Re: NNG: Travelling to Novaya Zemlya

Samart Wrote:
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> My goodness..that is just insane. I hadn’t heard
> about this size of bomb.
>
> I did have to chuckle at one of the comments.
> “The radioactive elements were negligible”.
> Riiiiiight. I bet those guys that jumped out of
> that helicopters were all dead in the 70s or 80s.

As much as both sides did some really dumb things with nukes back in the 50s and 60s.....including the nuclear fracking attempt not all that far from Chama....at least both sides realized that if they detonated the devices at high enough altitudes, so the fireball would not touch the ground, the ground contamination would be far less than what would happen in a worst case scenario (surface burst). In the case of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, in both cases, the weapons were detonated above 1000 ft., and in both cases the surface radiation decayed pretty rapidly. That's why both cities are very livable today, with radiation levels not much different from normal background levels. In the case of Tsar Bomba, the same was done. The device was exploded at high altitude, so you could probably visit the site today and not find it screaming hot.

Fortunately, Tsar Bomba was physically so large and heavy that the Tu-95, likely could not have carried it very far. I believe that the aircraft was damaged in the test and never flew again. As has been noted previously, the biggest nukes in our arsenal today are perhaps 1.5 MT. Most are 150KT or less, and are selectable yield....meaning the aircrews can select "little" bang, "bigger" bang, "really big" bang, or "how fast will this F-15E go?" bang.

/Kevin Madore