According to the plan, this was supposed to resemble the famous Pushkin masterpiece: “The sea will swell violently, boil, raise a howl, rush to the empty shore, splash in a quick run …” Only instead of 33 heroes, 500 meters high megatsunami should have crashed on the US coast caused by the explosion of a 100-megaton thermonuclear charge. With all the ensuing consequences in the form of cities washed off the face of the Earth and many millions of dead people. A terrible picture!
But what makes this picture even more ominous is that the authorship of this idea is attributed to Academician Sakharov. The life path of Andrei Dmitrievich, ranging from the creation of a hydrogen bomb to a dissident and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is difficult to understand. Especially if you do not resort to such outlandish concepts as spiritual quest, moral choice, etc. It is clear that even with the explosion of a hydrogen bomb, not very much humanism is emitted – mainly a shock wave, light radiation and penetrating radiation, which is more than enough for both civilians and not very peaceful ones. But the idea of drowning the population of an entire continent (the tsunami will not make out where is the USA, and where is Canada and Mexico), even against this background, looks like something beyond good and evil, especially when it comes from the lips of a fighter for peace. And here Sakharov got it from users (materials on this topic recently, like a tsunami, were distributed in Yandex.Zen and other Internet sites), who, even in the days of establishing good-neighborly relations, preferred to see America in a coffin. A hypocritical monster, a bloodthirsty psycho – that's exactly what they wrote in their iPhones! We decided to figure out how an academician and three times Hero of Socialist Labor came to such a life.
Tsar Bomb and Peace Enforcement
The authorship of the idea of destroying America with the help of megatsunami is attributed to Sakharov by various Internet resources led by Wikipedia with reference to the famous diplomat, referent Gromyko and Khrushchev, secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Valentin Falin. In one of his lectures on the post-war arms race, he said: “Sakharov generally suggested not serving the Washington strategy of ruining the Soviet Union with an arms race. our friends, push buttons. “
However, Sakharov himself in his “Memoirs” (he expounds everything there in sufficient detail and frankly) tells about the idea of using thermonuclear charges in the ocean in a completely different way. This topic arose after the famous tests of 1961, when Sakharov's brainchild, the 58.6 megaton thermonuclear Tsar Bomb, was blown up on Novaya Zemlya. This is the most powerful explosive device ever made by mankind (it was created in a single copy). When the area of total destruction of the polygon was superimposed on the map of Paris, the French capital with a margin fit into the “dead zone” with all the suburbs. The USSR has demonstrated that it has something to oppose to the US nuclear forces. This was an important condition of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, the superpowers were afraid to start a war, because they feared unacceptable losses for themselves. The demonstration of the Tsar Bomba or Kuzkina's mother, as she was also called after the famous speech of Khrushchev, pushed the countries to think about detente. And two years later, the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, Space and Under Water was signed in Moscow.
Why the “cannibalistic” project was born
However, the developers of the weapons understood that, despite the huge psychological effect, thermonuclear weapons at that time were practically not applicable for waging war. If the first American hydrogen bomb was the size of a three-story building, and it could only be detonated on its own territory, then Sakharov's group managed to create a relatively compact device. However, the bomb 8 meters long and 2 meters in diameter still did not fit into the bomb bay of the Tu-95 strategic bomber. I had to cut out a part of the fuselage and install a special lifting mechanism, but all the same, the Tsar Bomba was so large that it stuck out more than half of it.
Sakharov wrote: “After testing a“ large ”product (as the academician called the Tsar Bomba), I was worried that there was no good carrier for it (bombers do not count, they are easy to shoot down) – that is, in the military sense, we worked in vain. I decided that such a carrier could be a large torpedo launched from a submarine. I fantasized that a ramjet water-steam nuclear jet engine could be developed for such a torpedo. The target of an attack from a distance of several hundred kilometers should be enemy ports. The war at sea is lost, if the ports are destroyed, – the sailors assure us of this. The body of such a torpedo can be made very durable, it will not be afraid of mines and barrage nets “
That is, it was not about megatsunami, but about an attack on port cities, not only from the air, but from the sea. Which, however, would also be accompanied by a very large number of human victims. Sakharov clarified that with an underwater or surface explosion of a 100-megaton charge (twice as powerful as the Tsar Bomb), this would be inevitable. At the same time, the academician calls this project “spoken”. In the sense that the matter did not go beyond a few conversations.
