When America Thought Its Windshields Were Under Attack

Eventually, one hypothesis started to get some traction. It was one of the most alarming ones—that the pits and chips in the windshields were an unforeseen consequence of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test that had recently taken place at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. By the time the windshield-pitting epidemic had run its course, about 30 percent of people polled believed this was the reason behind the phenomenon.

That wasn’t surprising—the test had been widely discussed in newspapers. The explosion was far larger than anticipated by the scientists who had created it—the largest explosion ever caused by humans. To a population for whom the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier was still fresh in mind, this new weapon was understandably awe inspiring and terrifying. If the physicists had badly miscalculated the size of the explosion, what else might they have gotten wrong?

There is a crack in the windshield, Dear Liza (the damn Deer!).