‘Doomsday’ Nuclear Submarine Armed With Nuclear-Powered, Nuclear-Tipped Torpedoes Delivered to Russian Navy

Just 'effin great.

I was thinking of getting some new windows; the ones I had my eye on looked terrific in the showroom:

But you know how these things go, you have to see at least a couple of your fenestrations with the glass installed to get a feel for the look of the finished project but with the submarine news, why bother. 

'Effin Russians.

From The U.S. Naval Institute, July 8:

A Russian Navy submarine armed with a strategic nuclear torpedo the size of a school bus was delivered to the Kremlin this week, according to an announcement from the shipyard.

Project 09852 Belgorod is based on a Russian Oscar-class guided-cruise missile submarine that has been altered to accommodate six 80-foot Poseidon nuclear torpedoes that could be armed with a warhead of up to 100 megatons, USNI News previously reported.

The submarine was delivered to the Russian Navy in a ceremony in at the Northern Fleet’s headquarters in Severodvinsk on Friday,

“The Belgorod submarine opens up new opportunities for Russia in conducting various research, allows conducting diverse scientific expeditions and rescue operations in the most remote areas of the world ocean,” according to a statement from Russian Navy chief Adm. Nikolai Anatolyevich Yevmenov.

“The ship is designed to solve diverse scientific problems, conduct search and rescue operations, and can also be used as a carrier of rescue deep-sea and autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles.”

Poseidon Torpedo. Russian Defense Ministry Photo

Absent from the statement were images of the submarine or a description of the Poseidon weapons.....

....MORE

That's a big torpedo.

We've looked at this project a few times over the years and although there is great concern over the effect of an especially dirty nuke exploding in New York harbor, rendering the surrounding area uninhabitable, the real horror is if the Russians strap a cobalt bomb to the tip of the torpedo. One bomb if large enough can end human life on earth:

And in Other News: "Russia Building Coastal Base for ‘Doomsday Nuke’"

Remember the Russian "Doomsday" Autonomous Torpedo? "Military Research Ship Returns After Months on Secret Arctic Mission"

Russia Prepares To Test Nuclear Powered Doomsday Drone Torpedo

Possibly related:
"A Deep-Diving Sub. A Deadly Fire. And Russia's Secret Undersea Agenda"

One of the curious aspects of this event was the comment at the funeral for the dead officers—mainly Captains with at least two Heroes of the Russian Federation, very high ranking and curious in itself—the comment:

"....Russian servicemen ‘averted planetary catastrophe’
during nuclear submarine accident, military official claims at funeral...."

We now know the officer who made this extraordinary statement was himself a Captain so probably authorized to speak. Whether injudicious or deceptive I do not know.....

****

.....Tragic, and potentially disastrous for the immediate area if the reactor casing had opened but not something you'd call "a planetary catastrophe".

Among other reports we've seen (not verified so grain of salt) is that seven of the dead were captains, meaning whatever they were up to was pretty important. The fact the Russians are repairing and returning the boat to its mission would also point in that direction.

So what was the submarine or its submersible—capable of 20,000 foot dives—carrying?

The best guess I've seen is a high-yield, 100 - 200 megaton, cobalt thermonuclear bomb.

A bomb that size, two to four times more powerful than the biggest ever exploded, the Soviet Tsar Bomba (limited to 50 MT to allow the delivery plane a chance to escape) a bomb that size is awful enough but if it is encased in cobalt it becomes the most lethal munition ever built.

Here's MIT physicist Max Tegmark at the HuffPo in 2015:
Dr. Strangelove Is Back: Say ‘Hi’ to the Cobalt Bomb!

It's not a new idea, The New York Times had a story in 1954,  "Now Most Dreaded Weapon, Cobalt Bomb, Can Be Built" which included this line:

It is this type of hydrogen bomb of which Albert Einstein said: "If successful, radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere, and hence annihilation of any life on earth will have been brought with in the range of technical possibilities."

More recently, June 14, 2016 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume 72, 2016 - Issue 4: Security at sea, and under it published:
Would Russia’s undersea “doomsday drone” carry a cobalt bomb?

People smarter than I are speculating this might be what's going on up in the Arctic.

Since I'm probably putting the window project on hold, have at 'em. They're at the Sainte-Chapelle in the Palais de la Cité, Paris.

That Rose Window in the center of the top image tells the story of the Book of Revelation—“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him....", etc.

And in the center of the Rose Window we see Jesus, with a double-edged sword in his teeth:

Images from Visits to Ancient and Medieval Art: Apocalypse Wow (the Apocalypse will be in Technicolor)