The language of this discourse also obscured the fact that the “low-yield” Trident II warhead wasn’t, in the scheme of world history, so low. In fact, it would wreak more destruction than most people alive had ever witnessed from a single explosion. The conventional bombs that leveled buildings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the first two decades of the twenty-first century had the explosive power of 2,000 pounds of TNT. The low-yield Trident II warhead would explode with the blast power of 8 kilotons—meaning 8,000 tons, or 16,000,000 pounds—plus the heat, smoke, and radiation that
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