Mass production of Tsar Bombs?

So what is the biggest possible nuke that can be made? MT of course. What effect could it possibly have?

You can keep chaining fusion secondaries together, but eventually the bomb blows apart before the Li-D can finish reacting. The theoretical maximum yield is probably not known with any degree of certainty, and if it is known the number's classified, but I've seen references in memoirs to somewhere around several hundred megatons as the theoretical maximum in a single device. Of course, you could also strap multiple devices together to make an even bigger bomb if you had some reason to. There've been occasional nutso proposals in the military-nuclear community for gigaton-range superbombs, none of which, as far as we know, got beyond idle speculation.

(Including one proposal for an Orion-drive-powered ICBM as a first-strike weapon, tipped with a 5,000-MT bomb. The backstory is the study writer actually wanted to build an interplanetary spaceship, and was using the ICBM idea as an excuse to play with the equations and get access to classified material on propulsion bomb unit data - apparently he arbitrarily decided the mass of the warhead would be exactly the same as the payload for a trip to Neptune.)
 
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WI the Soviets after testing the first Tsar bomba in 1961, started mass-production of these? How would this affect the nuclear arms race and the Cold War? Would the US start mass producing their own versions too?
Not going to happen, for one very crucial reason.

Even the gimped 58 megaton version required such a massive parachute to stop its forward momentum and slow its fall that it was economically unfeasible. Producing a single 800kg parachute for the test weapon alone hindered the Soviet textiles industry, and it was a huge drain on time and labor to assemble it. This is the Khrushchev era here: it was a huge ideological concern to spend less resources and labor on military and industrial hardware, and more on consumer goods.

It was simply a lot better to turn that parachute into clothes or bedsheets than for a needlessly labor intensive giant parachute to slow the fall of a 27 tonne warhead.
 

Geon

Donor
Not Feasible

WI the Soviets after testing the first Tsar bomba in 1961, started mass-production of these? How would this affect the nuclear arms race and the Cold War? Would the US start mass producing their own versions too?

The Tsar Bomba would not have been practical on any basis. It was meant as a publicity stunt by Krushchev to try to scare the West. Something of that magnitude could not be delivered with the technology of the time.

Geon
 
WI the Soviets after testing the first Tsar bomba in 1961, started mass-production of these? How would this affect the nuclear arms race and the Cold War? Would the US start mass producing their own versions too?

Because two 20MT bombs weighed the same as one 50MT bomb and do rather more damage. The trend post the development of the H-Bomb was for more, smaller warheads rather than the "one big bomb" philosophy. The Tsar Bomba was the end of the cul de sac.
 
The Tsar Bomba would not have been practical on any basis. It was meant as a publicity stunt by Krushchev to try to scare the West. Something of that magnitude could not be delivered with the technology of the time.

Geon

Yep, that and bragging rights. That way the USSR could say they built the biggest bomb ever!
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
As a show of force, like the US Moon Landing.

A show of force?

Hardly. A demonstration of ability perhaps, but force? When you have no practical way of delivery it is more a show of impotence if you create a stockpile. A far more effective demonstration of force was that of the SS 18, which could deliver a 25 MT weapon with no chance of interception (although truth be told, the SS 18 was a hell of a lot more intimidating with ten 5 MT MIRV).
 
Calbear: the SS-18 didn't have MIRVs with that kind of power. The largest MIRV that SS-18s packed was 550 KT. Still, it was intimidating enough: Just 220 of those, in theory, could take out the entire Minuteman force, including launch control centers and Main Operating Bases, and leave nearly 1000 SS-18 warheads available to strike other targets in CONUS. Want really intimidating? The Mod 3 or Mod 5 had single 25 MT warheads to dig out really hard targets (SAC Headquarters, NORAD, Raven Rock, etc.).
 
Why? A normal bomb with an airburst would give the same impact.

A 100 MT Tsar bomb in airburst ca wipe a country in size of Belgium from map!
the shockwave of explosion what makes most damage has maximum diameter
of 250 km or 155 miles !

why that enormous caliber ?
in early days the Soviet union got only FOUR nuke targets in USA

Chicago
Los Angeles
New York
Washington D.C.

the first soviet ICBM R-7 carry a 4 MT warhead
and only four R-7 in stand by modus during 1960-1962
replace them with four UR-500 ICBM with 100 MT Warhead look reasonable
for Nikita Khrushchev...

1963 after Brezhnev putsch the Tsar bomb project was canceled
the UR-500 became the Proton launch rocket
 
As others have said not was not a practical weapon. Plus is severley restricted the range of the Tu-95 that carried it.
So yes, they could have built more of them, but they wouldn't have been able to deliver them anywhere with any effectiveness. Also when a nuclear weapon reaches that sort of yield it heads into the realms of the law of diminishing returns and a 100MT device would waste a lot of its power because it would produce a fireball bigger than the stratosphere.

The Tsar Bomba was effectivley willy waving on a grand scale.
 
the Tu-95 was never abel to transport a 100MT bomb to US target,
even the Prototype with 50 MT load was very heavy for the TU-95
Therefore the need of UR-500 ICBM

A 100 MT nuclear warhead is only reasonable for two things:
blasting a Asteroid from Earth path, like in M.I.T proposed project ICARUS from 1967
or Counter value attack during nuclear war
were the Enemy has attack successfully it's military targets
the 100MT warheads destroy the civilian targets on the Enemy side.
wat result in Mutual assured destruction = MAD

but a 100MT warhead is most inconvenient
it's size: the 50 MT prototype was 8 meter x 2.1 meter ø with weight of 27000 kilograms.
the ICBM:
the UR-500 with Warhead is around 40 meter high and max 8 meter ø
wat makes the construction of the underground silo, It's loading with UR-500 and maintenance & launch, a nightmare


P.S.
the US SAC planed for 1960s in case of nuclear attack (SIOP-62)
to drop Nuclear weapons in total load of 100~120 MT, on Moscow by ICBM, MRBM, SLBM, B-58, B-52, B-47
 
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