A replica of a Soviet AN-602, or Tsar Bomb, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated is now on display at Manezh in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015.
A replica of a Soviet AN-602, or Tsar Bomb, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated is now on display at Manezh in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Pavel Golovkin, Associated Press
Herb Scribner

By Herb Scribner

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A Russian nuclear energy agency has released a once-secret documentary video that shows the world’s largest hydrogen bomb explosion.

  • The video shows the device — called the Tsar Bomb, or Tsar’s Bomb — exploded on Oct. 30, 1961.
  • The footage is 30 minutes long.
  • The Tsar Bomb was 50 megatons, which “made it 3,333 times as destructive as the weapon used on Hiroshima, Japan, and also far more powerful than the 15 megaton weapon set off by the United States in 1954 in its largest hydrogen bomb blast,” according to The New York Times.
  • The explosion footages comes about 26 minutes into the video.

Bigger picture:

  • The explosion was a rather large weapon that was never put into use. But it was one of the final above-ground nuclear tests across the world, Vice reports. Not long after the test, the U.S., U.K. and the Soviet United signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty to move all tests underground.
  • “The footage is a stark reminder of the madness of the Cold War and a sober reminder that we seem to have forgotten its lessons,” according to Vice.
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