122 views

2:31

Watch
- Search Videos
  
  Advanced search »
- Submit a New Video
Discuss
About
- Try clicking on the various channels to see videos posted to that channel - if you're into music you can click the Music channel to get more music sifts - go on and explore! Use the "hotness" when you have opened the channel link to get videos that have gotten a lot of votes, or use "newness" to have a look at the new sifts.
  When browsing sifts you like, have a look at the Related Posts list to see other related videos, click the tags under the video title to see more sifts tagged with the same tags or have a look at other sifts from the same user in the More Posts By list. If the sifted video is in a play list, have a look at the play list to see other interesting videos the Sift users have linked together.
  Enter the Sift Lounge to chat with online sifters about anything and everything, or read interesting posts in the Sift Talk forum.
  The Top New Videos list is always full of interesting, current videos. It is always recommended that you have a look through the Top New Videos, but also have a look at these:
  - Upcoming Unsifted Videos - active video submissions that neither are published to the front page nor archived to the submitter's personal queue
- Have you seen a really funny, surprising, scary, interesting, cute or in any other way extra good quality video?
  Post and share it here - VideoSift is the best video aggregator on the Web, where we share, discuss, promote, and interact with the best videos out there on the web. Post it here, and share it with the large community of video-interested users. And - you are guaranteed to find more very good videos here already!
  Mind you, we only share videos you discover that someone else has made; if you "self link," by posting a video you have made, have posted or have interests in, you risk the ban hammer - read the posting guidelines before posting. The sift is NOT for promoting your own videos - it is for sharing videos others have made.
  Submit a Video Now »
Login

RDS-37

submitted by notarobot

6 years 7 months ago

From YT:

RDS-37 was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on November 22, 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons. It was scaled down to 1.6 megatons for the live test.

It was a multi-stage thermonuclear device which utilized radiation implosion called Sakharov's Third Idea in the USSR (the Teller–Ulam design in the USA). It utilized a fissile core containing Uranium-235 and synthetic Uranium-233, and a dry lithium deuteride fusion fuel, with some of it replaced with a "passive material" to reduce its total yield. Despite this reduction in yield, because the weapon exploded under an inversion layer much of its shock wave was focused back downward at the ground unexpectedly, causing a trench to collapse on a group of soldiers, killing one, and a building in Kurchatov, 65 km (40 mi) distant, to collapse and kill a young girl.

RDS-37 was air-dropped at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan, making it the first air-dropped two-stage thermonuclear test.

The RDS-6s device (Joe-4) exploded in 1953 had one-stage design, and was not scalable into the megaton yield range.