Discovery Channel - Ultimates - Explosions - Tsar bomb segment

Aerial view of an atomic bomb explosion

This is an aerial shot from Operation Buster Jangle shot Easy. November 5, 1951 detonated in Area 7 of the Nevada Test Site. 31 KT. A very famous shot. See it in "Atomic Filmmakers." Silent.

Bikini Atoll

Mushroom-shaped cloud and water column from the underwater Baker nuclear explosion of July 25, 1946. Photo taken from a tower on Bikini Island, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) away.
Information
Country	United States
Test site	NE Lagoon, Bikini Atoll
Period	1946
Number of tests	2
Test type	Free fall air drop, Underwater

Broken lives of Fukushima

In 2011 a massive earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant, resulting in a meltdown that became the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years. About 160,000 people living near the plant were ordered to move out and the government established a 20-km compulsory evacuation zone. The operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, is struggling to contain contaminated water at the site 240 km north of Tokyo. There have been multiple leaks and glitches over the last two and a half years. Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj returned to this abandoned area last month and captured these haunting images.( 25 photos total)


A small monument to victims is seen in front of an abandoned house at the tsunami destroyed coastal area of the evacuated town of Namie in Fukushima prefecture, some 6 km (4 miles) from the crippled Daiichi power plant, Sept. 22. Namie's more than 20,000 former residents can visit their homes once a month with special permissions but are not allowed to stay overnight inside the exclusion zone. A total of 160,000 people were ordered to leave their homes around Daiichi plant after the government announced the evacuation following the nuclear disaster in March 2011. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Gerd Ludwig's 'Long Shadow of Chernobyl' project

Internationally-renowned photojournalist Gerd Ludwig has spent years documenting the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In 1986, errors at the plant in Ukraine led to an explosion that ultimately caused over a quarter of a million people to permanently evacuate their homes to escape the radiation and radioactive fallout. Over the course of several trips to the site and the region for National Geographic Magazine in 1993, 2005, and 2011, Ludwig has amassed a documentary record of a people and a place irreparably altered by a tragic accident. His 2011 trip was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Now Ludwig has released an iPad app with over 150 photographs, video, and interactive panoramas. Gathered here is a small selection of the work Ludwig has produced over the years of the still-unfolding tragedy.


On April 26, 1986, operators in this control room of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant committed a fatal series of errors during a safety test, triggering a reactor meltdown that resulted in the world's largest nuclear accident to date. Today, the control room sits abandoned and deadly radioactive. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)


Workers, wearing respirators and plastic suits for protection, pause briefly on their way to drill holes for support rods inside the sarcophagus. It is hazardous work: radiation is so high that they constantly need to monitor their Geiger counters and dosimeters, and they are allowed only one 15-minute stay in this space per day. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


For years desperate efforts were under way to shore up the roof of the shelter to prevent it from collapsing. Inside the sarcophagus, dimly lit tunnels lead to eerie rooms strewn with wires, pieces of shredded metal and other debris. Walls have collapsed, and rubble is covered with contaminated dust. The stabilization work has been completed, and today the reactor’s interior sits untouched and deadly radioactive, waiting to be dismantled. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Although radiation levels only allowed for a few minutes of access, workers initially had to pass over hazardous ladders to a section underneath the melted core with life threatening contamination. To facilitate faster access, a daunting hallway called the leaning staircase was erected. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Workers near the sarcophagus expose themselves to hazardous levels of radiation while building the New Safe Confinement, estimated to cost $2.2 billion. The arch-shaped, 29,000-ton metal structure, 105 meters high and 257 meters wide, will slide over the existing structure to allow demolition of the ailing shelter. To provide an indestructible base for the new confinement, 396 enormous metal pipes are hammered 25 meters deep into the ground. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


A rooftop view from the Polissya Hotel in the center of Pripyat shows the proximity of the ill-fated Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to this former home of 50,000 people. Today, Pripyat stands a ghost town overrun by nature. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Built in 1970 for the scientists and workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the city of Pripyat, located less than 3 km from the reactor, was once inhabited by nearly 50,000 residents and brimming with life. Authorities did not immediately warn residents of the accident and ordered the evacuation a full 36 hours after the explosion. Pripyat, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


When Soviet authorities finally ordered the evacuation, the residents’ hasty departure often meant leaving behind their most personal belongings. The Soviet Union only admitted to the world that an accident had occurred three days after the explosion, when the nuclear cloud reached Sweden and scientists there noticed radiation on their shoes before entering their facility. Opachichi, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Nineteen years after the accident, the empty schools and kindergarten rooms in Pripyat - once the largest town in the Exclusion Zone with 50,000 inhabitants—remain a silent testament to the sudden and tragic departure. Due to decay, this section of the school building has since collapsed. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


