Chicago Mushroom Cloud: Devastation and Fallout

3. Mushroom Cloud extended 100 miles

4. Castle Bravo 15 Mtonnes The largest bomb ever made by the US

5. The city is Chicago

6. Estimated fatalities: 5,778,170 Estimated injuries: 3,421,250 Radiation radius (green): 3.14km. Without medical treatment, expect between 50% and 90% mortality from acute effects alone. Dying takes between several hours and several weeks. This covers much more of London, including Camden Town, Vauxhall, the City and some of Southwark. Fireball radius (orange): This time a nuclear fireball would reach Chalk Farm in the north and Camberwell in the south. The fatality rate is 100%. Air blast radius (red - 20psi): 8.91km. Heavily built concrete buildings would be demolished in Balham, Dulwich, the Isle of Dogs, Crouch End, Hammersmith and White City. The fatality rate is still 100% or very close. Thermal radiation radius (lighter orange): 60km. This would mean third degree burns "throughout the layers of the skin", which could cause severe scarring, disablement and even amputation. This would reach Chelmsford, Maidstone, Maidenhead, Luton, Southend and some of Guildford.

7. Oppenheimer’s “unfrocking” must be done or else - regardless of the outcome of the current hearing- scientists may lose their enthusiasm for the nuclear weapon’s programme. Edward Teller

8. “Perhaps only a malignant end can follow the systematic belief that all truth is one truth; that all experience is compatible with all other; that total knowledge is possible; that all that is potential can exist as actual.” Robert Oppenheimer, Reith Lectures, 1953

9. In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act - I understood that Dr. Oppenheimer acted - in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interested of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more. In this very limited sense I would like to express my feeling that I would feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands. Edward Teller

10. In 1952 FBI interviews, Teller claimed that Oppenheimer delayed or hindered the development of the H-bomb from 1945 to 1950 by opposing it on moral grounds. After the President announced the H-bomb was to be made, he opposed it on the ground that it was not feasible. After this he changed his approach and opposed it on the basis that there were insufficient facilities and personnel to develop it, which according to Teller, is incorrect.

11. “Teller states he would do most anything to see Oppenheimer separated from the General Advisory Council because of his poor advice and policies regarding national preparedness and because of his delaying of the development of the H-bomb.” FBI report, 1952

12. I was indignant Here was a man who had done so greatly for his country. A wonderful representative. He was forgiven the atomic bomb. Crowds followed him. He was a man of peace. And they destroyed this man, A small, mean group. There were scientists among them. One reason for doing it might be envy. Another might be personal dislike. A third, a genuine fear of communism He was an aesthete. I don’t think he was a security risk. I do think he walked along the edge of a precipice. He didn’t pay enough attention to the outward symbols. He was a very American person of a certain kind. A certain kind of intellectual, aesthetic person of the upper middle classes. I.I. Rabi

13. Teller proposing a bomb of any size

14. “deliberately precipitate a war with the USSR in the near future….before the USSR could achieve a large enough thermonuclear capability to be a real menace to the Continental US.” US Air Force Study Group recommendation, 1954 “This was contrary to every principle upon which our Nation had been founded, and which it continued to profess, and that in my opinion it would be abhorrent to the great mass of the American people.” General Matthew Ridgeway, US Army Chief of Staff “The United States and its allies must reject the concept of preventive war or acts intended to provoke war.” President Dwight Eisenhower, National Security Policy, 1954

15. Well, we’d have been a hell of a lot better off if we’d got World War III started in those days. Curtis LeMay, referring to overflights of Soviet territory

16. We may anticipate a state of affairs in which two Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilisation and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at risk of its own life. Robert Oppenheimer, 1953

17. “ I have reconnaissance planes flying over the Soviet Union 24 hours a day. If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I’m going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground.” When told this was not US policy, he replied “I don’t care. It’s my policy, it’s what I’m going to do.” Curtis LeMay, 1957

18. This action by the nation’s primary war deterrent force gave added meaning to the President’s declaration that the US would react to any nuclear missile launched from Cuba with a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union itself. General Thomas Power, SAC chief, October 1962