A term coined by writer George Orwell, after the dropping of the first atomic bombs in 1945, describes a sustained state of political and military tension between two major powers—each possessing nuclear weapons and thereby threatened with mutual assured destruction.
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What is pertinent is that close to the exact time my mother goes into labor, the American nuclear test Item, of the test series Operation Greenhouse is mounted onto a steel tower on Janet Island in the Enewetok Atoll and detonated in the Pacific Proving Ground. Item was the first test of a boosted fission bomb producing thermonuclear fusion and doubling the yield of unboosted bombs.
Two weeks later, my father, now graduated, loads his little family into the car and moves us all to Albuquerque. He is starting a new job at Sandia National Labs as an engineer on a team designing bombs. 11 months after me, comes my younger brother, a New Mexico baby. My father’s project to design a bomb that buries itself into the ground instead of exploding on impact (allowing for remote detonation at a later time) does not go well. The first tests are flops. He is not one to work hard for two years and have nothing to show. Dad quits and we all move back to Salt Lake where he joins his family’s business selling plumbing, heating and building supplies.
“Irish twins ” is a term for two babies who arrive within a year of each other. My brother is one of 3,913,000 babies born in 1952. We are baby boomers but for us the boom is also BOOM! and means bombs. We are a family of the cold war.