Chapter THREE ATTACK CASES - Princeton University

Chapter IV

THREE ATTACK CASES

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overview ● **************************Case 2: A Soviet Attack on U.S. Oil Refineries

The First Hour: Immediate Effects . . . . .Fatalities and Injuries . . . . . . . . . . . . .Petroleum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Electric Power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Casualty Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Military. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Reaction: The First Week . . . . . . . . . . . .Recovery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Long-Term Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Case 2: A U.S. Attack on Soviet Oil RefineriesImmediate Effects: The First Hour . . . . .Reaction: The First Week . . . . . . . . . . . .Recovery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Long-Term Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Case 3: A Counterforce Attack Against theUnited States ● * * * * e * *o** * * * * * * * * * * *

Prompt Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The Period Before Fallout Deposition.Casualty Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Contamination Period . . . . . . . . . . .Economic Disruption . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Recuperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Long-Term Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Case 3: A Comterforce Attack Against theSoviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The First Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The Shelter Period. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Recuperation . . . . . . . . . . .“. . . . . . . . . .Long Term Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Case 4: A large soviet Attack On U.S. Militaryand Economic● Targets ● 8 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The First Few Hours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page

636465696977717172727273747576777880

8181818386888890

9090919394

9495

Page

The First Few Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96The Shelter Period (Up to a Month). . . . . 97The Recuperation Period . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Case4: A large U.S. Attack on Soviet Militaryand Economic Targets

The First Few Hours. .The First Few Days . .The Shelter period. . .Recuperation . . . . . .

● * * * * * * * * * * * * 100. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104. ’ . 105., . . . . . . . . . .

TABLES

6.

7.

8.

9.10.11.

13.

14.15.

16.

Page

Energy Production and DistributionComponents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65U.S. Refinery Locations and RefiningCapacity by Rank Order. . . . . . . . . . . . 67Summary of U.S.S.R. Attack on theUnited States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Electric Powerplants in Philadelphia. . . 71Summary of U. S. Attack on U.S.S.R. . . . 76Approximate Distance of Various EffectsFrom Selected Nuclear Air Bursts . . . . . 77

FIGURESPage

Approximate Footprint Coverage–U.S.and Soviet attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Philadelphia and Surrounding Counties 70Counterforce Targets in the UnitedStates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Expected Casualties as a Function ofTypical Monthly Winds Resulting From anAttack on Selected Military Targets inthe United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Chapter IV

THREE ATTACK CASES.

OVERVIEW

The following pages present descriptions of three ‘*cases” of nuclear attacks.(The tutorial on nuclear effects–chapter H-was the first of our four cases.) As men-tioned in the Executive Summary, these cases do not necessarily represent “prob-able” kinds of nuclear attacks; they were chosen rather to shed light on the way inwhich different types of attacks could have differing effects on the civilian popula-tion, economy, and society. Moreover, each case is considered in isolation—eventsthat could lead up to such an attack are deliberately ignored (because their predictionis impossible), and it is assumed (although that assumption is questionable at best)that the attack described is not followed by further nuclear attacks.

Each case considers first a Soviet attack on the United States, and then a U.S. at-tack on the Soviet Union. These attacks are similar in that they attack similar targetsets, but different in detail because both the weapons available to the attacker andthe geography of the victim are different. It should be emphasized that this discus-sion is not suggesting that in the real world an attack would be followed by a mirror-image retaliation; rather, it is looking at similar attacks so as to highlight the asym-metries in the ways in which the United States and the Soviet Union are vulnerable.To save space, it is assumed that the reader will read the Soviet attack on the UnitedStates in each case before turning to the U.S. attack on the Soviet Union, and repeti-tion has been minimized.

The analyses that follow are much more like sketches than detailed portraits.Precise prediction of the future of the United States or the Soviet Union is impossibleeven without taking into account something as unprecedented as a nuclear attack. Adetailed study would say more about the assumptions used than about the impact ofnuclear war. What is possible, and what this report tries to do, is to indicate the kindsof effects that would probably be most significant, and to comment on the majoruncertainties.

The following pages discuss the impact oncivil i an societies of:

● A Iimited attack on industrial targets. Forthis case the hypothesis was an attackthat would be limited to 10 strategic nu-clear delivery vehicles (S NDVs) (i. e., 10 ●

missiles or bombers, in this case SovietSS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles(I CBMs), and U.S. Poseidon submarine-Iaunched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), andMinuteman Ill ICBMs), and that would bedirected at the oil refining industry. Oilrefining was chosen as the hypothetical

target because it is vital, vulnerable, andconcentrated in both countries. It is as-sumed that the attack would be plannedwithout any effort either to minimize or tomaximize civiIian casualties.

A large counterforce attack. The possibil-ities considered included both an attackon ICBM silos only (a case that has gainedsome notoriety as a result of assertions bysome that the United States may becomevulnerable to such an attack) and an at-tack on silos, missile submarine bases, andbomber bases (which some characterize

63

64 • The Effects of Nuclear War

●

as the least irrational way to wage a stra-tegic nuclear war). The analysis draws onseveral previous studies that made ‘vary-ing assumptions about attack design,weapon size, targets attacked, and vulner-ability of the population; the ways i nwhich variations in these assumptions af-fect the calculations of estimated fatal-ities are discussed.

A large attack against a range of militaryand economic targets. This attack is in-tended to approximate “the ultimate de-

terrent’’—the climax of an escalationprocess. The description of the results ofthis attack draws upon several previousstudies that made differing assumptionsabout the number of weapons used andthe precise choice of targets, but suchvariations are useful in indicating therange of possibilities. However, deliberateefforts to kill as many people as possibleare not assumed, which would lead tomore immediate deaths (perhaps 10 mil-lion to 20 million more) than targetingeconomic and military facilities.

CASE 2: A SOVIET ATTACK ON U.S. OIL REFINERIES

This case is representative of a kind of nu-clear attack that, as far as we know, has notbeen studied elsewhere in recent years–a“limited” attack on economic targets. This sec-tion investigates what might happen if theSoviet Union attempted to infIict as much eco-nomic damage as possible with an attacklimited to 10 SNDVs, in this case 10 SS-18ICBMs carrying multiple independently target-able reentry vehicles (MlRVs). An OTA con-tractor designed such an attack, operating oninstructions to limit the attack to 10 missiles,to create hypothetical economic damage thatwould take a very long time to repair, and todesign the attack without any effort either tomaximize or to minimize human casualties.(The contractor’s report is available separate-ly.) The Department of Defense then calcu-lated the immediate results of this hypotheti-cal attack, using the same data base, method-ology, and assumptions as they use for theirown studies. *

Given the limitation of 10 ICBMs, the mostvulnerable element of the U.S. economy wasjudged to be the energy supply system. Astable 6 indicates, the number of components

*The Office of Technology Assessment wishes tothank the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency for theirtimely and responsive help in calculations related to thiscase, the Command and Control Technical Center per-formed similar calculations regarding a similar U S at-tack on the Soviet Union

in the U.S. energy system forces the selectionof a system subset that is critical, vulnerable toa small attack, and would require a long timeto repair or replace.

