Word: megaton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...relatively small nuclear devices the U.S. is likely to continue underground tests, but the more powerful sod busters of the future will have to be tested in the open because the earth's crust cannot hold them. Former Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard F. Libby estimates that a ten-megaton test would need to be exploded 18 miles below the surface. At this depth the rock is probably so plastic that digging a test hole would be impossible. Another possibility is to fire tests above the earth's atmosphere, as the U.S. did on a small scale in Project...
What U.S. weapons have already been tested? At the start of the test moratorium in the fall of 1958, the U.S. had a family of well-tested bombs ranging in power from less than one kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT) up to 20 megatons (equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT). The 20-megaton weapons are too heavy for existing U.S. missiles, but more than one of them can be carried by far-ranging B-52 bombers. U.S. authorities, both civilian and military, see little advantage in more powerful bombs, such as the 100-megaton horror mentioned by Khrushchev...
...missile could be rigged to deliver a bigger bang; a decrease in weight of the current-strength warhead would allow an increase in the missile's range. The same effect would show up all along the line; a B-52 could carry twice as many improved 20-megaton bombs. The U.S. has many new weapons systems with nuclear warheads that have yet to be explosively tested. No ICBM, for instance, has carried a nuclear warhead out of the atmosphere and back again and demonstrated that after its high ride the warhead will still explode. No antimissile nuclear weapon...
...sentences later, Moscow showed that it was more interested in terrorizing the world's citizens than in preserving their health. Bluntly, the government declared that Russian scientists were working on "superpowerful" bombs in the 100-megaton range (the equivalent of 100 million tons of TNT), made to fit rockets "similar to those used by Major Y. A. Gagarin and Major G. S. Titov for their unrivaled cosmic flights." In case somebody missed the point, Russia's army newspaper Red Star explained that nuclear weapons of such power could wipe out anyone anywhere: "No super-deep shelter can save...
Minuteman. Or, U.S. scientists guessed, perhaps it was the "small" trigger device for the huge 100-megaton monster that Khrushchev boasted was being designed...