Word: meteorics
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...Guinea stand by their gear. On one of these days, a small, swift object rises steeply from the Kamchatka Peninsula. It soars into space on a curve 500 miles high, curves downward even more swiftly toward the danger area. For a few seconds it glows like a meteor, trailing a bright streak of flame. Then out of the sea rises a dome of fire 20 miles across. The sea boils as if a volcano had poked through the crust of the earth, and a cloud of radioactive death drifts downwind. An earth wave jangles seismographs in San Francisco, St. Louis...
These are the missile people, high technologists all. Some of them brood with pencil and paper; others contrive tiny instruments of inconceivable delicacy; others work with great rocket motors that shake the earth with their roars. All of them are racing that day when an enemy-made meteor glows like a spark in the sky. Long before that day, the U.S. must have its own deadly "birds" and many other monsters...
...even worse, and it smacks the re-entry body with jarring deceleration forces 20 times gravity. The situation is complicated by the fact that the air sweeping past the missile is ionized by high heat. This absorbs some energy, but creates corrosive particles. It is also responsible for the meteor-like trail...
...nation may get hold of a missile or two and blot out the capital city of a nation that it hates. Or perhaps when the great nations are armed to the teeth with long-range missiles and nervously watching each other, some quick mistake will be made. An innocent meteor may be mistaken for an invading missile. There will be no time to check or debate, and the decision to fire "in retaliation" will be made by some low-ranking officer. Retaliation may result in counterretaliation, and in a few more minutes all the world's missiles...
...bands of waves, VHF (Very High Frequency, 30 to 60 megacycles) and UHF (Ultra High Frequency, 300 to 3.000 megacycles), have been found to scatter. No one seems to know precisely what it is that makes them do it. Meteor trails are suspected in the case of VHF. Small "blobs" of irregularity in the electrical properties of the atmosphere up to 25,000 ft. are supposed to be the scattering agent for UHF. Whatever the cause, the waves do scatter, and special apparatus has been developed for the armed services to take advantage of the scattering. Some of the equipment...