-megaton bomb releases 10 times more energy than a 10-megaton bomb, but it does not do 10 times more damage. This is because the blast effects of explosions scale as a cubic root, not linearly. So a 10-megaton bomb detonated at an optimal altitude might do medium damage to a distance of 9.4 miles (15 kilometers) from ground zero, but a 100-megaton bomb “only” does the same amount of damage to 20.3 miles (33 kilometers). In other words, a 100-megaton explosion is only a little more than twice as damaging as a 10-megaton bomb. The weight of nuclear weapons, though, does roughly scale with their yield in a more linear fashion (design sophistication can vary this a bit), so a 100-megaton bomb weighs roughly 10 times more than a 10-megaton bomb, which makes it much more difficult to deploy on a bomber or missile.

(…)

Sakharov and most of the weapons designers were not at the test, but they knew it worked because the detonation disrupted radio communications with the test site for 40 minutes. Despite being detonated low enough (about 13,000 feet) to be at risk of contacting the ground and creating significant local fallout, the blast wave “bounced” the fireball of the bomb upward. As a result, almost all the fallout shot into the stratosphere, where it would circle in the northern latitudes for years before coming down.

(…)

A few months after Sputnik, in 1958, the US Air Force Chief of Staff asked the AEC for a feasibility study of even larger weapons—between 100 and 1,000 megatons in yield. As an internal, once-secret Air Force history from 1967 reported: “The Air Staff concluded that it might be feasible but not desirable to use a 1,000-megaton weapon. Since lethal radioactivity might not be contained within the confines of an enemy state and since it might be impractical to even test such a weapon, the Air Force Council decided in April 1959 to postpone establishing a position on the issue.”[30] Let that sink in: These were weapons too large for even the Eisenhower-era Air Force.

(…)

A few days later, Seaborg met with weapons scientists to discuss building high-yield weapons. Betts initiated a discussion with Sandia National Laboratory over the feasibility of dropping weapons with yields of 30 or 50 megatons from a B-52, which would require using drogue parachutes to ensure the survival of the pilots. At the same time, a team of Livermore scientists got together to review the possibilities of a US return to nuclear testing. Along with ideas relating to more optimized designs and “clean” bombs deriving most of their yield from fusion, they were intrigued once again by Teller’s possibility of bigger bangs: “USSR high-yield tests have reawakened interest in high-yield testing by the United States. High-yield weapons (50 megatons to 1,000 megatons) should be reconsidered and re-evaluated for their possible military use.”[34] Again, let that sink in: Even after denouncing the Tsar Bomba as pointless terrorism, there were scientists and military planners working for the US government who were considering nuclear weapons with yields 20 times larger.

(…)

The Limited Test Ban Treaty was beginning to take shape at this time, with a very real possibility that the United States and Soviet Union would agree to ban all atmospheric nuclear testing. Underground testing, which the United States had demonstrated in 1961, would continue. But underground testing is limited to relatively low yields: To avoid “venting,” the fireball must be entirely contained underground—and an enormous fireball would require an enormous hole in the ground. (To put it into perspective: The fireball for a 50-megaton weapon has a radius of about 3 miles. The deepest active mine in the world is 2.5 miles deep, and the deepest hole in the world is only about 4 miles deep. Even the world’s highest mountain is only 5.5 miles tall.)

(…)

But the Soviets never broke the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and smaller warheads became the norm. Warheads that could be mounted in multiples and independently targeted on a single missile, or put into submarines, became the core of the arsenal. Large, high-yield weapons would, eventually, be mostly phased out. The dismissal of the uselessness of the Tsar Bomba would become orthodoxy, as even the CIA (eventually) concluded that the Soviets were not going to field such a thing in numbers or try to put superbombs on missiles.

(…)

Are the days of the 100-megaton bomb gone for good? One would hope so—though it has been speculated that the Russian Poseidon nuclear-powered drone-torpedo might carry some kind of “very high-yield” charge (reminiscent of a proposal Sakharov made after the successful Tsar Bomba test) as part of its attempt to maintain a credible (and terrifying) deterrence against US ballistic missile defenses. Such a weapon, detonated at sea level, would not only be incredibly devastating to a targeted port and the areas around it, but would, unlike the air-bursted Tsar Bomba, release a swath of deadly radioactive contamination that could cover hundreds of thousands of square miles.

