Are Radioactive Nuclear Tsunamis Real Or Just Propaganda?

Plumbing the depths of the world’s nuclear arsenals

Grant Piper
4 min readMay 27, 2022
Russian submarine K-560 (Public domain)

Russian state television recently made claims that Russia could destroy London with a radioactive nuclear tsunami. The foreign hosts boasted that Russia has massive nuclear torpedoes that could be stealthily deployed and detonated off the coast of major cities. The explosion would result in a massive radioactive wave that would come ashore and flood everything.

This scenario sounds like something out of a doomsday movie, not a modern military arsenal. Are nuclear tsunamis a real thing? Does Russia have the capability to make good on its threat to swamp the United Kingdom with radioactive waves?

According to the Pentagon, Russia could indeed have these capabilities.

Status-6 Underwater Nuclear Drone

In 2015, information was uncovered that Russia was developing a new underwater nuclear drone. The drone was called Status-6 and at first, US military officials thought it might have been a feint or a distraction. The project sounded too ambitious. Status-6 was an “autonomous, nuclear-powered, and nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle” capable of delivering nuclear missiles and nuclear torpedoes.

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Grant Piper
Grant Piper

Written by Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.

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