74 | ansena ire) aed Volto hea Gettousr satouaut” oeoe © Sse plosion reaches the surface of the earth i) THE PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF A NUCLEAR WAR N PREVIOUS CHAPTERS we have examined the physical phenomena that are caused by a single nuclear detonation and their physical effects on the natural and man-made objects around it. We saw how the energy is released from inside the fissioned nuclei, and how it produces a destructive blast wave and other less violent but equally destructive effects such as the electro- magnetic pulse, delayed radioactive fallout, and the gener- ation of nitrogen oxides that destroy the protective ozone mantle above the Earth. The effects of a single nuclear detonation on human beings and their habitat and society, though massive, are not completely irreversible, as we have seen in the cases of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruc- tion of these cities and of hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants represents what we hope will be a unique trag- edy in human history. Yet within days after the nuclear attacks against them, these cities marshaled a semblance of organized activity. The survivors were treated and cared for. Rudimentary public services, such as the supply of food, water, power, transportation, and medical care, were reestablished. A centralized authority directed the entire effort, at first toward survival, and then toward recovery. But the experience of these cities cannot give us a true measure of the impact of a nuclear war on human life. Nor can they provide us with information that would allow us to conclude whether a nation can survive a nuclear war and recover after the termination of hostilities. Simply put, there is no precedent in history for the widespread, simul- taneous, perhaps irreversible destruction that a large mu- B76) ansi clear attack would cause to a nation. We can perhaps imagine the effects of n on one & by extrapolating from the relatively small i gain an. appreciation caused by a few detonations of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere by recalling the radio- active contamination of parts ofthe United States dusing the ts of nuclear w la. But not human memory even distant caused by the attack that Iw teach us very ut what we can anticipate at the mnot learn much, for example, levastation of Germany toward ar II, The total explosive energy of all in the last four years of the war was less than a millionth of the eneray a modest nuclear attack would visit upon the United States. The destruction that the bombing of Germany caused was local and spre: no radioactive fallout to impede activities in or near the bombed cities or deny the use of land. ld be after a large-scale images to help us. In doing so one fact must be constantly borne in mind: The destruction neous, so that one region of anoth do not think that United Stat clusion we ve at, It is trae that nations are different from one another in political, ¢ tions. But as different as soc! needs of human beings fo tical. Nuclear war would destroy the very means of sur 1d, shelter, and health facilities. sally ¢ sl destroy tions and pattems, : ety pos- sible. m effects of a large- attack are ares rvasi abruptness of the destruc- tion the slow and sporadic destruction brought bya conventional n lear war. The United on the ground, it would generate very large amounts of radioactive fallout, Thus, serious radiation hazards would extended areas downwind from the points of det- as largely absent from the attacks on detonations. For gle I-megaton nuclear weapon exploding in d generate as many electrons as there are nor- n the ionosphere around the earth. A few as all the sphere. Clearly, some effects of a nuclear war have global proportions. In order to assess the long-term effects of a nuclear war, let us examine the effects of a large-scale nuclear exchange jut 3,000 large nuclear weapons exploding78 | ansenat on the United States within a matter of hours or days. It is me that the Soviet les is not perfect and a nu aunch upon command, Further ‘ot all of the Soviet weapons would be ready for use of would reach their targets. Some of the Soviet bombers, for examp jost surely be shot down before they delivered their weapons. Perhaps most impor- tant, about 3,000 warheads is currently the number needed to successfully attack all the land-based intercontinental missiles, strategic airfields, and ballistic missile submarine pens in the United States, and destroy 80% of the thirty~ four most important manufacturing sectors of the United States and 97% of the U.S. petroleum-refining capacity, steel production, primary smelting facilities, engine and turbine manufacturing capacity, and electrical distribution equipment production—in short, to obliterate the military capability of the United States and the ability of the country to recover. This is known as a counterrecovery attack. (There is little reason to suspect that Soviet planners think any differently from their American counterparts, who since the dawn of the nuclear era and the cold war have targeted the U.S. nuclear arsenal against the Soviet Union with the same purposes in mind.) Consider now the specific targets of such an attack. The United States has 1,052 ig an intercon- e Soviet targe- the first one to detonate in the air as the silo as possible but without digging up a crater, and the second to detonate on the ground. This would be done so that the first detonation would not generate debris that would destroy the second warhead aimed at the same silo, ‘This means there would be 2,104 Ymegaton weapons det- onating in the American silo fields, which are located in Montana, North and South Dakota, Kansas, Arkansas, Mis- souri, and Nebraska, Three weapons would be targeted on each of the forty-six strategic Air Force airfields for a total xosta rsteis |79 of 138 weapons, and finally two weapons each over the two existing bi es, s the two now under consti \egaton weapons targeted against U.S. uc of which at least 1,052 would explode on the ground. Tt has been calculated that to destroy 80% of the man facturing capacity of the United States, teers would need the equival ‘ies: 75 against petroleum refineries, 60 against steel mills, 54 against primary smelting facilities that produce be divided into two phases: a counterforce