On October 22, 1964, half a mile underground in a salt mine in Mississippi, the United States set off a nuclear device about a third as powerful as the bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Above where the nuclear device was detonated, someone had placed a Confederate battle flag next to a sign that read, “The South Will Rise Again.” It was an unexpectedly apt description for what happened next: shock waves from the nuclear explosion, which scientists had expected to be contained inside the underground cavity, sent tremors through the earth.
