Rosatom releases previously classified documentary video of Tsar Bomba nuke test

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2020/08/rosatom-releases-previously-classified-documentary-video-50-mt-novaya-zemlya-test

by vinnyglennon • 6 years ago

448 226 6 years ago

thebarentsobserver.com

osipov• 6 years ago

The launch and the detonation start here: https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1309

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.

mhh__4• 6 years ago

A lot. I'm more interested in Espionage than the Space Program (I imagine if you asked nicely Roscosmos might give you footage), but to this day there is more material from the KGB from defectors than official sources (and this includes material going back a century). The biggest single dump of KGB archives was from Mitrokhin, who in the burst of freedom after the union dissolved walked off with a few hundred thousand papers he'd copied (The book version is a good read).

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.

nowandlater2• 6 years ago

The biggest single dump of KGB archives was from Mitrokhin, who in the burst of freedom after the union dissolved walked off with a few hundred thousand papers he'd copied (The book version is a good read).

If possible, could you point me to the book you're referring to. I'm really interested in reading this.

sbhn• 6 years ago

Anything russia is capable of, that scares america, is promoted by the american administration since, well, that is there job security, ie, saving you from the enemy. Maybe its fake news, but the money to be made from validating it, ie converting public money into a private monet, is to good an opportunity to refuse.

ceejayoz• 6 years ago

I don’t think an impractical nuke from 1961 is gonna move the needle much.

AnimalMuppet• 6 years ago

This was released by Rosatom, which the US administration does not control.

Andrew_nenakhov• 6 years ago

According to some members of the Congress, the US administration is controlled by us Russians. 4d chess you know.

mhh__4• 6 years ago

At the near-height of the Cold War, the US had a spy called Adolf Tolkachev. He has - somewhat romantically - been called the "Billion dollar spy", because he handed over strategically important information about Russian military capabilities (RADAR ceilings and the like). This allowed the US to change course, and spend the money on the right things. He was later betrayed by Aldrich Ames and/or Robert Hanssen.

It's not quite that simple.

akmarinov• 6 years ago

They wanted it to be a 100 megaton bomb, but that meant sacrificing the crew of the plane that dropped it.

trhway3• 6 years ago

in USSR it meant sacrificing the plane.

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.

cbfrench• 6 years ago

Detonation footage begins just after 22:40 for those (like me) looking for the big boom.

archsurface• 6 years ago

Love the cheerful music.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 6 years ago

If you like cheezy cheerful music accompanying nuclear destruction, watch https://youtu.be/HWZXinRwCaE?t=210

dTal2• 6 years ago

That's much more sinister - especially the part at the end where they show the warhead landing in a densely populated area and caption it "Mission Accomplished" with a triumphant musical flourish.

Sadly it's standard military contractor stuff. It's a sick culture.

nemo1618• 6 years ago

Less cheesy -- actually one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Rr4xIUYr4

liability2• 6 years ago

A North Korean take on this theme: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ADN0H6MREHA

zkms• 6 years ago

Alternatively there is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDL_pIPScSI about Minuteman III testing -- in which a song called "It's My Life" plays as we see breathtaking video of an unarmed Minuteman III missile climbing its way through the clouds at Vandenberg AFB and the West Coast; followed by footage of the reentry vehicles falling down from the sky at several kilometers per second, visible only as streaks of white light.

snoshy• 6 years ago

Quite eerie to watch the column of dirt rise so slowly after such a violent explosion. Same for the aftermath, other than perhaps the melted snow exposing the red dirt below, the landscape hardly looks any different after the test.

Amazing that the mushroom cloud nearly reached space.

01100011• 6 years ago

I think it appears slow because of the scale and the distance involved. It's actually moving quite fast(several km in a few seconds).

remcob2• 6 years ago

Napkin math: That column of dirt went up ~20 km in about 30 seconds. That's almost twice the speed of sound.

Incredible how its size makes it look slow.

trhway3• 6 years ago

That's almost twice the speed of sound.

