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.
