> On Mar 14, 2016, at 12:52 PM, Rob Dean <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [i] An article entitled "Facts and Fallacies of World War III" in the July 1961, edition of Popular Sciencemagazine read "A californium atomic bomb need be no bigger than a pistol bullet. You could build a hand-held six-shooter to fire bullets that would explode on contact with the force of 10 tons of TNT."[65]

That would be ‘bullet’ unless you were firing from significantly robust cover :-) Kind of like the Davy Crockett nuclear bazooka round…blast radius exceeds the useful range of the weapon.

Here’s the referenced PopSci page; <https://books.google.com/books?id=OiEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA180#v=onepage&q&f=false> I find it hilarious that it’s right next to an ad for “Army-Navy Surplus Sale” for some reason :-)

Of course, if you’re carrying around a six-shooter loaded with Californium, you probably want to go with the quicker ‘BOOM’ rather than the ‘ick ack puke’ route of radiation poisoning….

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs