The most powerful nuclear bombs in the world. The most powerful bomb in the world. Which bomb is stronger: vacuum or thermonuclear? Types of bombs by purpose and specificity

The destructive power of which, when exploded, cannot be stopped by anyone. What is the most powerful bomb in the world? To answer this question, you need to understand the features of certain bombs.

What is a bomb?

Nuclear power plants operate on the principle of release and containment nuclear energy. This process must be controlled. The released energy turns into electricity. An atomic bomb causes a chain reaction that is completely uncontrollable, and the huge amount of released energy causes terrible destruction. Uranium and plutonium are not so harmless elements of the periodic table; they lead to global catastrophes.

Atomic bomb

To understand which is the most powerful atomic bomb on the planet, we’ll learn more about everything. Hydrogen and atomic bombs belong to nuclear energy. If you combine two pieces of uranium, but each has a mass below the critical mass, then this “union” will far exceed the critical mass. Each neutron participates in a chain reaction because it splits the nucleus and releases another 2-3 neutrons, which cause new decay reactions.

Neutron force is completely beyond human control. In less than a second, hundreds of billions of newly formed decays not only release enormous amounts of energy, but also become sources of intense radiation. This radioactive rain covers the earth, fields, plants and all living things in a thick layer. If we talk about the disasters in Hiroshima, we can see that 1 gram caused the death of 200 thousand people.

Working principle and advantages of a vacuum bomb

It is believed that a vacuum bomb created by the latest technologies, can compete with nuclear. The fact is that instead of TNT, a gas substance is used here, which is several tens of times more powerful. The high-power aircraft bomb is the most powerful vacuum bomb in the world, which is not a nuclear weapon. It can destroy the enemy, but houses and equipment will not be damaged, and there will be no decay products.

What is the principle of its operation? Immediately after being dropped from the bomber, a detonator is activated at some distance from the ground. The body is destroyed and a huge cloud is sprayed. When mixed with oxygen, it begins to penetrate anywhere - into houses, bunkers, shelters. The burning out of oxygen creates a vacuum everywhere. When this bomb is dropped, a supersonic wave is produced and a very high temperature is generated.

The difference between an American vacuum bomb and a Russian one

The differences are that the latter can destroy an enemy even in a bunker using the appropriate warhead. During an explosion in the air, the warhead falls and hits the ground hard, burrowing to a depth of 30 meters. After the explosion, a cloud is formed, which, increasing in size, can penetrate into shelters and explode there. American warheads are filled with ordinary TNT, so they destroy buildings. Vacuum bomb destroys a specific object, as it has a smaller radius. It doesn’t matter which bomb is the most powerful - any of them delivers an incomparable destructive blow that affects all living things.

H-bomb

The hydrogen bomb is another terrible nuclear weapon. The combination of uranium and plutonium generates not only energy, but also temperature, which rises to a million degrees. Hydrogen isotopes combine to form helium nuclei, which creates a source of colossal energy. The hydrogen bomb is the most powerful - fact. It is enough just to imagine that its explosion is equal to the explosions of 3,000 atomic bombs in Hiroshima. Both in the USA and in former USSR you can count 40 thousand bombs of varying power - nuclear and hydrogen.

The explosion of such ammunition is comparable to the processes observed inside the Sun and stars. Fast neutrons split the uranium shells of the bomb itself at enormous speed. Not only is heat released, but also fallout. There are up to 200 isotopes. Production of such nuclear weapons cheaper than nuclear, and its effect can be enhanced as many times as desired. This is the most powerful bomb detonated in the Soviet Union on August 12, 1953.

Consequences of the explosion

Result of the explosion hydrogen bomb is triple in nature. The very first thing that happens is a powerful blast wave is observed. Its power depends on the height of the explosion and the type of terrain, as well as the degree of air transparency. Large firestorms can form that do not subside for several hours. And yet the secondary and most dangerous consequence, which the most powerful thermonuclear bomb can cause is radioactive radiation and contamination of the surrounding area for a long time.

