Word: fallout
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...Does fallout from nuclear testing endanger the health of the world? Last week only Soviet tests were spraying deadly fission products into the atmosphere, but 20-odd shots had been fired in only seven weeks, and from Japan to Norway, from Canada to India, fears and protests formed an anxious chorus. Statesmen and housewives asked scientists for reassurance. They got little: the scientists were worried...
Deadly Balloon. No responsible authority believes that fallout from the Soviet tests is strong enough yet to damage health. But authorities point out that weather and other uncertain factors can concentrate fallout to high local levels. And the worst is still to come: most of the dangerous radioactive products of the Soviet tests are still floating high in the stratosphere. No one can predict how much harm they will do when they eventually come down...
When a bomb in the megaton range explodes within a few hundred feet of the ground, as some of the Soviet tests presumably did, it produces three kinds of fallout...
...LOCAL FALLOUT. This is mostly the coarse, comparatively heavy material blasted out of the bomb crater. Although extremely dangerous, it spreads only a few hundred miles from the explosion. It does not get into the long-term circulation of the atmosphere, and it does not threaten the earth as a whole...
...fireball has expanded to full size (1½ miles diameter for a one-megaton bomb), the cloud of hot gas rises like a balloon, dragging with it a column of dust. Some of the dust falls to the ground within a few hours, becoming part of the local fallout. The rest climbs high in the atmosphere with the cooling, condensing cloud...