Rosatom releases previously classified documentary video of Tsar Bomba nuke test
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Makes you think about how, in the age where technological achievement can so quickly outpace the control of individuals, yet also relies on those same individuals to make it happen -- how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path.
It's no profoundly new sentiment, but in some ways we need to overcome our caveman instincts when we're stocked with nuclear weapons.
Who is "we", by the way?
Personally, I wouldn't watch anything from that channel. It's infamous for its low quality programming.
I think we should not so casually make remarks that imply a military intervention would do anything to benefit the Korean people.
There's even a nuclear tie-in as Gen. MacArthur was pressing Truman to drop a necklace of "30-50" bombs in order to irradiate the land and make it impassable for 60 years.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/macarthur-really-did-...
There are enough conventional artillery pieces installed at the border to flatten a substantial fraction of Seoul in minutes.
More fundamental than that conventional mutually-assured-destruction deterrent, there are larger forces that matter: North Korea exists because China and the Soviet Union wanted it to continue to exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#China_intervenes_(O... The international sanctions on North Korea continue to fail because North Korea's existence is convenient.
North Korea existed without nuclear weapons from roughly 1945 to 2006, or over 60 years, as far as I know.
Not to mention, South Korea has never had nuclear weapons, and despite being invaded by North Korea, still exists.
Wait, how do you think that would happen? Why didn't it happen 20 years ago before they had nukes?
If I search the internet for, say, "soviet invasion of germany" I get almost entirely hits such as plans for invading West Germany for WWIII, or alternate histories where the Soviets invaded Germany at the beginning of WWII instead of signing a pact. Also the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
It's not entirely unheard of to refer to Soviet offensive into Germany at the end of WWII as the "invasion of Germany", but it seems to be somewhat rare and unusual. And with Bing, unlike Google, I didn't find that usage at all.
I wonder if people rarely use the phrase because it seems vaguely to imply sympathy with the Nazis.
Murphy's law comes to mind. A small probability of badness + enough time = a near inevitable disaster.
It only takes one person to overreact for us all to start nuking each other.
I see no easy way out, apart from striving to become a multi-planetary civilization. Even then, it'll be a matter of time before the same pattern emerges.
The soviet union tore down an existing ruling class and replaced it with another "egalitarian" group that really acted in a way that was not so different in so many ways.
The minute humans are in charge and setting the rules the fallible flaw has been introduced.
With Stalin definitely, the only goal was complete control over the population and over the state. Sure, egalitarianism was paid lip service, but it was entirely propaganda.
In fact, the proper historical name for the economic system used in the USSR is "state capitalism". You still have corporations that employ people for a fixed wage, but instead of being controlled by private interests, they are controlled by bureaucrats appointed by the ruling dictators.
Socialism would have meant that the worker-owners get payed based on the profits of the factory, and that they have a direct say in how the factory is operated. In the USSR, no one had any say in how anything was operated, save for the unelected ruling elite.
The dogma that they should be run at a profit makes as much sense as expecting your plumbing, heating, and car to generate cash for your household budget.
"Empty trucks" are very much a thing in capitalism. Ask any airline about flying empty planes to keep slots.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/airport-slots-ghost-f...
The real difference between "capitalism" and "communism" is that capitalist economies are consumption-driven and geared to producing status-signalling Veblen goods and services, while communist economies tend to be run on a defensive war orientation.
It's easy to sell ad-driven acquisition and consumption as freedom, but real freedom is a rather difficult principle for a society to deal with.
Both are totalitarian, strongly nationalist and propagandising, and unsustainable in their different ways, but - at least in the home territories - capitalism does a much better job of painting a smiley face on its bleak underside and keeping its failures out of the mainstream narratives.
Whether or not they were doing this out of conscious malice or it's just a natural course I'm not actually sure.
The flavor of populism that the new dictators choose to use to ensure the population stays docile seems to matter much less.
Or to find a way of life that doesn't include "people at the top" as the primary decision making apparatus.
