The Calm Before the Storm
The LGM-118A Peacekeeper MIRVed land-based ICBM. Conventional nuclear missles carry one warhead. The Peacekeepr carries ten, each capable of hitting ten different targets. Each warhead is armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead. It was designed to be a counter measure against missile-defense systems and was, in particular, a counter-measure agaisnt hardened Russian missile silos housing the ten-warhead SS-18 MIRVed land-based ICBM.
In the above time-lapsed picture, a Peacekeeper missile is being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll. Each line you see against the sky represents one nuclear warhead. And each warhead has the explosive power of 25 Hiroshimas. In total, that's 250 Hiroshimas. That's 35,000,000 deaths, if one tends to conversatively estimate. That's almost the entire population of Poland.
One missile.
And yet, this picture made my heart skip a beat. Luminous white lines, penetrating the clouds, lighting up the pre-dawn sky. It's almost angelic.
3000 kilotons of horrific beauty.
In the above time-lapsed picture, a Peacekeeper missile is being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll. Each line you see against the sky represents one nuclear warhead. And each warhead has the explosive power of 25 Hiroshimas. In total, that's 250 Hiroshimas. That's 35,000,000 deaths, if one tends to conversatively estimate. That's almost the entire population of Poland.
One missile.
And yet, this picture made my heart skip a beat. Luminous white lines, penetrating the clouds, lighting up the pre-dawn sky. It's almost angelic.
3000 kilotons of horrific beauty.
1 comment:
I don't know what to say. It's so beautiful. Why do they make them.
when he was six he believed that the moon overhead followed him
by nine he had deciphered the illusion, trading magic for fact
no tradebacks...
so this is what it's like to be an adult
if he only knew now what he knew then... - Pearl Jam
Why do they become adults. Why cant we just live that way.
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