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Shocking simulation shows what would happen if the 'biggest nuclear bomb' went off in New York City

Home> News> US News

Published 17:16 28 Feb 2025 GMT

Shocking simulation shows what would happen if the 'biggest nuclear bomb' went off in New York City

The video details the mass destruction that dropping a bomb on the US' most populous city would cause

Joe Yates

Joe Yates

Featured Image Credit: Zack D. Films

Topics: New York, US News, Russia

Joe Yates
Joe Yates

Joe is a journalist for UNILAD, who particularly enjoys writing about crime. He has worked in journalism for five years, and has covered everything from murder trials to celeb news.

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@JMYjourno

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As tensions between world leaders rise and talk of World War III intensifies, a video has been created to demonstrate just how disastrous nuclear war could be.

YouTuber Zack D. Films has created a shocking simulation that details exactly what would happen if the biggest nuclear bomb ever created was dropped on New York City.

The world's largest nuclear explosion ever took place in 1961, that of course was the Russian hydrogen bomb called the ''Tsar Bomba', or as the western world knows it - the 'Tsar Bomb'.

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All-Russia Exhibition Centre in Moscow displaying the Tsar Bomba (TATYANA MAKEYEVA / AFP) (Photo by TATYANA MAKEYEVA/AFP via Getty Images)
All-Russia Exhibition Centre in Moscow displaying the Tsar Bomba (TATYANA MAKEYEVA / AFP) (Photo by TATYANA MAKEYEVA/AFP via Getty Images)

But it wasn't until almost 60 years later that footage was released of the huge blast.

Dubbed the 'King of Bombs', the Tsar Bomb was developed between 1956 and 1961, while the Soviet Union was in the middle of an nuclear arms race with the US.

It was said to be 3,300 times as destructive as the bomb that devastated Hiroshima, made up of a hydrogen bomb with 50 megatons - or 50 million tons - of explosives.

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When it was tested in October 1961, the Tsar Bomb released a mushroom cloud that was 60km high.

Now, the popular content creator Zack and his team put together a short video to explain how it would look if the Russians wanted to drop the bomb on the US' most populous city. Take a look:

"If the world's biggest nuclear bomb landed in New York City, the 50 megaton explosion would instantly vaporize everything within a two mile radius," the video says.

"The blast wave would flatten buildings up to 20 miles away, turning skyscrapers into rubble, and a fireball over five miles wide would ignite everything in its path.

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"The shock wave would shatter windows as far as New Jersey and the mushroom cloud would rise 40 miles into the air.

"Radiation would contaminate the area for decades, leaving no survivors in."

Let's hope Putin and Trump agree to never press the big red button! (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
Let's hope Putin and Trump agree to never press the big red button! (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

Let's hope Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump don't get into a war that leads to one of the two pressing the big red button...

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But to know what New York would be up against, let's detail a little more on the Tsar Bomb.

During the test in 1961, the Soviet Union stationed cameras on the ground and on board two Russian aircrafts which caught the moment the bomb caused a huge fireball in the sky.

"The testing of an exceptionally powerful hydrogen load ... confirmed that the Soviet Union is in possession of a thermo-nuclear weapon with power of 50 megatons, 100 megatons and more," said a narrator over footage of the test which was released in 2021.

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