What if the Tsar Bomba's maximum yield was reached?

[happysupercooldude99]

Because only one Tsar Bomba was ever built and tested, the bomb's full capabillities couldn't be explored. There are theories that if the bomb had included a uranium-238 tamper, it could have exceeded its original yield of about 50 megatons of TNT and detonate at more than 100. That's 100,000 kilotons. 

The original bomb was already powerful enough to nearly crash the plane that dropped it (despite being 115km away) and to cause earthquakes and shatter windows 900 kilometers away. The bomb destroyed a small village 55km from ground zero and shockwaves were observed as far away as 700 km away.

I can't remember if megatons work on a logarithmic scale, but I want to try to figure out what would have happened if the bomb had a yield of 100 megatons and detonated at the same spot.

[Bannanachair]

Ten people would have died and seventy would have been injured.

The bomb test itself would not have changed much, but the existence of the bomb would have had an impact. It is powerful enough to turn everything in Manhattan from the flatiron district to the financial district into a crater. If dropped in downtown manhattan, in addition to doing that, it would have caught everything up to 72nd street in its fireball, all of Hoboken and Weehawken would be caught in the fireball and half of Brooklyn would be in a similar situation. Newark, Elizabeth, Fort Lee (where I am right now), Yonkers are much more would be caught in the 5psi airburst range, leading to widespread destruction of buildings. Glass windows would shatter as far away as Trenton, NJ and Bridgeport, CT. Eight million people would die.

Now, the Tsar Bomba like that existing would not have necessitated its use, but its presence would have been a confidence booster for the soviets, and may have made Cold War tensions worse. On the other hand, there was already an existential threat of being nuked on both sides, so maybe it wouldn't have made an impact.

[happysupercooldude99]

Belyusha Guba, the largest town on Novaya Zemlya, would probably be pretty messed up. Chances are there would be broken windows and damaged structures.