Radioactive remains from a hydrogen bomb explosion

In case of explosion fire ball contains many very small radioactive particles that are retained in the atmospheric layer of the earth and remain there for a long time. Upon contact with the ground, this fireball creates incandescent dust consisting of decay particles. First, the larger one settles, and then the lighter one, which is carried hundreds of kilometers with the help of the wind. These particles can be seen with the naked eye; for example, such dust can be seen on snow. It leads to fatal outcome, if anyone is nearby. The smallest particles can remain in the atmosphere for many years and “travel” in this way, circling the entire planet several times. Their radioactive emissions will become weaker by the time they fall out as precipitation.

Its explosion is capable of wiping Moscow off the face of the earth in a matter of seconds. The city center could easily evaporate in the literal sense of the word, and everything else could turn into tiny rubble. The most powerful bomb in the world would wipe out New York and all its skyscrapers. It would leave behind a twenty-kilometer-long molten smooth crater. With such an explosion, it would not have been possible to escape by going down to the subway. The entire territory within a radius of 700 kilometers would be destroyed and infected with radioactive particles.

Explosion of the Tsar Bomba - to be or not to be?

In the summer of 1961, scientists decided to conduct a test and observe the explosion. The most powerful bomb in the world was to explode at a test site located in the very north of Russia. The huge area of ​​the landfill occupies the entire territory of the island New Earth. The scale of the defeat was supposed to be 1000 kilometers. The explosion could have left industrial centers such as Vorkuta, Dudinka and Norilsk contaminated. Scientists, having comprehended the scale of the disaster, put their heads together and realized that the test was cancelled.

There was no place to test the famous and incredibly powerful bomb anywhere on the planet, only Antarctica remained. But on icy continent It also failed to carry out an explosion, since the territory is considered international and obtaining permission for such tests is simply unrealistic. I had to reduce the charge of this bomb by 2 times. The bomb was nevertheless detonated on October 30, 1961 in the same place - on the island of Novaya Zemlya (at an altitude of about 4 kilometers). During the explosion, a monstrous huge atomic mushroom was observed, which rose 67 kilometers into the air, and the shock wave circled the planet three times. By the way, in the Arzamas-16 museum in the city of Sarov, you can watch newsreels of the explosion on an excursion, although they claim that this spectacle is not for the faint of heart.

An onomatopoeic word that had Greek approximately the same meaning as the word “babakh” in Russian. In the European group of languages, the term has the same root “bomb” (German. bombe, English bomb, fr. bombe, Spanish bomba), the source of which, in turn, is Lat. bombus, the Latin analogue of the Greek onomatopoeia.

According to one hypothesis, the term was originally associated with battering guns, which first made a terrible roar, and only then caused destruction. In the future, with the improvement of warfare technologies, the logical chain war - roar - destruction became associated with other types of weapons. The term experienced a rebirth at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, when gunpowder entered the arena of war. At that time, the technical effect of its use was negligible (especially in comparison with mechanical types that had reached perfection throwing weapons), however, the roar it produced was an extraordinary phenomenon and often had an effect on the enemy comparable to a shower of arrows.

