Word: megaton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Fail Safe is too absurd to be realistic, and too simple minded to be a commentary on world politics. Its only traces of realism are recognizable titles and place names, like President, 20 megaton bomb, and Moscow. The story would have lost all its impact if a fictitious city instead of New York had been destroyed. Perhaps a bombing of Hollywood would have been more appropriate...
...Your diagram of tactical nuclear weapons graphically illustrates the steps of escalation each side would inevitably be forced to take once the very smallest A-weapon had been used. As part of the same inexorable process, strategic weapons must follow until the "ultimate" (100-megaton?) bomb would be launched by the side still able to do it. This elementary fact must be brought home to those who still cannot grasp...
Actually, Goldwater's estimate had some basis in fact-as far as it went. Goldwater figures that the U.S. Strategic Air Command's estimated 1,080 first-line bombers can carry 24-mega-ton bombs, or, 25,920 megatons of destructive power. He places total megaton capability of U.S. missiles at 2,650. Goldwater assumes that all but about 50 of the SAC planes will have been phased out by the mid-'70s. From Pentagon announcements, furthermore, Goldwater researchers place the mid-'70s missile force at 1,000 Minuteman and 656 Polaris missiles, each capable...
When placed just right, it throws most of the rubble over the lip of a steep-sided hole. A 100-kiloton shot should be placed 600 ft. below the surface, while a one-megaton shot calls for a depth...
...small but real chance of catastrophic accident rides with many a military and scientific program. Nuclear weapons have already been involved in at least ten accidents - always, so far, without exploding, though one 24-megaton bomb jettisoned by a B-52 was reportedly found in a field with five of its six safety interlocks set off. Such peace able activities as weather control have taken risks with equally destructive energies, as when the early Project Cirrus seeded an Atlantic hurricane with dry ice, only to have it veer 120° to sideswipe a thinly populated stretch of Georgia coast...