Tsar bomb: an atomic bomb that was too powerful for this world. "Gifts" to descendants. How they lost and did not find nuclear bombs Where is the bomb

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb of such magnitude that it would have been too large for military use. And this event had far-reaching consequences of various kinds. That very morning, October 30, 1961, a Soviet Tu-95 bomber took off from the Olenya air base on the Kola Peninsula, in the far north of Russia.

This Tu-95 was a specially improved version of an aircraft that had entered service a few years earlier; a large, sprawling, four-engine monster that was supposed to carry an arsenal of Soviet nuclear bombs.

During that decade, there were huge breakthroughs in Soviet nuclear research. The Second World War placed the US and the USSR in the same camp, but the post-war period was replaced by a cold in relations, and then their freezing. And the Soviet Union, which was faced with the fact of rivalry from one of the world's largest superpowers, had only one choice: to join the race, and quickly.

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, known as "Joe-1" in the West, in the remote steppes of Kazakhstan, assembling it from the work of spies who had infiltrated the American atomic bomb program. During the years of intervention, the test program quickly took off and began, and during its course, about 80 devices were blown up; in 1958 alone, the USSR tested 36 nuclear bombs.

But nothing compares to this ordeal.

The Tu-95 carried a huge bomb under its belly. It was too large to fit inside the aircraft's bomb bay, where such munitions were normally carried. The bombs were 8 meters long, about 2.6 meters in diameter and weighed more than 27 tons. Physically, she was very similar in form to the "Kid" and "Fat Man" dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki fifteen years earlier. In the USSR, she was called both "Kuzkina's mother" and "Tsar Bomba", and the last name was well preserved for her.

The Tsar bomb was not the most common nuclear bomb. It was the result of a feverish attempt by Soviet scientists to create the most powerful nuclear weapon and thereby support Nikita Khrushchev's ambition to make the world tremble at the might of Soviet technology. It was more than a metal monster, too big to fit even the largest aircraft. It was the destroyer of cities, the ultimate weapon.

This Tupolev, painted bright white to reduce the effect of a bomb flash, has reached its destination. Novaya Zemlya, a sparsely populated archipelago in the Barents Sea, above the frozen northern reaches of the USSR. The pilot of the Tupolev, Major Andrey Durnovtsev, delivered the aircraft to the Soviet test site at Mityushikha to an altitude of about 10 kilometers. A small advanced Tu-16 bomber was flying nearby, ready to film the impending explosion and take air samples from the explosion zone for further analysis.

In order for two aircraft to have a chance of surviving - and there were no more than 50% of them - the Tsar Bomba was equipped with a giant parachute weighing about a ton. The bomb was supposed to slowly descend to a predetermined height - 3940 meters - and then explode. And then, two bombers will be already 50 kilometers from it. This should have been enough to survive the explosion.

The Tsar bomb was detonated at 11:32 Moscow time. A fireball almost 10 kilometers wide formed at the site of the explosion. The fireball rose higher under the influence of its own shock wave. The flash was visible from a distance of 1000 kilometers from everywhere.

The mushroom cloud at the site of the explosion grew 64 kilometers in height, and its hat expanded until it spread 100 kilometers from edge to edge. The sight must have been indescribable.

For Novaya Zemlya, the consequences were catastrophic. In the village of Severny, 55 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, all the houses were completely destroyed. It was reported that in the Soviet regions, hundreds of kilometers from the zone, the explosions caused damage of all kinds - houses collapsed, roofs sagged, windows flew out, doors were broken. The radio was out of service for an hour.

"Tupolev" Durnovtsev was lucky; the blast wave of the Tsar Bomba caused the giant bomber to fall 1,000 meters before the pilot could regain control of it.

One Soviet operator who witnessed the detonation recounted the following:

“The clouds under the plane and at a distance from it were illuminated by a powerful flash. The sea of ​​light parted under the hatch and even the clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our plane was between two layers of clouds and below, in the crevice, a huge, bright, orange ball bloomed. The ball was powerful and majestic, like. Slowly and quietly he crept up. Having broken through a thick layer of clouds, it continued to grow. It seemed to suck the whole earth. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”

The Tsar Bomba released incredible energy - now it is estimated at 57 megatons, or 57 million tons of TNT equivalent. This is 1,500 times more than the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 10 times more powerful than all the munitions used during World War II. The sensors registered the blast wave of the bomb, which circumnavigated the Earth not once, not twice, but three times.