On the day of the disaster, children oblivious to the nuclear accident played in this kindergarten in Pripyat, the reactor’s company town. The following day they were evacuated, leaving behind everything—even their treasured dolls and toys. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Wind blows through the desolate town of Pripyat. On April 26, 1986, this amusement park was being readied for the annual May Day celebrations when reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded less than 3 km away. Pripyat, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


On April 26, 1986, this amusement park in Pripyat with bumper cars and a Ferris wheel was being readied for the annual May Day celebrations when the nearby reactor blew up. Rotting away for 25 years, it has since become a symbol of the utter abandonment of the area. Now it is an attraction for tourists who have started flocking to the zone in droves. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


In 2011, the Ukrainian government officially legalized tourism in the Exclusion Zone. In Pripyat, visitors get to wander through the debris-strewn corridors and empty classrooms of a school. Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the canteen. One tourist brought his own gas mask—not to protect himself from the radiation but simply for photographs and giggles. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


The nuclear accident contaminated tens of thousands of square kilometers, forcing 150,000 people within a 30 km radius to hastily leave their homes. Today, nearly all the small wooden houses in the scattered villages within the Exclusion Zone are abandoned, and nature slowly takes over these remnants of civilization. Korogod, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Kharytina Descha, 92, is one of the several hundred elderly people who have returned to their village homes inside the Exclusion Zone. Although surrounded by devastation and isolation, she prefers to die on her own soil. Teremtsy, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Homegrown tomatoes are washed in the sink at the home of deaf couple Ivan Martynenko, 77, and Gapa Semenenko, 82. After the evacuation, a few hundred elderly evacuees subsequently returned to their former homes, subsisting mostly on produce grown on contaminated soil. Ilyintsy, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Suffering from thyroid cancer, Oleg Shapiro, 54, and Dima Bogdanovich, 13, receive care at a thyroid hospital in Minsk, where surgery is performed daily. As a liquidator, Oleg was exposed to extreme levels of radiation. This was his third thyroid operation. Dima's mother claims that Chernobyl’s nuclear fallout is responsible for her son’s cancer, but his doctors are more cautious; Belarusian officials are often instructed to downplay the severity of the radiation. Minsk, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


As his mother worries, Dima Pyko, 16, receives treatment as a lymphoma patient at the Children’s Cancer Center (Oncology and Hematology Center) in Lesnoy near Minsk. The facility was built with much financial support from Austria as a direct result of cancers occurring in the fallout regions in Belarus after the Chernobyl accident. Lesnoy, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Severely physically and mentally handicapped, 5-year-old Igor was given up by his parents and now lives at a children’s mental asylum, which cares for 150 abandoned and orphaned children with disabilities. It is one of several such facilities in rural southern Belarus receiving support from Chernobyl Children International, an aid organization established by Adi Roche in 1991 in the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Vesnova, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


In the days, weeks and months after the Chernobyl accident, strong winds pushed the radiation released by the explosion northwest into the Gomel region of Belarus, contaminating thousands of square kilometers with the radioactive fallout. Today, girls born around the time of the accident are having children of their own. Many find themselves anxious about the contamination and what it might have done to their reproductive organs and genes. Gomel, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Only 5 years old and suffering from leukemia, Veronika Chechet is hospitalized at the Center for Radiation Medicine in Kiev. Her mother, Yelena Medeyeva, 29, was born four years before the Chernobyl accident in nearby Chernigov, a city heavily affected by nuclear fallout. According to doctors at the hospital, many patients’ conditions are a direct result of the radioactivity released after the accident. Kiev, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


In an orphanage in Belarus, a mentally disabled boy enjoys the scent of a tulip. Children born in the fallout region are said to have a higher rate of birth defects and retardation, a belief supported by many—but not all—in the scientific community. International aid organizations established in the aftermath of the disaster continue to provide much needed financial support to homes and orphanages housing children affected by the fallout. Vesnova, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#


Each year on April 26 in a midnight vigil at the Monument to the Firemen, shift workers in Chernobyl honor those killed by the explosion. Two plant workers died immediately in the blast, and another 28 workers and firemen soon succumbed to radiation poisoning. Thousands more have since died of cancer and the social upheaval caused by mass relocation. Chernobyl, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

Japan's nuclear exclusion zone

What does a sudden evacuation look like? After everyone is gone, what happens to the places they've abandoned? National Geographic Magazine sent Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder to the nuclear exclusion zone around Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant to find out. Evacuated shortly after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami led to a nuclear radiation crisis, the area has been largely untouched, with food rotting on store shelves and children's backpacks waiting in classrooms. The area may face the same fate as the town of Pripyat, Ukraine after the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago. This isn't the first time Guttenfelder has gotten a rare glimpse of a place few see, as The Big Picture featured his photographs of North Korea in an earlier post. Collected here are Guttenfelder's haunting images just released of a place abandoned, and of people dealing with the loss.


