Word: thermonuclear
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Shelter Rattling? Millions would die in a thermonuclear war, but millions of others might be saved by a prudent shelter program. Since no one knows where the enemy would drop his bombs, cheap fallout shelters are a modest insurance for everyone, even in big metropolitan targets. Shelters affording some blast and fire protection are not much more expensive than fallout shelters, and could also be a measure of insurance. Community shelters, to which the Government has now switched its emphasis, are probably more effective than others, in terms of equity as well as effort...
...Added to the Bethe report were findings compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, Pentagon intelligence units and the President's own national security advisers. The evidence was overwhelming, leading to the conclusion that the Russians have made giant strides in the field of strategic thermonuclear weaponry, that they are rapidly catching up with the U.S. in tactical atomic abilities, and that unless the U.S. starts moving fast, it may be mastered by the physical force that it first unleashed as an instrument of devastation. Items...
...tests." As a result of its test program, said Khrushchev, the Soviet Union had perfected 50-and 100-megaton bombs-and some that were even bigger. What was more, Khrushchev boasted that Russia could readily convert the rockets that orbited its two astronauts to deliver the U.S.S.R.'s thermonuclear superkillers. Said he: "Not a single place on earth can consider itself safe from them...
Herman Kahn's ponderous shocker, On Thermonuclear War, frequently mentions a weapon whose purpose is to end all human life: the Doomsday Machine. Kahn discusses its political uses as calmly as if it were a bug killer, but he gives few technical details. In the latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Physicist W. H. Clark spells out some little-known facts about Doomsday Machines-and some of the more refined horrors that nuclear war could bring. Both the U.S. and Russia already can build near-Doomsday bombs, but far more disturbing is the fact that they are sufficiently inexpensive...
...detonator of a thermonuclear bomb is a fission bomb containing plutonium or uranium 235, and its explosion sets off the main charge of fusion material, which is essentially deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Fission detonators are expensive, but a single one can explode any amount of comparatively cheap fusion material. Result: the bigger the bomb, the cheaper it is in terms of explosive yield. Clark figures that a ten-megaton bomb costs somewhat more than $1,000,000, mostly for the detonator. But further increases in yield cost only about $5,000 per megaton, so that the price...