For those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of nuclear weaponry, there are actually multiple types of nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb was the original bomb designed and dropped in 1945 during World War II onto the Japanese cities of Hiroshima. An atomic bomb splits atoms using a combination of plutonium or uranium combined with conventional explosives, a process referred to as nuclear fission. Albert Einstein, however, worried more about hydrogen bombs (H-bombs), thermonuclear devices that combine nuclear fission with fusion. They split, then recombine atoms to magnify their explosive yields and greatly outstrip the power of atomic bombs.
Einstein’s fears were founded, as the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made was indeed a hydrogen bomb dropped in 1961. Dubbed the Tsar Bomba and built by the Soviet Union, its outrageous explosive power was 1,570 times more powerful than both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. The United States had already dropped the world’s first hydrogen bomb in 1952 after U.S. President Harry Truman recruited some of the scientists from the Manhattan Project to start development on the bomb in 1950.
That happened five years after Einstein’s aforementioned 1945 warning about developing further nuclear weaponry. But like so many wise words, his warning went unheeded. In the face of fresh, post World War II fears and the equally fresh memory of World War II’s bloodshed, the world’s superpowers marched ahead with creating a weapon that dwarfed the atomic bomb in size and destructive power.
