Russia Declassifies Largest Nuclear Explosion Footage, Watch It Here
If you wish to see the world's largest and most powerful nuclear explosion, now's your chance.
Russia recently released a video on YouTube of its 1961 'Tsar Bomba' nuclear explosion, which had a yield of 50 megatons, or the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT, as per the Drive.
Until now, only snippets of the explosion were shown, but to commemorate Russia's 75th anniversary of its nuclear industry, it decided to share the entire 40-minute video.
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Unseen footage
To this day, the RDS-220, or Tsar Bomba, explosion is the biggest man-made explosion. Shortly after its detonation, the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963 between the U.K., the U.S., and Russia, which saw nuclear tests move underground.
The footage was shared on August 20th by Russia's Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, which runs the nuclear show for the Kremlin.
The first portion of the video runs in typical Russian propaganda fashion, and around minute 22 you start to see the real action. The bomber that transported the nuke was a TU-96V Soviet bomber. The bomber had to remove some of its fuel tanks and bomb bay doors in order to accommodate the massive nuclear bomb, which was a hefty 26 feet long and 7 feet tall.
Tsar Bomba was dropped near the coast of Severny Island by the Arctic Ocean and exploded around 4,000 meters above the ground.
The enormous blast was visible up to 620 miles (997 km) away, and its gigantic mushroom cloud went up 42 miles (67 km) into the air, per Vice. That's roughly seven times higher than Mount Everest.
The video serves as a stark reminder of the Cold War era and what men are capable of creating and potentially destroying.