Story

1. by purpose - for combat and non-combat. The latter include smoke, lighting, photo aircraft bombs (lighting for night photography), daytime (colored smoke) and night (colored fire) orientation-signal, orientation-sea (create a colored fluorescent spot on the water and colored fire; in the West, orientation-signal and orientation-naval bombs have common name marker), propaganda (stuffed with propaganda material), practical (for training bombing - do not contain explosives or contain a very small charge; practical bombs that do not contain a charge are most often made of cement) and imitation (simulate a nuclear bomb);
2. by type of active material - conventional, nuclear, chemical, toxin, bacteriological (traditionally, bombs loaded with pathogenic viruses or their carriers also belong to the category of bacteriological, although strictly speaking a virus is not a bacterium);
3. according to the nature of the damaging effect:
   • fragmentation (damaging effect mainly from fragments);
   • high-explosive fragmentation (fragmentation, high-explosive and high-explosive action; in the West such ammunition is called general purpose bombs);
   • high-explosive (high-explosive and blasting action);
   • penetrating high-explosive - they are also high-explosive thick-walled, they are also (Western designation) “seismic bombs” (with high explosive action);
   • concrete-piercing (in the West such ammunition is called semi-armor-piercing) inert (does not contain a charge explosive, hitting the target only due to kinetic energy);
   • concrete-breaking explosives (kinetic energy and blasting action);
   • armor-piercing explosive (also with kinetic energy and blasting action, but having a more durable body);
   • armor-piercing cumulative (cumulative jet);
   • armor-piercing fragmentation / cumulative fragmentation (cumulative jet and fragments);
   • armor-piercing based on the principle of “shock core”;
   • incendiary (flame and temperature);
   • high-explosive incendiary (high-explosive and blasting action, flame and temperature);
   • high-explosive fragmentation-incendiary (fragmentation, high-explosive and high-explosive action, flame and temperature);
   • incendiary-smoke (damaging effects of flame and temperature; in addition, such a bomb produces smoke in the area);
   • poisonous / chemical and toxin (poisonous substance / agent);
   • poisonous smoke bombs (officially these bombs were called “smoking aerial bombs poisonous smoke");
   • fragmentation-poisonous/fragmentation-chemical (fragmentation and explosive agents);
   • infectious action/bacteriological (directly by pathogenic microorganisms or their carriers from insects and small rodents);
   • Conventional nuclear (at first called atomic) and thermonuclear bombs (initially in the USSR they were called atomic-hydrogen) are traditionally distinguished as separate category not only in terms of the active material, but also in terms of the damaging effect, although, strictly speaking, they should be considered high-explosive incendiary (adjusted for additional damaging factors of a nuclear explosion - radioactive radiation and radioactive fallout) of ultra-high power. However, there are also nuclear bombs enhanced radiation" - their main thing damaging factor is already radioactive radiation, specifically the flow of neutrons formed during the explosion (in connection with which such nuclear bombs received the common name “neutron”).
   • Also in a separate category are volumetric detonating bombs (also known as volumetric explosion, thermobaric, vacuum and fuel bombs).
4. by the nature of the target (this classification is not always applied) - for example, anti-bunker (Bunker Buster), anti-submarine, anti-tank and bridge bombs (the latter were intended for action on bridges and viaducts);
5. according to the method of delivery to the target - rocket (the bomb in this case is used as a missile warhead), aviation, ship/boat, artillery;
6. by mass, expressed in kilograms or pounds (for non-nuclear bombs) or power, expressed in kilotons/megatons) of TNT equivalent (for nuclear bombs). It should be noted that the caliber of a non-nuclear bomb is not its actual weight, but its correspondence to the dimensions of a certain standard weapon (which is usually a high-explosive bomb of the same caliber). The discrepancy between caliber and weight can be quite large - for example, the SAB-50-15 illumination bomb had a 50-kg caliber and weighed only 14.4-14.8 kg (a discrepancy of 3.5 times). On the other hand, the FAB-1500-2600TS aerial bomb (TS - “thick-walled”) has a 1500-kg caliber and weighs as much as 2600 kg (the discrepancy is more than 1.7 times);
7. according to the design of the warhead - monoblock, modular and cluster (initially the latter were called “rotational dispersal aircraft bombs”/RRAB in the USSR).
8. in terms of controllability - into uncontrollable (free-falling, in Western terminology - gravitational - and gliding) and controlled (adjustable).

Reactive depth charges, in fact - unguided rockets with a warhead in the form of a depth charge, which are in service with the Russian Navy and the Navy of a number of other countries, are classified by firing range (hundreds of meters) - for example, the RSL-60 (RGB - reactive depth charge) is fired (or, more correctly, launched) from a reactive bomb launcher RBU-6000 at a range of up to 6000 m, RGB-10 from RBU-1000 - at 1000 m, etc.

Development of bomb production technologies and new types of bombs

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Excerpt characterizing the Bomb

Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. Petya crawled between the officers and came close to Denisov.
“Let me kiss you, my dear,” he said. - Oh, how great! how good! - And, having kissed Denisov, he ran into the yard.
- Bosse! Vincent! – Petya shouted, stopping at the door.
- Who do you want, sir? - said a voice from the darkness. Petya answered that the boy was French, who was taken today.
- A! Spring? - said the Cossack.
His name Vincent has already been changed: the Cossacks - into Vesenny, and the men and soldiers - into Visenya. In both adaptations, this reminder of spring coincided with the idea of ​​a young boy.
“He was warming himself by the fire there.” Hey Visenya! Visenya! Spring! – voices and laughter were heard in the darkness.
“And the boy is smart,” said the hussar standing next to Petya. “We fed him just now.” Passion was hungry!
Footsteps were heard in the darkness and, bare feet splashing in the mud, the drummer approached the door.
“Ah, c"est vous!" said Petya. “Voulez vous manger? N"ayez pas peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,” he added, timidly and affectionately touching his hand. - Entrez, entrez. [Oh, it's you! Are you hungry? Don't be afraid, they won't do anything to you. Enter, enter.]
“Merci, monsieur, [Thank you, sir.],” the drummer answered in a trembling, almost childish voice and began to wipe his dirty feet on the threshold. Petya wanted to say a lot to the drummer, but he didn’t dare. He stood next to him in the hallway, shifting. Then in the darkness I took his hand and shook it.
“Entrez, entrez,” he repeated only in a gentle whisper.
“Oh, what should I do to him!” - Petya said to himself and, opening the door, let the boy pass by.
When the drummer entered the hut, Petya sat away from him, considering it humiliating for himself to pay attention to him. He just felt the money in his pocket and was in doubt whether it would be a shame to give it to the drummer.

From the drummer, who, on Denisov’s orders, was given vodka, mutton and whom Denisov ordered to dress in a Russian caftan, so that, without sending him away with the prisoners, he would be left with the party, Petya’s attention was diverted by the arrival of Dolokhov. Petya in the army heard many stories about the extraordinary courage and cruelty of Dolokhov with the French, and therefore, from the moment Dolokhov entered the hut, Petya, without taking his eyes off, looked at him and became more and more encouraged, twitching his head raised, so as not to be unworthy even of such a society as Dolokhov.
Dolokhov’s appearance strangely struck Petya with its simplicity.
Denisov dressed in a checkmen, wore a beard and on his chest the image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, and in his manner of speaking, in all his manners, he showed the peculiarity of his position. Dolokhov, on the contrary, previously, in Moscow, who wore a Persian suit, now had the appearance of the most prim Guards officer. His face was clean-shaven, he was dressed in a guards cotton frock coat with George in the buttonhole and a simple cap straight on. He took off his wet cloak in the corner and, going up to Denisov, without greeting anyone, immediately began asking about the matter. Denisov told him about the plans that large detachments had for their transport, and about sending Petya, and about how he responded to both generals. Then Denisov told everything he knew about the position of the French detachment.
“That’s true, but you need to know what and how many troops,” said Dolokhov, “you will need to go.” Without knowing exactly how many there are, you cannot start the business. I like to do things carefully. Now, would any of the gentlemen want to go with me to their camp? I have my uniforms with me.
- I, I... I will go with you! – Petya screamed.
“You don’t need to go at all,” Denisov said, turning to Dolokhov, “and I won’t let him in for anything.”
- That's great! - Petya cried out, - why shouldn’t I go?..
- Yes, because there is no need.
“Well, excuse me, because... because... I’ll go, that’s all.” Will you take me? – he turned to Dolokhov.
“Why…” answered Dolokhov absentmindedly, peering into the face of the French drummer.
- How long have you had this young man? – he asked Denisov.
- Today they took him, but he doesn’t know anything. I left it for myself.
- Well, where are you putting the rest? - said Dolokhov.
- How to where? “I’m sending you under guard!” Denisov suddenly blushed and cried out. “And I’ll boldly say that I don’t have a single person on my conscience. Are you happy to send someone away? than magic, I will tell you, the honor of a soldier.
“It’s decent for a young count of sixteen to say these pleasantries,” Dolokhov said with a cold grin, “but it’s time for you to leave it.”
“Well, I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying that I will definitely go with you,” Petya said timidly.
“And it’s time for you and me, brother, to give up these pleasantries,” Dolokhov continued, as if he found special pleasure in talking about this subject that irritated Denisov. - Well, why did you take this to you? - he said, shaking his head. - Then why do you feel sorry for him? After all, we know these receipts of yours. You send them a hundred people, and thirty will come. They will starve or be beaten. So is it all the same not to take them?
Esaul, squinting light eyes, nodded his head approvingly.
- This is all shit, there’s nothing to argue about. I don’t want to take it on my soul. You talk - help. Well, hog "osho." Just not from me.
Dolokhov laughed.
“Who didn’t tell them to catch me twenty times?” But they will catch me and you, with your chivalry, anyway. – He paused. - However, we have to do something. Send my Cossack with a pack! I have two French uniforms. Well, are you coming with me? – he asked Petya.
- I? Yes, yes, absolutely,” Petya cried, blushing almost to tears, looking at Denisov.
Again, while Dolokhov was arguing with Denisov about what should be done with the prisoners, Petya felt awkward and hasty; but again I did not have time to fully understand what they were talking about. “If big, famous people think so, then it must be so, therefore it’s good,” he thought. “And most importantly, Denisov must not dare to think that I will obey him, that he can command me.” I will definitely go with Dolokhov to the French camp. He can do it and so can I.”
To all of Denisov’s urgings not to travel, Petya replied that he, too, was used to doing everything carefully, and not Lazar’s at random, and that he never thought about danger to himself.
“Because,” you yourself must agree, “if you don’t know correctly how many there are, the lives of maybe hundreds depend on it, but here we are alone, and then I really want this, and I will definitely, definitely go, you won’t stop me.” “, he said, “it will only get worse...

