Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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World War III has happened again, and as usual, the earth has been nuked to dusty desert ruled by violent brigand bands...
...commercial aired on New York City radio stations, a bank uses a skit to encourage listeners to put their money in savings accounts. In the sketch, a wife berates her husband as they stand in the midst of a barren desert. "You honestly believed you could resell this land at a profit?" she groans. "There's only one person in the world who'd buy it, and you already have." In fact, thousands of others have bought such desolate plots. According to an indictment handed down by a federal grand jury last week, 77,000 such "semiarid desert...
...AMREP Corp. of New York City with 70 counts of mail fraud and ten counts of violating the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act. Since 1961, it charges, AMREP (an amalgamation of the American Realty and Petroleum Corp. with the Great Sweet Grass Oils Co.) has managed to sell desert plots to about 45,000 people for a total of more than $200 million. AMREP's initial investment for the parched land was about $17.8 million. To hype the value of the property, the indictment charges, the company added some showcase improvements in a development called Rio Rancho, which...
...coldness of space, the probe's instruments survived 53 minutes on the torrid surface-three minutes longer than the last Russian lander. They radioed a flood of data, including the first photographic image of the hidden Venusian landscape-a jumble of large jagged rocks rather than the sandy desert expected by some experts. Said Project Scientist Boris Nepoklonov: "We thought there couldn't be rocks on Venus [because] they would all be annihilated by constant wind and temperature erosion, but here they are, with edges absolutely not blunted. This picture makes us reconsider all our concepts of Venus...
...more immediate hazards, however, are physical. The wide-ranging temperatures cause respiratory infections: chronic colds, coughs and sore throats. The highly chlorinated water that is piped to the desert often brings on stomach cramps and nausea. Dehydration comes on quickly during the daytime heat, and unless the Americans drink much more water than they are accustomed to, they will be vulnerable to sunstroke and fainting spells...