attack against silos, air fields, and submarine pens fe , recovery attack. The important point here is that the results of such a concerted nucl very nearly the same regardl but some claim large fraction of our land-based missiles— and a larger fraction of the bombers on the ground—would wwe been destroyed. At the most, one-half of the ballistic- missile-carrying submarines would also have been put out of commission. The counterrecovery attack would have achieved the objectives outlined above. In terms, the loss of life would be staggering, Even though such an attack on the United States, and an at least equally devastating attack against the Soviet Uni would probably not extinguish human life throughout the northern hemisphere (or even throughout the two warring countries), it would kill a very large number of people and profoundly alter the way of life of the survivors. In order to assess these effects we will ex in some detail the impact of such an attack on six determinants of human sur- vival: medical care, food supplies, shelter, energy, life-sup- port systems of ‘the physical’ environment, ‘and the socioeconomic infrastructure that makes life as we now know it possible. Most of these factors of survival are inter-80 | ansean. dependent: Food produ y dwell- ers, for example, depends on energy and the general health of a population depends on both adequate food supplies and shelter In examining these six factors, we will assume that the conrse of events after an all-out nuclear attack will be more or less the following: The actual attack will take at most a few hours, probably much less, This will be followed by an early post-attack period of a few days to a week during which the immediate effects of the nuclear detonations will still be the dominant factor. Fires will still be burning, and radioactivity levels still be accumulating, though at a decreasing rate. The nattended injured wi ve but rapidly dying: people who may have sought protection in some kind of shelters, basements of houses and large public buildings, i be alive if the firestorm has not ki there will come a period of a basie struggle for survival which will last at least a year. This will, with luck, be fo lowed by a period of recovery that may last at least ten years and finally a period of slow evolution toward what was the normal state of things before the nuclear attack, which may: take as long as fifty years but almost certainly not less than. half that time. It is expected that we will never return to the same physical, social, economic, and political structures and institutions that we are familiar with now, but probably eventually evolve out of a nuclear catastrophe be similar. What about human casualties? The attack against indus- trial facilities, which are usually located within large urban centers, will cause the immediate or near-term death of 65% of the urban population of the United States, which now amounts to 132 million people. So 86 million people will be dead within a week after the attack. In addition, the counterforce attacks will kill between 5 million and 20 mil- lion additional people, depending on the prevailing winds, time of year, and other environmental conditions. So about 100 million Americans or roughly 45% of the entire country will be dead. Additional millions will be injured from the prompt effects of the detonations: bumed by the heat, wounded by the effects of the blast, or irradiated by prompt xosta TsiPis| 81 nuclear radiation, Many survivors will be subject to ad tional irradiation from the fallout caused by the 1,052 Yeamegaton bursts against the silos. Al the survivors will find themselves in grim surround- ings. The seventy-one urban centers attacked with I-mega- ton weapons will be in shambles, with most houses either totally destroyed or uninhabitable. Electricity, telephone, radio and television, police and fire stations, food stores, oil-storage facilities, gas lines, and warehouses will be de- stroyed, burned, or heavily damaged. Water will not be running because the pumping stations will not have elee- tricity to operate. But even worse, under these conditions, there will be little opportunity to provide medical assistance to those who need it, because the attack will have destroyed most medical facilities and killed most doctors. Most of the hos- pitals, and therefore the majority of the doctors, are located in the center of urban areas. Consequently it is expected that about 70% of the doctors and a comparable number of hospital beds will be destroyed outright by the nuclear det- onations. As a result it has been estimated that on the av- erage each surviving physician will have 1,000 patients to take care of in a post-attack environment. Assuming it takes him fifteen minutes to diagnose and treat each such patient and that he works ceaselessly sixteen hours a day, it will be two weeks before he will have a chance to see each of these 1,000 injured people for the first time. But this scenario is unlikely because many surviving doctors will themselves he injured. In addition, they will not be able to reach many of the wounded because of high radiation levels. Even if they could reach them, doctors will have few supplies and little equipment to work with: drugs, plasma, blood, dress- ings, instruments, diagnostic facilities, operating rooms will have been destroyed by the blast and fire. What hos- pitals remain standing will have no electricity, running water, medical supplies, or even working sewage. The EMP will have destroyed most electrical equipment. The large supplies of drugs and medical equipment will be in wholesale drug warehouses that in all probability will have been destroyed or will be inaccessible because of the de- bris, radioactivity, or loss of functioning transportation and82 | ansenaL, fuel. So most of the injured, probably as many as 80%, will die unattended, without even an injection of a narcotic to relieve their pain—narcotics are not stored in the great quantities that would be needed to reduce the suffering of neffectual and cannot be counted on to ry rate among the injured or even to lessen the misery and pain The most s post-attack period will be vation. It will become increasingly obtain uncontaminated water. TI those survivors who are obliged to remain indoors because of the ubiquitous radioactive fallout. In those eases