Dressed in French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov drove to the clearing from which Denisov looked at the camp, and, leaving the forest in complete darkness, descended into the ravine. Having driven down, Dolokhov ordered the Cossacks accompanying him to wait here and rode at a fast trot along the road to the bridge. Petya, transfixed with excitement, rode next to him.
“If we get caught, I won’t give up alive, I have a gun,” Petya whispered.
“Don’t speak Russian,” Dolokhov said in a quick whisper, and at that same moment a cry was heard in the darkness: “Qui vive?” [Who's coming?] and the ringing of a gun.
Blood rushed to Petya's face, and he grabbed the pistol.
“Lanciers du sixieme, [Lancers of the sixth regiment.],” said Dolokhov, without shortening or increasing the horse’s stride. The black figure of a sentry stood on the bridge.
– Mot d’ordre? [Review?] – Dolokhov held his horse and rode at a walk.
– Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici? [Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?] - he said.
“Mot d'ordre!” said the sentry without answering, blocking the road.
“Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le mot d"ordre...,” Dolokhov shouted, suddenly flushing, running his horse into the sentry. “Je vous demande si le colonel est ici?” [When an officer goes around the chain, the sentries do not ask review... I ask, is the colonel here?]
And, without waiting for an answer from the guard who stood aside, Dolokhov walked up the hill at a pace.
Noticing the black shadow of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov stopped this man and asked where the commander and officers were? This man, a soldier with a sack on his shoulder, stopped, came close to Dolokhov’s horse, touching it with his hand, and simply and friendlyly said that the commander and officers were higher on the mountain, on the right side, in the farm yard (that’s what he called the master’s estate).
Having driven along the road, on both sides of which French conversation could be heard from the fires, Dolokhov turned into the courtyard of the manor’s house. Having passed through the gate, he dismounted from his horse and approached a large blazing fire, around which several people were sitting, talking loudly. Something was boiling in a pot on the edge, and a soldier in a cap and blue overcoat, kneeling, brightly illuminated by the fire, stirred it with a ramrod.
“Oh, c"est un dur a cuire, [You can’t deal with this devil.],” said one of the officers sitting in the shadows with opposite side fire.
“Il les fera marcher les lapins... [He will get through them...],” said another with a laugh. Both fell silent, peering into the darkness at the sound of the steps of Dolokhov and Petya, approaching the fire with their horses.
- Bonjour, messieurs! [Hello, gentlemen!] - Dolokhov said loudly and clearly.
The officers stirred in the shadow of the fire, and one, a tall officer with long neck, bypassing the fire, approached Dolokhov.
“C”est vous, Clement?” he said. “D”ou, diable... [Is that you, Clement? Where the hell...] ​​- but he did not finish, having learned his mistake, and, frowning slightly, as if he were a stranger, he greeted Dolokhov, asking him how he could serve. Dolokhov said that he and a friend were catching up with their regiment, and asked, turning to everyone in general, if the officers knew anything about the sixth regiment. Nobody knew anything; and it seemed to Petya that the officers began to examine him and Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. Everyone was silent for a few seconds.
“Si vous comptez sur la soupe du soir, vous venez trop tard, [If you are counting on dinner, then you are late.],” said a voice from behind the fire with a restrained laugh.
Dolokhov replied that they were full and that they needed to move on at night.
He gave the horses to the soldier who was stirring the pot, and squatted down by the fire next to the long-necked officer. This officer, without taking his eyes off, looked at Dolokhov and asked him again: what regiment was he in? Dolokhov did not answer, as if he had not heard the question, and, lighting a short French pipe, which he took out of his pocket, asked the officers how safe the road was from the Cossacks ahead of them.
“Les brigands sont partout, [These robbers are everywhere.],” answered the officer from behind the fire.
Dolokhov said that the Cossacks were terrible only for such backward people as he and his comrade, but that the Cossacks probably did not dare to attack large detachments, he added questioningly. Nobody answered.
“Well, now he’ll leave,” Petya thought every minute, standing in front of the fire and listening to his conversation.