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.

refurb• 6 years ago

The clip from 250km away looks like the sun on the horizon.

m0zg6• 6 years ago

Similar physics - it's a fusion bomb, hence the low residual radiation. Wikipedia claims, BTW, that the energy released by this explosion was about 16.6 times all explosive energy released in WW2, and about 1/10th of all energy released by all nuclear testing.

lmilcin2• 6 years ago

There exists no purely fusion bomb. All thermonuclear bombs are lighted by a fission stage and bomb of such size would definitely have more than one.

ninjin2• 6 years ago

The analogy is very apt, from “Two Suns in the Sunset” [1] with Pink Floyd:

“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.

magicalhippo• 6 years ago

Björk's "One day"[1] as well:

"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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-nDLfFmEq8

liability2• 6 years ago

This film shows a number of what appear to be ordinary off-the-shelf cameras being used to record data, for instance at 5:01 and 12:55. Are those Zorkis?

wyoh• 6 years ago

Could be Fed

ninjin2• 6 years ago

Glad I am not the only camera nut out there, my personal speciality is the pre-SLR era that I know far too much about to be healthy. The use of high-end, off-the-shelf cameras for military and scientific purposes does not surprise me that much. The “Luftwaffe Leicas” [1] for example are famous in camera circles and even today I frequently spot Nikon and Canon gear in physics labs when I walk around campus.

[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.

vl2• 6 years ago

It’s interesting how they did the shot of the bomb on the parachute. It’s either not the real bomb (test drop of a dummy?), or camera operator should have been in the kill zone.

dTal2• 6 years ago

This whole video is a fascinating window into Soviet engineering culture of the time, with lots of juicy shots of classic oscilloscopes and the like. I would give my right arm to see a similar video of their space program.

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.

trebligdivad• 6 years ago

All the test equipment, scope cameras, and period radio equipment and radio operation was fascinating.

Animats• 6 years ago

Interesting. Didn't know it had to be carried outside the drop plane.

The control setup is very Russian. The arming and detonation were remotely controlled from the ground. The pilots couldn't go bomb someplace else.

saagarjha3• 6 years ago

I'm sure they'd be shot down if they inexplicably deviated too far from their course as well.

rsynnott9• 6 years ago

Well... yes. I'd think that would be standard practice for any rogue nuclear bomber.

vl2• 6 years ago

To be fair, the detonation had to be synchronized with the recording equipment start. They were proudly describe analog control system which start recorders at correct time.

saagarjha3• 6 years ago

Oh, wow, this is great. Seeing all this in detail is really interesting. It's even better after seeing the static, low-quality pictures on Wikipedia and then watching this and seeing that they are in fact part of a high-quality, video capture of the bomb. I can't wonder how many similar "secret" projects have such good documentation and videos of them that haven't seen the light of day yet…

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)

jbay8083• 6 years ago

I'm astonished that they would release this video. Even 60 years onward, this test is still beyond the capabilities of many nations and so it's surprising to me that this wouldn't remain classified. It goes into quite extensive detail on the logistics and planning and even shows footage of the bomb with panels removed.

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?

csomar• 6 years ago

It's possible they are releasing it because of the current tensions between US/China/Russia.

pvg2• 6 years ago

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment

serf• 6 years ago

Edit on downvotes - is my surprise at its declassification misplaced?

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.

mhh__4• 6 years ago

The Tsar Bomba was never intended to be a practical weapon. Modern computing (ever had to read/sign a disclaimer for FEM software saying "I will use this to make nukes"?) combined with espionage at the time means that there is almost no chance that there is anything particularly useful contained in the footage.

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.

perl4ever6• 6 years ago

Why should anyone care? If making larger and larger hydrogen bombs was militarily useful, people would have continued to do it. But there is actually no purpose to making the largest explosion possible, let alone literally blowing up the world which someone once claimed was theoretically possible.

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

rsynnott9• 6 years ago

There are hundreds of videos of nuclear tests publicly available. They're not revealing anything here. It's arguably weird it took this long; the Soviet Union and Russia have released footage of other tests before.

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.

segfaultbuserr2• 6 years ago

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.

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.

---

[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...

saagarjha3• 6 years ago

The linked page has a (the same) low quality picture as well: https://web.archive.org/web/20080518004931/http://www.atomic...

iandanforth• 6 years ago

They refer to it as a "clean" bomb and let people walk around at the hypocenter immediately afterward, saying the radiation measured was insignificant. How is this possible? Is this a common feature of hydrogen bombs?

totetsu• 6 years ago

It's a propaganda film. (Later surrounding countries complained about fallout, and atmospheric testing was replaced by underground testing)

hinkley2• 6 years ago

I was appalled to learn that nuclear weapons testing roughly doubles the radiation exposure of a person living at sea level (the atmosphere blocks a lot from outer space).

tyingq3• 6 years ago

I can't vouch for it personally, since I have no expertise there, but this Quora answer sounds credible: https://www.quora.com/How-did-they-minimize-the-radiation-of...