where mild exposure to radiation causes vomiting and diarrhea, dehydration will become an acute and even fatal problem. The su e much more susce| be to reduce the immune response of individuals, burn and injury e survived even without any medical care will frequently succumb to infec tion because of the weakening of their biological defenses ation (one-twentieth of the lethal dose will double the mortality of burn victims), the lack of medical care and the lack of water, food, and adequate ly if the attack comes during the cold win- ter months. During the subsequent survival period the chief medic: problems will come from infection, iicable dis . The surviving population will en- counter hard and primitive conditions accompanied by undernourishment, need for exhausting labor, and proba- nadequate and unheated shelter. Thus the survivin, population, especially since it has not been e: ously to many pathogenic organisms and to develop natural resistance, will be extremely vulnerable infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, and streptococcal infections. ied, decomposing corpses will ost Ts1PIs | 83 probably promote an uncontrolled increase in insects, which in turn will greatly facilitate the transmission of dis- ‘ease among the survivors. Many diseases endemic to the United States which are now kept under control by public health efforts will prob- ably become pandemic within the first year after the attack, and they will affect not only the population of the attacked or radioactive areas but the inhabitants of those parts of the country spared any direct destructive effects of the war. Cholera, malaria, plague, shigellosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, tuberculosis, hepatitis, influenza, and meningitis, be rampant. Particular concern has been voiced about tu berculosis and the plague, because the post-attack condi- tions will be particularly favorable for the unchecked transmission of these diseases among the members of a population weakened by radiation, hardships, and malnu- trition. There have been estimates that as many as 35% of the post-attack survivors—almost 45 million people—may die during the one-year period following the attack because of the spread of infectious diseases. A much larger fraction of the survivors will contract one or more of these diseases, but survive. The medical problems in the recovery and redevelop- ment period will primarily take the form of increased can- cer incidence among the survivors and genetie disorders and abnormalities among their offspring. Tragic and regret- table as those may be, they will pale in magnitude and importance compared to the medical problems of the early post-attack and survival periods. For those surviving disease, the great obstacle to survival will be the problem of obtaining food. A massive nuclear war will generate a precipitous and prolonged reduction of food supplies to the population of the attacked areas im- mediately, and to the entire nation during the early post- attack years. Since the average American urban family shops for food once a week, or more frequently, an average home will have food supplies for no more than a week or two, assuming that they have not been destroyed or burned. Since there will be no electricity, all perishables will spoil, and there will be some difficulty in cooking the remaining foodstufis, After the first post-attack week the survivors will84 | anseNaL, have to forage for food in neighboring stores and food ware- houses, But finding food in stores will become increasingly diff- cult everywhere, because the food-retailing system of the country will collapse. Food production is a specialized in- astry concentrated in a few states—California, Florida, the Midwest, and Texas. Furthermore, the food chain de~ pends on processing, storage, and transportation of food supplies to large consuming centers (like industrial and ‘ban complexes) at an uninterrupted rate. Thus at any one ne there is only a one-to-two-week supply stored in the retail stores and food warehouses of a large urban center. In addition, it must be expected that a large fraction of the warehouses and cold-storage facilities will be destroyed, or rendered inoperative by the lack of electric power, There fore, it is reasonable to expect that, in metropolitan areas, the available food will be reduced by at least the same percentage as the population, and that the survivors have at best a two-week supply of food, most of it housed in undestroyed stores and warehouses in outlying areas of the attacked citie: ‘The survivors will have great difficulty in reaching these supplies, however. Not only will many of them be injured, but the radioactivity in many areas will be too high to per- mit lengthy treks and forays in search of food. In addition, very few people know where to look for food beyond their local grocery stores and supermarkets. The majority of the surviving population of attacked areas will thus face star- vation within two to four weeks after an attack, unless food supplies are brought into the stricken areas, or the survivors abandon their dom: id migrate into the countryside ity of fresh food supplies arriving into ‘a month after the attack is very small, for a number of physical reasons. There will be no fuel to move the trains, trucks, or barges needed to transport the ( produce more will have been destroyed in th Coal-burning transpor be fuel have all but disappeared. The prompt effects of nuclear detonations will have destroyed or impaired elec xosra tsunis | 85 I power generation and distribution. The radioactive fallout will not allow repairs to be performed for quite a While, even if skilled labor were alive and willing to work rather than look after family members or search for food, Even though there is, on the average, seventy days’ worth of food for the entire population stored in the grain-produc- ing areas of the United States, the disruption of transporta- tion, lack of fuel, absence of personnel, and radioactiv fallout will prevent its distribution Conditions cannot be expected to improve as time passes, since the food supply depends critically on the availability of oil and the chemni- cal companies that use it to produce fertilizers and pesti- cides. With 95% of the refining capacity of the United States destroyed, and its distribution system disrupted, we