Mushroom World

Mushroom Cloud Over Manhattan

Mark Lynas | Literary Hub | 12th May 2025

Sobering explanation of how the first few hours of a nuclear war might go. Everyone who sees the light of the initial explosion will be blinded. A fireball "roughly the width of Manhattan" will then spread 1.5km off the ground. Everything within ten square kilometres, except steel and concrete, will be vaporised. Then, retaliation. "Once the detonations begin, the logic of escalation is inexorable" (3,800 words)

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The World's 'Poorest President'

Gerardo Lissardy | BBC News | 14th May 2025

Obituary for José Mujica, president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. He was known for his modest lifestyle: refusing to move into the presidential palace, driving himself in a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle and giving away a large portion of his annual salary. As a leftist guerilla in the 1970s he survived being shot six times and escaped twice from prison, once through a tunnel with 105 fellow inmates (1,200 words)