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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums1950s U.S. Nuclear Target List Offers Chilling Insight
WASHINGTON Target category No. 275 from the nuclear target list for 1959 may be the most chilling. It is called simply Population.
For the first time, the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China.
It lists many targets for systematic destruction in major cities, including 179 in Moscow (like Agricultural Equipment and Transformers, Heavy), 145 in Leningrad and 91 in East Berlin. The targets are referred to as DGZs or designated ground zeros. While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated Population.
Its disturbing, for sure, to see the population centers targeted, said William Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University that obtained the target list in response to a request first made in 2006. Mr. Burr, who specializes in nuclear history, said he believed it was the most detailed target list the Air Force had ever made public.
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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/1950s-us-nuclear-target-list-offers-chilling-insight/ar-BBnQleB?li=BBnb7Kz
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1950s U.S. Nuclear Target List Offers Chilling Insight (Original Post)
cali
Dec 2015
OP
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)1. One nuclear bomb in a population center is a catastrophe
Thousands and thousands of them are Armageddon.
Alas Babylon.
no_hypocrisy
(46,160 posts)2. I read "Alas Babylon" 40+ years ago in high school.
It's haunted me since then. I have a copy in my library but I can't bear to read it again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alas,_Babylon
rita rose
(1 post)3. 56M pilots ROTC special grads of 1956
for more on special pilots training in 1956 same time as Eisenhower's 1956 bomber directives, go to http://ikeya_zhang.tripod.com/B50ADRIAN.html -- private military contractors endemic today first grew up from this generation, albeit very slowly at first.