One of my favorite short stories is
Charles Stross'
"A Colder War", an alternate history science fiction where
Cthulu in
H.P. Lovecraft's stories is real and the Cold War is much, much worse than what actually happened in our timeline.
I just found out that XK-PLUTO, the missile in the story described as:
Travelling at Mach 3 the XK-PLUTO will overfly enemy territory, dropping megaton-range bombs until, its payload exhausted, it seeks out and circles a final enemy. Once over the target it will eject its reactor core and rain molten plutonium on the heads of the enemy. XK-PLUTO is a total weapon: every aspect of its design, from the shockwave it creates as it hurtles along at treetop height to the structure of its atomic reactor, is designed to inflict damage...,
If you read the story and is confused, you might find the footnotes in
this Wikipedia entry useful. I read the story approximately once a year for a few years now and it's always chilling.
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