The Tsar Bomba however differs from its parent design &mdash; the RN202 &mdash; in a number of places . The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage bomb with Trutnev-Babaev second - and third-stage design , with a yield of . This is equivalent to about 1,570 times the combined energy of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki , 10 times the combined energy of all the conventional explosives used in World War II , one quarter of the estimated yield of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa , and 10 % of the combined yield of all nuclear tests to date . A three-stage hydrogen bomb uses a fission bomb primary to compress a thermonuclear secondary , as in most hydrogen bombs , and then uses energy from the resulting explosion to compress a much larger additional thermonuclear stage . There is evidence that the Tsar Bomba had several third stages rather than a single very large one
1883 eruption of Krakatoa
1883 eruption of Krakatoa
Tsar Bomba