cannot assume that the food production, processing, and hain that now takes up about 4% of the total oil consumption in the United States will receive the en- egy it needs to move the farm equipment, pump water, milk the cows, process the food, package it, store it, and sport it. Furthermore, the radioactive fallout from the lear attack will have contaminated that year's grain crop, and killed millions of head of cattle and other animals asa substantial portion of the farm labor in the Midwest. Finally, the lack of fertilizers and pesticides wi handicap the production of food in subsequent years. It is true, however, that after the attack the country need much less food than at the present. The consu Population will have been reduced by about 50% to 60%: the American food-production chain, which is both exces- sively energy-intensive and wasteful, could probably fune- tion with much less available energy. At some point, pethaps a few years after the war, demographic adjustments will bring an equilibrium between supply and demand for food. Additional millions of survivors will die of starvation for example, and a migration of many survivors from useless and uninhabitable industrial centers to the farmlands of the Midwest will solve the labor shortage there and the food shortages in the attacked areas. We must expect, then, that for several years after the attack the population of the coun- try will go on decreasing while an even larger percentage86 | ansewat Compounding the food problems that the survivors be the lack of shelter for a substantial number of those that survive the prompt effects of a nuclear war. The large urban industrial centers of the Northeast and Centi will have about 60% to 70% of the dwelling netropolitan areas destroyed or severely damaged. The s vere winters that these areas experience will make this di struction an additional cause of disease and death, since malnourished and overstressed people will be less able to survive winter conditions in damaged and unheatt quarters. Reconstruction will require both buildin rials and fuel to move construction equipment, but these supplies will be lacking. Therefore, the most probable re- sponse to the destruction of shelter will be the migration of survivors to areas where housing has remained undamaged, and the orderly or violent sharing of this housing with its lawful proprietors In fact, the physical difficulties of reconstructing cities and industrial facilities ravaged by a nuclear attack and contaminated by fallout are such that the task seems very difficult and certainly of dubious cost-effectiveness. There- fore, we should expect the permanent abandonment of the destroyed and damaged areas of the urban-industrial com- plexes of the northeastern third of the country. The popu- lation shift that will be imposed by post-attack conditions will have profound socioeconomic and political effects. It may be, for example, that the absorption of millions of homeless, starving, and sick survivors from the urban cen- ters by the rural communities of the country will be carried out in an orderly, cooperative manner. But it may also be that in a country of proprietary and privately armed individ- uals, the migration will take the form of diffuse and anar- chie civil strife. Again, in the long run, these difficulties will be sorted out in one fashion or another, but it will probably be ten or more years before society retums to a period of relative order and normalcy. Energy is by far the most important short- and long-term Il affect the ultimate fate of the individual survivors of the nuclear attack as well as the fate of the country as a whole. Half of the energy requirements country, 88% needs of the country are met by natural gas and about 20% is met by coal, which is used mainly in the production of ‘electricity In the early post-attack period there will be no energy available to the attacked regions and electrical power will be cut off in the entire country because of the disruptive effects of the EMP. Oil supplies not destroyed will be rap- {idly consumed, and since the attack will have destroyed refineries, the’ entire internal-combustion-engine- transport system of the country—meaning diesel locomotive ba chinery, earth-moving equ ment—will halt. It is quite likely that a ye nuclear attack there will be no more liquid means of transporting whatever food supplies may exist in the food-producing areas, and no way or transport coal, of which we have ample supplies but which requires electricity for its mining and diesel fuel for its strip-mining and transportation. Transportation of needed supplies, ma- terials, and equipment around the country will must expect then that daily life as we know ease to exist, even in areas not destroyed by the nuclear attack. The continental scale of the ecor be- ‘cause of the lack of transportation, shrink to a fragmented. aggregate of local economic activities with unavoidable inefficiencies, dislocations, and searcities characteristic of medieval times in Europe. ‘The restoration of energy supplies will be a slow, gradual process. Because the natural-gas supply will remain largely intact and the pipelines that carry it could probably be re- paired within a year, natural gas will probably be the first major supply of energy available for use in restoring the energy-production and transportation facilities back to an ing the damaged elec- trical power network and the electrical power plants, it will be possible to provide the undamaged areas of with electrical power. But since the attack will have de-88 | ansenaL, stroyed 97% of the industry that manufactures the neces- sary power production and distribution equipment, it may be many years before such restoration takes place. In the absence of electricity the cities will lack water supplies and suffer from the absence of sewage-treatment plants. It is not inconceivable then that the lack of energy will be an additional reason for massive migrations of urban dwellers (even of unaffected cities) to the countryside in search of a life that does not require energy-dependent support sys- tems. An alternative answer to the energy problem of the coun- try is massive imports of refined oil products from abroad. If the attack had destroyed the major ports such help would be very difficult to receive. But even with the ports