Being the main source of the bomb's energy and most of its mass. A bomb consists of a body (shell), a charge - a mass of explosive material, and controls. Bombs are divided according to the type of explosive material used in them as an energy source, by caliber or conventional power expressed in kilotons (for nuclear charges), by specific effects, for example - fragmentation, neutron, electromagnetic, chemical, bacteriological, lighting, photobomb, incendiary, etc. By type - plantable (mine, land mine, etc.), aviation, deep, as well as missile warheads (rocket bomb).

Bomb's purpose

A bomb is one of the most formidable types of weapons, and accordingly, the main purpose of this weapon is to kill and destroy. Although in this series there is also a neutral purpose, for example, lighting and photobomb - for illuminating large areas and photographing. The bomb can also be a source of energy to “pump” a laser, for example an X-ray laser, or a laser operating in the optical range. The power of a bomb charge can range from a few grams to a power in TNT equivalent exceeding 50 megatons. With a powerful explosion in the history of civilization is the thermonuclear explosion carried out by the USSR in 1961 and called “Kuzka’s mother”. Modern technologies make it possible to create bombs of almost unlimited power, but such a need does not yet exist.

There is also the term bomb in laboratory technology, for example, calorimetric bomb (for measuring the heat of combustion of substances, etc.), “lead bomb” (for measuring the brisance of explosives). Thus, the word bomb has at least two different concepts, the first of which is a type of weapon, and the second of which means a high-pressure vessel.

History of the bomb and its names

Types of bombs by purpose and specificity

• Aviation: discharge from an aircraft carrier. Blast wave, fragments.
• Deep: discharge to a certain depth. Blast wave, fragments.
• Chemical: throwing different ways, bookmark. Damage caused by sprayed chemicals.
• Volumetric explosion: dumping and filling. Blast wave.
• Bacteriological: dumping and backfilling. Damage from sprayed viruses and bacteria.
• Electromagnetic: reset and bookmark. Defeat of electronic equipment.
• Lighting: reset, rocket launch. Lighting of large areas, photography.
• Mine: laying in the surface layers of the earth and building.

Delivery vehicles and bombing methods

Main means of delivering bombs:

• Manual delivery: Throwing (grenades, small land mines, etc.), sapper placement of charges into the ground or structures (mines, land mines).
• Automobile delivery: transportation of a charge in bulk or a bomb using vehicles without unloading or with partial unloading (military special operations and acts of sabotage by the enemy or terrorists).
• Aircraft bombing: targeted (laser or radio-guided), or “carpet drop” of a single charge or group of charges on a target, dropping charges by parachute, delivery of charges by unmanned robotic aircraft, high-altitude mining (suspension on balloons).
• Torpedoing: releasing a torpedo equipped with a warhead at a target (surface).

• Depth bombing: dropping deep anti-submarine bombs to a certain depth (direct bombing or mining of depths), as well as releasing underwater anti-submarine torpedoes or mining from submarines and leaving the mining zone.
• Missile delivery: Bombardment of charges of increased caliber, or nuclear charges of remote targets (including radio-guided or laser high-precision guidance).
• Orbital bombing: bombardment with charges of increased caliber and power, and nuclear charges, ground targets.

Famous bombs in history

• FAB-100: aviation (USSR).
• FAB-500: aviation (USSR).
• FAB-5000 (the largest aerial bomb (USSR) of the Second World War).
• FAB-9000.
• MOAB: (USA).
• "Little Boy" (Mk-I "Little Boy"): the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan (Hiroshima) on August 6, 1945 (8:15). (USA).
• "Fat Man" (Mk-III "Fat Man"): the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan (

General information

Bomb - explosive technical device, are designed to destroy underground, above-ground and sea targets. A bomb consists of a body, controls and a mass of explosive material.

