Word: multimegaton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...believe that Safeguard could be shelved by substantially hardening ICBM sites at a smaller cost ($6 billion to $7 billion). The Pentagon wants to do that in addition to Safeguard; the Air Force is already seeking out "hard rock" silo locations that would make ICBMs more resistant even to multimegaton near misses. Wiesner, Rathjens and Weinberg suggest that the number of ICBMs could be doubled for the price of Safeguard, which would mean that more than 1,000 missiles would survive an attack by the 420 SS-9s that the Pentagon's Foster hypothesized. Wohlstetter answers: "There are safer...
...landed on Spanish soil and were readily recovered. The fourth fell into the sea just short of Almeria. Fishermen quickly rescued the bomber's four survivors but not the bomb. Some 2,000 American servicemen from Spanish bases undertook the search. To be sure, none of the deadly, multimegaton nuclear-bomb cases was armed, and all were packaged in radiation-proof shells. But, just the same, everyone wanted all of them found...
...Nike-Zeus rocket, "interception" does not necessarily mean "a hit.'" Scientists calculate that with a one-kiloton warhead the rocket could either neutralize or destroy a multimegaton monster from a distance of a mile or more. The theory has yet to be tested, but it has silenced critics who originally scorned the plan as a foolhardy attempt to "hit a bullet with a bullet." Says an official of Douglas Aircraft, one of the major contractors for the program: "It's like hitting a bullet with a couple of football stadiums...
...nuclear bombs, even up to 100-megaton size, cost little more than small ones. By successive experiments the AEC lopes to learn how to store the energy of large explosions in salt or rock. If a multimegaton explosion can be safely confined underground, the power it produces may be cheap enough to compete with electricity from conventional sources...
...Kara Sea, usually mantled by ice and fog, glared with the blinding light of a multimegaton explosion. Some 1,500 miles to the south, in the stony uplands above Semipalatinsk, another nuclear bomb went off in a ball of fire, thrusting a column of fallout into the upper atmosphere. Thus last week, from one end of Siberia to another, Nikita Khrushchev continued to shock the world with almost daily detonations of nuclear weapons...