> but in some ways we need to overcome our caveman instincts when we're stocked with nuclear weapons.
In a lot of ways, it is our caveman instincts that make mutually assured destruction a viable political option. It's probably what also prevents us from using scorched earth as a common warfare tactic. This seems a bit like looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
How exactly does that work? “Mr. President, a foreign nuclear submarine just surfaced off the coast of Florida. They are not responding to our hails and their launch tubes are open. What do we do?” “Well we need to have a referendum and ask everyone, regardless of training, intelligence, and with no clearance or access to intelligence briefings what orders I should issue.”
The point of having leaders is to lead. Humans don’t do well without leaders. The most successful leaderless movement we’ve seen was the Occupy movement and nobody would ever call that any kind of success. It’s is in our nature as much as it is in the mathematics that describes our society.
Most large conflicts in human history have been about imperialism - one powerful ruling class trying to expand their power to new lands. Without the ruling class, it is hard to imagine millions of people caring whether they "control" some piece of land thousands of miles away. Would the US have gone to Vietnam if there weren't a ruling class that cared about extending their influence? To Irak? To Afghanistan? To El Salvador? Would they have orchestrated coups against the democratic leadership of Iran to protect BP's operations, and reinstalled their ousted absolutist monarchy? Would they have assassinated Iranian generals?
Logistical challenges in themselves do not invalidate an idea. They may make it impractical, but not invalid.
My point is the same as George Carlin’s: think of an average person and realize that 50% of the population is stupider than that. If people are dumb enough to fall for the Plandemic videos they are easy to manipulate. Leadership requires training, intelligence, wisdom, and expertise, which is why so few people possess those qualities. Do you truly think an average person is capable of making decent decisions when governing? Hell, something like 3/4 of the US voters don’t bother voting once every two years. An average person is neither qualified nor interested in making decisions that affect their country.
If you want another counterexample: California. It’s the only place where the ballot can contain a referendum to lower taxes and another referendum to increase spending and people sincerely vote yes to both without ever realizing wtf they are doing or what it means.
I would rather live in a society where politicians just do their jobs, don’t steal or fuck up, and I don’t have to think about it because their decisions are rational. There is nothing rational about a mass of random citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson#Mathemati...
is via independent events occurring at a constant mean rate.
I've thought about this a lot over the past two decades. If I had to summarize my conclusions in two statements, this would be it:
1. Desperation is the enemy of civilization.
2. The larger the group vilified by an ideology, the more evil that ideology is likely to be.
As an example of (1), we live in a technologically advanced age replete with wealth, but we seem to be driven by competition that has left even billionaire investors feeling desperate to preserve/grow their wealth.
As an example of (2), it is more likely that our perception of a large community is skewed, than that community being wholesale evil. This applies equally to the former Soviet Union, your preferred enemy nation, and also the 50% of your country who are on the opposite side of the left-right divide.
While some of the similarity can be explained by espionage, much of it comes from the confrontation between ingenuity and Nature. These instruments of war, built by professionals who deeply respected their adversaries, memorialize the extent to which each side was desperate to prevent the other from gaining an operational edge. It is the science of life and death, confronting not entropy (as we do in the case of Covid-19) but other humans.
As a scientist who builds instrumentation, looking particularly into the landing-gear wells and bomb-bays, I felt great connection with those who built the instruments. People, just like me, built these things because they felt that they had to in order to defend their homes. I have promised myself never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked -- devoting instead a portion of my time to non-proliferation work -- but it is easy to see how humanity reaches such a point.
I see in today's era of closing borders and increasing nationalism the prospect of conflict not seen since the 1940s. Tectonic stresses have built for decades; we must find ways to relax them gently in a way that is beneficial to everyone, so that humanity might prosper and thrive for generations to come.
They also had the first Submarine launched ballistic missile.
They had the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons for many years.
They developed the most potent nuclear weapons.
Can you be more specific?
