Word: bomb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...enjoyed your short dissertation, "Aristotle and the Bomb" [Oct. 13], in which Sidney Hook so convincingly stated the principal issue involved in the question: Red, Dead or Heroic? For if we but strived toward mere simple existence as our only end in life, would we not merely be acting as an irrational animal and contrary to our very nature as that of a rational human being...
...thermonuclear attack were to achieve complete surprise, the first warning would be the blinding flash, visible for hundreds of miles, of the bomb itself. Within an area of up to one mile from ground zero, everything would be vaporized; destruction and death, even to those in the deepest shelters, would be certain. Initial heat radiation would be released in two separate pulses within a few seconds and would incinerate virtually everything within a five-mile radius. Although fog or industrial smog would greatly decrease the effect, exposed persons would suffer third-degree burns out to ten miles and blistering...
Finally, after the heat and the shock waves, would come the most deadly of all the bomb's effects: radioactive fallout...
...When the bomb first burst, it would suck up millions of tons of earth and other debris, carrying them to over 100,000 ft. into the air and saturating them with more than 200 species of radioactive particles. Depending on wind and other conditions, these particles would fall back in lethal quantities over an area extending perhaps 150 miles from ground zero. As a rough rule of thumb, lag between the bomb's flash and the beginning of fallout might be figured at one minute for each quarter-mile from ground zero; thus, at 30 miles it would...
...inevitably as fallout follows the bomb, so have come profiteers, pitchmen, manufacturers of products that prove ineffective. "Lifesaving kits" contain a salve supposed to cause radiation to ricochet harmlessly off the body; in fact, no salve, ointment or grease has the slightest value as a fallout protector (neither does any of several brands of "antiradiation pills"). Jerry-built shelters bear the slogan "CD-approved" or other meaningless legends; actually, the OCDM approved nothing, merely set the standard for shelters. A widely advertised "fallout suit," selling at the rate of 500 a week for $21.95 each, actually provides no more protection...