OTA and the contractor jointly determinedthat petroleum refining facilities most nearlymet these criteria. The United States has about300 major refineries. Moreover, refineries arerelatively vulnerable to damage from nuclearblasts. The key production components are thedist i l lat ion uni ts, cracking uni ts, cool ingtowers, power house, and boiler plant. Frac-tionating towers, the most vulnerable compo-nents of the distillation and cracking units, col-lapse and overturn at relatively low winds andoverpressures. Storage tanks can be I if ted fromtheir foundations by similar effects, sufferingsevere damage and loss of contents and raisingthe probabilities of secondary fires and explo-sions.

MlRVed missiles are used to maximize dam-age per missile. The attack uses eight l-mega-ton (Mt) warheads on each of 10 SS-18 ICBMs,which is believed to be a reasonable choicegiven the hypothetical objective of the attack.Like all MIRVed missiles, the SS-18 has limita-tions of “footprint” –the area within whichthe warheads from a single missile can beaimed. Thus, the Soviets could strike not any80 refineries but only 8 targets in each of 10footprints of roughly 125,000 mi2 [32,375,000

Ch. IV—Three Attack Cases ● 65

hectares], The SS-18’s footprint size, and thetendency of U.S. refineries to be located inclusters near major cities, however, make theSS-18 appropriate. The footprints are shown infigure 13. Table 7 lists U.S. refineries by capaci-ty; and table 8 lists the percentage of U.S. re-fining capacity destroyed for each footprint.

The attack uses eighty l-Mt weapons; itstrikes the 77 refineries having the largestcapacity, and uses the 3 remaining warheadsas second weapons on the largest refineries inthe appropriate missile footprints, In perform-ing these calculations, each weapon that deto-nates over a refinery is assumed to destroy itstarget. This assumption is reasonable in viewof the vulnerability of refineries and the factthat a l-Mt weapon produces 5-psi overpres-sure out to about 4.3 miIes [6.9 km]. Thus, dam-age to refineries is mainly a function of num-bers of weapons, not their yield or accuracy;collateral damage, however, is affected by allthree factors. it is also assumed that everywarhead detonates over its target. In the realworld, some weapons would not explode orwouId be off course. The Soviets could, how-ever, compensate for failures of launch vehi-cles by readying more than 10 ICBMs for theattack and programming missiles to replaceany failures in the initial 10. FinalIy, all weap-

February 1976

ons are assumed detonated at an altitude thatwouId maximize the area receiving an over-pressure of at least 5 psi. This overpressure wasselected as reasonable to destroy refineries.Consequences of using ground bursts arenoted where relevant.

The First Hour: Immediate Effects

The attack succeeds. The 80 weapons de-stroy 64 percent of U.S. petroleum refiningcapacity.

The attack causes much collateral (i. e., unin-tended) damage. Its only goal was to maximizeeconomic recovery time. While it does notseek to kill people, it does not seek to avoiddoing so. Because of the high-yield weaponsand the proximity of the refineries to largecities, the attack kills over 5 million people ifall weapons are air burst. Because no fireballwouId touch the ground, this attack wouId pro-duce little fallout. If all weapons were groundburst, 2,883,000 fatalities and 312,000 falloutfa ta l i t i es a re ca lcu la ted fo r a to ta l o f3,195,000. Table 8 lists fatalities by footprint.

The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency(DC PA) provided fatality estimates for this at-tack. DCPA used the following assumptions re-


Figure 13

8Kalingrad

● ‘Moscow

Approximate footprint coverage of U.S. attack

Approximate footprint coverage of Soviet attack

Ch. IV— Three Attack Cases ● 67

Table 7.–U.S. Refinery Locations and Refining Capacity by Rank Order

Rank Percent Cumulative Rank Percent Cumulativeorder Location capacity percent capacity order Location capacity percent capacity

123456789

101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233

3.62.92.32,12.12,02,01,91 91.81.61.61,51.61.31,21.11.11.11.01 01 01 00.90.90 90 90.90 80.80 80.80 7

3,66.48.7

10.812,914,916,918,820.722.524,125.727,328,930.131.332.433.534.63 5 736.737.738.739.640,641,54 2 44 3 344,14 4 94 5 746,547.2

3435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162636465

0 70 70 70 70.70 70.60 60 60.60 60 60 50.50.50.50 50 50 50 50 50 50.50.50 40 40.44 11,60 50 3

3 1 3

47,948,649.350.05 0 651.351.952,55315 3 75 4 35 4 95 5 45 5 956,557.057.558.05 8 559,05 9 56 0 060.46 0 96 1 361 76 2 266.36 7 968.468.7

1000

asum of all refineries m the mdlcated geographic areabForelgn Irade zone onlyc[n~lude~ summary data from ali rehnerles with capacity less than 75000 bblfday 224 refineries Included

SOURCE National Petroleum Refiners Assoclahon

Table 8. –Summary of U.S.S.R. Attack on the United States

Totals ., ., ., 80 63.7 NA 5,031

aEMT = Equlvalenl megatons

bNA = Not applicable

68 • The Effects o/ Nuclear War—— . —.—— —

Ch. IV— Three Attack Cases Ž 69

garding the protective postures of the pop-ulation in its calculations:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Ten percent of the population in largecities (above 50,000) spontaneously evac-uated beforehand due to rising tensionsand crisis development;Home basements are used as fallout shel-ters as are such public shelters as sub-ways;People are distributed among fallout shel-ters of varying protection in proportion tothe number of shelter spaces at each levelof protection rather than occupying theb e s t s p a c e s f i r s t ;The remaining people are in buildings thatoffer the same blast protection as a single-story home (2 to 3 psi); radiation protec-tion factors were commensurate with thetype of structures occupied.

These assumptions affect the results for rea-sons noted in chapter III. Other uncertaintiesaffect the casualties and damage. These in-clude fires, panic, inaccurate reentry vehicles(RVs) detonating away from intended targets,time of day, season, local weather, etc. Suchuncertainties were not incorporated into thecalculations, but have consequences noted inchapters I I and I I 1.