Such an explosion cannot be kept secret. The United States had a spy plane a few dozen kilometers from the explosion. It contained a special optical device, the bhangemeter, useful for calculating the strength of distant nuclear explosions. Data from this aircraft - codenamed Speedlight - was used by the Foreign Arms Evaluation Panel to calculate the results of this clandestine test.

International condemnation was not long in coming, not only from the United States and Great Britain, but also from the USSR's Scandinavian neighbors such as Sweden. The only bright spot in this mushroom cloud was that since the fireball did not touch the Earth, there was surprisingly little radiation.

Everything could be different. Initially, the Tsar Bomba was conceived twice as powerful.

One of the architects of this formidable device was the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, a man who would later become world famous for his attempts to rid the world of the very weapons he helped create. He was a veteran of the Soviet atomic bomb program from the very beginning and became part of the team that created the first atomic bombs for the USSR.

Sakharov began work on a multilayer fission-fusion-fission device, a bomb that creates additional energy from nuclear processes in its core. This involved wrapping deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen, in a layer of unenriched uranium. Uranium was supposed to capture neutrons from burning deuterium and also start a reaction. Sakharov called her "puff". This breakthrough allowed the USSR to create the first hydrogen bomb, a device much more powerful than the atomic bombs had been a few years before.

Khrushchev instructed Sakharov to come up with a bomb that was more powerful than all the others that had already been tested by that time.

The Soviet Union needed to show that it could get ahead of the US in the nuclear arms race, according to Philip Coyle, former head of US nuclear weapons testing under President Bill Clinton. He spent 30 years helping build and test nuclear weapons. “The US was way ahead because of the work they had done preparing the bombs for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then they did a lot of atmospheric tests before the Russians did their first.”

“We were ahead and the Soviets were trying to do something to tell the world that they were worth reckoning with. The Tsar Bomba was primarily meant to make the world stop and recognize the Soviet Union as an equal,” says Coyle.

The original design - a three-layer bomb with uranium layers separating each stage - would have had a yield of 100 megatons. 3000 times more than the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union had already tested large devices in the atmosphere, equivalent to several megatons, but this bomb would have become simply gigantic compared to those. Some scientists began to believe that it was too big.

With such a huge force, there would be no guarantee that a giant bomb would not fall into a swamp in the north of the USSR, leaving behind a huge cloud of radioactive fallout.

That's what Sakharov feared, in part, says Frank von Hippel, a physicist and head of public and international affairs at Princeton University.

“He was really worried about the amount of radioactivity the bomb could create,” he says. “And the genetic implications for future generations.”

"And that was the beginning of the journey from bomb designer to dissident."

Before the tests began, the layers of uranium that were supposed to disperse the bomb to incredible power were replaced by layers of lead, which reduced the intensity of the nuclear reaction.

The Soviet Union created such a powerful weapon that scientists were unwilling to test it at full power. And the problems with this destructive device were not limited to this.

Designed to carry the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons, Tu-95 bombers were designed to carry much lighter weapons. The Tsar Bomba was so large that it could not be placed on a rocket, and so heavy that the planes carrying it would not be able to deliver it to the target and stay with the right amount of fuel for the return. And in general, if the bomb were as powerful as it was intended, the planes might not return.

Even nuclear weapons can be too many, says Coyle, who is now a senior official at the Center for Arms Control in Washington. "It's hard to find a use for it unless you want to destroy very large cities," he says. "It's just too big to use."

Von Hippel agrees. “These things (large free-falling nuclear bombs) were designed so that you could destroy a target from a kilometer away. The direction of movement has changed - towards increasing the accuracy of missiles and the number of warheads.

The tsar bomb led to other consequences. It caused so much concern - five times more than any other test before it - that it led to a taboo against atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in 1963. Von Hippel says Sakharov was particularly concerned about the amount of radioactive carbon-14 that was being released into the atmosphere, an isotope with a particularly long half-life. It was partially mitigated by carbon from fossil fuels in the atmosphere.

Sakharov was worried that the bomb, which would be larger than the tested one, would not be repelled by its own blast wave - like the Tsar Bomba - and would cause global radioactive fallout, spread toxic dirt throughout the planet.

