THE dull black cylinder on a mock Spartan anti-ballistic missile waited buried an incredible 6,000 feet beneath tiny Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. The signal was given and in one-tenth of a millionth of a second, Cannikin, code name for the most powerful underground nuclear test ever held by the U.S., exploded with the force of 5 million tons of TNT. TIME Correspondent Karsten Prager reported from the command bunker on Amchitka that half a second after detonation the earth heaved upward, hiding the test site in a curtain of dust and water, and aftershocks rumbled to the bunker 23 miles...
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