Tsar Bomba: The Largest Nuclear Bomb Ever Detonated

The threat of nuclear war peaked during the Cold War. The United States, Russia, China, and North Korea engaged in an arms race, including the development of nuclear bombs.

During the Cold War, nuclear weapons testing was quite intense. Some tests resulted in devastating destructive power. The following are some of the largest nuclear bombs ever detonated during the Cold War.

First, the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, also known as Tsar Bomba, is the largest and most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever detonated in history. It was detonated by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961, over Novaya Zemlya island in the Russian Arctic Sea.

Tsar Bomba had a yield of 50 megatons (1 megaton = 1,000,000 tons). This is equivalent to 3,500 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

The second most powerful nuclear bomb is the Satan 2 Stealth Nuke. This Russian-made nuclear bomb has a yield of 40 megatons, or 2,600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

Next is the Father of All Bombs, with a yield of 44 tons, four times more powerful than the Mother of All Bombs.

The Hiroshima bomb, detonated by the US in Japan on August 6, 1945, had a yield of 15 tons. Meanwhile, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), also known as the Mother of All Bombs, developed by the US, has a yield of 11 tons.