Word: downwinder
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...Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Physicist Ralph E. Lapp describes the radioactive aftereffects of the U.S. H-bomb tests in the Pacific. Dr. Lapp figures that a is-megaton H-bomb exploded near the ground will make an area of 4,000 square miles, mostly downwind, so radioactive that all people in it will get a "serious to lethal dose" in the first day alone. If they cannot evacuate, they will get more. Dr. Lapp believes that the explosion of 50 superbombs could blanket the entire northeastern U.S. "in a serious to lethal radioactive...
...tawny fields of Burgundy. In the rear cockpit, a Russian parachutist carefully checked his equipment. When he spotted a white chalk cross on the ground below, he stepped off into space. For 20 seconds he fell free. Then his nylon chute blossomed overhead and he began to drift downwind, past his target. Tugging skillfully at his suspension lines, he spilled air from his chute and slipped back toward the cross. He touched down only four yards short of the mark...
...triangular route. Into his French-built Air 102 glider stepped a foreign contestant, France's youngish (25) Gerard Pierre. As he checked his instrument panel, ground crewmen raised his single-wheeled craft's grounded wingtip and clamped a tow cable to its fuselage. Nearly a half-mile downwind, a 115 h.p. winch roared up and began to reel in the long steel cable, slowly at first, finally at a screaming speed...
...atom bomb detonated underground would leave a radioactive crater which would be dangerous indefinitely, and the "hot" dust blown into the air might paint a broad band of silent death many miles downwind. The only safe way to simulate such an explosion is to use a "low-order" chemical explosive and scale up its effects theoretically to full atomic proportions. Last week at desolate Buckhorn Wash, Utah, Army engineers came the closest yet to simulating an atomic blast...
...enemy might explode his bombs on the ground or, particularly in an attack on river-girdled New York City, might set them off under water deliberately sacrificing some of their blast effect. In such cases, radioactive contamination would become a massive problem. The deadly dust or spray drifting slowly downwind would not be obviously dangerous. Its radiation could not be detected by any human sense, and a man might absorb a fatal dose of it before feeling any ill effect...