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Old 03-30-2006, 03:18 PM   #8
Ghoulish Delight
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Sorry, the number was more like 4.5 tons of TNT-equivalence per capita. That's only including nuclear arms, and it was 1982, not 1985. Whether there might be more or less nuclear firewpower now...who knows. Disaramament treaties surely have reduced the number of warheads lying around, but advances in technology surely have made those the do exist more powerful. And even a small fraction of that is still a staggering number.

A little bit of perspective on what a 700 ton bomb means:

1 pound of TNT in a car kills everybody within and leaves a fiery wreck.
10 pounds totally demolishes the average suburban home.
1000 pounds [that's one half of one ton] packed inside an old German tank sent the turret to disappear in low overhead clouds.*

So, imagine 1400 German tanks lined up in the Nevada desert...

*Quoted from the book Metamagical Themas, by Douglas Hofstadter, attributed therein to one Wolf H. Fahrenbach
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