Word: deserting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Israel, a harassed and overcrowded Utopia-in-the-desert, is now shaking down to a grim fight to hang on, if possible, until long-term improvements begin to pay off. Israel's scant monthly food ration -four ounces of meat, two pounds of potatoes, a pound of frozen cod-makes oldtime British austerity seem almost pleasurable. Unrationed goods are priced skyhigh: $20 for cotton overalls, $8 for a pair of sandals, a month-and-a-half's wages for a radio...
...grey-green desert basin at Yucca Flat, Nev., some 1,500 G.I.s and technical observers huddled face down in deep, narrow trenches. If they were tense and nervous, they had reason. Never before had willing men waited so near the site of an imminent atomic explosion. Only two miles away, an A-bomb (officially called a "Nuclear Diagnostic Device") was perched on a tall steel tower, 300 feet above "Ground Zero...
...through their heavy protective goggles and listened to the ominous "Count Down." "Zero minus five seconds," chanted the loudspeaker, "four three, two, one, zero." There was a searing flash of light and heat like the rising of a new sun. Then a dirty orange fireball rose lazily over the desert. Now visible were the high-climbing, vertical trails left by the rockets set off to measure the passage of the shock wave (see opposite page). Almost half a minute later, the shock wave itself roared out to the observers-a violent bang and a rush of air against tense faces...
...radioactive cloud drifted eastward. A thick, dense column of dust reached into the sky behind it; below, a flat lake dust covered vast acres of desert. An hour passed before Army helicopters brought surprisingly chipper G.I.s from the trenches. Only two miles from Ground Zero, heat and light had passed over them as they crouched face down. The grey dust cloud they saw later, they were told was not dangerously radioactive. They had learned the lesson that atom bombs may spare careful soldiers who keep their distance and are well...
...dust cloud with its waning radio activity drifted harmlessly eastward ,but the ruins left behind at Yucca Flat impressed some observers more than others. For an area nearly a mile and a half long and almost as wide, the desert had been made dangerous with radioactivity. Hopefully, FCDA men announced that the bomb shelters in the cellar of House Two would have saved real inhabitants. Perhaps said dubious AEC officials, but it would be helpful to remember a few facts. The "Diagnostic Device" was less powerful than the primitive A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It probably packed the punch...