Genie out of the bottle.
Turns out Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved
the bomb wasn't big enough to destroy the city.
The blast needed to exceed twice its current size
if it were to destroy European cities made of stone,
concrete and steel. Meeting this requirement
meant a whole new bomb for the
engineers to design.
Duck and Cover drills in school.
Get under your desk, knees doubled
under your body. Hands behind your neck.
Your mouth should be as open as you can make it.
This protects your eardrums from the burst of
hot air headed your way.
Imagine the plane that could haul this beast.
Only the specially made B-29 "Silver Plate" bomber
was capable of handling this nearly five ton bomb.
There were more than forty of these planes
at war's end. The number drifted down to eighteen
by 1947. Stalin knew this through his spies.
He also knew there were very few A-Bombs
among Uncle Sam's weapons.
America was not a military threat to Stalin.
Not yet.
One hundred nuclear bombs erases the Soviet Union.
There was confidence the Air Force could evade
Russian air defense and deliver the goods.
Victory. No need to maintain a very costly
large army as well as an expensive fleet.
It was the all or nothing strategy and that was
its problem. Stalin attacks Berlin and Truman
annihilates all Soviet cities. Who would believe
the Yanks capable of such a response?
A few divisions of soldiers with tanks in Berlin
would provide better protection for the city
than this over-the-top empty threat.
Both Russia and the United States
quickly learned the skills of crisis management -
preventing a superpower confrontation from
getting out of hand.
One bomb erases thousands of men and their armor.
All that expensive defense quickly evaporated...
your enemy now passing through the door left wide open.
Just like that.
But first the A-Bomb needed to be reduced to a size
capable of being fired from a cannon or small enough
to be the warhead on a truck launched missile.
An atomic bomb small enough for cannon to fire.
The nature of war was changed. Or so it seemed.
Korea broke out in war at a time when Stalin
already had the bomb. The fighting remained
conventional for the duration of the conflict.
One reason being that American troops were
fighting Stalin's proxies - Koreans and Chinese,
not Russians... not officially.
The better reason was that life was good.
People were watching Sid Caesar on their
new TVs while their car sat in the driveway
out front of the family's home.
What person in their right mind would trade
in all this for a nuclear war?
* * * * *
OVER EASY
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