intact, such help would be improbable. With no industrial prod- ucts or food to sell, the United States will lack the funds to purchase the fuel it will need. With a decimated labor force scattered away from urban-industrial centers, it is question- able whether the marginal industrial capacity of the coun- try could be raised to a level that would produce not only the massive quantities of the myriads of products that will be needed for the survival of the population and the recon- struction of the country itself, but in addition create a sur- plus that could be sold abroad in exchange for energy. It is even questionable whether there will be enough surplus capital for reconstruction, since the country’s remaining re- sources will be devoted to consumption. It is conceivable, of course, that the United States will be able to coerce oil producing countries into sending to this country refined oil products by threatening a nuclear attack. But it seems un- likely that such a policy could be practically implemented. About 45% of the U.S. energy sources will survive a mas- sive nuclear attack. It would seem, since about 45% of the population is also expected to survive, that this will be an adequate supply of energy. But nearly’ all of the intact en- ergy sources will be coal or natural gas, causing severe difficulties for an economy dependent on liquid fuels. In addition, the inability to strip-mine and transport coal, and the damage to the natural gas pipeline and pumping sys- tems will allow only a very small percentage of the avail- able energy resources to reach the ultimate consumer in a kosta rss | 89 ‘postattack situation. For example, in principle, if the un- derground coal mines receive the necessary electrical power, they can provide high-quality anthracite for further electrical power production. But in reality the probability is very small that the surviving supply of coal stored at the yards of power plants will be used to produce electricity distributed primarily to coal mines. Even if this organiza- tional and managerial feat is accomplished amid the chaos ‘of a nuclear post-attack situation, the mined coal could not, be transported to the power plants for use. Coal-burning locomotives are as rare as hand-operated gasoline pumps in country, and those that exist could not be marshaled to the necessary locations because of the general breakdown of communications that will follow a large-scale nuclear attack. It is quite possible that the result of a large-scale nuclear attack on the energy network of the United States will re- duce the per capita available energy to levels characteristie of the cra before the industrial revolution. The surviving population will then have to resort to wood-burning for heating and cooking, and any industrial activity will have to depend on makeshift power that relies also on wood or falling water, as did industries of the late seventeenth and arly eighteenth centuries. Given the destruction of cities and productive capacity, the widespread diseases and epidemics, the starvation deaths of a large fraction of the survivors, and the unknown Genetic effects of the radioactive fallout there is some ques- tion about when, if ever, the birthrate in the country will exceed the deathrate, and what the political and economic fate of this will be if it does not. It is, of course, possible that shortly after the termination of the nuclear hostilities, massive and persistent infusions of food at supplies surviving population. It is questionable, however, whether countries like Japan, Australia, Argentina, and Saudi Arabia will rush to the aid of a demolished, unproductive, and Politically and militarily useless United States. It is more Probable that countries unaffected by the immediate re- sults of a U.S.-U.S.S.R. nuclear exchange will have their own dislocations (radioactive fallout, and lack of industrial ee90 | ARSENAL. products, chemicals, fertilizers, drugs, and food imported from the industrialized United States and Soviet Union) to cope with and will scramble for world ascendancy in the vacuum left by what to all intents and purposes must be considered the demise of the two superpowers. ‘The disintegration of many features of modem life will be a pervasive aspect of the socioeconomic environment facing the survivors of a nuclear war. It is important, how ever, to make a distinction between the surviving dwellers of attacked areas and the inhabitants of unaffected rural , and villages. The very fact that a nuclear war will probably create two drastically different classes of ci izens will be the root of some of the difficulties of the post- nuclear-war era, Peacetime contemporary life and eco- nomic activity rest on the successful integration of highly specialized production activities, the existence of central and local authorities, and the undisrupted functioning of an infrastructure of public and private services such as police, fire and medical facilities, telephone, radio and tele} and the entire complex and interrelated network of retail services and banking. While some of these cornerstones of rary life will survive and continue to function im- mediately after a nuclear attack in the majority of rural lo- ties, they will be totally destroyed or disrupted in areas of direct attack or heavy radioactive fallout. Consider the situation confronting a family of survivors in an urban suburb. Their house will have been destroyed or damaged beyond use; shortly after the attack they will face problems of food, water, and, if injured, medical sup- plies and services. They will have no means of knowing local radioactivity level is and how it will change n the days to come, and probably no means of commu ws or receiving instructions and information. They wi without any physical security, since there , military presence, or organized authority. the same, be forced to forage for food and usands or millions of others are competing with them within the same general area for scarce or non- existent resources, ‘The popularity of firearms in American society guaran- tees that many of these hungry, desperate, disoriented peo- xosra rsipis | 91 ple will be armed. In the absence of a central authority to {impart a sense of confidence and security, the survivors will have a heightened inclination to acquire the essential needs for survival by looting or