We Don’t Want the Smoking Gun to be a Mushroom Cloud
“Anytime an administration official starts talking about mushroom clouds and Las Vegas, I want answers,” Representative Shelley Berkley, a Democrat from Nevada, said on the floor of the House of Representatives.
There is a “Wait. What?” that goes along with a “Heads-up” from the government that Mushroom Clouds are going to be forming over your city pretty soon. Not to worry, though.
She said Mr Tegnelia told her a mushroom cloud would not be seen “over” Las Vegas, only “from” Las Vegas, according to a statement from her office.
“I thought you said ‘Monster Island’ was just a name.” “What I meant is that Monster Island is actually a Peninsula!”
“We also have — are you ready for this – a 700-tonne explosively formed charge that we’re going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada,” he said.
“And that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem,” he said.
The news report left out key descriptions of James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, as he was saying this. I’ll make the key edit.
“And that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem,” he said, giidily, drool running down his mouth.
Brushing aside any suggestions of health risks (RIDICULOUS), we can get to the point — the strategic point of…
“If you want to model these weapons, you want to know from a modeling point of view what is the ideal best condition you could ever set up in a conventional weapon — what’s the best you can do.
“And this gets at the best point you could get on a curve. So it allows us to predict how effective these kinds of weapons … would be,” he said.
He said the Russians have been notified of the test, which is scheduled for the first week of June at the Nevada test range.
“We’re also making sure that Las Vegas understands,” Tegnelia said.
Why do the Russians need to know a damned thing here? Those treaties we made with them are surely defunct by now. Actually, come to think of it, why does Las Vegas need to know about it? Couldn’t the Government tie in some psychological tests on the population just to see just what the response would be if a city sees the heralded “Mushroom Cloud” one day… not “over” Las Vegas, mind you, but “From” Las Vegas.