Word: megaton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...full-scale nuclear attack on the U.S. would without doubt be many times the size of the 1,446-megaton attack that is estimated to kill 50 million Americans. A full-scale nuclear attack would probably kill everybody, whether or not fallout shelters had been built...
...Soviets do, for clear-cut U.S. nuclear superiority is the best deterrent to attack. A few further nuclear tests, they say, would boost threefold the blast power of the two key U.S. deterrent missiles - the mobile, solid-fueled Polaris and Minuteman -which now carry warheads of one-half megaton, v. an estimated eight megatons for Soviet ICBMs. Testing would also speed development of a next-generation "neutron bomb." Now on the drawing boards, that weapon is designed to bom bard a specific area with showers of le thal, invisible neutron "bullets." Because its fusion reaction is to be triggered...
...fill this need, the Navy developed its submarine-launched Polaris, an intermediate range (1,200 miles) solid-fueled missile. The Air Force went to work on Minuteman, designed to be fired some 6,000 miles from bases in the continental U.S. Like Polaris. Minuteman packs a half-megaton punch (only one-third of the explosive load of the fully developed, liquid-fueled Atlas and only one-fifth of the giant warhead of the liquid Titan). Like Polaris and the Army's tactical Pershing missile, Minuteman is cheaper and far simpler to handle than its liquid-fueled predecessors, requires...
...generations and 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...
...When Los Alamos Physicist Donald R. Westervelt learned about this, he designed a detection system based upon it. A few dozen of his detectors spotted around the earth would be an adequate network. Some of them would always be under clear skies. In daylight they would detect a one-megaton burst 2,000,000 miles from the earth, much farther at night. Cost of each station...