violence. Since this s ‘chaos will be taking place in a ravaged environment, filled with the dead and dying and incapable of supporting the living, it is quite probable that physically able survivors will at least attempt to leave the attacked metropolitan areas and migrate haphazardly to the countryside in search of food, water, shelter, and fuel supplies in the form of ‘wood. It is to be expected that such treks, especially if attempted in wintertime, will take a heavy toll of the chil- dren and the elderly among the survivors, so it is possible that the countryside immediately surrounding the metro- politan areas will be filled with roving bands of armed adults struggling to survive by looting and plundering. But even migrating families and unarmed survivors will impose an enormous strain on the rural communities that they eventually reach. Contraty to the desperate, homeless, starving, and sick metropolitan refugees, the rural commu nities will have retained intact most of their organized so- ial and administrative functions and institutions. Police, fire, and medical services will be more or less functional. Even though, however, local means of production will be intact, the occupations of most inhabitants will not be avai able to them, because of lack of energy. Their homes and their water supply will continue unimpaired but they will experience food shortages. Yet these people will be enter- taining more or less the same expectations and sense of values about property, privacy, and individual freedoms and rights that they maintained before the war. In light of these values and the limited resources available, they will See the invading victims of the nuclear attacks as a threat to their survival. It is quite possible, then, that the two groups of post- huclear-war citizens will clash, the urban refugees trying to survive, the indigenous rural population trying to hold ‘on to their houses, their food, and their ability to live their lives as before. Since both populations will be well armed, it is almost certain that there will be numerous violent clashes that will be mitigated only by the eventual deple-92 | anseat tion of ammunition supplies. There is no r that a central, federal, or even state authority wil to impose order in this post-attack chaos, since there w' be no manpower, transportation, or communication facili- ies to effect such order. This period of strife for survival will eventually subside, but not without additional substan- tial loss of life and considerable delay in the initiation of the process of recovery and reconstruction. Information as to the location and extent of destruction and of the availability of surviving stocks of material will be very difficult to gather. Managing the recovery process, even with such information, will be such a slow, inefficient, and halting affair that there is serious question whether enough productivity could be restored to meet basic needs by the time existing stocks have run out. In the physical, social, and economic chaos that will follow a nuclear war, this crucial goal may not be achieved. If not, and if supplies cannot be replenished faster than they are consumed, the country will enter a descending spiral of inadequate re- sources insufficient to maintain the population, which in result in a further diminution of this population consequently an even lower productive capacity, On the other hand, the resiliency and instinct of survival ofthe human race may overcome the adverse physi ditions, the scarcity of energy and material, and the clima- ral changes to be discussed later. For one thing, there ral communities that will escape the destructive- ness of war and the socioeconomic strain of migrating ref get by long-term radioactive fallout, they may very well manage to survive, grow, and prosper. Quite possibly these areas may become the seeds of a re- newed society that will slowly evolve back from a predon ian economy to the diversified, specialized, highly technological industrial society that we live in now. “There has been intense and at times acrimonious publ debate on the contribution a large-scale civil defense effort could make toward the certainty and pace of recovery from «nuclear attack, Proponents argue that given advance (between se\ pared and rehearsed evacuation of the inhabitants of large xosta rstis | 99 urban centers to public and private dwellings in rural com- munities, a properly funded civil defe: detonations| nuntry. Such an effort would be of truly monumental proportions. ‘Twenty-five million in the period between the time the federal gover notifies loc: the beginning of nucl cs 7.5 billion inated water must be stored and space equal to a billion square feet must be found to house 100 millios must be will host the evacuees from the urban and indi ters. Those who question the ef out that the assumption of such early warning of an enemy: c. They also calculate that adequate and © preparations for such massive evacuations fantastically disruptive of peacetime activities and will cost tens of billions of dol ly. They further claim that physical and life-sustai sets of the attacked cities, such as itals, universities, energy-producing and managing faci be destroyed anyw: attack existence. Finally, they point out that a determined opponent can det "ar weapons on the round, and so blanket the country with such a high level The most depends on seventy it can be defeated by the oppone Presumably advance warnii bilization of the oppé deepening international crisis, By continuing to escalate the crisis and making preparations for an all-out nuclear at- tack, the opponent can convince U.S. civil defense author ities to commence evacuation of the urban population. Optimally, this evacuation will take about three days to94 | ansunat complete. At that time, the opponent can de-escalate the crises, and reduce the level of readiness of his nuclear forces. Eventually, this will induce the U.S. gover call off the evacuation and return the urban pop’ its cities. Then the Soviets can attack by surprise. ‘Thus, civil defense evacuation plans that require ad- vance warning have three serious flaws. First, the enemy ‘can attack without waming, Second, the enemy can fake the warning and catch the urban population after they have returned to their cities, at a time when they would not be jelieve government