Word: mi
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...would have been awful," says Matthew Meselson, a germ-warfare expert at Harvard University. For example, botulinum toxin kills by interfering with the nervous system and ultimately paralyzing the respiratory muscles. The Pentagon estimated that just one Scud missile warhead filled with the toxin could contaminate 1,430 sq. mi...
...territory east of the Ural Mountains and west of the Russian Far East, which includes the maritime provinces of Khabarovsk and Primorski on the Pacific coast; however, convention has labeled as Siberia all Russian lands east of the Urals--an area that covers more than 5 million sq. mi. Within these boundaries are nearly the entire lengths of four of the longest rivers on earth--the Yenisey, the Ob, the Lena and the Amur, which constitutes most of Siberia's border with China. Yakutia, now designated the Sakha Republic and the largest of Siberia's dozens of political divisions...
Forests, however, are just one item in Siberia's bulging portfolio of natural resources. Soviet exploitation managed to poison and degrade 35,000 sq. mi. of the vast republic, but that only scratched the surface of its mineral wealth. Bob Logan, an economist at the University of Alaska, has made trips to Yakutia to study the region's economic prospects, which he describes as "staggering." As much as 20% of the territory is known to have oil and gas deposits that could make it the Saudi Arabia of the north. The area is one of the world's leading sources...
There's a lot to explore. Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of the planet's surface--336 million cu. mi. of water that reaches an average depth of 2.3 miles. The sea's intricate food webs support more life by weight and a greater diversity of animals than any other ecosystem, from sulfur-eating bacteria clustered around deep-sea vents to fish that light up like New York City's Times Square billboards to lure their prey. Somewhere below there even lurks the last certified sea monster left from pre-scientific times: the 64-ft.-long giant squid...
...heat from Little Boy singed more than 4 sq mi. of Hiroshima reddish-brown. In the process, it left a bizarre photographic negative of the instant of destruction. Objects, human or inanimate, that came between the blast and other objects cast their shadows as unburned patterns on the protected space: a spiral ladder was imprinted on the surface of a storage plant behind it. Survivors foraging for food in vegetable gardens later that day dug up potatoes and found that they had been baked in the ground...