Fortunately this will never happen but I have always been curious about how US technicals would fare in a ground-war in Russia. My bet is that they would fail most of the times with no possibility of easy fixes, at least compared to their Soviet (now Russian) equivalents. What’s the US equivalent for the Russian Ural or Kamaz trucks?
T-34, which was superior to most German tanks like pzkpfw 3/4 when it was introduced, was produced in vast numbers, around 80000. German designed a competitive tank with the Panther, but only about 6000 were made, and they were beset by reliability problems.
Add in the production by the Western allies, such as 50000 Sherman tanks, the surprising thing is that Nazi Germany didn't collapse faster.
Don't know about modern hardware. Certainly Soviet hardware has a reputation for reliability in adverse conditions. OTOH the first Gulf war was a pretty damning indictment of the warfighting ability of Soviet armour.
In such an environment where all tanks are able to reliably hit and penetrate all others, numbers become the dominant factor.
In more open country, tank armour and punching power make more of a difference.
That's a solid bet. The US has not engaged a similarly sophisticated opponent in generations and with high unit costs of American weapons, any such war would be extraordinarily costly.
I can only speak for Sweden, but a lot of large military and civilian defence bunkers (and hardened, fixed in bedrock artillery) went obsolete went “the other side” got better targeting systems.
Until then, a lot of the installations were immune to anything but a direct hit, which was incredibly unlikely. Airbursts just wouldn’t have cut it to crack open the more serious underground installations.
Just to clarify I meant the old “hit somewhere in the city core” airbursts against which our underground shelters would have held up pretty well. To maximise impact a ground hit is seldom the right choice, too much energy is initially absorbed. (Also the fallout is made worse in a ground burst which can be a bad thing for an attacker if they want to follow up with boots on the ground.)
Soviet intel and propaganda was always far above what west could do. It is what kept it looking close for two decades.
Korea for example. US could easily use nukes with impunity. It did not but there would be no consequences in terms of nuclear retaliation as Stalin knew what the equation was. Still he took the bet to attack south.. just a mad lad that he was. When Chinese counter attacked if US used nukes again there would be no retaliation, McArthur got retired over that.
I am really happy we lived through that. It is incredibly lucky that it was US that got the nukes first and not Germany or USSR or other similar regime.
If you think "oh this is not so bad" you should watch Threads.
Add to that the effects of medium range Soviet weapons in Western Europe (which they had a lot of) then things would have been very bad here.
Source: The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg
The whole race was about creating nukes to nuke the other nukes out of the orbit when they are attacking, so the total amount of nukes was way beyond what was required to destroy the other side.
The USSR seemed to spend little or nothing on stealth.
From the book 'Stealth' by Peter Westwick.
What if it is the United States that attacks another country? Would you build weapons for that other country instead? Pacifism should be an universal attitude for it to make sense at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington
Anything more recent?
(for that matter, are there any scenarios for full major power wars that don't end after an hour or two?)
It is interesting that at this polarising times, the idea that this weaponry will be used in an internal conflict is not considered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_of_the_American_Civi...
(I've noticed many revolutionary movements fail when their key exports turn out to have been worth less, due to stocking or substitution, on world markets than they'd been planning. Sometime I should check successful revolutions, and see what happened in their export markets...)
Edit: for the US revolution, nothing so far on the economic effects of the British blockade, but the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Chesapeake implies they lacked complete naval superiority.
Attacked by whom and for what purpose and for what ends? How would you moderate your response to an attack based on the circumstances? How do you even know the attack was real or that it had the intent that was reported by the media[1]?
The US is a big country, and while its mainland has never suffered any significant attack by a nation-state in de-jure war, the US is "attacked" in some way or another quite regularly - the immediate example is 9/11 of course, but what about economic and social attacks (e.g. Russia social-media manipulation, or the PRC's attempts to replace US influence abroad)?
I assume the US is your home - but from my perspective (as a non-American) that seems a tad chauvinistic: do I detect you implying that the US worth defending but not other democracies? Or 1,001 other points one could make along similar lines.
