If you DON'T build it, will they come? I so love the idea of lighter-than-air warships, though really I think...

If you DON'T build it, will they come?  I so love the idea of lighter-than-air warships, though really I think they'd be downed pretty quickly.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

A few weeks ago, I posted (goo.gl/mE052w) about one of the stranger legacies of the Cold War – a never-launched (for obvious reasons) American plan involving an Atomic Zeppelin fleet, which would patrol over the world's oceans 24/7, carrying Minuteman ICBM's on board.

Now, this plan was raised as part of a fairly transparent ploy by various groups at the Department of Defense to claim that they had "thought through all options" and could therefore justify the M-X Missile program.

So I have no idea what the excuse is behind this thing, a description of a plan for nuclear-powered Zeppelins to be fielded by the Soviet Union. I'm suspecting that this appeared in Tekhnika Molodezhi for much the same reason that bizarre designs show up in Popular Mechanics: that is, as an "imagine this neat future!" gimmick rather than serious engineering.

But I'm oddly pleased to discover that both sides of the Cold War had people that looked at nuclear reactions, looked at Zeppelins, and immediately thought these are two great tastes that taste great together.

This really strange bit of lore brought to you by @PulpLibrarian over on Twitter.