Basically lead instead of uranium tampers. Makes for more fusion, less fission.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Well clean is relative. Hydrogen bombs still have a traditional fission stage and that is going to produce fallout. However the bomb was detonated several kilometers above ground which means that fallout would generally be dispersed widely downwind from the source of the explosion.

I'm not a 100% sure but it certainly might have been possible that the location wasn't very radioactive afterwards.

hinkley2• 6 years ago

I've I've parsed this properly:

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.

rsynnott9• 6 years ago

That's exactly what was done here. They actually tested the cut-down version; with a uranium tamper it might have been over 100MT.

almost_usual• 6 years ago

Khrushchev wanted a 100 megaton weapon and to achieve such size, the engineers added a third stage on the thermonuclear warhead. Normal hydrogen bombs comprise two stages. Understanding the extreme radiation releases, the engineers, and among them Andrei Sakharov, decided to reduce the actual yield of 100 megatons to around half.

mLuby• 6 years ago

26:13 "Before landing the [radiation reconnaissance] helicopter – a check for radioactivity. Even in the very centre of the site, it was insignificant."

jfb2• 6 years ago

It's a piece of internal Soviet propaganda. Draw your own conclusions.

jbay8083• 6 years ago

Despite the cheery orchestral music, I don't think a video that was classified for 60 years would have been produced as propaganda. I assume it was intended as an internal technical report for high-ranking officials.

rsynnott9• 6 years ago

It was cleaner than most fusion bombs, and fairly high up, so it probably wasn't _too_ bad on the ground. Also their attitudes would have been different. There were hundreds of atmospheric tests in those couple of decades.

AngryData• 6 years ago

Most of the nuclear fallout on a nuclear explosion is from detonating at or near ground level which turns the dirt and dust around there radioactive while blasting it high into the air. An air burst bomb only has the radioactive material that failed to explode in the bomb, and like someone else mentioned that is easy to deal with and isn't a real big problem in the first place unless you intentionally are making your bomb inefficient and dirty.

Tuna-Fish2• 6 years ago

Two-stage nuclear weapons get cleaner as they get bigger, because the excess neutrons from the second stage will destroy any long-lived fission products from the first stage. On top of that, all you need is a tamper that doesn't get activated by neutrons and you can push the fallout down to insignificance. This is why "atoms for peace" and such initiatives were not quite as stupid as they sound at the outset, as it would have been possible to build bombs that don't cause much fallout for them.

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.

Symmetry• 6 years ago

That's all true of bombs detonated high up in the air where the only elements around are hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and argon - none of which tend to be neutron activated in a particularly dangerous way. On the ground if you're using bombs for engineering work there are a lot of other elements that do get very upset if you hit them with fusion neutrons.

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.

nabla9• 6 years ago

There are two types of fallout: local and global fallout. Airburst creates relatively little or no local radioactive fallout relative to groundburst.

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.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

Watching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs, making the same preparations (down to the anti-flash white paint on the aircraft), 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.

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.

yareally• 6 years ago

Reminds me of the TV series, The Americans[1]. It did a great job of humanizing people on both sides of the Cold War. Sure, there were those that were blinded by their nationalism, but a majority on both sides we just trying to live their lives in a not so dissimilar way from the other.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans

narrationbox• 6 years ago

Try the Russian version "Adaptasiya" (Adaptation). We use it for testing speech transcription and machine translation since there are no official English subtitles for it. The show's pretty good.

http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/

rbanffy2• 6 years ago

What I like the most in it is the realism. Apart from the fact that, for such high-value assets, they get far too much exposure.

vbezhenar2• 6 years ago

The fact that there was no major war with country possessing nuclear weapons makes me think that nuclear weapon is a very good thing to have. Imagine North Korea without nuclear weapons. They would be democratized in a blink of an eye.

tehjoker2• 6 years ago

What you say is true, but it would be ahistorical not to remark that the genesis of North Korea was the previous "democratization" of the Korean peninsula that resulted in stomach churning war crimes, the destruction of nearly every habitable structure, and the execution of innumerable civilians. NK's "Juche" survivalist ideology is perfectly understandable given what they had to rebuild from.

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-...

ISL3• 6 years ago

North Korea didn't have nuclear weapons for almost half a century.

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.

perl4ever6• 6 years ago

They would be democratized in a blink of an eye

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.

rsynnott9• 6 years ago

They would be democratized in a blink of an eye.

Wait, how do you think that would happen? Why didn't it happen 20 years ago before they had nukes?

simsla• 6 years ago

In a limited timeframe, sure. Beyond that, I'm genuinely scared.

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.

Guthur3• 6 years ago

I think it's also clear from the major distinctions between the sources of those "people at the top" that there is very little uniqueness about them.

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.

narrator2• 6 years ago

The Soviet system was kind of like capitalism, but just with one corporation and getting fired meant going to prison or being executed and you weren't allowed to quit (immigrate out).

Swizec• 6 years ago

As we used to say in eastern-ish europe: Everyone is equal and some are more equal than others.

TaylorAlexander• 6 years ago

Though I don’t believe in silver bullets, I like the idea of decentralized bottom up organizing as a way to reduce the power of anyone “at the top”.

akira2501• 6 years ago

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.

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.

IgorPartola3• 6 years ago

Or to find a way of life that doesn't include "people at the top" as the primary decision making apparatus.

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.

lovecg3• 6 years ago

Mutually assured destruction sounds like a viable approach on paper except for the fact that accidents happen even in the best designed systems. And there has been a number of close calls already.

hliyan2• 6 years ago

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.

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.

ISL3• 6 years ago

When walking through the Pima Air and Space Museum, where NATO and Soviet-bloc aircraft of matching generations often sit almost side-by-side, the similarity of the aircraft was striking.

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.

sjg007• 6 years ago

The NIKE missile silo is interesting too. They have some information about the armaments of the US and the USSR. From what I recall, or what at least left an impression, the US had technically better missile systems that were reliable but less nukes overall. In contrast, the USSR had worse targeting and less reliable missiles and so was relying on a very large number of nukes. I remember thinking about the probabilities.

enriquto• 6 years ago

I have promised myself never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked

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.

DaiPlusPlus• 6 years ago

I have promised myself never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked

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).

kapuasuite• 6 years ago

I have promised myself never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked

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.

md2020• 6 years ago

devoting instead a portion of my time to non-proliferation work

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.

smsm42• 6 years ago

never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked

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...

mc32• 6 years ago

A related problem is how to prevent over cavepeople from stocking their own caves with these weapons. What do we do about the North Korean cave or the Iranian cave?

ohazi• 6 years ago

There's a cost to answering this question wrong too -- the US spent the better part of last century toppling governments and installing sock-puppets, and it led to resentment, terrorism, and revolutions that brought even worse governments.

dontcarethrow2• 6 years ago

That problem seems to rely on ignorance/a lack of perspective. That can be fixed with education/travel, both currently limited.

tsimionescu4• 6 years ago

Most countries are most powerfully concerned with protecting themselves. Both North Korea and Iran are mostly stocking weaponry and military knowledge because they are facing constant threats from the world's most powerful military that their leadership will be annihilated.

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.

StanislavPetrov• 6 years ago

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.

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.

rdtsc• 6 years ago

Very well said. Of course, I couldn't help but notice your username too :-)

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.

microcolonel• 6 years ago

I count us all as lucky that the two cold war states were the lucky picks that would not be overcome by the urge to find out what happens.

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

Leslie Groves appears (from his own memoir) to have had the urge to find out what happens.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24078815

m0zg6• 6 years ago

That arms race is the only reason why we haven't had a major war in the last 75 years, and won't have one in the foreseeable future. AKA Long Peace.

baddox• 6 years ago

Just thinking out loud here, but how long would this level of having no “major” wars have to last for it to have been worth it if it ends in nuclear war?

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

That arms race is the only reason why we haven't had a major war in the last 75 years, and won't have one in the foreseeable future.

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).

bouncycastle• 6 years ago

Most of these guys (and their parents) just witnessed two world wars with the worst atrocities of all time being committed. Context is everything.

est31• 6 years ago

Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

kubanczyk2• 6 years ago

The Tsar Bomb started development in 1961 and at that time the fear component became much lower (aka Khrushchev Thaw). Both Stalin and Beria died in 1953.

hugh-avherald• 6 years ago

| 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.