I appreciate that one's moral philosophy and position on the extent of the right to self-defence (from the person, to the home, to the town, to the nation) is a very complicated and subjective topic, so to be clear: I don't mean to attack your stated position at all (I'm sure you have a well-reasoned position), but it's a bad idea to try to succinctly summarize one's opinion on this matter in particular on the Internet.
[1] Thinking of 9/11 again: I'd wager the vast majority of Americans would repeat the "they hate us for our freedom" line without thinking too much about how much of a gross-oversimplification that line was when there were in-fact many reasons for the plot (e.g. https://mershoncenter.osu.edu/news/what-caused-911-and-conse... ). I guess if anything good came out of 9/11 it's that Islamofascist militants realised any political message they want to make would be completely distorted or misrepresented in the American media landscape - even if some of their goals were still achieved (e.g. getting the US stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East).
I remember that Iraq was attacked with strong claims from intelligence agency that they have weapons of mass destruction (another president), America destroyed Iraq and what remained from that destroyed economy was seed of ISIS. Later on, when they have not found any evidence of weapons official admired that they spiced the info. Because hey oil was interest to protect. Despite biggest protest in history of the World, and despite not having UN approval America attacked Iraq.
Also, I am curious to find out, what makes someone think that it is ok to drop a bomb that will level entire city and kill thousands innocent people, basically committing genocide. Allays were portrayed as good in WW2 but are we? First bombed was dropped to Hiroshima 70,000 people vaporized instantly, later on 140,000 would die. Now I guess they had some kind report, but they did not stopped there, they dropped another one to Nagasaki.
So let say they did not know about first one, but second one was pure genocide, targets were civilians. Now I ask among those ~300,000 was there any innocent child?
My point is what ever way you feel it is justifiable it is not, history is written by the winners, and our "morality" tends to bend accordingly.
As we progress in future, if we do not find mechanisms to identify human psychopathic tendencies we are doomed, as each fraction of advancement would just mean higher risk and probability of mutual destruction. Technology is just a multiplier of all our abilities and who we are. Although we tend to think we are better than our savage ancestors, history has proven number of times - that we are not.
The issue with this is that by the time we are under attack it’s already too late to develop weapons. Most of the naval and air assets we used to fight World War II (the modern ur-example of a just conflict) were on the drawing board and planned, if not already in production, prior to Pearl Harbor. The problem is only magnified today where it takes years, not months, to build a ship, for example. Pledging to not work on weapons and other military projects absent a conflict is, in essence, a pledge never to work on weapons or military projects ever.
I do not wish to spend my limited time on the planet improving the fundamental rate at which we can kill one another. We, as a species, are already excellent at that task.
I am a physicist. If we are involved in a protracted conflict, there will be plenty of opportunities akin to MIT's Rad Lab or the Manhattan Project to which I might contribute. R.V. Jones is a personal hero. Until then, I would rather contribute to preserving life or chasing down nature's secrets (my day job through 9/16, when I cast off on a new odyssey).
There's however one key, pivotal change that happened during the wartime - scaling out the manufacturing and logistics. Primarily USA, and largely Great Britain and USSR, scaled out production of weapons, vehicles & materiel, subassemblies, and certain raw materials by factor of 10x or even 100x. Same with the related logistics. This was a huge undertaking[1], required high level of engineering, manufacturing, and managerial expertise. If people like GP only got into weapons & materiel production in the wartime, they'd still contribute greatly to the military effort.
--
[1] building and relocating whole factories, rearranging production lines, and adjusting designs & manufacturing techniques for streamlining. Example, a ship was built in under 5 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Robert_E._Peary
This is very interesting to me, what line of work are you in such that you are able to devote a portion of your time to non-proliferation work? Having previously worked at one of the NNSA labs it's my understanding that non-proliferation work is often classified, but I'd be interested to hear how normal technically-minded folks can contribute.