In this April 7, 2011 photo, local police wearing white suits to protect them from radiation, search for bodies along a river inside Odaka, Japan. Weeks after authorities had searched for victims and started recovery in other tsunami-hit regions, cleanup crews hadn't yet been dispatched around the crippled reactors because of high radiation levels. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 8, 2011 photo, residents wearing protective suits gather in a gym in Hirono, Japan for a briefing before being escorted to their homes inside the exclusion zone to retrieve a few small items. The government allowed strictly controlled visits by residents and each person had to be tightly screened for radioactive contamination upon return. (AP Photo/AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 24, 2011 photo, residents wearing protective suits inside a bus in Hirono, Japan wait to be escorted to their homes inside the exclusion zone for the first time since the March 11 tsunami to retrieve a few small personal items. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 8, 2011 photo, employees of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) bow deeply as a bus passes by carrying people originally living in towns inside the exclusion zone near the damaged nuclear power plant which is operated by TEPCO. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 26, 2011 photo, Junko Shimizu packs her husband's suit to take out of their evacuated home in Namie, Japan during a government organized visit inside the exclusion zone for families to collect a few of their belongings. The Shimizu family chose to take with them important documents, their best clothing, their daughter's wedding kimono, and family photos, among other important small items. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this July 16, 2011 photo, a noodle restaurant sits abandoned along the main highway near Futaba, Japan, less than six miles from the damaged nuclear power plant. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this July 26, 2011 photo, rice and tempura mildews in bowls left on the tables of a restaurant in Namie, Japan, that was hastily abandoned after the earthquake struck on March 11. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this July 13, 2011 photo, cans of beer lie dislodged inside a flood-damaged vending machine in an abandoned neighborhood in Naraha, Japan inside the nuclear exclusion zone. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this June 7, 2011 photo, residents of a nursing home in Itate, Japan rest in a community room. Itate is located northwest, and just outside of the official nuclear exclusion zone but registers some of the highest levels of radiation in the prefecture and was largely abandoned over the summer. Employees of the nursing home say that some residents of the nursing home elected to stay behind because they are old enough that they do not fear the long-term effects of exposure to radiation. Employees of the facility had mostly moved away but commute to work and rotate their shifts to limit their own exposure. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 10, 2011 photo, the sun rises in the abandoned town of Namie, Japan, near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this June 5, 2011 photo, an animal rights activist wearing a white suit to protect him from radiation, tries to guide a car through an overgrown mountain road near Naraha, Japan as he and his colleagues bypass police barricades to enter the nuclear exclusion zone so they can feed and rescue abandoned animals. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 5, 2011 photo, two stray pet dogs fight in the deserted streets of Okuma, Japan. In the early days of the crisis, roaming farm animals and pets were everywhere inside the no-go zone. But by midsummer, some animals had been rescued and a number of others had perished of starvation and disease. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 5, 2011 photo, Japanese animal rights activists Leo Hoshi (right) and Kei Asanuma grill meat to attract stray dogs as they try to rescue pets that evacuees from the nuclear exclusion zone left behind in the contaminated town of Okuma, Japan just three kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 18, 2011 photo, a farmer's pig rests in a puddle on main street near the train station in central Namie, Japan less then six miles from the crippled nuclear reactor. Farmers across the area had to hastily leave their homes and were unable to evacuate livestock, or return to the irradiated zone to care for them. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 18, 2011 photo, a hog naps after eating a meal inside an abandoned feed store and wandering the deserted streets of radiation-contaminated Namie, Japan. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 8, 2011 photo, Keigo Sakamoto holds two of his dogs in the front yard of his house. Sakamoto, a Japanese egg farmer, lives in Naraha on the 12-mile boundary line of the exclusion zone around the damaged nuclear power station. He is allowed to stay in his home but must bypass the police barricades and lost his livelihood when the neighbors and nearby towns were evacuated. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 9, 2011 photo, a family member's portrait, dislodged and shattered by the March 11 earthquake, hangs on the wall of an abandoned farmhouse in Naraha, Japan within the exclusion zone. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this July 22, 2011 photo, a woman shops for groceries despite the shelves being mostly empty during the final days of a gradual process of evacuation of the town of Itate, Japan. Itate is northwest, and just outside of the official nuclear exclusion zone, but registers some of the highest levels of radiation in the prefecture and was largely abandoned over the summer. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 19, 2011 photo, a stray pet cat rests inside a dryer at an abandoned coin laundry in central Namie, Japan less than six miles from the crippled nuclear reactor. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 8, 2011 photo, a member of the Namie, Japan school board wears a protective suit while measuring radiation levels in a field in his community inside the nuclear exclusion zone. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 26, 2011 photo, a member of the Namie, Japan school board checks the hands of a colleague as they measure radiation levels in a baseball and soccer field in their community inside the nuclear exclusion zone. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 9, 2011 photo, an evacuee lies down in her makeshift temporary home on the floor of the Big Palette convention center in Koriyama, Japan. Tens of thousands of people fled their homes surrounding the damaged nuclear power plant. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 9, 2011 photo, evacuee Nobuko Sanpei, 74, eats rice in her cardboard-box home on a hallway floor in a convention center in Koriyama, Japan. Sanpei, who has since moved to a small apartment, farmed rice with her husband in Tomioka, Japan less than six miles from the power station. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 9, 2011 photo, 69-year-old and tattooed Toyoo Ide bathes with fellow evacuees in a traditional Japanese-style bath set up in a tent by Japan's Self-Defense Forces at an evacuation center in Koriyama, Japan. "There's no water or electricity now, but if there were, I'd go back, radioactivity or not. I'd go back today. I can't live in a stranger's town," said Ide who was a lifelong employee of the nuclear power plant. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 26, 2011 photo, vines grow across the highway near the town of Tomioka, Japan inside the nuclear exclusion zone. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 18, 2011 photo, packaged items lie on the floor of a convenience store in Futaba, Japan near the nuclear power plant. The items were left untouched since the earthquake shook the region on March 11. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 22, 2011 photo, Fuyono Kitayama, 83, cries after her last calf is loaded into a truck as she and her husband prepare to be evacuated from Itate, Japan. Itate is northwest, and just outside of the official nuclear exclusion zone but registers some of the highest levels of radiation in the prefecture and was largely abandoned over the summer. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 24, 2011 photo, ships that washed inland with the tsunami sit along a road inside the nuclear contaminated exclusion zone in Namie, Japan. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


