Word: bikini
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...atom clans were gathering: physicists, chemists, seismologists, meteorologists, biologists, physicians, oceanographers. The chiefs of all three armed services-General Eisenhower, General Spaatz and Admiral Nimitz-were coming to their party. Ships of all types were loading in U.S. ports, or were already headed for the Marshall Islands, where Bikini, the chosen atoll, awaited Crossroads...
...Nagasaki-type bombs (which forward-looking scientists and the Air Forces now call primitive "Model Ts") would be exploded at Bikini: one in the air, the other on the surface of the lagoon. So far, the plans concerned chiefly the first bomb, scheduled to be dropped about May 15. No one knew what changes of plans would seem prudent before the second bomb exploded. In any case, promised Vice Admiral W. H. P. Blandy, boss of Operation Crossroads, the test would not be rigged to favor the Army, the Navy or the bomb...
Before & After. First scientists to start work at Bikini will be 14 biologists, botanists, oceanographers (and two commercial fishermen, reportedly paid higher wages than the scientists). They sailed from Honolulu last week aboard the U.S.S. Bowditch, to catalogue plant and animal life on & near the atoll. After the explosions, they would make another expedition, to get a before-&-after picture. Years later, they would return to ravished Bikini, to chart the slow, painful process of repopulation...
Long before the Bowditch men finish their work, Seabees will build six 75-ft. steel towers on the little islands around Bikini to support 'batteries of cameras, radio-controlled and sheathed in lead against radiation. A legion of instruments will be exposed on the sand, built into concrete bunkers, or sunk in the lagoon. They will measure radiation, heat, shock and blast. Twenty sunken instruments will measure the waves, which might rise to a height of several hundred feet...
Rats on the Bridge. On that day, the ships in Bikini Lagoon will be manned by "guinea pig" crews: 200 goats, 200 pigs, 4,000 white rats. They will wait their fate in the same positions which a human crew would occupy in battle stations: rats in the turrets, on deck, in engine rooms, gun-tubs and bridges. The goats will be tethered among them. Some of the pigs, whose skin approximates human skin, will be dressed in standard Navy anti-flash suits and smeared with anti-flash lotion. A few will have new and secret protection. There will...