Scary part is, the one they detonated was about half of the actual size.
They were afraid (rightfully so) that the plane wouldn’t be able to outrun a fullsize one and that they may fubar the planet with it as well :rofl
The original, November 1961 A.E.C. estimate of the yield was 55–60 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as 50 Mt. Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist Parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). Although simplistic fireball calculations predicted the fireball would impact the ground, the bomb’s own shock wave reflected back and prevented this.[8] The fireball reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane and was seen almost 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from ground zero. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres (40 mi) high (nearly eight times the height of Mount Everest), which meant that the cloud was well inside the mesosphere when it peaked. The base of the cloud was 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide. All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 kilometres (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were completely destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows and doors; and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third-degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 kilometres (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi). Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage at even greater distances, breaking windows in Norway and Finland. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth.[9] Its seismic body wave magnitude was about 5 to 5.25.[8] The energy yield was around 7.1 on the Richter scale but, since the bomb was detonated in air rather than underground, most of the energy was not converted to seismic waves. The device was trillions of times more powerful per unit volume in comparison to the material in the sun’s fusion core (about 25% of the sun’s radius) and it would take about 10 million years for an equivalent volume of the sun’s core to produce the same amount of energy as came from within the bomb’s casing. The TNT equivalent of the 50 Mt test could be represented by a cube of TNT 312 metres on a side, approximately the height of the Eiffel Tower.
The weight and size of the Tsar Bomba limited the range and speed of the specially modified bomber carrying it and ruled out its delivery by an ICBM (although on December 24, 1962, a 50 Mt ICBM warhead developed by Chelyabinsk-70 was detonated at 24.2 Mt to reduce fallout).[11] In terms of physical destructiveness, much of its high yield was inefficiently radiated upwards into space. It has been estimated that detonating the original 100 Mt design would have released fallout amounting to about 25 percent of all fallout emitted since the invention of nuclear weapons.[12] Hence, the Tsar Bomba was an impractically powerful weapon. It was decided that such a test blast would create too great a risk of nuclear fallout and a near certainty that the release plane would be unable to reach safety before detonation.[13]