Word: gigatons
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What was the weapon? Was it what famed U.S. Physicist Ralph Lapp calls a "gigaton" bomb-a nuclear weapon packing the power of a billion tons of TNT that could be detonated 100 miles off the U.S.'s coastline and still set off a 50-ft. tidal wave that would sweep across much of the entire North American continent? Was it a cobalt bomb that would send a deadly cloud sweeping forever about the earth? A "death ray" or a germ bomb? Or even an empty boast? Two days later Nikita Khrushchev said it wasn't nuclear...
...Russians build a 100-megaton bomb? There is no reason why not. Increasing the power of an H-bomb is not a simple matter of adding more of the explosive ingredients; careful designing and testing are called for too. But U.S. experts agree that the U.S. could easily build "gigaton" (billion-ton) bombs if there were a need for them. So could the Russians...
...require the cultivation of high-yielding algae on every rooftop to feed the elbow-to-elbow masses. But even more dangerous than biodeto-nation is "sophidetonation": the ever-quickening accumulation of scientific knowledge. One likely effect of sophidetonation, says Cole, is a war fought with megaton or perhaps gigaton* nuclear weapons, and although this might serve as a drastic check on biodetonation, it would not leave the earth a pleasant place to live...
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