Hydrogen Bomb Announcement

January 7th, 1953. You are watching President Harry S. Truman give his final state of the Union address when he says:

“Since Alamogordo we have developed atomic weapons with many times the explosive force of the early models, and we have produced them in substantial quantities. And recently, in the thermonuclear tests at Eniwetok, we have entered another stage in the world-shaking development of atomic energy. From now on, man moves into a new era of destructive power, capable of creating explosions of a new order of magnitude, dwarfing the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”

Only a few months earlier, in November of 1952, a hydrogen bomb nicknamed “Mike” was successfully detonated in the Marshall Islands. Like was contained in a building standing twenty feet tall. He weighed at least 140,000 pounds and was equipped with an additional 24,000 pounds of cooling equipment. Saying that “Mike” was deadly would be an understatement, as his explosion was more than four hundred and fifty times stronger than the bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.