– One of the first with whom I discussed this project was Rear Admiral Pyotr Fomin (he headed a special department in the Navy, which was engaged in the adaptation of atomic weapons for the needs of the fleet – Ed), – Sakharov wrote, – Fomin was shocked by the “cannibalistic” character project and noticed in a conversation with me that sailors are used to fighting an armed enemy in open combat and that the very idea of such a mass murder is disgusting for him. I was ashamed and never discussed my project with anyone again. “
America was saved by geography
So was there a boy? Was there in reality at least some calculated project of using megatsunami in the war against the United States? It turns out – yes! Although Sakharov had nothing to do with him.
A detailed story about this story is given in the book of another participant in the Soviet atomic project, winner of the Lenin Prize, Viktor Adamsky. According to him, the idea to arrange megatsunami off the coast of the United States surfaced a year after the Tsar Bomba tests, “but without the participation of Andrei Dmitrievich and, definitely, without his knowledge.”
The idea was based on a memorandum that Academician Lavrentyev (he once worked at the Arzamas-16 nuclear center, where thermonuclear weapons were created) sent to Nikita Khrushchev. Lavrentyev assumed that an underwater explosion of a 100-megaton thermonuclear charge could cause a catastrophic tsunami and cause significant damage to the States. Just at this time, the Cuban missile crisis broke out and Khrushchev demanded to check the calculations and report back.
The theoretical calculations were carried out by the Department of Surface Phenomena of Underwater Nuclear Explosions of the Leningrad Naval Branch of the Central Research Institute-12 of the Ministry of Defense, which was headed by Nikolai Suntsov.
It turned out that in order to achieve the desired effect, a 100-megaton bomb had to be detonated at a depth of 1000 meters. In this case, the height of the ocean wave 5 kilometers from the epicenter would be 500 meters, and the length would be about 10 kilometers.
The Americans were saved by geography. Calculations showed that if you detonate such a bomb off the Pacific coast of the United States – for example, near San Francisco, then there will be no big effect, since the mountainous coastline would prevent the water from scattering far. On the Atlantic side, the coastline is gently sloping, but it is adjoined by extensive coastal shoals. Therefore, in order to find kilometer depths suitable for an explosion, it is necessary to retreat far into the ocean.
The US East Coast was recreated on Ladoga
To understand how an artificial tsunami will behave in shallow water, Leningrad scientists conducted model studies. Some of them were held on the shores of Lake Ladoga, where in the Priozersk region (a town with a population of about 20 thousand people), a semblance of the Atlantic coast of the United States with continental shoals and water areas was created. Here, small devices with a capacity of up to 100 kg of TNT were blown up under water. In control experiments at the test site on Novaya Zemlya, the explosions were more powerful – up to 1 ton of TNT.
“However, the modeling confirmed the skeptical assumptions that the continental shelf is an excellent filter that destroys the surf stream,” said Nikolai Suntsov. – Regardless of the power of an underwater super explosion in the ocean depths, real damage could have been caused to structures and objects at a distance of 2, maximum 5 kilometers from the water line.
With this, the topic of controlled by megatsunami was closed.
As for Sakharov, the Tsar Bomba tests, for which he, at the insistence of Khrushchev, received the third star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, became the last large weapons project in which he invested without a trace. Then his discrepancies with the “party line” grew deeper and in 1968 the godfather of the hydrogen bomb was suspended from work in the secret nuclear center Arzamas-16.
QUESTION – A RIB!
Why did the creator of the superweapon fight to ban it?
