A nuclear bomb is one of the symbols of scientific progress?

1945 was marked not only by the victory of the Allied countries in the Second World War over fascist Germany and its allies, but also by another fateful event. Two Japanese cities were destroyed by only two bombs, one for each. Mankind has entered a new era. The nuclear age has begun.

A nuclear bomb with the amusing title "Babe" was the first charge created by physicists capable of inflicting such large-scale destruction on the enemy and successfully applied in the course of combat operations. The historical aircraft B-29, which carried out this mission, stands in the Museum of American Aviation and Cosmonautics, on its polished dural board is inscribed the name of the mother of the ship's commander, Enola Gay, such are the cases. On August 6, the first blow was struck, and three days later the second, over the city of Nagasaki. This nuclear bomb also had a ridiculous name - "Fat Man".

The first bomb was arranged quite simply, according to the "cannon" principle. The supercritical mass of uranium was placed in a piece of the artillery barrel from the ship's gun, and in the breech part there was a charge that created its necessary compaction for the appearance of a chain reaction. The nuclear bomb had a length of three meters, weighed four tons, and the mass of the war uranium charge was 64 kilograms, of which only about 700 grams reacted. The rest of the weight of this terrible weapon consisted of the mentioned fragment of the trunk, shell, stabilizers, fuses and other minor material.

The low efficiency suffered by the first nuclear bomb caused a relatively small radiological contamination of the soil and a small amount of destructive force for this class of weapons, measured in the thousands of tons of TNT necessary to cause such damage. In "Baby" it was about 15 000 tons. For comparison - the maximum payload of the same "Supercrush" B-29 was 9 tons. For four and a half years, such a bomber should make daily combat sorties in order to cause the enemy approximately such destruction.

Mankind has always striven forward and upward, trying to outdo itself, and especially in the field of creating devices for the extermination of all living things. Rosetil equivalent, new "layered" technologies and other clever solutions were used to increase the coefficient of "useful" action of atomic weapons.

The apogee of the destructive power created by physicists became the "product of AN 602". Not that it was impossible to create something even more terrible, it is possible, only there would be no experience.

The most powerful nuclear bomb in history, by tradition, also received its own name, albeit unofficial, "Kuzkina mother" or "Kuzka." It was this creation that threatened to show the Americans N.S. Khrushchev, and in the days of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU (1961) kept his promise.

At first they wanted to "bang" 100 megatons, but they regretted the Norilsk Metallurgical Plant. Converged at half the equivalent. The length of the bomb is twelve meters, the diameter is two and a half, the body remains the same, from the stomegaton, and the Tu-95 did not fit into the bomb-lodge, it was necessary to slightly cut the edges and remove the doors. The effect surpassed all expectations, an explosive wave flew three times around the planet.

However, later it turned out that the military does not need such a nuclear bomb, its delivery to the target is problematic, and several less powerful charges can cause the enemy more harm than one giant explosion.

It remains to be hoped that the history of nuclear conflicts will end with the first two bombs dropped in 1945.