Word: thermonuclear
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...thermonuclear attack were to achieve complete surprise, the first warning would be the blinding flash, visible for hundreds of miles, of the bomb itself. Within an area of up to one mile from ground zero, everything would be vaporized; destruction and death, even to those in the deepest shelters, would be certain. Initial heat radiation would be released in two separate pulses within a few seconds and would incinerate virtually everything within a five-mile radius. Although fog or industrial smog would greatly decrease the effect, exposed persons would suffer third-degree burns out to ten miles and blistering...
Wider Choice. Behind the preparations being made by Abe Abrams and his U.S. Army fighting comrades lies the decision made by President John Kennedy last spring to increase the flexibility of the nation's defenses. The main shield of the U.S. remains the thermonuclear deterrent-the strategic missiles and bombers meant to discourage Nikita Khrushchev. But Kennedy holds that the Army must also be ready to fight with gunpowder or with tactical nuclear weapons anywhere from the plains of Europe to the rain forests of Asia. "We intend to have a wider choice than humiliation or all-out nuclear...
...instinct lies a carefully reasoned moral case. That case is set out with great clarity in a symposium of some leading Western intellectuals published by the monthly Commentary. The debaters do not specifically deal with Berlin but with the basic question: Can Western civilization use the horrible weapons of thermonuclear war to save itself, or would such a war destroy the very things the West stands for? It is basically the same question asked by the average citizen who builds a fallout shelter but wonders: "If I survive, will anything worthwhile be left afterward...
...stages in the life of man, liberty has been a rare and precious commodity, but free men of strong will have never complained that the price was too high. Despite the threat of thermonuclear war, the U.S. clearly has a will to survive and succeed (see The People). Despite unemployment and small weaknesses in the economy, the nation has the prosperity to pay for freedom. There can be little doubt that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, if he asks for it, can gather the national riches and focus the national energy and will for the creative work that lies ahead in building...
...seemed more flustered than the New York Herald Tribune's Syndicated Columnist John Crosby, who last October promoted himself from television reviewing to patrolling a cosmic beat: "Mr. Kennedy says Berlin is not negotiable. Why isn't it? Why isn't anything negotiable rather than thermonuclear war? Are we going to wipe out two-and-a-half billion years of slow biological improvement? Over what-Berlin? I agree with Nehru that to go to war under any circumstances for anything at all in our world in our time is utter absurdity. I certainly think Berlin is negotiable...