Word: kiloton
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...Even had they known more, could officials ever have contemplated the scale of this thing? The blasts were so powerful that counter-terrorism teams have begun asking the airlines for fuel loads on the plane; aviation experts have been asked to calculate the explosive yield of each blast -in kiloton terms. The reason? Washington wants to see if the planes amounted to weapons of mass destruction. "What we want people to realize is they?ve crossed a line here," said a U.S. intelligence official. In fact, some senior administration officials are considering drafting a declaration of war, although the State...
...Pakistani soldiers already die each week in cross-border skirmishes. India lashes back, sending its troops across the Pakistani border to chase militants. Islamabad retaliates with heavy artillery shelling. Conventional war breaks out and quickly escalates to the point where both sides resort to their nukes, and 15-kiloton, Hiroshima-size bombs are dropped by warplanes or lofted by missiles on densely populated cities like Bombay and Karachi. Many thousands of civilians die, and deadly fallout spreads throughout the subcontinent...
...news on CNN a few minutes later, a staff member wails, "Oh, my God. That's not possible. We've been watching that site." Not very well, apparently. Less than 48 hours later, Washington is surprised again when India sets off two more test blasts--of much smaller, sub-kiloton yield--defiantly going ahead after the Administration has warned India to expect sanctions. The five tests reveal that India is designing a nuclear arsenal ranging from bomblets for blasting open a mountain pass to killer warheads able to obliterate cities. "The Indian leadership has gone berserk," says Pakistani Foreign Minister...
...possible to quietly detonate a100 kiloton nuclear bomb, France did it Sunday off the Fangataufa Atoll in French Polynesia. "Because Greenpeace's boats have been confiscated, the organization currently has a greatly reduced capability to protest. The French government has very shrewdly focused on this strategic weakness, and was able to explode the bomb with very little resistance," reports TIME's James Geary. Hours before the explosion, a blast more than five times as powerful as the one that levelled Hiroshima, the French seized another Greenpeace vessel, the fourth since the tests began last month at the Mururoa Atoll...
...that if the U.S. lifts its current ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, Russia will also resume testing. Currently, the U.S. military is prohibited from testing until July 1, when the moratorium mandated by Congress ends. The Pentagon wants to resume small-scale testing of bombs under 1 kiloton (explosive force=1,000 tons of TNT). Yeltsin's warning is a signal that if that happens, the nuclear race could be back...