Totskoye nuclear exercise

The exercise was conducted on September 14, 1954, at 9.33 a.m.,[4][5] under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov to the north of Totskoye village in Orenburg Oblast, Russia, in the South Ural Military District.

The participants were carefully selected from Soviet military servicemen, informed that they would take part in an exercise with the use of a new kind of weapon, sworn to secrecy, and earned three months salary.

[7] A delegation of high-ranking government officials and senior military officers arrived to the region on the eve of the exercise, which included First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Marshals of the Soviet Union Nikolai Bulganin, Aleksandr Vasilevsky, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Ivan Konev and Rodion Malinovsky.

[3] The exercise involved the 270th Rifle Division,[10] 320 planes, 600 tanks and self-propelled guns, 600 armoured personnel carriers, 500 artillery pieces and mortars and 6,000 automobiles.

The soldiers wore gas masks, protective suits and respirators,[13] special gloves and capes[14] and moved around the territory in armoured personnel carriers, holding a distance of 400[12]–600 metres from the hypocenter and avoiding the most dangerous areas of the explosion site.

Those of them who decided not to return after the operation was complete, were provided with newly built four-room furnished houses near the Samarka river or obtained financial compensation.

[4] A few days afterwards, Soviet scientists received detailed reports on the test and began to study the impact of the nuclear blast on model houses, shelters, vehicles, vegetation and experimental animals affected by the explosion.

[17] The results of the exercise were discussed at a scientific conference at the Kuybyshev Military Academy in Moscow and served as the basis for the Soviet program of defense against nuclear warfare.