megatonnagen.

1954 Florence (S. Carolina) Morning News 23 Nov. 4 a/7 No one can really be sure, moreover, at just what ‘megatonnage level’ (repeated explosions of) the hydrogen bomb..might destroy, not only the enemy, but all life on earth.

1962 J. F. Kennedy in Public Opinion Q. (1963) 27 215 When we start to talk about the megatonnage we could bring into a nuclear war, we are talking about annihilation.

1963 Economist 23 Nov. 746/2 Nato is probably much closer to equality with the Warsaw alliance, in numbers of footsloggers as well as in nuclear megatonnage, than used to be thought.

1971 Nature 24 Dec. 493/2 The Soviet Union has already substantially overtaken the United States in numbers of ICBMs, in megatonnages, and in underground tests of large nuclear devices.

1999 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (Electronic ed.) 30 Sept. 1 e The result is a map of the area showing the effects of a nuclear blast, given the megatonnage of your choice, superimposed on a map of the area.

1981 Washington Post (Nexis) 26 July g1 Sure-fire hits are ‘Go-rillas’ and ‘Monsters’ guaranteed for ‘megatonnage’ in his Kal-Q-lations.

1990 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Oct. 168/1 It was also political dynamite of sufficient megatonnage to topple Tsaldaris and his cronies.

2000 Newsday (Electronic ed.) 9 Mar. b33 She deploys such polysyllabic megatonnage as ‘eleemosynary’ to decimate those who could keep her from impressing her mother and grandmother.