Sakharov became an outspoken supporter of the 1963 partial test ban and an outspoken critic of nuclear proliferation. And in the late 1960s, missile defense, which, he rightly believed, would spur a new nuclear arms race. He was increasingly ostracized by the state and went on to become a dissident who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 and called "the conscience of mankind," says von Hippel.

It seems that the Tsar Bomba caused precipitation of a completely different kind.

According to the BBC

As it was announced, the hydrogen bomb caused an extremely negative reaction from the world community. The threat of imposing new sanctions hung over official Pyongyang. In a similar way, the leading countries of the world, primarily those that have nuclear weapons in their arsenal, seek to prevent its further proliferation.

One of the biggest threats of the current moment is the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the so-called "rogue states" or terrorist groups.

At the same time, it is taken for granted that the munitions in service with the powers that have long been members of the "nuclear club" are under strict control and do not pose any threat.

In fact, this is far from the case. Information about egregious cases of negligent handling of nuclear bombs, no, no, yes, and it appears. For example, in the late summer of 2007, an American B-52 strategic bomber, mistakenly equipped with nuclear weapons, flew 1,500 miles over America with these weapons on board before the loss was noticed.

The bomber took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana more than three hours later. Only then did the crew discover that 6 cruise missiles armed with W80-1 warheads with a capacity of 5 to 150 kilotons were placed under the wings of the aircraft.

The US military was quick to state that the munitions had not posed a threat all this time and were under control. However, the squadron commander was removed from his post, and the crew was forbidden to work with a combat nuclear arsenal.

But the 2007 incident is a trifle compared to the cases when the US Air Force simply lost the most real military nuclear bombs.

Uranium as a gift to Canadians

In 1968, the US Department of Defense first published a list of accidents with nuclear weapons, which listed 13 serious accidents that occurred between 1950 and 1968. An updated list was released in 1980 with 32 cases. Meanwhile, the US Navy, which released classified data under the Freedom of Information Act, admitted 381 incidents with nuclear weapons between 1965 and 1977 alone.

The history of such emergencies began in February 1950, when, during an exercise, a B-36 bomber, playing the role of a Soviet Air Force aircraft that decided to drop a nuclear bomb on San Francisco, crashed in British Columbia. The bomb that was on board the aircraft did not have a capsule that triggers the process leading to an atomic explosion.

After the disappearance of the B-36, the leadership of the exercise considered that the plane had fallen into the ocean and stopped the search. But three years later, the US military accidentally stumbled upon the wreckage of the aircraft and the lost atomic bomb. They tried not to make the scandalous case widely publicized.

In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its own atomic bomb. In the United States, they reacted rather nervously to this, increasing the number of sorties with real atomic charges several times over.

But the more often planes take to the skies, the higher the risk of accidents. Only in 1950 in the US Air Force there were 4 cases of accidents with aircraft carrying atomic weapons. One of the most dangerous incidents occurred over Canada, where the crew of a B-50 bomber, which began to malfunction, decided to drop a Mark 4 atomic bomb into the St. Lawrence River, having previously turned on the self-destruct system. As a result, self-destruction occurred at an altitude of 750 meters, and 45 kilograms of uranium fell into the river. Local residents were told that the incident was a planned test during a military exercise.

Resort with a nuclear filling

In 1956, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea became richer by two containers of weapons-grade plutonium - this happened after the crash of a B-47 bomber flying to Morocco. These containers have never been found.

In 1957, an American C-124 transport aircraft carrying three nuclear weapons, due to an emergency on board, decided to drop two bombs into the Atlantic Ocean. To this day, they have not been found.

In February 1958, a Mark 15 hydrogen bomb hit the bottom of Wasso Bay near the resort town of Tybee Island on Tybee Island, Georgia. This happened after a collision between a B-47 bomber and an F-86 fighter. It was not possible to find the bomb, and careless American holidaymakers are still resting next to the "neighbor" of enormous destructive power. However, the US military department insists on the version that in 1958 it was not a real nuclear bomb that disappeared, but only its dummy.

The US military has a special code "Broken Arrow", which means that there has been a loss of a nuclear weapon, that is, an emergency of the highest category.

Curiosity as a vice

Less than a month after the events at Tybee Island, the Broken Arrow code was reactivated, this time a Mark 6 bomb was lost over South Carolina. This time, when it reached the ground, it exploded, leaving a crater 9 meters deep and 21 meters in diameter. Fortunately, the usual charge detonated, and there was no nuclear capsule inside.