It'd be kinda late to start building weapons then. Imagine a country being attacked by an adversary like USSR and start building weapons at the moment of the attack only. They couldn't last a week.
Note also that the official ideology of the USSR presumes ultimate violent overthrow of every non-socialist state. While late USSR has mellowed down somewhat and preferred stealth and sneaky rather than open combat, the expansionist drive has never been gone. And I wonder what we could have seen if USSR would have been the only country that had nukes in their possession...
Iran is constantly being threatened with the use of force by one of the most powerful and belligerent countries in the region (Israel). It has a history of having its leaders deposed by the USA. It has a history of making deals with the USA, keeping its end of the bargain, and discovering the USA had no intention of doing so (while accusing Iran of being the problem). It is one of the only places where their particular religion is accepted in the region, with extreme intolerance of it from one of the other powerful nations in the region (Saudi Arabia). And it is one of the few countries who still care about the fate of the Palestinians.
I'd argue that its more important for us to imbue everyone with a sense of personal responsibility. Instill in everyone that they are personally responsible for everything that they do without regard for what anyone else does.
>executing the same commands -- all just normal people who were caught up in a terrible arms race. Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition.
>Watching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs
We should teach our children that, "getting caught up" is never an excuse or a mitigation of their own personal responsibility for their actions. Whether they are motivated to participate in bad behavior out of duty, ambition or just "doing their job" - their motivations are ultimately irrelevant - they always remain personally responsible for their actions regardless of their motivations.
Unfortunately this is not a popular position because so few of us are willing to own total responsibility for our own actions. Its much easier to wave a finger in the air and blame "leadership" for our behavior, or point to the fact that very few people take explicit personal responsibility for the results of their behavior, and use that as a rationalization for not taking responsibility themselves. Many will argue that they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because their individual actions are inconsequential in the big scheme of things, but I would argue that every individual's action is infinitely consequential in terms of their own personal responsibility. We are all completely responsible for what we do as individuals and not responsible for what others do (and consequently cannot use the bad behavior of others to excuse or mitigate our responsibility for our own bad behavior). You cannot willingly be a cog in the machine and at the same time disavow the product that the machine turns out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
It was interesting how the Soviets had built a dead-hand system caller Perimeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand, but then didn't seem to advertise its existence to the West, which would make sense to do typically. And some believe (wiki has a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Zheleznyakov) that it was to give the people at the top a better chance to react more rationally. In a way, it was to allow the possible "Petrovs" in their midst to do the right thing.
The perimeter seem to be not some individual system, but a feature grafted into all C3 gear that gives the launch officer a clear indication that the strategic command has been taken out, and an automatic decision making about what target plan to follow (remember, up until late 80s, all ICBMs had to be programmed at the factory, and the memory was scarce)
Soviet ICBM infrastructure, and staff that was left outside of Russia confirm this, it had no provision for fully automated launch. Stationary launch positions especially were stuffed with all kinds comm gear to ensure that the silo is not cut off from the superior officers under any circumstances.
At most, it is an automated target designation, and "fire at will" switch.
So yeah, I think it's great that we can no longer have major wars, and I think it's worth having the nukes if that's what it takes to deter others.
The Cold War was one of largest wars in history by casualties, on the same rough order as (and possibly ahead of) WWI.
Nuclear weapons are a big part of why it was popular to maintain the rather paper-thin fiction that it was simply a series of separate conflicts that happened to have the same parties standing behind the principal combatants (or involving at most one of those backers directly).
Don't forget the fear component!
> Stalin was fascinated by the thought of a “super bomb” and set up an atomic bomb project and put Lavrentiy Beria change and told him that he had five years to produce an atomic bomb or face the consequences.
