had a “lethal envelope” with a radius of about a mile, and the “probability of kill” (PK) within that envelope was likely to be 92 percent. The Soviet aircrew’s death from radiation might take as long as five minutes—a delay that made it even more important to fire the Genie as far as possible from urban areas. Detonated at a high altitude, the weapon produced little fallout and didn’t lift any debris from the ground to form a mushroom cloud.
This really is genius.