When they began to find out how the B-47 bomber lost the bomb that was being transported to England, the highest ranks of the American army grabbed their hearts. It turned out that one of the crew members, who decided to get to know the bomb better, accidentally pressed the emergency release lever, releasing the ammunition "to the wild."

In 1961, a B-52 bomber carrying two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs exploded mid-air. One of the bombs that fell into the swamp was found after a long excavation. The second one safely descended by parachute and calmly waited for the search party. But when the experts began to study it, they almost turned gray with horror - three of the four fuses that prevented a nuclear explosion turned off. From the most powerful thermonuclear explosion, America was saved by a low-voltage switch, which was a quarter fuse.

In 1965, another American hydrogen bomb found shelter on the ocean floor at a depth of 5 kilometers. This happened after an A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft equipped with a nuclear charge accidentally fell into the ocean from the Ticonderoga aircraft carrier.

Spanish "Chernobyl"

Incidents that occurred over their own territory, the US military tried not to make public. But on January 17, 1966, an international emergency occurred. At an altitude of 9500 meters off the coast of Spain, while refueling, a US Air Force B-52G bomber with a nuclear weapon on board rammed a KC-135 Stratotanker tanker aircraft. The B-52G disintegrated in the air, three of the seven crew members died, the rest ejected. And four Mark28 hydrogen bombs, equipped with drag parachutes, fell uncontrollably down. A tanker plane also exploded, the wreckage of which was scattered over an area of ​​40 square kilometers.

But the American military was more interested in the fate of the bombs. As it turned out, one of them fell into the ocean, nearly drowning the boat of a 40-year-old local fisherman from the village of Palomares. Francisco Simo Ortza.

It is interesting that when the fisherman turned to the police, they only shrugged their shoulders - the local law enforcement officers were not informed about the emergency.

Meanwhile, literally the next day, the inhabitants of the village of Palomares felt as if they were at war - their settlement and a ten-kilometer zone around it were cordoned off by NATO soldiers and officers who were conducting a search operation.

It was clear that something extraordinary was happening, but only three days later the US military command recognized the loss of a nuclear bomb in a plane crash, but only one. As stated, she fell into the ocean and does not pose a danger to local residents.

Three others were not reported. The search party managed to find one of them descended on her parachute into the half-dried bed of the Almansora River.

With the other two things were much worse. Their parachute systems failed and they crashed into the ground one and a half kilometers west of the village, as well as on its eastern outskirts. The fuses that set off the main charge did not work, otherwise the Spanish coast would have turned into a radioactive desert. But the detonated TNT caused the release of a dense cloud of highly radioactive plutonium into the atmosphere.

According to the official version, 230 hectares of soil, including farmland, were exposed to radioactive contamination. Despite the decontamination work carried out, 2 hectares of the territory around the bombing sites are still considered undesirable for visiting.

The fourth bomb was found and lifted from the seabed 80 days later, after they did find out what Francisco Simo Orts had seen. The work to find and recover the bomb cost the United States $84 million, the highest cost of a sea rescue operation in the 20th century.

The US government has paid more than $700,000 in compensation to local residents. The US Air Force announced the cessation of flights over Spain of bombers with nuclear weapons on board.

In order to reassure citizens that the sea in the area of ​​the accident is safe, US Ambassador to Spain Angier Beadle Duke and Spanish Tourism Minister Manuel Fraga Ilibarn in the presence of journalists, they personally bathed in the water, which many considered contaminated.

Forty years later, in 2006, Spain and the United States signed an agreement to clean up the area near the village of Palomares from the remnants of plutonium-239 that fell into the area as a result of the disaster on January 17, 1966.

Greenlandic "souvenir"

On January 21, 1968, a US Air Force B-52 strategic bomber crashed near the American base at North Star Bay in Greenland. Aircraft flying from this base on patrol were ready to strike at the USSR and had nuclear weapons on board.

The B-52 that fell on January 21 was equipped with four nuclear bombs. The plane broke through the ice and went to the bottom of the ocean. According to information released in 1968, all the bombs were found and defused. Years later, it became known that only three ammunition was able to be raised to the surface. The fourth, after several months of search work, was left at the bottom.