The attack also causes much collateral eco-nomic damage. Because many U.S. refineriesare located near cities and because the Sovietsare assumed to use relatively large weapons,the attack would destroy many buildings andother structures typical of any large city. Theattack would also destroy many economic fa-cilities associated with refineries, such as rail-roads, pipelines, and petroleum storage tanks.While the attack would leave many U.S. portsunscathed, it wouId damage many that areequipped to handle oil, greatly reducing U.S.petroleum importing capability. Similarly,many petrochemical plants use feedstocksfrom refineries, so most plants producing com-plex petrochemicals are located near refin-eries; indeed, 60 percent of petrochemicalsproduced in the United States are made inTexas gulf coast plants. l Many of these plants

‘ Bill Curry , “Gulf PIants Combed for Carcinogens, ”W’ash/ngton Post, Feb 19, 1979, page A3

would be destroyed by the attack, and many oftherest would be for lack of feed stocks.III the attack aimed only at refinerieswould cause much damage to the entire petro-leum industry, and to other assets as well.

All economic damage was not calculatedfrom this attack, because no existing data basewould support reasonably accurate calcula-tions. Instead, the issue is approached by usingPhiladelphia to illustrate the effects of theattack on large cities. Philadelphia containstwo major refineries that supply much of theNortheast corridor’s refined petroleum. In theattack, each was struck with a l-Mt weapon.For reference, figure 14 is a map of Philadel-phia. Since other major U.S. cities are near tar-geted refineries, similar damage could be ex-pected for Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Fatalities and Injuries

The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency(DCPA) provided not only the number of peo-ple killed within each of the 2-minute grid cellsin the Philadelphia region but also the originalnumber of people within each cell. These re-sults are summarized in the following table fordistances of 2 and 5 miles [3 and 8 km] fromthe detonations:

Deaths From Philadelphia Attack

Distance from Original Number Percentdetonat ion popula t ion ki l led ki l led

2 m l 155,000 135,000 875 ml 5,785,000 410,000 52

Detailed examination of the large-scale mapalso indicates the magnitude of the problemsand the resources available to cope with them.These are briefly discussed by category.

Petroleum

Local production, storage, and distributionof petroleum are destroyed. 1 n addition to thetwo refineries, nearly all of the oil storagetanks are in the immediate target area. Presum-ably, reserve supplies can be brought to Phila-delphia from other areas unless– as is likely–they are also attacked. While early overlandshipment by rail or tank truck into north andnortheast Philadelphia should be possible,water transport up the Delaware River may not

70 Ž The Effects of Nuclear War

Figure 14.— Philadelphia and Surrounding Counties

The two large dots represent the ground zeros of the two l-Mt Soviet weapons. Within 2 miles of these aroundzeros, there are approximately 155,000 people of which 135,000 were calculated to have been kil led. Within 5miIes, there are 785,000 people of which 410,000 would have died.


be. This busy, narrow channel passes withinabout 1.3 miles [2.1 km] of one of the targetsand could become blocked at least temporari-ly by a grounded heavily laden iron ore ship(bound upriver for the Fairless Works) or bysunken ships or barges.

Electric Power

There are four major electric powerplants inor near Philadelphia. Table 9 summarizes ca-pacity, average usage (1976), and expecteddamage to these four installations.

While the usage figures in table 9 are aver-age and do not reflect peak demand, it shouldbe noted that a large percentage of this de-mand will disappear with destruction of the in-dustrial areas along the Schuylkill River and ofa large portion of the downtown business dis-trict. Thus, the plant in the Richmond sectionof Philadelphia, Pa., may be able to handle theemergency load. Assuming early recovery ofthe Delaware plant,quate emergency eing portion of the d

Transportation

Air.– The majorphia International1.5 nautical miles

there probably will be ade-ectric power for the surviv-stribution system.

facilities of the PhiIadel-Airport are located about[2.8 km] from the nearest

burst. These can be assumed to be severelydamaged. The runways are 1.5 to 2.5 nauticalmiIes [2.8 to 4.6 km] from the nearest burst andshould experience Iittle or no long-term dam-

age. Alternate airfields in the northeast andnear Camden, N. J., should be unaffected.

Rail.– The main Conrail lines from Washing-ton to New York and New England pass abouta mile from the nearest burst. I t can be ex-pected that these will be sufficiently damagedto cause at Ieast short-term interruption. Localrail connections to the port area pass within afew hundred yards of one of the refineries. Thisservice suffers long-term disruption. An impor-tant consequence is the loss of rail connec-tions to the massive food distribution centerand the produce terminal in the southeast cor-ner of the city.

Road.– Several major northeast-southwesthighways are severed at the refineries and atbridge crossings over the Schuylkil l River.While this poses serious problems for the im-mediate area, there are al ternate routesthrough New Jersey and v ia the westernsuburbs of the city.

Ship.– Barring the possible blockage of thechannel by grounded or sunken ships in thenarrow reach near the naval shipyard, ship traf -fic to and from the port should experience onlyshort-term interruption.

Casualty Handling

Perhaps the most serious immediate andcontinuing problem is the destruction of manyof Philadelphia’s hospitals. Hospitals, assum-ing a typical construction of muItistory steel or

72 . The Effects of Nuclear War

reinforced concrete, would have a SO-percentprobability of destruction at about 2.13 miles(1 .85 nautical miles [3.4 km]). A detailed 1967map indicates eight major hospitals within thisarea; all are destroyed or severely damaged.Another nine hospitals are located from 2 to 3miles [3 to 4 km] from the refineries. Whilemost of the injured would be in this area, theiraccess to these hospitals would be curtailed byrubble, fire, and so on. Thus, most of the seri-ously injured would have to be taken to moredistant hospitals in north and northeast Phila-delphia, which would quickly become over-taxed.

Military

Two important military facilities are locatednear the intended targets. The Defense SupplyAgency complex is located within 0.5 miles [0.8km] of one of the refineries and is completelydestroyed. The U.S. Naval Shipyard is 1.0 to 1.8miles [1.6 to 2.9 km] from the nearest targetand can be expected to suffer severe damage.The large drydocks in this shipyard are within amile of the refinery.

Other

Several educational, cultural, and historicalfacilities are in or near the area of heavy de-struction. These include Independence Hall,the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel insti-tute of Technology, Philadelphia Museum ofArt, City Hall, the Convention Hall and CivicCenter, Veterans Stadium, Kennedy Stadium,and the Spectrum.