Bombs are divided into different kinds. Depending on the type - aviation, embedded, deep. According to specific effects - electromagnetic, chemical, bacteriological, photobomb, incendiary, fragmentation, neutron. They are also divided by caliber and power of action.

In general, a bomb is a weapon designed to destroy and destroy, which in turn leads to death.

The most powerful bomb in the world.

To answer the question, what is the most powerful bomb in the world, you must first decide what type of bomb we're talking about: atomic or non-atomic.

As you know, the most powerful bomb that has ever been put into action is the Soviet thermonuclear bomb, which was dropped on October 30, 1961 on Malaya Zemlya (Sukhoi Nos test site). The bomb's yield was 57 megatons of TNT.

The “nuclear mushroom” of the explosion rose to a height of 67 km, thereby passing through the stratosphere. The blast wave was recorded by sensitive instruments three times - so many times it circled the Earth, the audibility of the wave became 1000 km. This bomb received two names: “Tsar Bomba” and “Kuzka’s Mother”.

But due to technological progress, scientists are developing alternative views bombs - not atomic ones.

Massive Ordnance Air Blast - official name the most powerful non-nuclear American bomb GBU-43/B. In special circles, or more simply put, among the people, this bomb was called “The Mother of All Bombs.” Its length is 10 m, diameter 1 m, weight is about 9.5 tons. Most, which comes in the form of H6 explosive, which consists of aluminum powder. The bomb's damage radius is about 150 m.

The MOAB was conceived as a follow-up to the famous BLU-82 Daisy Cutter. The first tests of this bomb were carried out in March, and then in November 2003, in Florida. Total There are 15 bombs manufactured, production is located in the city of McAlister. Unfortunately, the use of these ammunition is not so relevant in our time - they are used for cleaning large territories from the thickets.

However, in 2007, a more powerful bomb was built in Russia. The exact name for the new model has not been released, but after successful tests it received the name “Daddy of All Bombs.” The total affected area of ​​the “daddy of all bombs” is 20 times larger than that of the “mother”. And today there is no more powerful non-nuclear bomb in the world. Also, lastly, I recommend watching the video of the explosion of the most powerful atomic bomb in history

Etymology of the concept

The Russian word “bomb” comes from the Greek. βόμβος (bombos), onomatopoeia, an onomatopoeic word that had approximately the same meaning in Greek as the word “babakh” in Russian. In the European group of languages, the term has the same root “bomb” (German. bombe, English bomb, fr. bombe, Spanish bomba), the source of which, in turn, is Lat. bombus, the Latin analogue of the Greek onomatopoeia.

According to one hypothesis, the term was originally associated with battering guns, which first made a terrible roar, and only then caused destruction. In the future, with the improvement of warfare technologies, the logical chain war-roar-of-destruction became associated with other types of weapons. The term experienced a rebirth at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, when gunpowder entered the arena of war. At that time, the technical effect of its use was negligible (especially in comparison with the mechanical types of throwing weapons that had reached perfection), but the roar it produced was an extraordinary phenomenon and often had an effect on the enemy comparable to a shower of arrows.

Story

1. Artillery grenade. 2. Bomb. 3. Buckshot grenade. XVII-XIX centuries

1. by purpose - for combat and non-combat. The latter include smoke, lighting, photo aircraft bombs (lighting for night photography), daytime (colored smoke) and night (colored fire) orientation-signal, orientation-sea (create a colored fluorescent spot on the water and colored fire; in the West, orientation-signal and orientation-naval aerial bombs have the general name of marker bombs), propaganda (stuffed with propaganda material), practical (for training bombing - do not contain explosives or contain a very small charge; practical aerial bombs that do not contain a charge are most often made of cement) and imitation (simulate nuclear bomb);