Hundreds of US military and Danish civilian specialists from the airbase were involved in the cleanup work. 10,500 tons of contaminated snow, ice and other radioactive waste were collected in barrels and sent for disposal in the United States at the Savannah River plant. The operation cost the US Treasury $10 million.

The disaster in Greenland forced US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamaru order the cessation of combat patrols with nuclear bombs on board.

To date, the US Department of Defense recognizes the irretrievable loss of 11 nuclear bombs during the Cold War.

As for the Soviet Union, according to the official statements of the Russian Ministry of Defense, no such cases were recorded in the USSR Air Force. Information about the fall of a Soviet strategic bomber with two nuclear bombs on board, allegedly taking place in 1976 in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, has never been confirmed by officials.

It is quite possible that in the USSR there really was no state of emergency comparable to the American ones. This is due to the smaller number of Soviet strategic aviation, and the ban on combat patrols with nuclear bombs on board, which has always existed in the USSR Air Force.

The Soviet Union is confidently leading in another indicator - in the number of nuclear weapons that ended up on the ocean floor after nuclear submarine disasters. According to the information available today, as a result of the accidents of nuclear submarines of the USSR and the USA, about 50 nuclear warheads ended up in the depths of the ocean, more than 40 of which were Soviet.

Koh Kambaran. Pakistan decided to conduct its first nuclear tests in the province of Balochistan. The charges were placed in an adit dug in the Koh Kambaran mountain and blown up in May 1998. Local residents almost never look into this area, with the exception of a few nomads and herbalists.

Maralinga. The area in southern Australia where atmospheric nuclear weapons tests took place was once considered sacred by the locals. As a result, twenty years after the end of the tests, a second operation was organized to clean up Maraling. The first was carried out after the final test in 1963.

Save In the Indian empty Thar state of Rajasthan on May 18, 1974, an 8 kiloton bomb was tested. In May 1998, charges were already blasted at the Pokhran test site - five pieces, among them a thermonuclear charge of 43 kilotons.

Bikini Atoll. Bikini Atoll is located in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, where the United States actively conducted nuclear tests. Other explosions were rarely captured on film, but these were filmed quite often. Still - 67 tests in the interval from 1946 to 1958.

Christmas Island. Christmas Island, also known as Kiritimati, is distinguished by the fact that both Britain and the United States conducted nuclear weapons tests on it. In 1957, the first British hydrogen bomb was detonated there, and in 1962, as part of the Dominic Project, the United States tested 22 charges there.

Lobnor. At the site of a dried-up salt lake in western China, about 45 warheads were blown up - both in the atmosphere and underground. Testing was terminated in 1996.

Mururoa. The South Pacific atoll survived a lot - more specifically, 181 French nuclear weapons tests from 1966 to 1986. The last charge got stuck in an underground mine and, during the explosion, formed a crack several kilometers long. After this, the tests were terminated.

New Earth. The archipelago in the Arctic Ocean was chosen for nuclear testing on September 17, 1954. Since then, 132 nuclear explosions have been carried out there, including the test of the most powerful hydrogen bomb in the world, the Tsar Bomba, at 58 megatons.

Semipalatinsk. From 1949 to 1989 at least 468 nuclear tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. So much plutonium accumulated there that from 1996 to 2012, Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States conducted a secret operation to search for and collect and dispose of radioactive materials. It was possible to collect about 200 kg of plutonium.

Nevada. The Nevada test site, which has existed since 1951, breaks all records - 928 nuclear explosions, of which 800 are underground. Considering that the test site is located only 100 kilometers from Las Vegas, mushroom mushrooms were considered quite a normal part of entertainment for tourists half a century ago.

The one who invented the atomic bomb could not even imagine what tragic consequences this miracle invention of the 20th century could lead to. Before this superweapon was experienced by the inhabitants of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a very long way had been done.

