Soviet scientists arrived at a 50-megaton yield but for decades their nation was happy to accept the higher American figure. By ganging together eight or more smaller H-bombs and mating them to clusters of thermonuclear fuel capsules, a really big bomb could be built without any new technology. One Tsar Bomb alone could burn down West Germany—if it could get there. The nuclear fusion warhead was of the Teller-Ulam type and used a 40–100 kiloton implosion type nuclear fission primary (reportedly based on the Smokey TX-41 shot of Operation Plumbbob)[2] “The ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it looks like a skating rink,” a witness reported. The bomb is still active, and, in 2277, the Lone Wanderer is given the choice to detonate it (destroying Megaton in the process), or disarm it and save the town's population. So was the Tsar Bomb really a functional weapon? The bomb was dropped on Washington, D.C. during the Great War in 2077; however, it remained undetonated in its crater. I can only find figures for a 1 megaton bomb. With the Cold War escalating no time was spared. Curiously enough, at about the same time American nuclear weaponeers had, according to Alex Wallerstein, arrived at breakthrough high-yield bomb designs. About 500 of these weapons were manufactured between September 1960 and June 1962. As the aircraft approached the Mityushikha Bay test range, Major Andrei Durnovtsev and his crew checked their instruments and donned heavy goggles. Andrei Sakharov came to think so after witnessing the Tsar Bomb's test, and later became the Soviet Union's leading dissident and anti-nuclear sage. Durnovtsev flew the aircraft that dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever. And yet it could have been even more powerful—a full 100 megatons. Its blast yield was 25 to 50% that of the AN602 Tsar Bomba, which delivered a blast of 50 or 100 megatons of TNT, depending on its own configuration as a "clean" (lead encased) or dirty (uranium encased) bomb. Based upon Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator A 20 Gigaton nuclear explosion would create: 20 Gigatons = 83,680,000,000,000,000,000 joules or slightly over 3 times the total of all nuclear weapons in existence in 2017. Khrushchev wanted a political spectacle to shock and awe the West, and it had better go right. It could be deployed in free-fall or aerial (parachute) configuration, and could be set for airburst, groundburst, or laydown delivery. It even looked like a bomb was supposed to—just much, much bigger. The Megaton atomic bomb only appears in Fallout 3. The bomb can be rigged to detonate with a fusion pulse charge. A first-stage fission device generates the heat, pressure and radiation to ignite nuclear fusion in a second-stage fuel vessel, and the more fusion fuel, the bigger the reaction. After taking part of the Ritual of the Mother Seed inside Point Lookout's Sacred Bog, the Lone Wanderer sees the bomb sitting next to Mister Break during the punga-infused hallucination. At 11:32 am Moscow time the Tu-95N released its weapon then climbed and banked sharply. Megaton's sheriff Lucas Simms offers a reward for disarming the bomb. The B-41 (designated Mk-41 until 1968) entered service in 1961. Break, the bomb explodes and the Lone Wanderer wakes up outside of the Sacred Bog. The US responded in kind within the month. As Carey Sublette of the Nuclear Weapons Archive website explains, “It is safe to assume that the 100 Mt bomb was a very conservative design - one that pushed no technical envelopes save for size. “The same goes for rocks. After roughing up America's young new President Kennedy at a Vienna summit in June, Khrushchev was in a mood, according to Andrei Sakharov, to “show the imperialists what we can do.”. The founders of Megaton discovered the bomb, and a group of people calling themselves the Children of the Atom started worshiping it. On October 30, 1961, under the watchful but distant eyes of State Commission Chairman Major General Nikolai Pavlov and a host of dignitaries 600 miles away, the pregnant-looking white Tu-95N and an Tu-16 airborne lab plowed their way towards Novaya Zemlya, a large icebound island in the Arctic Ocean. The Soviet Union had no practical way of delivering its Tsar Bomb. 20 Megatons would be a thermonuclear bomb. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Megaton_atomic_bomb?oldid=3117118. Ground zero was gone. It was the highest-yield nuclear weapon ever fielded by the United States, with a maximum yield of 25 megatons (Mt), and weight of 4,850 kg (10,690 lb). For scenario, we're referring to an attack using a long range tactical nuclear ballistic missile with the intentions of destroy an enemy occupied mining and military base on the lunar surface. Andrei Sakharov's team at Arzamas-16, the "USSR's Los Alamos," skipped the careful mathematical analysis require for H-bomb design and worked out "Big Ivan" on the fly using approximations. Like Russia's gigantic Tsar Bell and Tsar Cannon, this would be the Tsar Bomb. Temperatures would rise to 20 million degrees Fahrenheit, and everything — buildings, trees, cars, and people - would he vaporized. The Megaton atomic bomb (called Atom by the Church of the Children of Atom and also the Apostles of the Holy Light) is the undetonated C-23 Megaton[1] nuclear weapon sitting at the center of Megaton. Such a huge bomb came about only because Soviet scientists had a good idea about how to proceed. Take your favorite fandoms with you and never miss a beat. This article first appeared several years ago. There is not a trace of unevenness in the ground.... Everything in this area has been swept clean, scoured, melted and blown away.”