Vladimir Putin likes to portray himself as a man’s man. That often means riding a horse with his shirt off, hunting in the Siberian Tyva region, holding a big gun with his top off or fly fishing, you guessed it, with his top off. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Russia has built a new nuclear missile — known as Satan 2 obviously — which is big enough to blow up the whole of Texas.On Tuesday, Russia released the first photos of the new nuclear missile. The Satan 2 (or the RS-28 Sarmat to give the missile its less terrifying name) will replace Russia’s current nuclear weapon, the SS-18, which is now almost 30 years old, built during the final years of the Soviet Union and not capable of matching today’s sophisticated missile defence systems. During a period of strained relations with much of the West, Russia seems to be looking to beef up its weapons system. President Putin recently suspended a treaty with Washington that would have seen Russia dispose of Plutonium originally intended for nuclear weapons.To get a sense of the power and capabilities of Satan 2, it’s best to look at the figures:
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- 10,000 – the number of kilometres Satan 2 can travel, according to the Daily Mail, meaning it can reach all of Europe, as well as the east and west coasts of the U.S.
- 7 – kilometres per second is how fast the Satan 2 can travel, meaning it could reach London from Moscow in under 6 minutes
- 40 – megatons, which makes it 2,000 times more powerful than the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during world war 2
- 16 – nuclear warheads meaning it would be capable of destroying an area the size of Texas, or the whole of France.
- 2018 – when the new missile is expected to go into service.