A start

In April 1903, Paul Langevin's friends gathered in the Parisian Garden of France. The reason was the defense of the dissertation of the young and talented scientist Marie Curie. Among the distinguished guests was the famous English physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford. In the midst of the fun, the lights were put out. announced to everyone that now there will be a surprise. With a solemn air, Pierre Curie brought in a small tube of radium salts, which shone with a green light, causing extraordinary delight among those present. In the future, the guests heatedly discussed the future of this phenomenon. Everyone agreed that thanks to radium, the acute problem of lack of energy would be solved. This inspired everyone to new research and further perspectives. If they had been told then that laboratory work with radioactive elements would lay the foundation for a terrible weapon of the 20th century, it is not known what their reaction would have been. It was then that the story of the atomic bomb began, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

Game ahead of the curve

On December 17, 1938, the German scientist Otto Gann obtained irrefutable evidence of the decay of uranium into smaller elementary particles. In fact, he managed to split the atom. In the scientific world, this was regarded as a new milestone in the history of mankind. Otto Gunn did not share the political views of the Third Reich. Therefore, in the same year, 1938, the scientist was forced to move to Stockholm, where, together with Friedrich Strassmann, he continued his scientific research. Fearing that fascist Germany will be the first to receive a terrible weapon, he writes a letter with a warning about this. The news of a possible lead greatly alarmed the US government. The Americans began to act quickly and decisively.

Who created the atomic bomb? American project

Even before the group, many of whom were refugees from the Nazi regime in Europe, was tasked with developing nuclear weapons. The initial research, it is worth noting, was carried out in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the government of the United States of America began funding its own program to develop atomic weapons. An incredible amount of two and a half billion dollars was allocated for the implementation of the project. Outstanding physicists of the 20th century were invited to carry out this secret project, including more than ten Nobel laureates. In total, about 130 thousand employees were involved, among whom were not only the military, but also civilians. The development team was led by Colonel Leslie Richard Groves, with Robert Oppenheimer as supervisor. He is the man who invented the atomic bomb. A special secret engineering building was built in the Manhattan area, which is known to us under the code name "Manhattan Project". Over the next few years, the scientists of the secret project worked on the problem of nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium.

Non-peaceful atom by Igor Kurchatov

Today, every schoolchild will be able to answer the question of who invented the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. And then, in the early 30s of the last century, no one knew this.

In 1932, Academician Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov was one of the first in the world to start studying the atomic nucleus. Gathering like-minded people around him, Igor Vasilievich in 1937 created the first cyclotron in Europe. In the same year, he and his like-minded people create the first artificial nuclei.

In 1939, I. V. Kurchatov began to study a new direction - nuclear physics. After several laboratory successes in studying this phenomenon, the scientist gets at his disposal a secret research center, which was named "Laboratory No. 2". Today, this secret object is called "Arzamas-16".

The target direction of this center was a serious research and development of nuclear weapons. Now it becomes obvious who created the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. There were only ten people on his team then.

atomic bomb to be

By the end of 1945, Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov managed to assemble a serious team of scientists numbering more than a hundred people. The best minds of various scientific specializations came to the laboratory from all over the country to create atomic weapons. After the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Soviet scientists realized that this could also be done with the Soviet Union. "Laboratory No. 2" receives a sharp increase in funding from the country's leadership and a large influx of qualified personnel. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria is appointed responsible for such an important project. The enormous labors of Soviet scientists have borne fruit.

Semipalatinsk test site

The atomic bomb in the USSR was first tested at the test site in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). On August 29, 1949, a 22 kiloton nuclear device shook the Kazakh land. Nobel laureate physicist Otto Hanz said: “This is good news. If Russia has atomic weapons, then there will be no war.” It was this atomic bomb in the USSR, encrypted as product number 501, or RDS-1, that eliminated the US monopoly on nuclear weapons.

Atomic bomb. Year 1945

In the early morning of July 16, the Manhattan Project conducted its first successful test of an atomic device - a plutonium bomb - at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico, USA.

The money invested in the project was well spent. The first in the history of mankind was produced at 5:30 in the morning.

"We have done the work of the devil," the one who invented the atomic bomb in the United States, later called the "father of the atomic bomb," will say later.

Japan does not capitulate

By the time of the final and successful testing of the atomic bomb, Soviet troops and allies had finally defeated Nazi Germany. However, there was one state that promised to fight to the end for dominance in the Pacific Ocean. From mid-April to mid-July 1945, the Japanese army repeatedly carried out air strikes against allied forces, thereby inflicting heavy losses on the US army. At the end of July 1945, the militarist government of Japan rejected the Allied demand for surrender in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration. In it, in particular, it was said that in case of disobedience, the Japanese army would face rapid and complete destruction.

President agrees

The American government kept its word and began targeted bombing of Japanese military positions. Air strikes did not bring the desired result, and US President Harry Truman decides on the invasion of American troops into Japan. However, the military command dissuades its president from such a decision, citing the fact that the American invasion would entail a large number of victims.

