Showing posts with label doomsday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doomsday. Show all posts

1957 ... stuff of nightmares!


... DoD illustration (Gordon Phillips) of 'Project Pluto' nuclear powered ramjet. This was an idea for an unmanned  'SLAM' ( Supersonic Low Altitude Missile). After disposable booster rockets got it aloft and up to supersonic speeds an unshielded light-weight atomic reactor became the heat source for the Mach 3 ramjet. No conventional fuel was needed. Range and time aloft was virtually unlimited.

The design called for a payload of multiple atomic weapons which could be ejected at given points on various targets along the flight plan. Just the shockwave of the vehicle passing over at tree-top level at Mach 3 could kill you. Then there was the matter of that unshielded reactor  irradiating and poisoning large swaths of land as it criss-crossed across the USSR. Nicknamed 'the flying crowbar' a swarm of these death birds could continue operating weeks after anyone was left to kill or care. The Pentagon abandoned plans for the locomotive sized missile after analysis concluded it was just too ... crazy!

Recently Russia has been looking into cheap and scary new ways to intimidate US and Nato; their SSC-X-9 Skyfall is a rebirth of the basic concept. Dr. Strangelove would approve!

In 1958 a science-fiction movie was made with a suspiciously similar 'monster' LINK



1951 ... Atom subs on the way!




1951 ... what we got!



all images- Right click- open in New Window or Tab = super colossal size!


1948 ... B-45 "Tornado"

... the first US operational jet bomber, the "Tornado" gained importance as it assumed a tactical nuclear delivery assignment when atomic bombs became smaller and lighter.




... the song of the end of the world.


" ... yes of course the wailing sirens, the man-machine of Gabrielle’s last long trumpet solo.

Throw open the Cathedral doors and the front door and the screen porch door, any second the pure and horrible white light growing beyond seeing , beyond blindness, beyond purple and far spectrum violet.

In those few seconds that the Universe has left, the final time the sky will ever be blue and the grass still alive and green, in that last aching sentence of all of our lives; we listen to it, perfect and crisp across the last morning of the last day of the last Spring...

the Song of the End of the World!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erMO3m0oLvs