Reaction: The First Week

During this period people would be in astate of shock, with their lives disrupted andfurther drast ic changes inevi table. Manywould have loved ones killed and homes de-stroyed. Factories and offices in the targetareas would be destroyed, throwing people outof work. People would face many immediatetasks: care of the injured, burial of the dead,search and rescue, and fire fighting.

Fires at petroleum refineries, storage tanks,and petrochemical factories would rage for

hours or days, adding to the damage caused byblast. Some oil tanks would rupture and the oilwould leak onto rivers or harbors, where itwould ignite and spread fire. Fires at refineriescould not be extinguished because of intenseheat, local fallout, an inadequate supply ofchemicals to use on petroleum fires, and roadsblocked by rubble and evacuees. Petrochem-ical plants, already damaged by blast, wouldbe further damaged by fire and would leak tox-ic chemicals. As discussed in chapter 11, fire-storms or conflagrations might begin, in thiscase supported by thousands of tons of gas-01 inc. Anyway, the plants would likely be dam-aged beyond repair. Finally, with fires threat-ening to burn, poison, or asphyxiate people inshelters, rescue crews would attach top prior-ity to rescuing survivors.

Once it was clear that further attacks wereunlikely, the undamaged areas of the countrywould supply aid. However, the available med-ical aid would be totally inadequate to treatburns this attack would cause. The radius ofthird-degree burns (5.2 nautical miles [9.6 km]for a l-Mt weapon air burst) is far greater thanfor any other life-threatening injury, and hugefires would cause more burns. But, even inpeacetime, the entire United States has facil-ities to treat only a few thousand burn casesadequately at any one time.

If the attack used ground bursts exclusively,it would cause fewer prompt fatalities (2.9 mil-lion instead of 5.0 million for the air burstcase), but much fallout. Given the extensivefallout sheltering described above, 312,000people would die of fallout. Fallout casualties,however, would depend strongly on wind di-rections: would gulf coast fallout blow towardAtlanta, Miami, Cuba, or Venezuela? WouldNew Jersey fallout land on New York City onits way out to sea? The problems of shelterersare discussed under “Case 3: A CounterforceAttack Against the United States, ” in thischapter.

Beyond the physical damage, people wouldrealize that a central assumption of theirlives–that nuclear war could not occur—waswrong. Even people beyond target areas wouldknow immediately that secondary effects

Ch. IV— Three Attack Cases w 73—.——..———.——— — —.—

would irrevocably change their way of Iife; sur-vivors traveling to undamaged areas woulddrive this point home. Most would fear furtherattacks, and would seek protection by evac-uating or seeking shelter. While recovery planscould be made and damage assessed, little re-construction could be done with many peopleaway or in shelters. Thus, the reaction periodwould not end until most people acted as ifthey believed the war was over.

Recovery

Once people believed that the war was over,the Nation would face the task of restoring theeconomy. The human consequences would besevere, but most deaths would have occurredwithin 30 days of the attack. Economic disrup-tion and the economic recovery process wouldlast much longer.

Restoring an adequate supply of refinedpetroleum would take years. It is unlikely thatany of the attacked refineries could be re-paired, although enough infrastructure mightsurvive to make it cost effective to clear anddecontaminate the rubble and rebuild on theold sites, The attack would kill many peopleskilled in building or operating refineries. Theattack wouId also destroy many ports with spe-cial facilities for handling large quantities ofcrude oil and refined petroleum, While inten-sive use of pIant and equipment can substan-tially increase output for many industries, itcan increase a typical refinery’s output by only4 percent. Thus, the attack would leave theUnited States with about a third of its prewarrefining capacity and with Iittle of its prewaroil importing capacity; this situation wouldpersist until new refineries and ports could bebuilt.

The survival of a third of the Nation’s refin-ing capacity does not mean that everyonewould get a third of the petroleum they didbefore the war. The Government would surelyimpose rationing. Critical industries and serv-ices would have top priority— military forces,agriculture, railroads, police, firefighting, andso on. Heating oil could be supplied, but ataustere levels. Uses of petroleum for which

P

there were substitutes would receive little orno petroleum. For example, railroads couldsubstitute for airlines, trucks, and buses on in-tercity routes; mass transit would probablysubstitute for private automobiles and taxis inlocal transportation.

The demise of the petroleum industry wouldshatter the American economy, as the attackintended. A huge number of jobs depend on re-fined petroleum: manufacture, sales, repair,and insurance of cars, trucks, buses, aircraft,and ships; industries that make materials usedin vehicle manufacture, such as steel, glass,rubber, aluminum, and plastics; highway con-struct ion; much of the vacation industry;petrochemicals; heating oil; some electricpower generation; airlines and some railroads;agriculture; and so on. Thus, many workerswould be thrown out of work, and many indus-tries would be forced to close.

The limited direct economic damage, al-ready muItiplied by thousands of secondary ef-fects just enumerated, would be multipliedagain by tertiary effects. Economic patternsthat rest on the petroleum economy would bedisrupted. Much of the American way of life isdependent on automobiles, from fast-food res-taurants and shopping malls to suburban hous-ing construction and industries located on ma-jor highways whose workers commute by car.The many people thrown out of work wouldhave less money to consume things made byothers. Service industries of all kinds would beespecialIy hard hit.

These economic changes would lead tosocial changes tha t wou ld have fu r thereconomic consequences. Gasoline rationingwould at best severely curtail use of privatecars; mass transit would be used to its capaci-ty, which would appear inadequate. Demandfor real estate would plummet in some areas,especially suburbs, and skyrocket in others,notably cities, as people moved nearer to workand stores. Such mass movement, even withincities but especially between them, wouldupset the demographics underlyin g t axes ,schools, and city services. With many peopleout of work, demand for unemployment com-

74 ● The Effects of Nuclear War

pensation would rise at the same time taxeswere falling. Vacation patterns would shift;cuts in air and car travel would force people totravel by train, which would lead people tovacation closer to home. The situation follow-ing the attack could lead the dollar to tumble,but whether or not that occurred, the curtail-ment of commercial air travel would preventmost people from traveling abroad. The eco-nomic system on which production dependswould be radicalIy different. To be sure, mostworkers and equipment would survive un-scathed, and economic recovery would even-tually take place.