assurances that an. attack is ‘nent and evacuation is again necessary. Third, warning” is so poorly defined that it is difficult to imagine how the responsible authorities will recognize what does, and what does not, constitute assured warning of an impending attack. It is quite clear that the population not be willing to evacuate twice, so the civil defense authorities must interpret the behavior of the opponent cor rectly, Itis also possible that once the urban population of the United States has been evacuated, the U.S. government may feel itself under political pressure to begin a nuclear war in order not to lose credibility with its citizenry. Itis indeed true that a large-scale civil defense program, properly organized and funded, and given adequate tactical advance warning, can both increase substantially the sur- viving manpower pool and minimize the immediate post- attack-period medical problems. On the other hand, the survival of additional millions of people will leave essen- tially the same amount of undestroyed resources and sup- plies to be shared by a larger number of survivors Consequently, post-attack consumption requirements will be much higher than they would be in the case of an unpro- tected population, and therefore, the accumulation of suff- cient surplus supplies to avoid the downward spiral of the economy in the post-survival era will be that much more difficult. Also, those civilians who would have died in the cities in the absence of a massive evacuation will die of starvation and disease sometime after the attack, since the supplies available won't be enough to support the extra survivors. Massive transportation of people into communi- ties that cannot absorb them over the long term or provide them with productive oecupat sistence after the nuclear war will exacerbate soci economic strains between urban refugees and rural jtants. For these reasons, it seems that, aside from the di ficulties pointed dee civil defense plan, eve ly executed, postpone the problems rather than solve them. Probably it cannot even achieve that much because an opponent iffaced 1 defense protection plan, overwhelm by changing the tactics and nature of the attack: In the final analysis, all efforts at survival and recovery will be limited by the effects on the environment of a large scale nuclear attack against the United States. This attack, and presumably one of si simultaneously against the Soviet cernible Kinds: (1) the deposition of radioactive debris more or less uniformly over the middle latitudes of the northern hemi- sphere, beyond the areas of local depositions (2) the change ofthe climate caused by the injecti fine dust into the atmosphere: logical and ecosystem changes cansed by the dep! ozone in the stratosphere over the northern hemisphere. ‘The dust and debris that the fireballs of ground-burst ‘weapons carry into the stratosphere will be very radioac- tive. Large tracts of arable land, mainly in the Midwe used for grain production, will be contaminated by the fal ‘out caused by these counter-silo explosions. In an area of at least 400,000 square miles (see Figure 1 the size of France, Germany, and England con livestock and the year's crop will be lost, and it whether any of that land area could be put back into use the next growing season. All conifer trees in this area will die, Downwind from each collection of silos, the radiation will be so high that all fruit trees and other deci plants will die in areas of as much as 10,000 square Since the areas of radi extensive, it will be impossible for the inhabitants to aban- don them until the radioactivity level subsides below harm-xosta tstP1s | 97 vivors will not be able to use the land for several years pecause of the high level of radioactivity. ‘This is particu- he affected areas down- ees of food. Lowa, for exampl yet produces nearly 10% of the U.S. food supply; it pro- @uces 20% of the national com production and has the larg- ‘est livestock industry of any state. Depending on the exact attack, any- where between 40% and 100% of I be covered ‘with about 1,000 rems of radiation within the first four days -ast 600 rems of ra- dioactivity will accumulate during the same period in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, the northeastern half of , Minnesota, parts of Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Vi smaller regions of New Mexico and noxthwestern Texas. The entire country east of Montana, Wyoming, and Colo- rado and north of the Arkansas-Mississippi-Alabama-Geor- gia line will be covered with enough radioactive strontium. 90 (more than 2 microcuries per square meter) to render dards. Strontium 90 decays slow ‘twenty-eight years to decrease by half the rad the strontium deposited in these areas. So there may be several years before even the least contaminated areas can bbe returned to safe agri Much worse contamination of ‘enemy decides to attack, with nuclear weapons, our nucle: teactors and the high-level radioactive waste storage pools Associated with them. A reactor contains about 2,000 times less radiouetivity than the radioactivity generated by the detonation of a I-megaton weapon an hour after the explo- sion. But the radioactive material from the nuclear reactor ly, so land contaminated mnger than nut from nuclear weapons explo:98 | ansenat, ground. The radioactive wastes in the storage tanks have radioactivity even more persistent than the nuclear reactor. Ifa nuclear weapon explodes at a reactor, it will evapo- rate both the reactor core and the radioactive wastes from the storage pools, and carry that radioactive debris to heights of 40,000 to 60,000 feet. Then as the cloud cools, the prevailing winds will spread the contents of the reactor and the waste ponds downwind from the destroyed reactor site. A month later, 12,000 square miles of land down from the reactor will still have enough radioactis anyone there sick. A hundred years later there will still be 2,000 square miles that remain uninhabitable by the crite- tia of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Some fine particles of dust on radioactive nuclei have congealed as the fireball cooled will stay in the atmo- sphere for ile, pethaps for years. This portion of return to earth over a period of time in two ways. Some of the dust will be carried back by rainfall. This will create unpredictable