This note contains spoilers for the book.

A three-in-one edition. I don't really remember why it's on the shelves, but I'm sure it's mine.

I don't know if I'm going to make it through, though. It's annoying the hell out of me.

However, the "9mm Browning Long" cartridge they mention seems to actually be real; a European design that never took off and never made it to the US. The ballistics table for it that I found shows it shooting a lighter bullet than most normal 9mm, at a slightly faster velocity, for equal or slightly higher muzzle energy, so that doesn't sound too bad. They've equipped Bond with an old original Browning chambered for this round; weighing 32 ozs., taking this archaic caliber, and holding only 7 rounds in the magazine. What were these idiots thinking?

Those wacky brits. The Lockheed Starlifter is described as having a wingspan of over 48 meters, a length of over 44 meters, and towering to a height of nearly 40 feet. Guess that metricization thing hasn't really gone through yet.

Then there's the discussion of the movie The China Syndrome, which claims the movie shows a melted down reactor core going all the way through the Earth. Lydy says the movie shows no such thing; and it's certainly ridiculous. The gravitational pull is towards the center of the earth, and burning through the rock, magma, whatever would slow the melted core mass down considerably. I doubt it would go very far past dead center (nowhere near out the other side); and however far past it went, it would then come back, oscilating back and forth until it came to rest essentially in the middle. And a nuclear physicist / insane genius is promoting this view, talking about radiation damage on the other side, etc. Stupid, stupid, stupid.