Production depends, however, not only onthe use of physical resources, but also on awide range of understandings between produc-ers and consumers. These underpinnings wouldbe destroyed by the attack just as surely as ifthey were targeted. Prices would be uncertain,and various kinds of barter (trading favors aswell as goods) would supplement the use ofmoney. Credit and finance could not functionnormally in the absence of information aboutthe markets for continuing production. Con-tracts would have uncertain meaning. Manybusinesses would go bankrupt as patterns ofsupply and demand changed overnight. Courtswould be seriously overburdened with the taskof trying to arbitrate among all of these com-peting claims. Corporations and individualswouId be reluctant to make commitments orinvestments.

Given this disruption, the effort to resumeproduction would require grappling with somebasic organizational questions. To which taskswould surviving resources be applied? Howwould people be put back to work? What mixof goods would they produce? Which indus-tries should be expanded, and which curtailed?Which decisions would Government make,and which wouId be left to the market?

This organizational task is unprecedented,but in principle it could be performed, Pre-sumably the United States would follow theprecedent of the mobilization for World WarsI and 11, in which extensive Government plan-ning supplemented private enterprise, and key

assets and key people from the private sectorwere borrowed by the Government for the du-ration of the emergency. Certain tasks, such ascaring for the injured, decontamination, high-priority reconstruction, and serving as an em-ployer of last resort (to say nothing of meetingmilitary requirements), would obviously behandled by the Government. The difficultywouId be in planning and facilitating the trans-formation of the private sector. The combina-tion of unusable factories and service faciIitieswith unemployed workers could easily create asituation analogous to that experienced in theUnited States between 1929-33.

Long-Term Effects

Postattack society would be permanentlyand irrevocably changed. People would live indifferent places, work at different jobs, andtravel in different ways. They would buy dif-ferent things and take different kinds of vaca-tions. The Nation would tend to apply thelessons of the past to future policy by seekingto reduce its vulnerabilities to the last attack.Energy conservation, where not required byregulations, would be encouraged by prices,taxes, and subsidies. Railroads and mass transitwould supplant travel by cars and planes; railand ships would substitute for planes andtrucks in hauling freight. Automobile produc-tion would drop sharply and would emphasizeenergy-efficient models; bicycles and motor-cycles would be popular. While housing con-struction would not necessarily end in thesuburbs, new homes there would probably bebuilt closer together so that mass transit couldserve them. Construction in cities would boom.All houses would be better insulated; morewould use solar energy as fuel costs soared.

Farms would be able to obtain adequatesupplies of petroleum and its derivatives. Agri-culture uses only 4 or 5 percent of the Nation’spetroleum, and its products are necessary.While gasoline and petrochemical-based fer-tilizers and pesticides wouId be much more ex-pensive, they comprise only a small fraction offarm expenses and would be essential forlarge-scale efficient agriculture. Moreover

Ch, IV—Three Attack Cases Ž 75

much fertilizer is made from natural gas ratherthan petroleum, so its price would not rise asdramatically as that of gasoline, Petroleum-related cost increases would be passed on tothe consumer. The character of agriculturecouId change, however. I n particular, the Iive-stock industry might be sharply curtailed. Atevery stage, Iivestock raising, slaughter, anddistribution require much more energy than docrops. For example, rapid transportation andextensive refrigeration are required. MeatwouId become very much more costly in rela-tion to other foods than it is now, and so wouldbecome a luxury. If l ivestock productiondropped, a major source of demand for corn,soybeans, and other fodder would decline,possibly slowing price increases for other farmproducts.

Although refineries and oil importing facil-ities would be rebuilt, U.S. refining capacityafter recovery wouId probably be less than pre-attack capacity. Increased prices for gasolineand heating oil would shift demand to othersources of energy, raising their prices and en-couraging an acceleration of their develop-ment.

Patterns of industrial production would shiftdramatically because of these changes, forcingmassive shifts in demand for ski I Is and re-sources. Many people and factories would beoriented to the production of things no longerin demand; it would take many years for theeconomy to adjust to the sudden, massivechanges imposed by the attack.

The at tack would af fect publ ic heal th.Chapter V discusses the long-term effects ofsublethal levels of radiation. Petrochemicalplants damaged by the attack would leak car-

cinogenous petrochemicals, but numbers ofcancer cases from this source, the time of theirappearance, and the duration of the threatcannot be predicted. To the extent that con-tamination or destruction of housing, or eco-nomic collapse, force people to live in sub-standard housing, illness would increase. Notall changes, however, would be for the worse.Some new patterns of living would promotepublic health. There would be fewer auto, air-craft, and boating accidents. More peoplewould walk or bicycle, increasing exercise. Re-duced consumption of meat would reduce die-tary fats, heart attacks, and strokes. At somepoint, Government-imposed controls necessi-tated by the attack could be lifted becausesocietal changes and market forces (price in-creases, alternative energy sources, residentialpatterns, and numbers and efficiency of cars)would achieve the goals of controls withoutcoercion. For example, gasoline rationingwould certainly be imposed immediately afterthe attack, and might be lifted in stages as re-fining capacity was restored, or subsidies to ex-pand and support mass transit could level offor decline as revenues made it self-supporting.

The Nat ion ’s ad jus tment to a l l thesechanges would be painful. The problemswould be especially severe because of thespeed of their onset. Many people say that theUnited States would be better off if it was lessdependent on cars and petroleum. Whilechanging to new patterns of Iiving via nuclearattack would minimize political problems ofdeciding to change, it would maximize the dif-ficulties of transition. Problems would appearall at once, while any advantages of new pat-terns of Iiving would come slowly.

CASE 2: A U.S. ATTACK ON SOVIET OIL REFINERIES

This case investigates what might happen if ber and long construction time, and becausethe United States tried to inflict as much eco- of the severe economic consequences of doingnomic damage as possible on the Soviet Union without refined petroleum,with 10 SNDVs without seeking to maximize orminimize casualties. Petroleum refineries were The Soviet refining industry is at least asselected as targets because of their small num- vulnerable as its U.S. counterpart, though the


vulnerabi l i t ies di f fer s l ight ly. The UnitedStates refines more petroleum than does theU. S. S. R., about 17.9 million barrels per day ofcrude (1978 figures) versus 11.0 million (1980projection). 2 According to a 1977 source, theU.S.S.R. had 59 refineries, including at least 12under construction, some of which are verylarge; the U.S. and its territories have at least288 .3 All individual refineries in both nationsare highly vulnerable to attacks with nuclearweapons. The U.S. attack destroys most ofSoviet refining capacity because the U.S.S.R.has few refineries; the Soviet attack destroysmost of U.S. refining capacity because U.S. re-fineries are clustered.

