cbomb

"A cobalt bomb, incorporating a ton of deuterium, according to Prof. Harrison Brown, nuclear chemist at the California Institute of Technology, could be set on a north-south line in the Pacific about a thousand miles west of California. "The radioactive dust," he said, "would reach California in about a day, and New York in four or five days, killing most life as it traverses the continent."

"Similarly," he added, "the Western powers could explode hydrogen cobalt bombs on a north south line about the longitude of Prague that would destroy all life within a strip 1,500 miles wide, extending from Leningrad to Odessa, and 3,000 miles deep, from Prague to the Ural Mountains. Such an attack would produce a 'scorched earth' unprecedented in history."