PLN 13

The article “The Most Powerful Bomb Ever Constructed” by Allan Bellows talks about how the Soviets during the Cold War built the most powerful nuclear bomb in the world called the Czar Bomb. This bomb yielded 10 trillion pounds of force, while the US warheads only yielded 40 billion pounds. Since the Soviet’s goal was to beat out the US in the nuclear arms race, they built the biggest and best nuke. They skipped all of the mathematic equations needed to estimate the explosive power of the bomb. When they detonated the bomb up the flash could be seen for 1,000 kilometers and the mushroom cloud reached 60 kilometers high. The diameter of the blast was about 40 kilometers which was much larger than they estimated. During the hour of the blast most radio communications were disabled. Also, when photographers were sent to the bomb site to record the effect, they reported that the ground was completely flat and that all of the rocks were smoothed over by the blast. This showed that the blast was 10 times more powerful than anything ever produced. Though the Soviets never actually used this bomb or any other type of bomb during the Cold War, there was always the threat that they would. They knew that if they sent nukes over to obliterate the US then we would retaliate and destroy all life on Earth.