The hypothetical attack targets 24 refineriesand 34 petroleum storage sites. Some major re-fineries are beyond range of Poseidon missiles,so the United States uses 7 Poseidons with atotal of sixty-four 40-kiloton (kt) RVs and 3Minuteman IIIs with a total of nine 170-kt RVs.Because of the dispersal of Soviet refineriesand limits of footprint size, each footprint had

2“U S. Refining Capacity” (Washington, D.C NationalPetroleum Refiners Association, July 28, 1978), p 1 (U. Sfigures), and International Petroleum Encyclopedia, 1976(Tulsa, Okla.: Petroleum Publishing Co , 1977), p, 323 (So-viet figures).

‘International Petroleum Encyclopedia, 1976, op. cit.,p, 393 (Soviet figures); and “U.S. Refining Capacity,” opcit.; passim, (U.S. figures).

fewer refineries than available RVs. The addi-tional RVs were first allocated 2 on 1 againstlarge refineries; remaining RVs were targetedagainst petroleum storage complexes. As in theU.S. case, every weapon is assumed to deto-nate over and destroy its target. It is assumedthat all weapons are air burst, and the conse-quences of using ground bursts are notedwhere appropriate.

Immediate Effects: The First Hour

The attack destroys 73 percent of Soviet re-fining capacity and 16 percent of Soviet stor-age capacity, as table 10 shows. Collateral eco-nomic damage could not be calculated or col-lateral damage to a large Soviet city assessedbecause sufficient unclassified data could notbe found.

If all weapons are air burst, the attack kills1,458,000 people assuming everyone to be insingle-story buildings, and 836,000 assumingeveryone in multistory buildings; the latterassumption comes closer to reality. If allweapons were ground burst, the attack wouldkill 1,019,000 people, 722,000 promptly and297,000 by fallout, assuming the worst case,everyone Iiving in single-story buildings.

The estimated injuries from the attack aresubstantial under all conditions. Under thesingle-story assumption on housing, the air-

— -- — -- — - -- - - - —— —-

burst attack would produce 3.6 million injuriesand a surface-burst attack about a m i I I ion less.I f in mult istory bui ldings, the populat ionwould suffer 3.8 miIIion injured from an air-burst attack and 2.5 million for the surfaceburst. (A protection factor of 5 was assumedagainst fallout from the surface bursts. )

The attack kills fewer Russians than Ameri-cans. The differences in fatalities do not meanthat the United States is necessarily more vul-nerable than the Soviet Union to nuclear at-tack; rather, the asymmetries occur from thedesign of the attack. Soviet refineries are far-ther from cities than are U.S. refineries : a n dU.S. weapons are smaller, so fewer Russiansare within the lethal radii of U.S. weapons. Sen-sitivity of fatalities and injuries to distancefrom ground zero is shown in table 11, Hadeither nation sought to kill people, it wouldhave used different weapons and targetedthem differently.

Reaction: The First Week

As in the United States, life for the survivingmajority would be totally disrupted. Manywould be directly affected by the attack: theinjured, those with injured relatives, the home-

Ch. IV—Three Attack Cases ● 77— —-- — .-—-—

less, people affected by shortages. Accommo-dation to a future with a sharply reducedpetroleum supply would begin: gasoline andother products might be hoarded, by enter-prises if not by individuals. Some less-im-portant industries would probably be closed tosave fuel or to allow their workers to shift tothe military, agriculture, and essential indus-try. Until it became clear that the war wasover, millions of reservists would be mobilizedfor military service, placing a heavy demandon the domestic economy to replace them. Be-cause of the mobilization, hours worked andthe mix of production would change dramat-ically and overnight; workers in essential in-dustries might be on 12-hour shifts; other work-ers not drafted wouId be pressed into service inessential industries, and quite possibly movedto factories in distant areas. The speed andmagnitude of disruption would cause muchpsychological shock.

How would the Soviet Union cope with thedamage? Although a greater percentage of itsrefining capacity would be destroyed, it wouldsuffer fewer fatalities than would the UnitedStates (1.0 million to 1.5 million versus 3.2 mil-lion to 5.0 million) and fewer injuries (2.5 mil-lion to 3.8 million versus 3.9 million to 4.9 mil-

Table 11 .–Approximate Distance (Nautical Miles) of Various Effects From Selected Nuclear Air Bursts(personnel casualties)


lion) because of the lower yield of U.S. weap-ons and the location of Soviet refineries awayfrom cities. If all weapons were air burst at op-timum height of burst, there would be negligi-ble fallout in both countries; if all weaponswere ground burst, the Soviet Union would re-ceive far less fallout because of the lower yieldof the weapons. Because the Soviets have builtmany widely dispersed small dispensaries andfirst aid centers, rather than smaller numbersof modern full-service hospitals concentratedin cities, more of these facilities would survivethan in the United States. In addition, manyRussians have received first aid training, andpeople with injuries that could be treated byparamedics, dispensaries, and first aid wouldprobably be better off than their Americancounterparts; others would be at least as badoff. Those who required treatment at majorhospitals would suffer because of the smallnumber of beds in nearby modern hospitalsand the inability of the Soviet transportationsystem to move them elsewhere. Like theUnited States, the U.S.S.R. could not cope withlarge numbers (say, over 100) of severe burncases. There would be many victims of severeburns in both nations who would die for lackof adequate treatment.

The damage, the emergency conditions, andthe risk of further attacks would remind every-one of the special horror that the Soviets facedin World War II. The psychological traumawould be exacerbated in the first week by an-ticipation of crisis economic conditions. TheSoviet Government in past crises has proved tobe ruthless and efficient in moving people toparts of the country where labor was needed.Such action would be likely in this crisis aswell, along with cutbacks in food, consumergoods, housing construction and maintenance,and transportation. Only regimentation wouldbe likely to increase. Life would be grim, andwouId remain so for years.

Recovery

What course would Soviet recovery take?Economic viability would not be at issuefollowing this attack, and the Government

could be expected to remain firmly in controlbecause of the limited scale of this attack.Assuming that there are no further attacks,most of the deaths would occur within 30 daysof the attack. While the course of economicrecovery cannot be predicted in detail, it isclear that:

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The attack would hurt. The recovery peri-od would be marked by shortage and sac-rifice, with particular problems stemmingfrom agricultural shortfalls.

Nevertheless, the Soviet economy and po-litical system would survive, and woulddo so with less drastic changes than theUnited States would probably experience.

The asymmetries between the two nationsin effects for a given attack are greater forthis case than for a very large attack.