> Whilst the rest of the Soviet Union suffered shortages of men, materials and food, Beria setup a secret town and put in the top scientists to work on the atomic bomb with no expense was spared. Beria had two lists, one for those who would get promotion for their work and the other for those that failed, they would face the gulag or execution.
https://curious-droid.com/1209/how-the-atomic-race-was-won/
Another "highlight" was Korolev, one of the key designers of the Soviet rocket program, being sent to the gulag. Some of the design work he did was from the gulag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment
At the time this was filmed, "those at the top" were extremely focused on knot leading their countries down the path to war.
To go back to main subject, most of us are unaware are the things we do good or bad, we work to feed family or just to survive. Maybe some guy out there thinks he is working in strict chemical factory but in fact he is working for a drug lord or some dictator that is creating chemical weapon. For him not feeding his family is bad thing, and he does the job he is educated for.
Very much like biblical "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
Most of us do not, I am working on a banking software... maybe it will create misery putting in spiral debt some family that will become homeless...
You would have to convince everyone that everyone has a right to live and survive and have basic comforts.
If those scientists and engineers refuse to work on weapons, how will they make money and put food on their table?
They won't even be allowed to walk out if they know secrets.
If they were to detach from their society and go forage in the wild and attempt to start a self-sufficient community, they won't be able to defend against government, military or criminals (a redundant list you might say but I digress).
You have to convince the soldiers who enforce the will of "the people at the top", but then how would they earn a living?
Edit: no, really, go check out the Wikipedia image of the bomb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) and then watch the video. They have the recording they pulled that exact picture on the top of the page from, except the quality is significantly better in every aspect. (If you're impatient: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1780)
Edit on downvotes - is my surprise at its declassification misplaced? Does every teenager these days know how to plan and carry out a 50 megaton nuclear test by reading Wikipedia?
Not quite but closer than you might have thought, see
"though in such a case the limiting factor in developing such a weapon is not usually design difficulty but rather the procurement of material (enriched uranium)"
Results of the analysis are still classified (declassified document is redacted to death) but there are some accounts claiming that Dr. Teller uncovered that the design was viable and would produce a blast within order of magnitude of the “inspiration”.
If the account above is true it means anything from low single digit kiloton range to low double digit.
But I do not think today anybody would doubt that. The biggest obstacle to fission bomb making are materials themselves. Lack of public data to calibrate would mean nothing to terrorists (1 kiloton is still terror-inducing) and nation states have no problems in accessing nuclear scientists.
Fortunately, getting enough material is what makes this lunacy impractical.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24045858
For their role in V-J day, let's give belgium a hand!
Was that a bleakly-relevant joke? I mean, kudos to you - but jeez, 'dark' does't begin to cover it.
Yes.
If you think that this is even a fraction of the data and resources needed to replicate that chain of events, then you probably seriously misjudge the difficulty faced with regards to the engineering and construction of such a device.
The teenager comment is somewhat hyperbole, I think -- but it's not necessarily wrong. The basic principals behind these devices have been public knowledge for as far as I can remember; diagrams of how they work have been in magazines like Scientific American since the mid 70s -- maybe earlier.
This "teenage knowledge" threat predates Wikipedia, that's for sure. I was sending away cash for nefarious science kits way before Wikipedia.
I also read that, as well as it being detected by an American nuclear surveillance plane, the detonation wasn't actually publicly announced within the Soviet Union.
Why would a bomb that is larger than needed to destroy the largest city be useful?
Besides the Tsar Bomba, there is also a Tsar Bell, the largest bell, equally as pointless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bell
Oh, and a Tsar Cannon, "largest bombard by caliber in the world": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Cannon
Both the US and Soviet Union did explore using really big fusion bombs for geo engineering (there was a bonkers plan to dig a harbour in Alaska with them, notably), but early testing of these concepts were not promising and the atmospheric test ban killed it off.
> Does every teenager these days know how to plan and carry out a 50 megaton nuclear test by reading Wikipedia?
This video shows you nothing of the sort.
The bad image quality on Wikipedia is intentional because the use of this photo is restricted by copyright laws [0][1]. Resolution downscaling is done for all non-free photographs and images on Wikipedia to conform to the fair use criteria to the maximum extent under the U.S. Copyright Law.