. At the time the largest device the Soviets had tested yielded much lower, so to achieve 100 megatons Sakharov's team used clustering and staging. You can count on one hand the number of targets in Europe big enough to merit the Tsar Bomb's attentions. What Would Happen if a 20 Megaton Nuclear Explosion on a City of 3 Million? Also, in the Japanese version of the game, the option to detonate the bomb was removed due to the controversy of it being modeled after the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II and Japanese people may have taken offense to the fact. The Communist Party's 22nd Congress in October 1961 required something special. Efficiency. The Megaton atomic bomb (called Atom by the Church of the Children of Atom and also the Apostles of the Holy Light) is the undetonated C-23 Megaton nuclear weapon sitting at the center of Megaton. Big Ivan detonated at 13,000 feet and its fireball still nearly reached the ground. Painted a special white reflective white to reduce flash damage from the explosion, the big Tu-95N turboprop bomber was still too small to carry Big Ivan internally. The B-41 was an example of a fission-fusion-fusion-fission type thermonuclear weapon, or tertiary stage bomb. The gigantic weapon—over 26 feet long, nearly seven feet in diameter and 27 tons mass—was designed, engineered and fabricated all at once. The atomic bomb itself is in the center of the town, since Megaton was built around the crater in which it sits. Its bomb bay doors were removed and sections of fuselage cut away to mount the bomb halfway inside the plane, like a giant engorged remora. Both groups teamed up, and, using airplane parts from a demolished airport, built Megaton's walls and structures and settled in the area. There are hints that the clean 50-megaton design was considered for weaponization, but nothing concrete. For two years while their country joined the United States and the United Kingdom in a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests, Soviet nuclear scientists, including Andrei Sakharov, the “father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb,” developed and refined new weapon concepts and designs. fueled by HEU to trigger the lithium-6 deuteride fusion fuel. The weapon was 12 ft 4 in (3.76 m) long, with a body diameter of 4 ft 4 in (1.32 m). It was based on the "Bassoon" test device first fired in the Redwing Zuni test of 27 May 1956. After an interaction with Mr. The B-41 (also known as Mk-41) was a thermonuclear weapon deployed by the United States Strategic Air Command in the early 1960s. Setting aside its declared political purpose, the Tu-95N bomber—the USSR's only way of delivering the Tsar Bomb—was not a practical delivery platform: NATO fighters would shoot the lumbering plane out of the sky long before it had a chance to drop its huge bomb. The additional tertiary fusion stage, compressed by a previous fusion stage, could be used to make a bomb with yields as large as desired. At the center or Megaton's crater sits an undetonated atomic bomb, a remnant of the great conflict that destroyed the world. [3][2] However, since neither full yield versions of the B-41 nor "Tsar Bomba" were ever demonstrably tested, the B-41's high efficiency is merely theoretical; the most efficient tested and proven nuclear physics package is the W56. It lies in a puddle of radioactive water from which Confessor Cromwell is constantly making speeches about his religion. You must also state the height at which the bomb is detonated. Fandom may earn an affiliate commission on sales made from links on this page. The resulting weapon was enormous, an unsophisticated kludge but a robust one. Now they had to deliver big results in very short order. It isn't clear who proposed a 100-megaton bomb—Khrushchev or the weaponeers—but at the premier's command the most powerful nuclear weapon ever built had to be ready in only four months. It weighed 10,670 lb (4,840 kg). The fate of the town lies in the Lone Wanderer's hands. Two versions were deployed, Y1, a "dirty" version with a tertiary stage encased with U-238 (natural uranium), and Y2, a "clean" version with a lead-encased tertiary. It was still too big for American rockets but a 25 megaton bomb, the B-41, had the largest yield of any weapon in the US stockpile and it stayed in service until the 1970s. During its operational lifetime, the B-41 was the most efficient known thermonuclear weapon in terms of yield to actual weight, with a 5.2 Megaton/tonne ratio (based on a 25 Mt yield). On August 31 the Premier announced the giant new bomb and the abrupt end to the USSR's voluntary moratorium; a Soviet atmospheric nuclear test followed the day after. An enormous mushroom cloud climbed over 20 miles up through the hole blown in the Earth's atmosphere. The fate of the bomb and the whole settlement is determined in one of the adventures of the Lone Wanderer. Khrushchev's next move came on August 13, 1961, when East Germany began erecting the Berlin Wall. Big Ivan was a one-off, essentially a technical stunt. Some toys are best left in their boxes. Mister Burke is the person who is looking for help detonating it, as his employer, Allistair Tenpenny, considers Megaton "a blight on the landscape" of the Capital Wasteland. The B-41 was the only three-stage thermonuclear weapon fielded by the U.S.[1]. Its own shockwave reflected off Novaya Zemlya's surface bounced the five-mile-wide incandescent sphere skywards. It was the most powerful nuclear bomb ever developed by the United States, with a maximum yield of 25 megatons. The last B-41s were retired in July 1976. Buildings were leveled 30 miles away, windowpanes broken 500 miles distant. When it was ready a locomotive towed it to the airfield for loading into a specially-modified Tupolev Tu-95N "Bear A" bomber.