Word: fissionability
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...early-type fission bombs killed mostly by blast and heat, which people who had just experienced World War II knew about. Radioactivity, however, was new, and therefore doubly feared. Undetected by any of man's senses, it killed mysteriously. The few Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died of radiation sickness received more horrified sympathy than the many who were burned to death or blown to smoking shreds...
...special cases (e.g., an A-bomb exploding in a harbor and drenching a city with "hot" spray) there was little to fear from radioactivity. The bomb's initial burst of gamma rays affected few people. If the bomb exploded high in the air (the approved position), its radioactive fission products were carried aloft and dissipated in the upper atmosphere. When they sifted down thousands of miles away, they could be detected by sensitive instruments, but their activity was far too weak to damage human wellbeing...
This happy situation has changed radically with the growing quantity of fission bombs and the recent development of the hydrogen (fusion) bomb. Not much has been explained about the radioactivity left in the air by the hydrogen bomb. There is a good chance that each old-style fission bomb, or perhaps a fraction of each, can be upgraded to an H-bomb, 1,000 times as powerful. The fission bomb will act as a detonator, starting the explosion of "fusion" ingredients such as heavy hydrogen and lithium. The end product of the fusion reaction is likely to be rich...
Retreat into Mystery. Two weeks after Fermi reached New York, he heard about the famous telegram telling Niels Bohr that uranium fission had been discovered in Germany. Fermi knew what it meant: that enormous energy might be extracted from the uranium atom. Soon he was part of the vast U.S. attempt to release that energy in an atomic bomb...
...that Russia has passed into the hands of a group of men who are displaying striking flexibility and adaptability in their handling of domestic and foreign problems." They also, he says, have "a large measure of confidence" as a result of "possession of the hydrogen and atomic fission bombs, a fine fleet of jet aircraft [and] industry to match paces with the U.S." In foreign policy they are determined to convince the world that Russia "is now ruled by a group of 'reasonable men.'" Many Moscow diplomats, said he, "believe that American policy is suffering severely from...