World's most powerful bomb was 3,300 times more powerful than Hiroshima but most people have never heard of it
Attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II are considered to be among the most devastating and inhumane actions in history, but there was actually a bomb far more powerful that was created a few decades later, although it was thankfully never actually used.
They say war never changes but things certainly shifted once the atomic bomb was thrust into action by United States. 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds' were the words said by J. Robert Oppenheimer following his horrific creation, and it stands as a uniquely powerful tool used in war over the past century.
You only need to look at videos of massive bomb explosions to understand the true scale of their destruction, and you're likely to have shivers crawl down your spines when you see comparisons between some of the world's biggest ever detonations.
However, it might shock you to find out that the 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively were far from the largest of their kind, and Soviet forces actually tested a behemoth that was reportedly 3,300 times more powerful just a few decades later.
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As reported by IFLScience, the Soviet Union operated a test explosion of what they called the 'Tsar Bomba', and its power is certainly fitting of the kingly name.
While it was 'only' denotated with an explosive power of 50 megatons, the Tsar Bomba had the capacity to carry double that, with engineers deeming the former figure more than enough.
For comparison, Hiroshima's Little Boy carried just 0.015 megatons of explosive power, so it's suddenly easy to understand quite how destructive the Soviet weapon now could have been.
At max capacity, it would have been 6,666 times more powerful than the Little Boy, which in of itself killed over 150,000 people.
Its blast radius was so large that you would be able to see the fireball from over 1,000 kilometers away, and the shockwave its explosion produced circled around the entire Earth three times over.
The Nuclear Secrecy Blog's 'NUKEMAP' tool allows us to see quite how destructive a bomb with 50 megatons of power would have been, as placing the radius over New York would wipe out not just the entire city, but its thermal radiation radius - where you'd receive third degree burns - stretches all the way to Stamford, Conneticut.
It also estimates that there would be around 7,633,390 fatalities if this were to strike New York City at its heart, with an additional 4,194,990 injuries in just the first 24 hours following the bomb.
With reports that the impending threat of an asteroid striking Earth would carry 'only' the power of 500 Hiroshima bombs, its even easier to comprehend quite how horrific this weapon could have been if it was deployed by the Soviet army.
Additionally, the Tsar Bomba is also far more powerful than any nuclear weapons currently in the United States arsenal, with the B83 gravity bomb at 1.2 megatons paling in comparison to the now 60-year-old effort from the Soviets.
It has been suggested that nuclear tensions are among the biggest threats if World War III were to break out as well, with the danger escalating dramatically when countries possessing warheads engage in conflict.