Intuitively, the copyright system in the Soviet Union (or any other country, for that matter) for works created by civil servants while performing official duties for the government should be similar to the U.S. Copyright Law - under public domain. Unfortunately, if the Wikipedia editors were correct, when Russia joined the Berne Convention, a lot of previous uncopyrightable works have been retroactively granted for copyright again. The result is an extremely complicated copyright situation, making the vast majority of Soviet Union public domain works non-free.
See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Soviet.
Unfortunately, yes, copyright laws can be this stupid. And copyright has encumbered many historically important records similarly, what a pity.
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tsar_photo11.jpg
This image is a faithful digitisation of a unique historic image, and the copyright for it is most likely held by the person who created the image or the agency employing the person. It is believed that the use of this image may qualify as fair use under the Copyright law of the United States. Other use of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement.
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests...
If you believe the argument is mistaken and the photograph is free, you can simply screenshot the full-resolution denotation scene in the film and upload it to Wikipedia, and persuade the editors that it's indeed a public domain work, but good luck with that given the complex situation...
If, like me, you were confused by the propeller blades being black on takeoff, despite being painted white earlier in the video - only the backs were painted, as the aircraft was flying away from the bomb on detonation.
The control setup is very Russian. The arming and detonation were remotely controlled from the ground. The pilots couldn't go bomb someplace else.
Basically lead instead of uranium tampers. Makes for more fusion, less fission.
I'm not a 100% sure but it certainly might have been possible that the location wasn't very radioactive afterwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
A hydrogen bomb is triggered by a smaller plutonium/depleted uranium device. It's the moral equivalent of a detonator for C4, with a sprinkle of X-Rays and plasma on the side.
The punchline is about a third of the way down:
> The fission reactions though, especially the last fission reactions, release a tremendous amount of fission products and fallout. If the last fission stage is omitted, by replacing the uranium tamper with one made of lead, for example, the overall explosive force is reduced by approximately half but the amount of fallout is relatively low. The neutron bomb is a hydrogen bomb with an intentionally thin tamper, allowing most of the fast fusion neutrons as possible to escape.
However, since you can roughly double the power of any two-stage bomb by replacing the tamper with uranium, at minimal expense and with no added mass, but at the cost of producing massive amounts of fallout, real bombs deployed for war generally would have made a lot of fallout.
Even in the context of 3 stage designs there's a huge difference in fallout between airbursts and groundbursts. It's the groundburst fallout that would have killed everyone in Copehagen and Stockholm if WWIII had gone down when the wind was blowing from the east, even with a successful US first strike.
Only fission is always dirty. Hydrogen bomb can be made clean, dirty or extremely dirty (salted) depending on the tamper material. Also, underwater explosions of hydrogen bomb create dirty explosion due to natrium in the water. Need for fission reaction to start the fusion reacton creates always some radioactive particles.
Tzar bomba was airburst hydrogen bomb with lead tamper. It was relatively clean but the fission core still crated global fallout.
Amazing that the mushroom cloud nearly reached space.
Incredible how its size makes it look slow.
a bit of pedantism - giving that it was air heated by the radiation and shock wave the speed of sound was much higher, so while going up very fast, the dirt being moved up by convection and pressure differential may have still moved subsonically wrt. the local speed of sound.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A6%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C-%D0%B...
https://www.atomic-energy.ru/files/books/Ukroschenie%20yadra...
Calling the bomb clean would be like calling somebody's vomit clean because it was diluted in large amount of water and then sprayed on all walls so there are no large concentrations of it.
Also, there is vomit all over the pavements and walls of your city. Just in low concentrations.
“The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly it’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset, hmph
Could be the human race is run”
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TSz30Nj2n4
For some reason I never understood why the record has such a bad reputation, I am a huge fan of both the Waters’ and Gilmour eras.
"The atmosphere Will get lighter And two suns ready To shine just for you
[...]
