Vladimir Putin has unveiled a terrifying new weapon that could, in theory, wipe America’s coast off the map.
It’s called Poseidon — a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed super torpedo. And it’s being described as the most fearsome device Russia has ever built.
Military analysts say it can cruise through oceans for thousands of miles, undetected, before exploding near shorelines and unleashing radioactive tidal waves that could drown cities like New York or Los Angeles in toxic water.
Russian state TV has already bragged that it could ‘plunge Britain to the depths of the sea.’
Now, after fresh Russian tests, President Donald Trump has ordered the US military to restart nuclear weapon testing for the first time in 33 years.
The Cold War is back — and this time, it’s underwater.
Putin, the Russian president, couldn’t resist bragging. Over tea and cakes at a Moscow hospital with soldiers wounded in Ukraine, the Russian leader announced that his country had successfully tested the weapon earlier this week.
‘For the first time, we managed not only to launch it from a carrier submarine,’ he said proudly, ‘but also to activate its nuclear power unit.’
Russia’s Poseidon nuclear-capable system is seen in this animated video released by Russia’s military
The weapon can trigger tsunamis, like the one that ravaged this resort in southern Thailand
Then came the line that sent shivers down Washington’s spine.
‘There is nothing like this,’ Putin declared. ‘There is no way to intercept it.’
He wasn’t exaggerating.
The Poseidon — named after the ancient Greek god of the sea — is said to be 20 meters long, nearly two meters wide and to weigh a staggering 100 tons. It can travel 6,200 miles and move at roughly 115 miles per hour deep underwater, where few sensors can track it.
The device is also designed to carry a two-megaton thermonuclear warhead, enough to flatten Manhattan and send a wall of radioactive seawater miles inland.
In NATO circles, it’s known as ‘Kanyon.’
Russia’s largest submarine, the Belgorod, can carry six of them. Another, the Khabarovsk, is reportedly being built for the same purpose.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and Putin’s loyal deputy, has called it a ‘true doomsday weapon.’
Experts are divided — but most agree the Poseidon represents a sinister twist in modern warfare.
Russia’s Belgorod nuclear submarine can carry six of the dreaded ‘doomsday’ torpedoes
The Poseidon is one of Putin’s biggest chips in nuclear brinkmanship with Trump
Jeffrey Lewis, a respected scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, summed it up bluntly.
‘It’s downright terrifying,’ he wrote in Foreign Policy. ‘We’re talking about a massive, megaton-sized thermonuclear weapon designed to produce significant, long-lasting radiation effects.’
He warned that such a ‘dirty thermonuclear device’ could be the kind of weapon terrorists would dream of stealing.
Christopher A Ford, a former US Assistant Secretary of State, said the weapon could ‘inundate US coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis.’
And Britain’s own spy chief, Lieutenant General James Hockenhull, warned that Poseidon’s ‘global reach’ means it could strike ‘from unexpected directions.’
In Washington, the news sent shockwaves through the Pentagon.
On Thursday, President Trump, currently in South Korea for a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping, took to Truth Social to deliver his response.
‘Because of other countries’ testing programs,’ Trump wrote, ‘I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.’
Then came the boast: ‘Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years.’
Russia immediately denied any recent nuclear tests, insisting its Poseidon trials did not involve live warheads.
The Poseidon is said to be 20 meters long, nearly two meters wide and to weigh a staggering 100 tons
‘Until now, we didn’t know that anyone was testing,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
But few in Washington are convinced.
Russia’s military has conducted three major nuclear-related tests in a single week — a nuclear-powered cruise missile on October 21, readiness drills on October 22 and the Poseidon torpedo test on October 28.
That’s enough to rattle nerves in the West — and, apparently, to jolt Trump into action.
Not everyone believes Poseidon changes the global balance of power.
Jim Mattis, Trump’s former Defense Secretary, once dismissed Putin’s grandstanding as ‘election rhetoric.’
Speaking in 2018, Mattis said the new systems ‘do not change the military balance,’ since both Russia and the US have long been capable of annihilating each other’s cities many times over.
But even skeptics admit the psychological impact is enormous.
‘It’s a terror weapon,’ Ford said in 2022. ‘It’s designed to kill or traumatize the inhabitants of American coastal cities.’
The idea of a nuclear drone torpedo lurking unseen beneath the waves, capable of traveling from the Barents Sea to the Hudson River, is nightmare fuel for strategists everywhere.
For Putin, the Poseidon is more than just a weapon. It’s a symbol.
Since the US pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 and began expanding NATO eastward, Moscow has been obsessed with proving it can still strike back.
It can travel 6,200 miles and move at roughly 115 miles per hour deep underwater
When Putin first revealed Poseidon and the Burevestnik cruise missile in 2018, he called them a direct response to ‘Western aggression.’
The Burevestnik and Poseidon tests are intended to send a clear message that Russia, in Putin’s words, will never bow to Western pressure over the war in Ukraine.
In 2022, Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov illustrated exactly what Poseidon could do.
On live television, he showed computer animations of the torpedo slamming into Britain’s coastline.
A vast wave rose up, sweeping over the country and ‘plunging Britain to the depths of the sea,’ he said, turning the island into a ‘radioactive desert.’
It was pure propaganda — but the imagery stuck.
The notion of a weapon that could wipe out entire coastlines in minutes, leaving behind poisoned water and ruined cities, is enough to make any leader sit up straight.
Poseidon may never actually be used. Most experts believe it’s mainly a deterrent — a warning shot in the ongoing game of nuclear brinkmanship. But its arrival marks the dawn of a new era: one of autonomous underwater warfare, where silent, self-powered drones could deliver apocalyptic destruction.
Lewis called it ‘the stuff of nightmares,’ and in a world where Putin and Trump are once again flexing their nuclear muscles, nightmares suddenly feel a little too real.
