October 30th was the anniversary of something most would rather not be reminded of — the insane scramble in the Cold War to produce ever larger and more lethal atomic bombs.

On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union set off the most powerful explosion ever at the Novaya Zemlya testing ground by detonating a thermonuclear bomb yielding 50 megatons.

Within the 30-mile radius around the epicenter the ground burst into flames, even though it was covered with deep piles of snow that could completely bury a man standing up.

…The nuclear mushroom towered as high as 40 miles, according to the estimations made by the American observation stations. The blast wave enveloped the Earth three times, while the electro-magnetic emission thwarted the reception of radio waves for an hour.

The flash from the light was so bright that on a heavily clouded sky the light could be seen within a 600-mile radius. One of the groups participating in the experiment, almost 200 miles away from the epicenter, saw a bright flash even with dark glasses on.

Russia Today