Project Sundial: the Apocalypse Bomb
The more we learn about top secret Cold War weapons, the more insane they seem. The race to build bigger nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union was furious, until we had the capability of destroying the entire world many times over. The ultimate step was to design a weapon that would annihilate the earth and everyone in it in one fell swoop. Why would we do that? Just to have a bigger nuke than the Soviets.
Project Sundial was a project to develop just such a bomb. It, of course, could never be tested. And it didn't even have to be built, because the rumor of such a weapon was all we really needed. See, the arms race itself was based on fear of the terrifying weapons of the other side. Once we achieved weapons that assured suicide as well as offensive power, those in charge started to think that maybe we'd gone too far. Ya think? But while we don't have a one-bomb apocalypse ready to go, we still have enough nuclear weapons to do the same thing if we used them all at once.
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https://www.neatorama.com/2024/11/07/Project-Sundial-the-Apocalypse-Bomb/