Russia releases never-before-seen footage of Tsar Bomba test, largest explosion in history

Russia's state nuclear energy agency has recently released never-before-seen footage of the Tsar Bomba test - the largest man-made explosion in human history. The blast caused when the country detonated a 50 megaton thermonuclear bomb in 1961 over the Barents Sea. The bomb was detonated 13,000 feet above an island in the Arctic Circle, exploding with 3,333 times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima as Soviet and was filmed by cameramen from hundreds of miles away.

Tsar Bomba Test declassified

The exclusive footage was shared by the Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation, the state-run Russian nuclear energy concern, to mark the celebration of 75 years of Russia's nuclear industry. Tsar Bomba test footage comes during a 40-minute Soviet film with Russian narration, that was released on the YouTube channel by the corporation on August 20. 

The film shows the long march of the Tsar Bomba -the informal name given to the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb by Western observers of the Soviet Union, to its transport by steam train to Olenya Air Base in northwest Russia, to its final detonation above Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961. More importantly, it provides never-before-seen shots of the actual Tsar Bomba explosion in more elaborated manner.

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TO capture the detonation, several Cameras were positioned hundreds of miles from the blast and set up for low-light conditions so as not to be blinded by the flash. The cameras captured a fireball rising into the sky for a full 40 seconds before it dissipated into a mushroom cloud. The cloud rose 213,000 feet into the air which is six times the cruising altitude of a passenger jet. The Tsar Bomba, was the largest nuclear bomb ever created by the Russian Military. It was developed at the height of the Cold War to compete with thermonuclear devices produced by the USA.

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WATCH THE 'TSAR BOMBA TEST' FOOTAGE HERE:

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