Project Nightmare

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Project Nightmare is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in Amazing Stories, May 1953, and reprinted in one of Heinlein's collections, The Menace from Earth.

In the story, clairvoyant and telekinetic operators are suddenly required to deal with an eerily modern crisis. In the story telekenetics are capable of causing a sub-critical mass of uranium to explode as if it were a critical mass, simply by thinking about it. Conversely, they are able to prevent a critical mass from exploding. When the United States is held hostage with nuclear weapons planted around the nation, the clairvoyants are tasked with finding the bombs, and the telekenetics with preventing them from exploding. After a few tense moments, the bombs are disabled, and the President requests that the psychics turn the tables on those who threatened them with a similar scheme.