57 years ago today the largest nuke ever tested went off

originally posted by: Bluntone22

originally posted by: CriticalStinker

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: Lagomorphe

the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki - were - in my opinion - a nessecary evil . there was no civilised alternative

So what are your thoughts on the US intercepting USSR-Japanese communications where they were negotiating an unconditional surrender?

There is a very good chance they would have surrendered without that action.

Unless you are in the camp that believes it was a necessary message to send to the USSR for after the war.

The Russians were so sure that Japan was going to surrender that they invaded china and prepared to invade Japan.

And the bombs were definitely a message.

Agreed.

I take a weird approach on this topic.

On one hand I think that we didn't have to use the atomic bombs and still would have gotten very similar results. The reason I say this, in terms of destruction, the nukes were no more destructive than some of our conventional bombing campaigns.

On the other, it doesn't make much difference for the reason above, aside from the fallout, it didn't do more damage than some of the other carpet bombing. The most destructive night was the first day we started bombing, where we killed 120,000 in just one night at Tokyo. So whether or not we used the nukes, the same destruction would have happened. So the nukes are more symbolic than anything.

Before these two dropped, we delivered similar results to 66 cities in Japan.

But, they were more afraid of Stalin stepping in than the bombs themselves.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

Correct, the weapon choice didn't matter.
Regular bombs did plenty of damage.

The real reason was to keep stalin out of japan.
Japan would have been split like Germany.
Nobody wanted that.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

The plane piloted by Andrei Durnovtsev dropped the Tsar Bomba at 11:32 AM Moscow time, from a height of 6.5 miles (10.5 km) over Mityushikha Bay in Novaya Zemlya. The bomb detonated at a height of 2.5 miles (4 km). The descent from the height it was dropped from until the place of the detonation at 4,000 meters above ground took 188 seconds, just enough time for the pilot, Andrei Durnovtsev to fly to a safe distance. Just one second after the detonation, the fireball was already 4 miles wide, and the light could be seen at distances of over 2,000 kilometers. The mushroom raised to a height of about 64 km, over 7 times the height of Mount Everest.

In the video section of this site you can see some videos made during the detonation, and on the Map section you can see where exactly the ground zero is, as well as the route of the plane.

source tsarbomba.org...

I think that what a few of you are missing out is that there were different faction's within the Japanese government and military, one group may have wanted to surrender - perhaps even a group with communist tendency's - which for most Japanese was an unthinkable proposition at that time with there home island's only just beginning to come under attack.
The bomb's ended the war simple as that.

a reply to: watchitburn

i dont make many threads. im just interested in explosions and know the date of this one. figured id share it and see if anyone had any knowledge to share that i dont know

a reply to: LABTECH767

The bomb's ended the war simple as that.

That's how American newspapers pitched it. But that's probably not the case.

We're armchair historians playing with hypothetical outcomes.

But we do know that we intercepted messages between the USSR and Japan about a surrender. As I said earlier 66 cities already experienced comparable, and in some cases worse damage and more casualties than either of the nukes. So why would two more cities tip the scale?

Japan wanted Stalin to be the mediator in the surrendering process, it would have benefited all parties involved as Stalin would have made sure the terms didn't give the US too much leverage and influence in the region while making sure Japan surrendered.

But the USSR invaded Manchuria and the Sakhalin Island becoming a belligerent, negating the neutrality they could bring as a mediator.

We had already inflicted way more damage with conventional bombs on far more cities. It just so happened they ran out of leverage on any hopes of a negotiation with any favor to them.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

It is always going to be a contentious subject, I agree we are indeed armchair historians but what we know today is that this was the period when we started to pollute not just enemy nation's but the entire world with radioactive isotopes.

Personally I would love to see a global disarmament but in today's world with a trigger happy american president, a former KGB colonel in charge of Russia whom long's for the return of the old Soviet Union (or at least it's former territorial claim's), wars in the middle east and elsewhere and looming resource wars - already started with the Iraq and Libya wars which were more about Oil than anything else (so too was the Afghan war since they originally wanted to build an oil pipeline through part of that nation to supply western China and it's booming economy as well as the rare earth minerals in that nation and arguably so was Syria - oil again).

It is now more dangerous than at any time since the early 1980's and I believe it is indeed only a matter of time before we see either a limited nuclear exchange or even a full scale nuclear war, China is murdering and persecuting ethnic Turk's while Turkey is itself a nuclear power, India and Pakistan are on the verge of yet another war over water right's since India is damming rivers that Pakistan depend's upon and China an ally of Pakistan already has territorial disputes with India as well as quite a few very thorny other hotbeds in today's world.

Exactly...uncomparable.
And you can be 100 percent certain that if japan had the bomb first....they would have had zero problems wiping out everyone in sight. Better them than us.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

a reply to: Lagomorphe

Fortunately the Tsar bomb was not dropped on two Japanese cities on August 6th and 9th in 1945 such as the saviours of world peace did and heartily clapped their hands as certain people are still doing nowadays.

