26Qattara Depression: Hydrogen Lake Vision
The Qattara Depression in western Egypt, situated 60 meters below sea level, was considered for transformation into a lake after World War II. The ambitious plan involved using 213 hydrogen bombs to create a canal leading to the Mediterranean. Utilizing the natural gradient between the Mediterranean and the Depression, it was envisioned to generate up to 5 GW of electricity, sufficient to power over a million homes.
27. The red grapefruit originated from a 1950s government nuclear program called "Atoms for Peace," where crops were mutated using radioactive materials. In the "Gamma Gardens," plants grown in close proximity to the radiation source perished, while those farther away exhibited a red coloration.
28. Atomic gardens were established as part of the Atoms for Peace program in the 1950s, which sought to develop "peaceful" uses of fission energy after World War II. These gamma gardens were created in laboratories across the US, Europe, parts of the former USSR, India, and Japan.
29. Article V of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty mandates that nuclear powers must sell nuclear bombs to non-nuclear powers for peaceful explosive purposes. This provision emerged in response to the peaceful nuclear explosion movement, which advocated using nuclear bombs for construction and aimed to eliminate it as a pretext for independent nuclear weapon development by other nations.
30. Project Gasbuggy, conducted in the 1960s, involved the utilization of a nuclear explosion to stimulate natural gas and oil production by "fracking" trapped gas in shale. Despite testing at various locations in Colorado and New Mexico, the project did not yield the anticipated results due to the tendency of nuclear explosions to vitrify or convert the sandstone into glass-like material.
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31Tsar Bomba: Record-breaking Mega-Blast
Tsar Bomba, a hydrogen bomb developed by the Soviet Union in 1961, holds the record as the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, with a yield of 50 megatons. The bomb's colossal size necessitated its delivery by a specially modified plane, and the explosion was visible from over 600 miles away. The resulting mushroom cloud reached a height over seven times that of Mount Everest, and its shockwave circled the Earth three times, even causing partial windowpane breakage at distances of 900 km.
32. The US military developed the M45 AFAP, a cannon-fired nuclear weapon that could be launched from a standard 155-mm howitzer. These rounds cost at least $1.25 million each and remained operational from the 1960s until the program's retirement in 1992.
33. During the Cold War, the US Army trained officers to deploy backpack nukes called Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADM) and detonate them, potentially still within the blast radius. These bombs were built without electronics and relied on mechanical timers, which had accuracy issues and could go off as early as eight minutes ahead of schedule or as many as 13 minutes behind.
34. There was a Soviet nuclear torpedo called the T-5, which had a range of only 10 km but a blast radius of up to 13 km, making it potentially deadly to the user's own submarines if not deployed carefully. The T-5 was developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War but was never actually used in combat.
35. Blue Peacock was a 10-kiloton nuclear landmine developed by the British during the 1950s to be used in Germany. To address the issue of cold weather affecting the bomb's electronics, one proposed solution was to use live chickens as a heat source to keep the system operational for up to a week.
