Lucky Island?

Pacific H-Bomb

Which Will be the Lucky Island?

IT was announced, just before Christmas, that British and Australian scientists will, at the end of 1956, explode an H-Bomb on an “uninhabited Pacific Island/’

The Australian government has refused to allow the H-bomb to be exploded on the Australian main land, but a couple of plain A-bombs, used as triggers for the H-bomb, will go off sometime this year.

The researchers have a list of 20 islands “suitable for the test” and will make a survey of them shortly —the bomb will “probably be flown from the UK to the chosen island.”

As the uninhabited Pacific islands under Commonwealth administra tion are strictly limited —particularly when they have to have facilities for landing bombs by air we can scarcely wait until we find out which is to be the lucky one.

Anticipating those screams of rage that are sure to come from some reactionary Pacific residents, we would like to point out that it is nice to think that the vast open spaces of the Pacific are useful for something. Moreover, the experi ment will have some advantages— there are unlikely to be any Japanese fishing boats around the “chosen” island at that time, and those of you who live within a thousand miles or so of it will be able to find out if H-bombs really do affect the weather.