TSAR Bomba, page 1

reply to post by NUKEBOY77

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Tsar Bomba was militarily useless. It was too expensive to build, too heavy to be delivered to the USA, too indiscriminate in its effect. Missiles made this weapon obsolete before it had even been dropped.

And there was nothing to prevent the West building such a monstrous weapon too. They just didn't need to, that's all.

There's other threads on ATS about this weapon.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

*edit*

and welcome to ATS


[edit on 15/4/2009 by The Lass]

reply to post by NUKEBOY77

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The reason the west decided not to invest in large payload nuclear weapons is due to the strategy of creating an arsenal with built-in redundancy. Most Soviet targets had several missiles tasked to them in order to ensure a hit in case of a weapons malfunction or shoot down by a defensive system. Many small payload weapons have the same cumulative impact on a target as that of a large device.

The TSAR bomb was designed primarily to have a psychological impact on the enemy by instilling terror. Its use in a war theater would have been limited at best.

In terms of physical destructiveness, much of its high yield was inefficiently radiated upwards into space. It has been estimated that detonating the original 100 Mt design would have released fallout amounting to about 25 percent of all fallout emitted since the invention of nuclear weapons. Hence, the Tsar Bomba was an impractically powerful weapon.

[edit on 4/15/2009 by clay2 baraka]

reply to post by The Lass

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Too expensive?

They built one didn't they? And when you use it you start a war that will leave nobody to collect the bill.

To indiscriminate? It's a bomb; a huge one. It is not meant to pick off a bridge and leave buildings standing...

Couldn't transport it? You know for a fact that during the cold war russia never developed something which could cary it? I mean...I didn't realize we had someone on the forum who had access to such information.



edit: and saying the missle made it obsolete? How?

another edit: now reading the post above mine, the amount of fallout generated and all that...it seems to be the perfect "F-it" weapon.

Our nuclear system is designed to operate without us in the case of our being the first hit in a nuclear exchange: M.A.D. If we all die, then the rest of the world eats it too...apparently --at least that is what I have heard on more than a few History Channel shows.

So if we are prepared to make damn sure that we screw the whole world in the event of our 'losing', why would the Russians not want to maintain a healty collection of these big boys?

A pretty good reason to not bomb Russia would be the promise of four or five of those things going off if they loose...even if they all go off in Russia.

[edit on 4/15/0909 by spines]

[edit on 4/15/0909 by spines]

reply to post by spines

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Well they only built one, didn't they ?

They weren't exactly rolling off the production lines like Model T Fords. Communists they may have been but even they were subject to the disciplines of the mighty ruble. It doesn't make great financial sense to kill your next door neighbour with a howitzer when you've got a perfectly good revolver which does the job just as well for a fraction of the price.

Of course the missile made it obsolete. Unless you deliberately choose to confound history I think the missile made the nuclear armed strategic bomber almost entirely obsolete. Missiles then couldn't be shot down, it's debatable whether they can even be reliably shot down today. But slow, lumbering bombers struggling under the weight of such a monster would've been easy pickings for the USAF. Wouldn't they ?

Indiscriminate ? Of course it was. You don't need a 57 megaton hydrogen bomb to destroy a city, heavens, Hiroshima showed a 20 kiloton atom bomb could do the job just as effectively.

This thing if used could've taken out England in one go and covered most of Europe (the Soviets & their allies included) in deadly fallout.

And if that isn't indiscriminate I don't know what is.

reply to post by spines

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"Couldn't transport it? You know for a fact that during the cold war russia never developed something which could cary it? I mean...I didn't realize we had someone on the forum who had access to such information."

They could have put it in a freighter and sailed it to NYC to start a war with a bang!

reply to post by The Lass

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Read my edit. I have bad timing.

In a world of M.A.D., where everyone is prepared to kill the earth, this would be one of those perfectly terrible pieces of technology that could assure your safety from invasion/nuking.

Really, after rereading your reply, you make my argument for me. This thing is very useful (when looking at it from the cold-war worldview, please don't think I am for something like this existing. It is disgusting, but does it's job damn well.).

It's existence practically ensures that it will never be used.

[edit on 4/15/0909 by spines]

reply to post by Gawdzilla

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Hell, they could have buried it in a hole and said: Nobody bomb us ever or this one and four more like it make this planet alot less heavy!

reply to post by spines

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I do apologise, Spines, I didn't catch your edit.

Yes, I see what you mean. But I don't think the deterrence value of this weapon, or even a dozen of them, would've been any greater than the rest of the Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal.

I think simply being nuclear with an effective method of delivery, command & control is sufficient deterrent in itself.

The weapon yield doesn't much come into it, in my opinion anyway.

reply to post by djvexd

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Not exactly the fastest, safest or best way to deliver a nuke.




This thing could and would have been blown from the sky if it got anywhere near it's target all the work for nothing when they could have fired 2000 missiles and got a better yield this thing was just for propaganda purposes.

reply to post by SLAYER69

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regardless, they had a delivery system. And if masked by 40-50 other bombers and fighter escorts......Hell our SAC bombers stayed on alert until the mid 80's for chrissake..lol. They are even STILL using Bears. Granted more as a political point rather than actual tactical usage.

the bomb was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT; however that was reduced by half in order to limit the amount of nuclear fallout that would result.
en.wikipedia.org...

What military use would a 100 MT bomb have except as a doomsday device.

Crater at 73º32'40"N 54º32'40"E

www.vce.com...

Storax Sedan test in nevada made a bigger crater then the tsar bomba.

en.wikipedia.org...(nuclear_test)

reply to post by djvexd

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The bomb was physically so large they could only get it onto the plane by removing the bomb bay doors completely and by removing the fuselage fuel tanks. Both actions limit range and I'd suggest to such an extent the crew would never get home, not that they'd have one to return to anyway.

They'd either get shot down on their way, die in the blast itself or run out of fuel before they'd even left North American airspace, presumably to be lynched by some rather unhappy locals.

A kamikaze mission no less. To that extent, I guess, it was a deliverable weapon.

reply to post by spines

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In early 2008 Russia had 5200 nuclear weapons with over 6600 warheads. The US has 4,075 with 5,535 warheads. What kind of deterrent is it to have one type of bomb that would detonate between 50 and 100 megatons, when you already have enough warheads stockpiled to destroy the world a few hundred times over?

At their peaks, the US had 32, 193 warheads, and the Soviet Union had 41,000.

This "Bomb" and all nuclear bombs are brought to you courtesy of Walt Disney Studio's and Howard Hughes.

How many Generations are brainwashed? Disney learned well from Hitler.

Dr. Emmett Brown:
No, no, no, no, no. This sucker's electrical.
But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.

Marty McFly:
Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium. Did you rip that off?

Dr. Emmett Brown:
Shhhhhh. Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing full of used pinball machine parts! Come on! Let's get you a radiation suit. We must prepare to reload.

This is what we all got sold. A shiny bomb casing full of the pinball wizard.

Peace

reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

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That's right, and all the people that witnessed the testing, and the mushroom clouds, and worked on the bombs were really seeing alien hologram technology.

reply to post by The Lass

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Well if you put that together with the fact that this was meant as a last ditch effort, it isn't so unbelievable. Our first mainland raid on Tokyo was generally considered a one way trip. The Soviet Union DID espouse the philosophy of "Heroes of the Motherland".

[edit on 16-4-2009 by djvexd]

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