At the time this was filmed, "those at the top" were extremely focused on knot leading their countries down the path to war.

NiceWayToDoIT3• 6 years ago

I like what you said so much, to digress just a bit two thoughts: - I was thinking about the same lines few days ago watching coloring of Roman statues, and how they look lifelike, and then coloring of WW1 photos, and how it looks as business as usual, no fuss no drama, just another ordinary day - sky is blue birds are singing and humans are having war. - 2nd train of thoughts were some fiction "theory" how we humans were created by aliens as working force. And then somehow amusing thought was that if you have bionic robots or mechanic, but after they served their purpose (mining for instance) they need to dismantle themselves, all you need is to add a self-destruct feature, but feature must be part of the character so they will not suspect. So instead you as overload alien creating killer switch and risking they going after you, they will do it on their own ...

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...

Razengan• 6 years ago

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.

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?

emmelaich• 6 years ago

Video is weird. It plays a bomb sound at the same time as the explosion is seen. And the sound is just like the classic stock bomb sound found in movies and video games throughout the 80s.

https://youtu.be/nbC7BxXtOlo?t=1720

f0ok• 6 years ago

It's very clean hydrogen indeed.

noisy_boy• 6 years ago

The equipment looked great - I wouldn't mind return of atleast some shiny steel switches on modern equipment.

aaron6953• 6 years ago

Wow, the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation is amazing.

It's what science used to be in the golden age in the West.

https://rosatom.ru/en/

http://rosatomnewsletter.com/

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...

ciarannolan• 6 years ago

It's still what science used to be in the golden age in the West.

Care to elaborate?

aaron6953• 6 years ago

After WW2 it's considered to be an amazing period of science.

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....

0823498723498728• 6 years ago

The virus interferes at the moment, but I'd half like to book a cruise on the "50 years of victory" before it becomes redundant, after the next 20 or 30 years of polar warming.

(Is it still defection if one migrates from one capitalist country to another?)

aaron6953• 6 years ago

I was about to say I'd join you, but at the prices here I can't this decade :(

https://www.quarkexpeditions.com/expedition-ships/50-years-o...

ranger207• 6 years ago

The video is surprisingly high quality. It almost looks like a movie set, especially the night scenes. It's really great to watch even for just the cinematography. You can tell they the filmmakers really cared about the details.

coldcode• 6 years ago

The music and narration during the explosion reminded me of 1950/1960's sci-fi movies.

mongol2• 6 years ago

I was missing a segment on when they armed the bomb. Given it's absolutely massive explosive power I would assume they wanted to avoid a crash at the airport to detonate it. But perhaps it was armed already when attached to the plane?

rustoo• 6 years ago

Q: What if this bomb was exploded below the ground, and not above?

jcims• 6 years ago

The Cannikin test was 5MT and still pretty mindblowing:

https://www.military.com/video/nuclear-bombs/nuclear-weapons...

chx• 6 years ago

Small underground nuclear bombs were used to put out well fires. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/how-soviets-put-out-oi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Xq03njsc

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.

monkpit• 6 years ago

The flash dome itself reached 20 km, while the ring of absolute destruction had a radius of 35 kilometers

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?

konart• 6 years ago

I assume this is just a word-for-word translation for "зона полного разрушения".

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"

EGreg• 6 years ago

How was the radioactivity insignificant a few hours after the bomb detonation? I read totally the opposite regarding the radioactive cloud and ash.

azinman2• 6 years ago

How could it be that these guys were cleared to go in and measure the radiation? They’re there to get accurate measurements, in which case they could then see themselves that it was astronomical. Did they just knowingly sacrifice themselves? Or does the radiation spread and it really is low at the blast site?

dandanua• 6 years ago

This documentary looks like a fairy tale with an appropriate storyteller, music and narration. Like a massive nuclear bomb is the happiest achievement of the humankind. How schizophrenic is that??

tomcam• 6 years ago

The Tu-95 plane carrying the bomb was far away at the time of detonation. However, the explosion’s shock wave caused the aircraft to instantly lose 1,000 meters of altitude, but it later landed safely.

I assume the pilots were fully prepped, but... still seems like a bad day

Rosatom releases previously classified documentary video of Tsar Bomba nuke test

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