CHAPTER 1
Allahu Akbar
The B61 nuclear bomb is the primary thermo-nuclear gravity bomb in the United States Enduring Stockpile following the end of the Cold War. It is a low to intermediate yield strategic and tactical nuclear weapon featuring a two-stage radiation implosion design.
The B61 is of the variable yield (“dial a yield”) design with a yield of 0.3 to 340 kilotons in its various models. It has a streamlined casing capable of withstanding supersonic flight speeds. The weapon is 11 ft 8 in (3.56 m) long, with a diameter of about 13 inches (33 cm). Basic weight is about 700 pounds (320 kg), although the weights of individual weapons may vary depending on version and fuse/retardation configuration. (1)***
“This night we shall be in heaven my brother” Mastoor El-Atallah whispered to his helper as he entered the code that would start the countdown sequence on the Thermo-Nuclear bomb in front of them resting in a cradle. There was an audible beeping sound, the red LED lights lit up across the panel on the bombs inner panel and it began to cycle in reverse, 0060, 0059, 0058, 0057, 0056, 0055……………………….. Reaching, 001
The light was like a supernova. It was so bright you could see through a person for a split second, five thousand times brighter than a Mojave Desert sun at noon, and then, they and those nearby disappeared into nothingness. Leaving not a trace or ashes of what they once were.
*** From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
They just disappeared and were gone, vaporized. The blast is visible over the horizon extending out to a thousand miles. A super bright white light that illuminates the skies for a few seconds.
First, there was the blast followed by the enormous heat, reaching temperatures exceeding one hundred fifty million degrees Fahrenheit. Melting rocks. Turning them into puddles of a molten substance. Trillions of calories of energy were released in a blinding moment followed by winds which exceeded the sound barrier over seven hundred fifty miles per hour. Extending itself out in a blast zone covering between forty to sixty-five miles in a circle pattern. Ten miles from the epicenter, a burned and sizzling remnants of what once stood was unrecognizable. The epicenter was merely a blackened hole spread out in a wide circumference of fifty city blocks, roughly a mile, and was three hundred feet deep. It was all that was left of what was once standing there in that spot. Outward and away from the blast bits and pieces of what was, formerly only cement arches or steps of a building was all that was barely recognizable.
The gigantic fire quickly increased in intensity and in minutes the winds traveled away from the epi-center faster than a jet plane, slowing within minutes to a lesser speed, but still exceeding hurricane force.
After about a half hour, the temperatures slowly decreased until reaching the average air temperature well above the boiling point of water, at two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit. Everything burned and sizzled at this intensity for the next six hours.
Even after the fires burned out, pavements, and the streets remained so hot, tracked vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers could not pass over them for days without becoming stuck in the boiling muck. Unburned materials from collapsed buildings or covered up by debris burst into flames when exposed to air weeks after the initial detonation.
The rising mushroom cloud, seething with radioactivity, rose hundreds of thousands of feet blotting out the sun. Lightning bolts flashed and raced all over the skies like momentary spider webs of light. Deadly fallout contaminated hundreds of square miles downwind with radioactive poisons from the blast, dooming millions of human beings and animals to a painful death from radiation sickness. Much of the land remains uninhabitable for years. Higher deaths and mortality rates will continue for centuries from cancer, leukemia, and genetic damage to succeeding generations and will result in horrible birth defects to those born after the blasts for the next twenty generations.
Six months earlier:
The two B-61-thermonuclear bombs were made in the USA for the Israelis. The B-61 is primarily a strategic weapon whose yield (intensity) can be dialed down to .3 kilotons which is just slightly bigger than the bombs dropped on Japan or can be adjusted anywhere up to 340 kilotons. At 340 kilotons, the blast radius is about sixty-five miles. When detonated, the blast field would extend nearly ten miles in all directions from ground zero and result in total destruction of everything. This ten-mile wide circle of destruction will extend out to sea causing the water to boil and then evaporate leaving glass like shards everywhere on the beaches and on the land away from the sandy beaches.
The two bombs had been attached under the wings of an Israeli F-15 Fighter/Bomber that had the misfortune to crash just off the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. The plane and the bombs sank in seven hundred feet of water.
The crash did not go unnoticed and an all-out recovery effort was launched by Israel and by non-Israelis who saw an opportunity. Since the wreckage was essentially in Syrian waters The Israelis were at a disadvantage and were provokingly held at bay by a small armada of Syrian vessels while a relatively quick recovery proceeded under water. The Israelis never saw the bombs again nor did they choose to go public with the information they had managed to lose two nuclear weapons.
The news of the loss was spread through government and military circles to those who needed to know, but not to the public mainly because the bombs were armed.
The news stories of the time always commented on the relative safety of the bombs due to the arming procedure. The B-61 bombs are different. For instance; in January of 1966 the U.S. Airforce lost four Thermonuclear bombs after a midair collision between a B-52 Strategic Air Command Strato-Jet and a tanker aircraft over Palmares Spain. The bombs were unarmed and three landed harmlessly on surrounding farmland. The fourth went down in two thousand feet of water in the Mediterranean where in a circus of publicity, it was eventually recovered. Those bombs were unarmed.
Avalon: The Retreat Book One incorporates real survivalist skills to help prepare you for that fateful day when catastrophe strikes. It could very well be sooner than you think! Are you prepared?
