also gouged a hole one mile in diameter and 175 feet deep in the reef. “Probably more than 100 million tons of material were disloged and thrown into the air," (94, p. 170), great waves were sent out that rolled over nearby islands, and a huge mushroom cloud rose to a height of 130,000 feet (25 miles) in just 15 minutes. 'Mtike' was indeed a superdevice, estimated to have a yield of about 5 megatons or the equivalent of 250 (Hiroshima-type) atomic bombs. . 'Bravo,'' the slumbering nuclear giant, was "born" at 06:45 a.m. on March 1, 1954. It burst forth from its "womb" in a blinding rage of light, with boiling and blistering heat and radioactivity, a cataclysmic, thunderous roar accompanied by a mighty shock and pressure wave which shook the earth, sea, and sky. In millionths of a second the chain reaction occurred and the bomb and its housing simply disappeared-~vaporized by the intense heat somewhere in the neighborhood of tens of millions of degrees. In a one méegaton (one million tons of TNT) blast the fireball, looking like half of a giant, luminous bubble, and consisting of vaporized bomb particles, air, water and soll, would have expanded to more than 7,000 feet in diameter after 10 seconds. "Bravo," however, according to conservative estimates was 15 megatons in yield (although it may have been larger). It was of a magnitude to stagger the imagination.* Undoubtedly the diameter of the fireball and its surrounding hemisphere of burning gases, thermal and shock fronts was from three to five miles in diameter, an area in which no living organism could survive. In the first few * In the early 1960's Russia boasted of detonating a 50 megaton device, and of having the capability of detonating a 100 megaton monster bomb. Such a bomb would be the equivalent of 5,000 Hiroshima or Nagasakitype-bombs. [O14b 149 73