Totskoye Range Nuclear Tests (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Totskoye is a military range established in September 1941 to the north of Totskoye village, about 40 km from Buzuluk in Orenburg Oblast, Russia (in Southern Urals) under the jurisdiction of the South Urals Military District. In 1954, nuclear bombing tests were performed in Totskoye range during the training exercise Snezhok (Snowball) with some 45,000 people, Soviet soldiers and prisoners, who were exposed to radiation from a bomb twice as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima nine years earlier. The exercise was commanded by the Marshal of the Soviet Union, George Zhukov. At 9:33 a.m. on 14 September 1954, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber dropped a 40 kiloton atomic weapon from 8,000 m (25,000 feet). The bomb exploded 350 m (1,200 feet) above Totskoye range 13 km from Totskoye.