San Antonio Summer ‘64
========================

* Richard Bronson

*…there are approximately 16,300 nuclear weapons* *located …in 14 countries.* *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2014*

> > Rising on columns of fire,
> > 
> > rockets launched to the moon –
> > 
> > and I who'd wished
> > 
> > to work with astronauts,
> > 
> > am assigned instead
> 
> > to weigh SAC bomber crew
> > 
> > immersed in water –
> > 
> > measure “lean body mass,”
> > 
> > wondered what difference
> > 
> > a paunch on a pilot would make
> > 
> > sitting in a B52.
> 
> > Silent—
> > 
> > eyes hidden
> > 
> > behind red goggles,
> > 
> > they swaggered
> > 
> > in their muscled nakedness
> > 
> > into my lab.
> 
> > Dark-adapted to their cockpits,
> > 
> > ready day or night, airborne
> > 
> > at the President's command –
> > 
> > fly over the pole, drop hydrogen bombs –
> > 
> > mutual assured destruction.
> > 
> > MAD it was called.

## Footnotes

*   Competing interests None.

*   Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.