Word: megatonned
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Finally releasing details last week, the Department of Defense and the AEC called Teak and Orange "by far the most spectacular shots ever fired by the U.S." They were also the first megaton (i.e., equivalent to 1,000,000 tons of TNT) bombs ever exploded by the U.S. in the stratosphere...
...electromagnetic effects of the blasts showed that the upper atmosphere was so disturbed by ionizing radiation "that some radio waves were absorbed or scattered" for hours afterward. Result: communications were upset or blacked out over an area "at least" 3,000 miles in diameter. Obvious conclusion: a megaton bomb exploded high overhead just ahead of an all-out missile attack could disrupt vital defense communications for a few crucial hours...
...second-stringers not only on his conversations with Khrushchev but on the techniques of "informal diplomacy" while abroad. Next morning Humphrey went to the White House, spent more than an hour with Dwight Eisenhower, reported that Khrushchev had told him that the Soviet Union has a five-megaton nuclear weapon that employs only one-tenth as much "dirty" fissionable triggering material as old bombs, although U.S. intelligence has picked up no evidence that any such "clean" weapon has ever been tested...
...exploded a 20-megaton bomb, has succeeded in reducing fallout from H-bombs by at least...
...ground. Within weeks, the deep cylindrical pit will be paved with concrete so thick that months must pass before it cures. Then the U.S. Air Force will slide a 90-ft., 117-ton monster into its perpendicular den and seal it with heavy concrete doors against the megaton shocks of man-made thermonuclear quakes. The monster is the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile, the first weapon in Air Force history to go underground...