1. by type of active material - conventional, nuclear, chemical, toxin, bacteriological (traditionally, bombs loaded with pathogenic viruses or their carriers also belong to the category of bacteriological, although strictly speaking a virus is not a bacterium);
2. according to the nature of the damaging effect:
   • fragmentation (damaging effect mainly from fragments);
   • high-explosive fragmentation (fragmentation, high-explosive and high-explosive action; in the West such ammunition is called general purpose bombs);
   • high-explosive (high-explosive and blasting action);
   • penetrating high-explosive - they are also high-explosive thick-walled, they are also (Western designation) “seismic bombs” (with high explosive action);
   • concrete-piercing (in the West such ammunition is called semi-armor-piercing) inert (does not contain an explosive charge, hitting the target only due to kinetic energy);
   • concrete-breaking explosives (kinetic energy and blasting action);
   • armor-piercing explosive (also with kinetic energy and blasting action, but having a more durable body);
   • armor-piercing cumulative (cumulative jet);
   • armor-piercing fragmentation / cumulative fragmentation (cumulative jet and fragments);
   • armor-piercing based on the principle of “shock core”;
   • incendiary (flame and temperature);
   • high-explosive incendiary (high-explosive and blasting action, flame and temperature);
   • high-explosive fragmentation-incendiary (fragmentation, high-explosive and high-explosive action, flame and temperature);
   • incendiary-smoke (damaging effects of flame and temperature; in addition, such a bomb produces smoke in the area);
   • poisonous / chemical and toxin (poisonous substance / agent);
   • poisonous smoke bombs (officially these bombs were called “smoking aviation poisonous smoke bombs”);
   • fragmentation-poisonous/fragmentation-chemical (fragmentation and explosive agents);
   • infectious action/bacteriological (directly by pathogenic microorganisms or their carriers from insects and small rodents);
   • Conventional nuclear (at first called atomic) and thermonuclear bombs (initially in the USSR they were called atomic-hydrogen) are traditionally allocated to a separate category not only according to the active material, but also according to the damaging effect, although, strictly speaking, they should be considered high-explosive incendiary (with adjusted for additional damaging factors of a nuclear explosion - radioactive radiation and radioactive fallout) of ultra-high power. However, there are also “nuclear bombs of enhanced radiation” - their main damaging factor is radioactive radiation, specifically the neutron flux formed during the explosion (in connection with which such nuclear bombs received the common name “neutron”).
   • Also in a separate category are volumetric detonating bombs (also known as volumetric explosion, thermobaric, vacuum and fuel bombs).
3. by the nature of the target (this classification is not always applied) - for example, anti-bunker (Bunker Buster), anti-submarine, anti-tank and bridge bombs (the latter were intended for action on bridges and viaducts);
4. according to the method of delivery to the target - rocket (the bomb in this case is used as a missile warhead), aviation, ship/boat, artillery;
5. by mass, expressed in kilograms or pounds (for non-nuclear bombs) or power, expressed in kilotons/megatons) of TNT equivalent (for nuclear bombs). It should be noted that the caliber of a non-nuclear bomb is not its actual weight, but its correspondence to the dimensions of a certain standard weapon (which is usually a high-explosive bomb of the same caliber). The discrepancy between caliber and weight can be quite large - for example, the SAB-50-15 illumination bomb had a 50-kg caliber and weighed only 14.4-14.8 kg (a discrepancy of 3.5 times). On the other hand, the FAB-1500-2600TS aerial bomb (TS - “thick-walled”) has a 1500-kg caliber and weighs as much as 2600 kg (the discrepancy is more than 1.7 times);
6. according to the design of the warhead - monoblock, modular and cluster (initially the latter were called “rotational dispersal aircraft bombs”/RRAB in the USSR).
7. in terms of controllability - into uncontrollable (free-falling, in Western terminology - gravitational - and gliding) and controlled (adjustable).

Reactive depth charges (in fact, unguided missiles with a warhead in the form of a depth charge), which are in service with the Russian Navy and the navies of a number of other countries, are classified by firing range (in hundreds of meters) - for example, the RSL-60 (RSL - reactive depth charge) is fired ( however, it is more correct to say - launched) from the RBU-6000 rocket launcher at a range of up to 6000 m, RGB-10 from the RBU-1000 - at 1000 m, etc.

Bomb consumption in major wars

Development of bomb production technologies and new types of bombs

Safety precautions when handling bombs

Bomb disposal

Bombs and terrorism

see also

Literature

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Bombing, eh... Russian word stress

- (French bombe, Italian and Spanish bomba, from Greek bombus dull-burning). 1) a cast iron ball filled with gunpowder and thrown with a mortar; it breaks either during its flight or during its fall; also an explosive projectile in a metal shell for manual... ... Dictionary foreign words Russian language