The portraits are so beautiful, it's easy to forget that each subject could kill hundreds of thousands. This photo gallery, from Martin Miller, looks at weapons on mass destruction, from 1945's Trinity experimental A-Bomb to the Atomic Cannon to the guidance system for the Peacekeeper ICBM (seen above). "Although the term, WMD, has become a part of our daily lexicon, it remains very much an abstraction for most of us," Miller writes. "This series of images offers a retrospective look at some of these weapons. Most of my subjects are drawn from the Cold War period during which there was a very real threat to the survival of civilization itself. The last sixty years has seen a frenzied tango between strategy and technology that has left us with the chilling array of doomsday machines seen here."
[Photo: Martin Miller; good eye: CA]