An aeroplane Will curve gracefully Around the volcano With the eruption that never lets you down
[...]
And the beautifulness Fireworks will burn in In the sky Ooh just for you"
[1]: https://cameraquest.com/luft.htm
My guess for 5:01 [2] is a Zorki 6 with a rigid Industar-50 [3]. The top plate matches the Zorki 6 from what I can tell and the rigid Industar-50 has a very distinct shape when attached as it looks a bit “fat” in the middle.
[2]: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=301
[3]: http://mattsclassiccameras.com/rangefinders-compacts/zorki-6
At 5:08 [4] I think we have a Zorki S [5] based on the top plate. Those familiar with screw-mount Leica cameras can note the striking similarity, more on this later. I have no clue about the lens though, it looks akin to specialist lenses from the era that I have seen.
[4]: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=308
[5]: http://mattsclassiccameras.com/rangefinders-compacts/zorki-s
For 12:38 [6] we again seem to have Industar-50s, but now with four Zorki S’.
[6]: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=758
A word of warning, I am far far far more familiar with German and Japanese cameras from this era as it is what I have used in the past – corrections are welcome. Also, if you spotted other camera gear (no film cameras though, ask someone else…) do poke me.
To end on an interesting historical fact. The Zorki S you saw and plenty more from the era produced both in the USSR (do not say Russia, from what I remember plenty were made in the Ukraine) and Japan (both Nikon and Canon) were “Leica copies” that either looked very much like to their German counterparts, accepted lenses with the same mount (M39 or Leica Thread Mount), and/or had very similar lens designs. This means that lenses/cameras produced during this era tends to be compatible between makers and countries, which leads to a lot of fun if you can muster a little courage and try film. In particular the USSR-made cameras/lenses are dirt cheap these days.
Anyway, looking at those explosions these days it usually reminds me that the total produced nukes by both sides - 100K+ - was sufficient to send an Orion style space ship to the closest star with 1-3% of the speed of light.
Sadly it's standard military contractor stuff. It's a sick culture.
The song itself wasn't bad, though.
Is there another term for “ring of bsolute destruction”? When I google that, all of the results are either for a book with that in part of the title, or a guitar effect pedal, or this article itself.
I’d like to read more about this - can anyone suggest a better search term?
If you "detonate" 100M Tzar Bomb on https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ it tells you that
>Moderate blast damage radius (5 psi): 32.6 km
So I assume that the “ring of absolute destruction” ~= "Moderate blast damage radius"
I assume the pilots were fully prepped, but... still seems like a bad day
https://www.military.com/video/nuclear-bombs/nuclear-weapons...
A few ten megaton bomb would create a very small earthquake, quite probably only detectable by instruments. You'd need to wade into millions-ten of millions of megatons to create an extinction event.
Clips of nuclear "money shots" are at the end of the documentary: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1779
Makes you wonder how many unreleased "Top Secret" documentaries from the Soviet Union are still on tapes someplace.
It will likely remain that way for many years, the Russian Federation is still chekist just as the Soviet Union was before it - those who criticize Putin do not live long.
If possible, could you point me to the book you're referring to. I'm really interested in reading this.
The original Russian is classified (Make of that what you will - the British establishment very much did not leave no rock unturned when it came to soviet infiltration), the English is (I think) available online somewhere, and the aforementioned book is a summary of his papers.
Would you call this a legitamite/equivalent source?
It's what science used to be in the golden age in the West.
https://twitter.com/RosatomGlobal
https://www.facebook.com/rosatom.global/
Maybe scientists need to defect to get work done?
How exactly does a nuclear icebreaker work ️? We thought you'd never ask. https://rosatom.ru/en/rosatom-group/the-nuclear-icebreaker-f...
Care to elaborate?
Here's an article - "GROWING UP IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE - Frank Press"
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ea.23....
(Is it still defection if one migrates from one capitalist country to another?)
https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/expedition-ships/50-years-o...
It's not quite that simple.