For more than a decade, conservative activists held that a single atomic bomb could, without killing Americans directly, lay waste to the country — a claim that built fervor for war with Iran.
The test detonation in 1962 of a hydrogen bomb lit up the night sky over Honolulu and knocked out some of the city’s electrical systems. Experts linked the unanticipated damage to what they came to call the electromagnetic pulse.
Senator Patty Murray, a former chair of the Senate health committee, is forming a group of experts to examine how to insulate the C.D.C. from political interference.
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