Because of the limits of the infant technology in 1945, your commit is about coherent as saying good thing machine guns weren’t used at the Battle of Badon?

By the.....

WWII: War Atrocities on Guam
www.guampedia.com...

On 8 August, a Marine patrol found thirty dead Chamorros around a Japanese truck north of Yigo village at Chagui’an. The next day, near the same area, another patrol came across another twenty-one bodies. These dead Chamorros were forced by the Japanese to carry ammunition and supplies to the north, and then were killed by the Japanese to prevent them from providing information to the Americans.

That was just one small 11 miles wide 30 miles long pacific island.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

Really?

Hiroshima atomic bombing did not lead to Japanese surrender, historians argue nearing 70th anniversary

mobile.abc.net.au...


Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka said the country had no choice because the Soviets would have killed Emperor Hirohito, seen as the heart and soul of imperial Japan.

"The Soviet Union would demolish the emperor system and they would execute the emperor as well as all members of the royal family," he said.

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: Lagomorphe

the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki - were - in my opinion - a nessecary evil . there was no civilised alternative

I Hope you still feel the same when someone drops a bomb on your head...

Go big or go home... and alert the Cosmos to man's stupidity while at it.

originally posted by: neutronflux
a reply to: Lagomorphe

Fortunately the Tsar bomb was not dropped on two Japanese cities on August 6th and 9th in 1945 such as the saviours of world peace did and heartily clapped their hands as certain people are still doing nowadays.

Because of the limits of the infant technology in 1945, your commit is about coherent as saying good thing machine guns weren’t used at the Battle of Badon?

By the.....

WWII: War Atrocities on Guam
www.guampedia.com...

On 8 August, a Marine patrol found thirty dead Chamorros around a Japanese truck north of Yigo village at Chagui’an. The next day, near the same area, another patrol came across another twenty-one bodies. These dead Chamorros were forced by the Japanese to carry ammunition and supplies to the north, and then were killed by the Japanese to prevent them from providing information to the Americans.

That was just one small 11 miles wide 30 miles long pacific island.

Riigghhttt.

Bang on with a valid answer... NOT.

a reply to: Lagomorphe

In what why is it not a valid answer. Is it false the Japanese were a fanatical war machine responsible for war crimes in ever piece of territory they captured. And there was no sign they were ever going to change their style of warfare, use of slave labor, or style of occupation.

a reply to: Lagomorphe

en.m.wikipedia.org...

The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service took part in conducting chemical and biological attacks on enemy nationals during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II and the use of such weapons in warfare were generally prohibited by international agreements signed by Japan, including the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), which banned the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.[10][11]

a reply to: Lagomorphe

en.m.wikipedia.org...

In August 2002, a Japanese court ended decades of official denials and acknowledged, for the first time, that Japan had used germ warfare in occupied China in the 1930s and 1940s.[8] The court acknowledged the existence of Japan's biological warfare program but rejected the plaintiffs' demands for compensation, saying the issue was covered under postwar treaties.[8] Following the court decision, Japanese officials announced that their government would send a delegation to China to excavate and remove hundreds of abandoned chemical weapons, including bombs, shells, and containers of mustard gas and other toxins left over from the Second World War.[8]

If dropped on NYC, it would take out the entire city, and a third of Jersey. (the bomb in the OP).

They designed one that was 100 megatons, but to my knowledge, never built it. Largest we tested, I believe, was about 15 megatons. (at least that we acknowledged).

Luckily, these days, a) the weapons are more designed for airburst (so less radiation), and b) are far less in yield (around the 1 to 3 megaton range, though some are larger, or have multiple warheads).

a reply to: Lagomorphe

There was a war. All diplomatic ties were severed.

We were trying to "kill each other faster than the other guy could kill you". That's war in a nutshell.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: fightzone58

I''ve seen footage of this tsar bomba before and i only have three words...Jesus effing Christ.

If this was exploded about NYC...future generations would be asking 'what is a New York city?' I think the blast radius was about a 60 kilometers in radius, but i could be wrong.

I could go into specifics but i've had nightmares about thermonuclear attacks, maybe the strontium-90 affected my brain.

There are blast radius calculators for these weapons. It's astounding to see that for the highest yields, the flashburn radius is around 200 miles...

This one does Tsar Bomba:

outrider.org...

too many replies for invividual responses

no - dipplomacy [ esp via the soviets ] was not going to work - the ultra nationalists plotted a coup to depose the emperor FFS - thats how screwed up thier " thinking " had become

conventional warfare ? - yes but at what cost [ on all sides ] - ops olympic and coronet were going to be blood baths - on bloth sides - and allow the soviets to stage a land grab

as i said in my first post - a nesecary evil . people need to understand what that means