It Took Some Rugged Guys To Charge Atomic Weapons On Horseback

Link: The Opposite End of China || Xinjiang & Northwest China Blog (中国的另一端 || 新疆 & 中国西北博客): Hydrogen Bomb Souvenirs.

BEIJING, June 17 (Xinhua) – Chinese scientists Sunday commemorated the 40th anniversary of the country's first test of a hydrogen bomb, and called for greater self-confidence and self-reliance in the development of new high-technologies.

China's first hydrogen bomb was tested in the desert of west China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region on June 17, 1967.

The successful test startled the world as it took only two years and eight months for China to develop the hydrogen bomb after it tested its first atomic bomb in October, 1964, said Li Yingxiang, former head of the general office of the Ministry of Nuclear Industry.

Seventy-year-old Wang Jingheng, former head of China's first nuclear weapons research and production base in northwest Qinghai Province, recalled their tough conditions at the base more than 40 years ago.

More than 10,000 people worked at the base and natural disasters in other parts of the country in the early 1960s made it difficult to get enough food for his crew, Wang said.

"We lived in cave dwellings, ate qingke barley (a highland barley grown in Tibet and Qinghai), and our only vegetable was cabbage. When there was not enough food, we had to search for edible wild herbs to feed ourselves," Wang added....

(((Well worth a look just for the sake of that uniquely analog world-destruction hardware.)))