The political and economic structure of theU.S.S.R. appears designed to cope with drasticemergencies like this attack. While almost alleconomic assets would be unscathed, re-sources would need to be shifted rapidly toproduce a different mix of outputs. The attackwould totally disrupt existing economic plans.The economic planning apparatus and Govern-ment control methods in place in the U.S.S.R.would permit the Government to shift plansand resources, but the speed with which suchchanges could be made is uncertain. To the ex-tent that revisions in the economic plan werenot made or were delayed, people and equip-ment would sit idle or would be producing ac-cording to less-efficient priorities, drainingscarce resources from higher priority tasks andhindering recovery. Workers would be shiftedto different industries as pIants closed; somewould be forced to move, share apartmentswith strangers, or work at new jobs (includingmanual labor in farms or factories).

Some insight into the economic conse-quences can be obtained by looking at foursectors of the economy— military, agriculture,

transportation, and industry. Each of these sec-tors would have a strong claim on availablepetroleum, but their total demand would ex-ceed the supply.


The military would have first call on fuel,especially if the war continued. It has ade-quate stocks to prosecute a war for severalweeks. However, unless this attack led to adecisive Soviet victory or to a major relaxationof tensions, the military would need refinedpetroleum to rebuild its stocks and to carry outnormal training.

Soviet agriculture is precarious even inpeacetime because of its inefficiency. Agricul-ture engages about a third of the work forceand consumes a third of Soviet gasoline anddiesel fuel. (U.S. agriculture, in contrast, uses2.7 percent of the work force (in 1978) and asmall fraction of U.S. refined petroleum .)4 TheSoviet Union imports grain in most years. Nev-ertheless, the U.S.S.R. has maintained a largecattle industry at considerable expense to pro-vide a consumer good much in demand. Farmsuse petroleum for tractors and trucks; petro-leum and natural gas are feedstocks for ferti-lizer and pesticides. Agricultural use of petro-leum is increasing. One small example is theSoviet use of light aircraft to spread fertilizer;while this task could be done by tractors or byhand, it is much more efficiently done by air-craft.

Cutbacks in petroleum would magnify agri-cultural inefficiency. Even if the Soviet Unionallocated all the petroleum it produced to agri-culture, it would not produce enough to sus-

4Statistica/ Abstract of the United States, 1978 (Wash-ington, D C U S Department of Commerce, Bureau ofthe Census, 1978), I ists 91,846,000 employed persons age16 and over in the United States, of whom 2,469,000 werelisted as farmworkers, for January-April 1978 (p. 418). TheStatistical Abstract does not present the amount of petro-leum consumed by Amer ican agr icu l ture . Severa l s ta t is -t ics , however , ind icate th is number to be a smal l f rac t iono f t o t a l U S p e t r o l e u m c o n s u m p t i o n P r e l i m i n a r y 1 9 7 7data showed all U S prime movers (automotive and non-automotive) had 26,469,000,000 horsepower, whi Ie farmsaccounted for 328,000,000 horsepower, or 1 2 percent (p.604) In 1976, industrial consumption of petroleum ac-counted for 18 percent of total U S petroleum consump-tion (p 764) And a National Academy of Sciences studyfound that agriculture accounted for 3.5 percent of totalnational energy consumption In 1968 Agricu/?ura/ Pro-duction Efficiency (Washington, D C National Academyof Sciences, National Research Council Committee onAgricultural Production Efficiency, 1975), p 119)

tain agriculture’s prewar consumption, andother critical sectors would compete for petro-leum. Drawing on inventory would sacrificelater agricultural production for earlier pro-duction. Following the attack, the main con-cern of agriculture would be planting, growing,or harvesting the year’s crop; sacrifices andsubstitutions would be required in other agri-cultural subsectors to meet this goal withavailable petroleum. The U.S.S.R. would belikely to divert people from schools, factories,and (depending on the international situation)the military to work the fields, as it does inpeacetime, but to a greater extent. The substi-tution of human labor for mechanical energywould be a poor but perhaps unavoidabletrade. The most obvious cutback would belivestock; meat is a luxury, livestock consumemuch food that could otherwise be used forhuman consumption, and cat t le rais ing,slaughter, and distr ibut ion require muchenergy. The Soviet Union might slaughtermuch of its Iivestock after the attack to freefarmers, fields, trucks, and petroleum to pro-duce crops. Russians might have a 3-monthorgy of meat followed by two decades with-out.

Soviet transportation would be pinched. Afew top leaders would still have cars; othercars would sit idle for years, monuments to theprewar standard of living. Air transportationwould be sharply curtailed, and Soviet super-sonic transports would be grounded. Trucktransportation would be curtailed, with trucksused almost exclusively for intracity transpor-tation and hauling goods between railroadsand loading docks. By elimination, the trans-portation burden would fall to railroads be-cause of their energy efficiency. Key trunklinesare electrified, and might obtain electricityfrom sources other than petroleum. The Sovi-ets have stored a number of steam locomo-tives, which would be hauled out, refurbished,and put to use.

The tempo of industrial production wouldslow. Even as it stands now, the Soviets havebarely enough energy and occasional short-ages. Electric power would continue, butwould probably be cut back 10 to 15 percent,


forcing some industries to close and reducingheat and light at other industries and apart-ments. With transportation cut back, factorieswould have to wait longer for inputs, loweringproductivity.

Some less-essential industries, especially en-ergy- or petroleum-intensive ones, might shutdown. Plastics use petroleum derivatives asfeedstocks. Aluminum production uses greatamounts of energy, though some Soviet alumi-num pIants, such as at Bratsk in Siberia, usehydroelectric power. Truck production wouldstop for lack of fuel for existing vehicles, idlingthe huge Kama River truck plant.

Construction consumes much petroleum, soit would be curtailed except for essential in-dustries, hydroelectric powerplant construc-tion, refining construction, and minimal hous-ing for workers in those occupations.

These changes would disrupt workers’ lives.Closing of some plants would idle many work-ers, forcing them to work in other industries;many could be moved long distances to otherplants. Workers would not necessarily beforced to work long hours. While some plantswould operate around the clock, others wouldbe closed or cut back to enable the energythey consume to be diverted. At the same time,however, and within limits of substitutability,workers could Iikewise be diverted from closedto open plants, providing extra labor for fac-tories that remained open extra time.

