The Tsar Bomba was dropped from a Russian bomber on an island in the Arctic circle and had a yield equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT, approximately 3000 times as powerful as the fission-type atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. If a bomb of this size were to be dropped on New York city, 10,000,000 people would be instantly killed perhaps 2 million instantly vaporized, the entire city leveled, and many millions more fatally injured. The total casualties could exceed 30 million killed and severely injured. The original was scaled back from 100 megatons for fear it might ignite the Earths atmosphere. The island it was dropped above was essentially erased, and the flash of the blast was seen over 600 miles away. It caused major structural damage up to 200 miles away and even shattered windows in Norway over 700 miles away. In the United States, it was detected by seismographs and registered as a moderate Earthquake. This explosion literally set up low frequency vibrations in the entire planet. It was a "clean" nuke, having relatively little fallout due to it's detonation at 4000 meters elevation, or approximately 2.5 miles in altitude. At least one of the pilots was seriously injured by the blast, which detonated with the bomb at a total distance of approximately 30 miles. Even at this altitude of detonation, the bomb left a 60 meter deep crater 5 miles across. Now here's the most frightening thing of all, there is no ACTUAL theoretical limit on the yield of a thermonuclear weapon, but luckily there is a practical limit of around 20 megatons.
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