Word: bomb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...detonator of a thermonuclear bomb is a fission bomb containing plutonium or uranium 235, and its explosion sets off the main charge of fusion material, which is essentially deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Fission detonators are expensive, but a single one can explode any amount of comparatively cheap fusion material. Result: the bigger the bomb, the cheaper it is in terms of explosive yield. Clark figures that a ten-megaton bomb costs somewhat more than $1,000,000, mostly for the detonator. But further increases in yield cost only about $5,000 per megaton, so that the price...
Among the techniques: >A nuclear bomb could be loaded on a submarine or barge and planted on the ocean bottom near the coast of a target country. Exploded under two miles of water (at the aggressor's will and from great distance), a 20,000-megaton bomb would stir up a wave whose crest would still be 100 feet high after it had traveled 200 miles. It would wash most coastlines bare and ride far inland...
...better Doomsday effect, large bombs could be made as radioactive as possible. One way is to "salt" them with sodium, which becomes intensely radioactive when it absorbs neutrons. Clark figures that a 20,000-megaton bomb of this kind would contaminate 200,000 square miles (four times the area of New York State) so heavily that even people in basement shelters would surely die. But since the half life of radioactive sodium 24 is only 15 hours, the bomb's products would lose much of their punch before the wind could carry them around the earth. Thus, a sodium...
...More deadly yet would be large fission-fusion-fission bombs whose outer blankets of cheap uranium 238 yield energy as well as deadly fission products. Clark believes that any nuclear power could easily destroy a nation with the close-range fallout effect from this type of bomb, but he thinks that the human race as a whole would be more resistant...
...furor in New York has hardly been noticed in Harvard. No faculty members have placed ads in the New York Times or circulated petitions of protest among their colleagues. Perhaps they have been too busy worrying about their research, their students, Cubs or bomb shelters to take an active part in an academic freedom controversy. Or perhaps, having observed the indifference with which Black Muslim, Communist, and National Review speakers have been received at Harvard, they dont think the issue is worth the trouble...