--- title: "Russia Declassifies Video of World’s Biggest Nuclear Blast" description: "Russia has officially declassified footage from 1961 of the biggest ever nuclear blast of the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, better known as Tsar Bomba." date: "2020-09-02" modified: "2020-09-02" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-declassifies-video-worlds-biggest-nuclear-blast" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "atomic bomb" - "hydrogen bomb" - "Russia" - "the digest" --- # Russia Declassifies Video of World’s Biggest Nuclear Blast ![Russia has officially declassified footage from 1961 of the biggest ever nuclear blast of the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, better known as Tsar Bomba.]() *\Image: Atomra\* ## Tsar Bomba Russia has officially declassified 1961 footage of the biggest nuclear blast in history — a test of the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, better known as Tsar Bomba. The video, a 40 minute documentary uploaded to YouTube last week, is meant to honor the 75th anniversary of the Russian nuclear industry, as the [*South China Morning Post* reports](). It includes extensive footage of the massive detonation and resulting mushroom cloud, which rocked a remote collection of islands in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961. https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo ## Big Bang The explosion was a blast equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT — about 1,500 times more forceful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. The Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, for context, exploded with the equivalent energy of "just" 15 kilotons of TNT. The flash resulting from the gargantuan explosion of the Tsar Bomba was reportedly visible from almost 1,000 kilometers away. ## Megatonnage Race "There was a megatonnage race — who was going to have a bigger bomb," Robert Norris, an atomic age historian, [told *The New York Times*](). "And the Soviets won." Luckily, no bomb like it was ever detonated again following the test in 1961. Two years later, the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom signed the [Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty](), forbidding airborne nuclear weapon tests. Later nuclear tests were largely carried out underground. The most recent suspected nuclear bomb test was conducted in a mountainous region of North Korea on September 3, 2018. The detonation [registered as a 6.3 magnitude earthquake](), causing the entire surrounding mountain to collapse. **READ MORE:** [New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded]() \[*The New York Times*\] **More on nuclear bombs:** *Whatever Your Budget, Now You Can Own a Historic Piece of the Manhattan Project* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()