Totskoye nuclear exercise, 1954
Soviet Totsk nuclear test, 1954, fireball and mushroom cloud. Also known as the Totskoye nuclear exercise and Joe 8, this test of a Soviet nuclear bomb took place on 14 September 1954 near Totskoye village in the Orenburg region of Russia. Around 45,000 troops were stationed in trenches close to ground zero and then marched through the area where the blast took place, wearing protective gear and radiation dose monitors, and engaging in military exercises. The atom bomb (an RDS-4 nuclear fission design) had a yield of 40 kilotons, was dropped by a Tu-4 bomber, and exploded at 06:33 UTC at a height of 350 metres above the ground.