Unidentified: The UFO Phenomenon

CHAPTER 7A STRANGE LOVE OF NUKES

“…the liberation of atomic energy on a large scale for industrial purposes, the development of atomic bombs, and a world war which would be fought by an alliance of England, France and America against Germany and Austria would destroy major cities of the world by atomic bombs.”

—H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (1914)

In 1967 my Air Force job was to sit in an underground concrete capsule where my commander and I had control of 10 Minuteman I missiles. Each missile had a single nuclear warhead that had a capacity for destruction the equivalent of nearly one million tons of TNT—enough to engulf the center of any major city in a single ball of fire. In that year, U.S. military forces had a stockpile of about 37,000 ...