Word: megatons
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...above chart indicates the radius (in miles) of the area of 100% mortality, with or without fallout shelters. For example, if a 10 megaton bomb burst over the Harvard Yard, Concord would be within the area completely destroyed...
...Nikita informed his gasping audience, has 40,000 atomic or nuclear warheads.† This, he cried, is more than enough. "During the first blow, 700-800 million people would die," cried the Russian Premier. "Dear Comrades, I'll tell you a secret. Our scientists have developed a 100-megaton bomb. If we were to drop it on France or West Germany, it would destroy you too. An empire on earth is preferable to a kingdom in heaven...
Most longtime students of Soviet politics doubt this. They believe that there is still something like collective leadership in Russia, hence that Khrushchev may have been egged on by militarists-or for that matter, urged to be careful by the cautious. Certainly the man who has exploded a 50-megaton bomb in a test over the Arctic, might, by ordinary standards, be considered a hard-liner himself. On balance, there is reason to assume that Khrushchev was behind the Cuban project from start to finish...
...time of truth arrived when he received sheaves of photographs taken during the preceding few days by U.S. reconnaissance planes over Cuba. They furnished staggering proof of a massive, breakneck buildup of Soviet missile power on Castro's island. Already poised were missiles capable of hurling a megaton each-or roughly 50 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb-at the U.S. Under construction were sites for launching five-megaton missiles...
...fuel tanks and mess halls. Chillingly clear to the expert eye were some 40 slim, 52-ft., medium-range missiles, many of them already angled up on their mobile launchers and pointed at the U.S. mainland. With an estimated range of 1,200 miles, these missiles, armed with one-megaton warheads, could reach Houston. St. Louis -or Washington. The bases were located at about ten spots, including Sagua la Grande and Remedios on the northern coast, and San Cristobal and Guanajay on the western end of the island (see map above, and pictures on following eight pages). Under construction were...