This July 8, 2011 photo shows a waterlogged family photo album left behind in the town of Namie, Japan on Fukushima's tsunami-ravaged coast. In the pictures the children are dressed in fine kimonos worn during a traditional celebration when children turn three, five, and seven. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 8, 2011 photo, empty chairs sit around a theater inside a building next to the mayor's office where residents of Namie, Japan spent the first night after the tsunami struck. Months after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor disaster sent the town of Namie's residents fleeing, few have been allowed to return for brief visits. Public and private buildings have been left largely untouched since the disaster struck. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this July 26, 2011 photo, meal debris and personal effects lie on the floor of the gymnasium at Karino Elementary School, which was used as an evacuation shelter shortly after the nuclear crisis erupted, in the town of Namie, Japan. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


This July 8, 2011 photo shows the damaged gymnasium floor which sank after tsunami waves swept across the neighborhood at a school near the coast in Namie, Japan. The signs on the school stage were placed before the March 11 quake and tsunami in preparation for a graduation ceremony. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this July 10, 2011 photo, a water mark cuts across the backs of theater seats at a planetarium in Namie, Japan after tsunami waves swept across parts of the town. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this July 26, 2011 photo, oranges, which were left behind when the town of Namie, Japan was evacuated, rot on the shelves and floor of the town's main supermarket. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic)


In this June 18, 2011 photo, a mud-caked television remote control device sits on a table above a mud-covered and cracked floor of an abandoned home in Odaka, Japan in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)


In this June 19, 2011 photo, children's desks, backpacks, and school supplies lie abandoned inside an earthquake-rattled primary school classroom in Namie, Japan. Months have gone by since the students fled following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and it is uncertain when or if the children will be able to return or reclaim their possessions. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)#


In this June 21, 2011 photo, police with glowing wands and vests and wearing protective face masks guard a road leading into the nuclear exclusion zone near the city of Minami-Soma, Japan. The sign behind them reads "Keep Out" in Japanese. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)#


In this July 10, 2011 photo, traffic lights blink on the deserted main street in the radiation-contaminated and abandoned town of Namie, Japan. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)#


This July 25, 2011 photo shows the radiation-contaminated and abandoned town of Namie, Japan at dawn. (AP Photographer David Guttenfelder on assignment for National Geographic Magazine)#