Word: bomb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB...
Deep in the heart of Texas is a man who has become even more of a martyr than the heroes of the Alamo. He is Major Claude Eatherly, who, according to ban-the-bomb legend, led the atomic raid on Hiroshima, repented what he had done and, racked by guilt, turned to a life of petty crime to punish himself. Between times, he discoursed on the total sin of the atom bomb. Wrote Edmund Wilson: "He seems to have been unique among bombers in having paused to take account of his responsibility and in attempting to do something to expiate...
Eatherly never dropped a bomb in World War II. He served Stateside until his 509th Composite Group was picked for the atomic raids. He was assigned to be weather scout on the Hiroshima run. He checked the visibility over Hiroshima, then radioed the go-ahead to the Enola Gay, carrying the bomb. Returning to base without seeing the explosion, Eatherly was virtually ignored, while the crew of the Enola Gay got all the glory...
...quite so warlike as Moscow pretends, nor Russia quite so peaceable. The Chinese attack Moscow for cowardice in signing the test ban treaty with the imperialists, and they have spoken cynically about the possibility of surviving a nuclear war, but after all, Russia, not China, has the Bomb. Russia, not China, risked nuclear war in Cuba and came close to risking it in Berlin...
Tazieff lectures on his esoteric specialty at the University of Brussels, but drops his regular work whenever he gets a chance to confront an active volcano. Protected by fiber-glass armor that can deflect a molten bomb weighing 100 Ibs., he carefully stalks into the craters, sometimes close to the roaring throats, and plants seismographs to measure the heartbeat of lava rising deep under the mountain. He samples gases with little glass tubes poked into hot ash, studies the unstable build-up of fresh cinders. So far, Tazieff has escaped without serious injury...