But even if such weapons are now purely relegated to history, we should remember that the decision not to deploy them was not made because the Soviet Union and United States shied away from the shocking megatonnage. It was because massive bombs were harder to use, and something about them symbolized the ridiculousness of the arms race in a way that making thousands of “smaller” weapons (some as big as 20–30 megatons) did not.

The United States did not make 50- to 100-megaton bombs or gigaton bombs, but it made a gigaton arsenal: At its peak in 1960, the US stockpile was some 20,000 megatons, dispersed across tens of thousands of weapons. Even with trends toward miniaturization, it was not until the early 1990s that the US arsenal dropped beneath 5,000 megatons. Today it is probably around 2,000 megatons—more than enough to devastate the planet in a full-scale nuclear war.

The Tsar Bomba is dead; long live the Tsar Bomba. As the United States, Russia, and China seem to be engaged in new arms races in several domains, including unusual and new forms of nuclear delivery vehicles, the Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless. “Very high-yield” nuclear weapons weren’t necessary for deterrence, and they were explored at the expense of not only other weapons systems, but also the multitude of other things that nations could spend their wealth and resources on. They didn’t bring safety or security.”

“The notion of a small nuclear war was offered as an alternative to the policy of “massive retaliation” identified with John Foster Dulles, President Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, which held that an aggressor state risked an atomic barrage, language that in the thermonuclear age carried with it a suggestion of total annihilation. Kissinger was too clever to let himself be trapped by any thesis, even his own, and he couched his “strategic doctrine” in qualified, antiseptic language. “The tactics for limited nuclear war should be based on small, highly mobile, self-contained units, relying largely on air transport even within the combat zone,” he wrote. The right model for a limited nuclear war was, he said, naval strategy, “in which self-contained units with great firepower gradually gain the upper hand,” with the effect of keeping “the enemy constantly off balance.” In a triumph of understatement, he added that this “will require a radical break with our traditional notions of warfare and military organizations.”

(…)

Indeed, in a world with more than fifteen thousand nuclear weapons—more than four thousand deployed on warheads—nukes are never really off the table. Many years ago, Herman Kahn, a rand Corporation expert on thermonuclear war, liked to ask, “How many American dead would we accept as the cost of our retaliation?” He’d mulled that question with many Americans, he wrote (in “The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence”), “and after about fifteen minutes of discussion their estimates of an acceptable price generally fall between ten and sixty million dead. Their temporary first reaction, incidentally, usually is that the United States would never be deterred from living up to its obligations by fear of a Soviet counterblow, an attitude that invariably disappears after some minutes of reflection.””

#tsar bomba #nuclear weapons #russia #soviet union #america #ukraine #nuclear war #kissinger #henry kissinger

[thenuclearmallard]

Tsar Bomba: The World's Most Powerful Nuclear Weapon

By Ella Morton

Just after midday on October 30, 1961, the most powerful human-made explosion in history radiated from the Arctic island of Severny, creating a shockwave that broke windows up to 560 miles away. The USSR had just detonated Tsar Bomba, a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 megatons—more than 3,000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. 

Severny, part of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago north of Russia, is an island of strong winds, ice-covered mountains, and freezing summers. In the 1870s, Russia resettled a small population of its indigenous Nenets people from the mainland onto the island, in order to assert sovereignty over the archipelago, and protect it from a Norwegian takeover. The Nenets survived the severe conditions by hunting polar bears, reindeer, and seals. But their time on the islands was short-lived. In the 1950s, they were returned to the mainland, when the government decided it had new plans for the island: it was to become the Soviet Union’s most important nuclear testing site.

Detonations began in 1955. In 1961, Novaya Zemlya acquired the dubious honor of being the proving ground for Tsar Bomba, which weighed 60,000 pounds, measured 26 feet long and seven feet in diameter, and had a yield of 50 megatons. It remains the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.

During its 40 years as a Cold War test site, 224 nuclear weapons exploded over Novaya Zemlya. The last reported detonation took place in 1990, although a seismic disturbance in the area in 1997 raised suspicions of secret ongoing testing.

#indigenous #indigenous russian #culture #indigenous russia #russia #important #colonization #fypシ #fypage #landback #Decolonize #Tsar bomba #Indigenous people #Displacement #Nenets #Nenet tribe #Nenet #Nuclear bomb

[iamgoingtooppenheimeryou]

i wonder what i should do with The World Machine...

#use a tsar bomba on it

[dainty-yet-daring]

currently feeling like a little miss smarty pants due to listening books about nuclear weapons, nuclear power and also nuclear disasters

#very nuclear #all thanks to a very quick yet profound interest of the tsar bomba