Michaela Sue

Chain saws are powerful and loud to begin with, but competitors in the hot saw competition have clearly decided that their chain saws need to be much bigger and produce a noise somewhere between the Rolling Stones being electrocuted in a Quonset hut and a cat in a cyclotron.

"We run mainly this methanol he-urr, ahnd it c'rodes thuh enjuhn to let it set in there. We hata put the gas back in and run it fer a minute t'clean her owt. Reason it's pourin' owt is I drilled a buncha howles ta let in mower ayer."

These fellas were from the Canadian border of Vermont and loggers by trade. Their accents were so thick, and endearing, and hysterical that I forgot that a man was telling me of a strategy wherein he intentionally drilled holes through the top of his gas tank. One might call it devotion.

The first bona fide thermonuclear device was born in 1952. It was not a bomb in the conventional sense but more like a factory for producing an explosion. Nicknamed ‘Mike’, it weighed 65 tonnes and was two storeys tall. Most of its bulk was devoted to the refrigeration unit needed to keep the thermonuclear fuel at -250 degrees centigrade. Anyone familiar with American refrigerators should not be surprised at its dimensions nor at the capacity of the US to build it.