Editing Cobalt bomb (section)

== In popular culture ==
* In [[Nevil Shute]]'s novel ''[[On the Beach (novel)|On the Beach]]'' (1957), cobalt bombs are given as the cause of the lethal radioactivity that is approaching Australia. The cobalt bomb was a symbol of man's hubris.<ref>{{cite news|title=Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon|last1=Smith|first1=P. D.|date=25 September 2008|publisher=Penguin UK|language=en}}</ref>
* In ''[[City of Fear (1959 film)|City of Fear]]'' (1959), an escaped convict from [[San Quentin State Prison]] steals a canister of cobalt-60, thinking it contains drugs. He flees to Los Angeles to pawn it, not knowing it could kill him and possibly contaminate the city.
* In the dark comedy ''[[Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb]]'' (1964), a type of cobalt-salted bomb is employed, specifically utilizing a composite called 'Cobalt-Thorium G' with a [[Dead Hand (nuclear war)|Dead Hand]] mechanism, by the Soviet Union as a '[[doomsday device]]' nuclear deterrent: if the system detects any nuclear attack, the doomsday device will be automatically unleashed. With unfortunate timing, a deranged American general mutinies and orders an attack on the USSR before the Soviet secret device, already activated, could be unveiled to the world. One American bomber piloted by a hapless and unknowing crew gets through to their target; the Dead Hand mechanism works as designed and initiates a worldwide nuclear holocaust. In the film, the Soviet Ambassador says, "If you take, say, fifty H-bombs in the hundred megaton range and jacket them with Cobalt-Thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety-three years!"<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FRj7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA129|title=Kubrick's Total Cinema: Philosophical Themes and Formal Qualities|last=Kuberski|first=Philip|date=2012|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA|isbn=9781441149565|language=en}}</ref>
* In the [[James Bond]] film ''[[Goldfinger (film)|Goldfinger]]'' (1964), the title character informs Bond he intends to set off a "particularly dirty" atomic device using "cobalt and [[iodine]]"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sciencebydegrees.com/2018/02/21/no-mr-bond-i-dont-know-about-radioactivity/|title=No Mr Bond, I don't know about anything radioactivity|date=2018-02-21|website=Science by degrees|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-11}}</ref> in the [[United States Bullion Depository|U.S. Bullion Repository]] at [[Fort Knox]] as part of Operation Grand Slam, a scheme intended to contaminate the gold at Fort Knox to increase value of the gold he has been stockpiling.
* In [[Roger Zelazny]]'s 1965 [[Hugo Award for Best Novel|Hugo Award]]-winning novel ''[[This Immortal]]'', Earth has suffered a nuclear war many decades ago and some areas still suffer high radiation levels from cobalt bombs, leading to drastic mutations and ecological changes.
* In the fourth act of the classic [[Star Trek: The Original Series|''Star Trek'']] episode "[[Obsession (Star Trek: The Original Series)|Obsession]]" (1967), Ensign Garrovick states that 10,000 cobalt bombs would be less powerful than one ounce of [[antimatter]].
* In ''[[Beneath the Planet of the Apes]]'' (1970) the main character, upon seeing an underground [[mutant]] community worship a doomsday bomb, comments "They finally built one with a cobalt casing" in reference to a cobalt bomb that could wipe out the world. After astronauts Brent and Taylor are shot  by an invading army of apes, Taylor's dying act is to detonate the doomsday bomb, obliterating all life on fortieth-century Earth.
* In a two-part episode of the TV show ''[[The Bionic Woman]]'', "Doomsday Is Tomorrow", a cobalt bomb, dubbed by its creator as "the most diabolical instrument of destruction ever conceived by man" is used as a trigger for a more powerful weapon that can render the world lifeless.
* In [[Tom Clancy]]'s novel ''[[The Sum of All Fears]]'' (1991) it is noted that [[Israeli Air Force]] tactical nuclear bombs can optionally be fitted with cobalt jackets "to poison a landscape to all kinds of life for years to come".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/335003/the-sum-of-all-fears-by-tom-clancy/9780451489814/excerpt|title=Excerpt from The Sum of All Fears|website=Penguin Random House Canada|language=en|access-date=2019-06-11}}</ref>
* In the [[Virgin New Adventures|Doctor Who New Adventures]] novel ''[[Timewyrm: Genesys]]'' (1991), the planet Anu was destroyed by a cobalt bomb in the year 2,700 BC. The [[cyborg]] responsible escapes in a spacecraft, which crashes in ancient [[Mesopotamia]]. After adopting the guise of the goddess [[Ishtar]], she builds another cobalt bomb in the city of [[Kish (Sumer)|Kish]] to threaten the [[Seventh Doctor]], [[Gilgamesh]], and the city's king with the destruction of the Earth if they should interfere with her plans for world domination. This second bomb is later used as a nuclear power source for a spacecraft, allowing the surviving refugees of Anu to travel to a new homeworld.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/Doctor_Who_-_New_Adventures_001_-_Timewyrm-_Genesys|title=''Timewyrm: Genesis''|website=The Internet Archive|language=en|last=Peel|first=John|date=1991|access-date=2022-12-01}}</ref>
* In the television show ''[[Designated Survivor (TV series)|Designated Survivor]]'' (2016), over the course of Season Two, a plan to use a cobalt bomb on the city of [[Washington D.C.]] is discovered during diplomatic summits. The bomb and its maker are tracked by Special Agent Hannah Wells, but it ends up detonating and killing six federal agents, including FBI Director John Foerstel. It is later uncovered as planted by a conspiracy led by the ambassador of the fictional nation of Kunami in an attempted domestic power-play.
* In the video game ''[[Detroit: Become Human]]'' (2018), the player has the option of detonating an improvised cobalt bomb during certain endings of the game.
* In the video game ''[[Metro Exodus]]'' (2019), the player visits the Russian city of [[Novosibirsk]] which was hit with at least one cobalt warhead during a worldwide nuclear war in the year 2013, resulting in catastrophic levels of radiation, and easily the most irradiated area visited in the three ''[[Metro (franchise)|Metro]] ''games. While the city is left largely standing even twenty years after the cobalt warhead's detonation, the radiation in the city is so lethal that even with lead-lined full enclosure suits, the player can only spend a few minutes on the surface before receiving lethal amounts of radiation poisoning. During their visit, the player discovers that the survivors of the attack survived underground for twenty-two years, but only due to constant injections of anti-radiation medicine.
* In ''[[Termination Shock (novel)|Termination Shock]]'' by [[Neal Stephenson]], a lead-lined briefcase is filled with activated cobalt wrapped around a conventional explosive bomb with the intention of detonating it under a weather alteration gun to render it unusable for a hundred years.