radioactive sites pethaps thousands of miles away from the location of the explosions as storms and the jet stream distribute the dust ‘over the northern hemisphere. The remaining dust wi slowly settle back to the surface, forming a more or less uniform mantle of long-lived radioactive nuclei such as io- dine 129 and strontium 90 over the entire middle band of the northern hemisphere. Except in rare cases, this long-term radioactive fallout will not amount to doses that will cause radiation sickness. But since its presence will be long-term and pervasive, it will find its way into the food, drink, and air of the inhabi- tants of the northern hemisphere. Day in and day out, these people will be ingesting and breathing in small amounts of radioactive nuclei. Since these nuclei are long-lived, their effects inside the body will be cumulative, especial the metabolic activities of the body tend to segregate differ- ent substances to different parts of the body. Iodine, for example, is stored in the thyroid gland, and strontium is amassed in the bones. So even though the amount of these radioactive nuclei may be small per square kilometer of the surface of the northern hemisphere, accumulations of these radioactive nuclei can form “hot spots” inside the organs of osta stpts | 9) the bodies of animals and humans and inside plants. The data is not complete on the effects of such hot spots, but there is strong evidence that they cause cancer, abnormali- ties in babies born of mothers exposed to such chronic ra- diation, and an increased rate of miscarriages. At the very least this diffuse radioactivity will cause sick- ness in additional millions of people, many of whom will die, It will also reduce the birthrate of many plant and -, raising the possibility of extinction of entire species, man among them, in the attacked countries. The problem really is that we do not know, and in fact cannot imagine, what the totality of the effects of long-term radia- tion can be. The ecosystem is quite delicate, but also quite resilient. For example, about 60 million years ago an un- known event happened on earth that released enormous amounts of energy and caused massive clouds of dust that wiped out thousands of species in the northern hemi- sphere, among them the dinosaurs. This did not end life on the planet, but it certainly altered it profoundly. The sud- den release of thousands of megatons of energy in a nuclear wat and the subsequent long-term and ubiquitous radioac- tivity may also cause significant changes in the ecosystem. The injection of well over 100 million tons of dust into the atmosphere will cause another significant physical ef- fect: Less sunlight will reach the surface of the earth, be- ‘cause the dust will scatter and absorb it on the way. The northern hemisphere will live in a haze for a year or two. A similar effect occurred in 1883, when the volcano Krakatoa literally blew up, sending about 10 million tons of dust into the stratosphere. As a result, the average surface tempera- ture on the earth was lowered a few tenths of a degree for about a year. The following winter was colder and wetter in the northern hemisphere than the average. So we can expect that the first winter after the nuclear war will be a Particularly cold one, and the cereal crops in Canada, the United States, and the Soviet Union will probably fail that Year as a result, But in the long run the dust will settle and the temperature of the earth will be restored to its present level. The so-called ozone depletion effect will be a significant by-product of a nuclear war. The nitrogen oxides that will100 | ansear, be generated by all the nuclear detonations will be lifted by the fireballs into the part of the stratosphere that con- tains the ozone. This will result in a rapid depletion of about half the ozone layer over the northern hemisphere, a reduction that could last several years. It has been esti- ated that a 50% reduction of the ozone layer will increase the ultraviolet light on the surface of the northern hemi- sphere anywhere between ten and one hundred times. This additional light might change the heating pattern of the atmosphere, which can affect tropospherie air cirew patterns and thus the overall weather of the entire hemi- sphere, Heating of the upper levels of the atmosphere will ‘cause a reduction of the average surface temperature of the earth by about 1° C, a change that may last a few years. oming on top of the cooling eaused by the dust suspended in the atmosphere, this cooling could have more permanent and drastic effects, not only on the to stay alive, but on the entire ecosystem that will be bur dened anyway by the effect of ozone di and even plant life. It is expected that a t outright, harm others to an unpredictable degree, kil colored animals, and cause severe and abrupt sunburns to exposed skin of humans. By far the most serious threat of such an increase in ultraviolet is its effect upon the eyes of the surface of the eye, causing scar tissue on the cornea that blocks light from entering the eye. The damage occurs slowly, but it accumulates to the point that the exposed animal becomes blind. And for many ani probabl enough for the damage on blind them. Nocturnal or aquatic animals wi fected. But a massive blinding and death of thou diumal species such as mammals and birds, together with the destruction of many plant species, could cause imbal- ances among species populations leading to the collapse of the ecosystem in the northern hemisphere. ‘As improbable as such far-reaching consequences might oss ries | 101 ‘seem, one cannot escape a feeling of apprehension that the Syncray of all these offects—the lowering of the earth's (perature, persistent radioactivity, the blinding and “death of numerous species of ani ye destruction or Stunting of many plant species, and the myriads of ways i which these ly reinforce each other—w Some unprecedented catastrophe that is beyond calculat orprediction. There is just no way of accurately estimating these effects, nor, therefore, the extent of such a collapse. ignorant of the full gamut of the effects of a -seale nuclear war, and to conceal our ignorance Bead be not only unscientific but iresponsible, Yet admit that we have the power to ina beyond our control represents an equally egregious and ultimately far more terrifying error.