At the suggestion of Henry Lewis Stimson and Dwight David Eisenhower, it was decided to use a more effective way to end the war. A big supporter of the atomic bomb, US Presidential Secretary James Francis Byrnes, believed that the bombing of Japanese territories would finally end the war and put the US in a dominant position, which would positively affect the future course of events in the post-war world. Thus, US President Harry Truman was convinced that this was the only correct option.

Atomic bomb. Hiroshima

The small Japanese city of Hiroshima, with a population of just over 350,000, was chosen as the first target, located five hundred miles from the capital of Japan, Tokyo. After the modified Enola Gay B-29 bomber arrived at the US naval base on Tinian Island, an atomic bomb was installed on board the aircraft. Hiroshima was supposed to experience the effects of 9,000 pounds of uranium-235.

This hitherto unseen weapon was intended for civilians in a small Japanese town. The bomber commander was Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. The US atomic bomb bore the cynical name "Baby". On the morning of August 6, 1945, at about 8:15 am, the American "Kid" was dropped on the Japanese Hiroshima. About 15 thousand tons of TNT destroyed all life within a radius of five square miles. One hundred and forty thousand inhabitants of the city died in a matter of seconds. The surviving Japanese died a painful death from radiation sickness.

They were destroyed by the American atomic "Kid". However, the devastation of Hiroshima did not cause the immediate surrender of Japan, as everyone expected. Then it was decided to another bombardment of Japanese territory.

Nagasaki. Sky on fire

The American atomic bomb "Fat Man" was installed on board the B-29 aircraft on August 9, 1945, all in the same place, at the US naval base in Tinian. This time the aircraft commander was Major Charles Sweeney. Initially, the strategic target was the city of Kokura.

However, the weather conditions did not allow to carry out the plan, a lot of clouds interfered. Charles Sweeney went into the second round. At 11:02 am, the American nuclear-powered Fat Man swallowed up Nagasaki. It was a more powerful destructive air strike, which, in its strength, was several times higher than the bombing in Hiroshima. Nagasaki tested an atomic weapon weighing about 10,000 pounds and 22 kilotons of TNT.

The geographical location of the Japanese city reduced the expected effect. The thing is that the city is located in a narrow valley between the mountains. Therefore, the destruction of 2.6 square miles did not reveal the full potential of American weapons. The Nagasaki atomic bomb test is considered the failed "Manhattan Project".

Japan surrendered

On the afternoon of August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender in a radio address to the people of Japan. This news quickly spread around the world. In the United States of America, celebrations began on the occasion of the victory over Japan. The people rejoiced.

September 2, 1945 on board the American battleship "Missouri", anchored in Tokyo Bay, was signed a formal agreement to end the war. Thus ended the most brutal and bloody war in the history of mankind.

For six long years, the world community has been moving towards this significant date - since September 1, 1939, when the first shots of Nazi Germany were fired on the territory of Poland.

Peaceful atom

A total of 124 nuclear explosions were carried out in the Soviet Union. It is characteristic that all of them were carried out for the benefit of the national economy. Only three of them were accidents involving the release of radioactive elements. Programs for the use of peaceful atom were implemented only in two countries - the United States and the Soviet Union. The peaceful nuclear power industry also knows an example of a global catastrophe, when a reactor exploded at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

So if you are looking for a way how to defuse a bomb in beholder, then most likely it has already exploded, or you are holding the game on pause. Let's figure out where to start and how to proceed.

Where to look for the bomb?

First you need to find the bomb in the house. We go down to the basement and find it in the washing machine, which is on the left. After you have taken the bomb, run to the phone - "Dial the number" - "Report the bomb to the ministry."

bomb disposal

The Ministry will promise to send sappers to you. However, you do not have time and you will have to defuse the bomb. We learn from the ministry by phone about the types of bombs:

• MGB-53- 6 sticks of dynamite, 6 closed circuits, watch timer.
• NKVD-41- a flask with nitroglycerin, 1 closed circuit, a timer from an alarm clock.
• GUGB-43- pyroxylin powder, two closed circuits, a timer from an electronic clock.

After that, we return to the laundry, inspect the bomb (this will help you determine the type of bomb), and then defuse it using the instructions received.

Thus, problems with the task Tick-tock, boom! and bomb disarming in Beholder you shouldn't have.