Probably, everyone who got acquainted with the story of Andrei Sakharov asked himself the question: when was he sincere – when he created a superweapon or when he fought for its prohibition? How and why did the revolution in his worldview take place? Was it a moral enlightenment that made you abandon honors, privileged position and material wealth, unthinkable for an ordinary Soviet person? Or has he succumbed to the pernicious influence and betrayed the ideals of all the brightest?
“If you get paid that much, what else do you want …”
After all, there is a widespread point of view, which was recently voiced by the classic of our cinema: if you are paid so much money, then what else do you want?
I must say that the participants in the atomic project were paid very well. Sakharov wrote: “We received a colossal salary, I – 20,000 rubles in old money, that is, new 2000”. Recall the national average salary of 200 rubles per month, was considered very good
After the successful tests of the hydrogen bomb in 1953, Sakharov and his leader Igor Tamm, in addition to the star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, received the Stalin Prize in the amount of 500,000 rubles (at the old rate). It was decided to build a dacha for each of them in the village of Zhukovka near Moscow (the same ruble direction).
Sakharov repeated the fate of the father of the American atomic bomb
It is unlikely that the material side of the question had any significance here. But perhaps it will be easier for us to understand the motives that guided Andrei Sakharov if we recall the story of the American father of the “atomic bomb” Robert Oppenheimer. His life trajectory is strikingly similar to Sakharov's.
In 1942, the physicist joined the “Manhattan Project” and headed the laboratory of secret weapons. This choice was not to everyone's liking in the American leadership, since Oppenheimer sympathized with leftist ideas and even donated money to various liberal projects. Although he was not a member of the Communist Party. However, his brother, student mistress Jean Tetlock and wife Catherine Harrison collaborated with the communists. Nevertheless, the army leadership of the “Manhattan Project” believed that it was Oppenngheimer who was able to organize 6 thousand scientists to make a scientific breakthrough.
They say that on August 6, 1945 (the day of the bombing of Hiroshima), while his colleagues ran with joyful cries through the corridors of the laboratory, Oppenheimer locked himself in his office so that no one could see him crying. And after the creation of the atomic bomb, her godfather did everything to slow down the project to create an American thermonuclear weapon. As head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Oppenheimer put forward the idea of international nuclear arms control and insisted on ending the arms race. In general, he turned into a renegade and a renegade. The “healthy forces” of American society subjected Oppenheimer to persecution and in 1954, during the court hearings, the recent hero of the nation was denied access to secret work.
Sakharov admitted that he strongly empathized with Oppenheimer and his personal tragedy, and at the same time saw striking parallels between his life and the fate of Oppenheimer.
What gunsmiths know about a deal with the devil
It is hardly a coincidence that the father of the American atomic bomb and the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb renounced their past and took steps that were regarded by their contemporaries as disregard for national interests. Together, people only get the flu. And they go crazy one by one. Then why did the best gunsmiths in the world have such a friendly inner turn? Sakharov said many times that the main thing for him and the other members of the group was the inner conviction that this work (to create a superweapon) was necessary.
“I could not help but realize what terrible, inhuman things we were doing,” he wrote. – But the war has just ended – it is also an inhuman affair. I was not a soldier in that war – but I felt like a soldier of this scientific and technical one. Over time, we learned or ourselves came up with such concepts as strategic balance, mutual thermonuclear deterrence, etc.
During the first 50 years of the twentieth century, politicians and the military unleashed two world wars that claimed the lives of more than a hundred million people. Is there any hope that past experience will stop them? Unlikely. It seems to me that at some point, scientists realized that this could be put to an end by making a kind of deal with the devil. Satan will receive the object of his lust – a weapon of unprecedented power that can destroy all life on Earth. But the risk of self-destruction will keep him from the temptation to start a victorious Third World War.
But probably only the creators of the nuclear club know how fragile this treaty with the devil is and how many weak links are in this chain that keeps him from turning the world around him into hell.
