> These tests are meant to find a better version of the Trident Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, a weapon of mass destruction - what do they need to know? How big a bang it makes? How many people it will kill?

Last night, there was a show on the Hitler channel about submarines, including a large segment on nuclear ballistic submarines. At one point, the program gave a statistic claiming that the 18 such US vessels have a combined firepower roughly equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima explosions. Several other countries also have considerable fleets of these weapons. Each ship has over a dozen missiles each of which can independently target warheads to hit a number of different sites over about a 6000 mile range. Overall, it was a very impressive program, showing the many strengths, weaknesses, and achievements that went into the great subs.

But still, for someone who is not a military strategist, the stats seem absurd. What possible reasons could there be so that we would want or need to destroy thousands of cities at a time? It sounds very literally like overkill.

Another item that seemed almost silly was the race to build bigger bombs. So our bombs were 50 kiloton and the enemy's were 100 kiloton. Whoopee. Nothing's going to survive anyway; the targeting systems were already accurate to within a few dozen feet.

gab"Maybe they just thought bigger bombs were cooler"by