In sum, the reduction in the standard of liv-ing and the amount of disruption would prob-ably be less than in the United States but theremight well be more hardship and misery. Rus-sians would have less food, especially protein,than they did before the attack, while Amer-ican agriculture consumes so Iittle petroleumthat its output could probably be maintained,

though some variety might be sacrificed. Therewould be less heat in both nations, but wintersare shorter and milder in the United States,and U.S. indoor temperatures in winter couldbe reduced 50 or 10° F without ill effect.Therefore, heating could probably not be cutas much in the U.S.S.R. as in the United Stateswithout jeopardizing health. Cars would besacrificed at least temporarily in both nations.Soviet industries producing consumer goodswould be cut back more sharply than their U, S.counterparts after the attack, and would re-gain productivity more slowly.

Long-Term Effects

Destroying 73 percent of refining capacitywould force the economy onto a crisis footing,curtailing choices and consumer goods, drop-ping the standard of living from austere togrim, and setting back Soviet economic prog-ress by many years. Recovery might follow thepost-World War II pattern, with a slow butsteady improvement in the quality of life. Butrecovery wouId be slow, The desire to reducevulnerabi l i ty to future at tacks would un-doubtedly divert resources from recovery tosuch tasks as building some underground re-fineries. While the United States could possi-bly recover in a way that would use less petro-leum than it did prewar, this course would bedifficult for the U.S.S.R. because much ofSoviet petroleum goes to necessities. Long-term health and genetic effects would be lessthan for the United States because of thesmaller size of U.S. weapons and the locationof Soviet refineries away from people. But theSoviet Government might accept greater radia-tion exposure for people in order to speed pro-duction, increasing such effects.


CASE 3: A COUNTERFORCE ATTACKAGAINST THE UNITED STATES

The case of a Soviet attack on U.S. strategicforces has received extensive public attentionin recent years, since some observers believe itis the least irrational way of waging strategicwar. For the purposes of this study, the militarysuccess of such an attack (i. e., how many U.S.forces would be destroyed) and the resultingU.S. responses are not important. It is suffi-c ient to assume that such an attack islaunched, and to examine the consequencesfor the civilian population, economy, andsociety. For this purpose, small variations inthe attack design (e. g., whether control centersas well as silos are targeted) are immaterial.While there are many possible variations in thedesign of a counterforce attack, a question ofparticular interest is whether the attack wouldbe delivered only against ICBM silos, orwhether bomber bases and missile submarinebases would also be attacked. Some of thepublic discussion of such an attack suggeststhat an attack on ICBM silos alone could causemuch less civilian damage than a full-scalecounterforce attack because the silos are moreisolated from population centers than arebomber bases. It is certainly true that, holdingal I the other possible variables constant, an at-tack that included bomber bases and missilesubmarine bases would cause more civiliandamage than one that did not. Nevertheless,the difference between the ICBM-only attackand a comprehensive counterforce attack wasfound to be no greater than the differencemade by other variables, such as the size ofweapons used, the proportion of surface burstsused, and the weather. Both cases are consid-ered in this section; the countersilo attack is asubset of the counterforce attack, and avail-able data is too coarse to support a believabledifferentiation between the civilian effects ofeach attack.

Prompt Effects

The blast damage from a counterforce at-tack is concentrated on military installations.

Attacks on submarine bases and bomber baseswould cause considerable blast damage tonearby populations and urban structures; at-tacks on silos would cause relatively littlecivilian blast damage. Unlike ICBM silos, manybomber bases and fleet ballistic missile sub-marine (SSBN) support facilities are near cities.(See figure 15.) For example, an attack on Grif-fiss Air Force Base, near Utica and Rome, N. Y.,would place nearly 200,000 people at risk fromprompt effects; attacking the SSBN support fa-cility near Charleston, S. C., would place morethan 200,000 people at risk; attacking MatherAir Force Base, near Sacramento, Cal if., wouldplace more than 600,000 people at risk. The ad-ditional attacks would simultaneously reducethe number of people able to provide aid andincrease the number of injured or evacuees requiring aid. The attacks would make it harderfor people able to provide aid to sustain thoseneeding it.

Countersilo attacks would probably deto-nate some weapons at or near the Earth’s sur-face to maximize the likelihood of destroyingICBM silos. Surface bursts produce intensefallout, causing most of the damage to the ci-vilian population, economy, and society. Theprincipal civilian impact of adding attacks onbomber and SSBN bases is the large increase inurban destruction.

The Period Before Fallout Deposition

Fallout would begin to reach closer popu-lated areas in a few hours; it would reach manyothers in a few days. As fallout arrives, radi-ation levels rise sharply and rapidly. Peoplewould therefore have to take any protectiveact ions —shelter or evacuation — before thefallout arrives. This prearrival period wouldthus be one of intense activity and intense con-fusion. How would people react? Trainingcould help, but people trained in how to be-have under fallout conditions would fare poor-ly if they could not get to shelters or if shelterswere unstocked. To what extent would people


Figure 15.—Counterforce Targets in the United States

State capital

NOTE: No targets in 15 States; one target each in 11 States

panic, seek other family members, or evacuatespontaneously, and what would be the conse-quences of such actions?

Evacuat ion would probably be a poorchoice, since it would be difficult or impossi-ble to predict which would be the safe areasand which the hot spots, and since a car in atraffic jam would offer poor shelter indeed.The decision on whether or not to evacuate,however, is complicated because evacuation isa reasonable response for people who wouldbe at risk from blast from further attacks eventhough evacuation is a poor strategy for peo-ple at risk from fallout alone.

Shelter would in theory be available to a ma-jority of people, although the best availableshelter might not be good enough in areaswhere the fallout proved to be very intense.However, the practical difficulties of falloutsheltering could be very great. The time toseek shelter could be very limited (and people

would not know how long they had), and peo-ple would want to get their families togetherfirst. A shelter must have a sufficient protec-tion factor. Fallout particles must be kept outof the shelter, which requires a ventilationsystem more complicated than an open win-dow or door, and if anybody enters a shelterafter fallout has fallen there must be somemeans of decontaminating the new arrival.Water is necessary; heat may be necessary de-pending on the time of year; sanitation is aproblem. Finally, people could not tell howlong it was necessary to stay in the shelterwithout radiation rate meters.

It is obvious that the time of day, the time ofthe year, and the degree of emergency prep-arations during the hours or days before the at-tack would all affect the level of deaths. What-ever the circumstances, the few hours after theattack would see a frantic effort to seek shel-ter on the part of most of the American popu-

Ch. IV—Three Attack Cases Ž 83

Iation. Then, in densities and locations deter-mined by the attack parameters and theweather, the fallout would descend. ManyAmericans would be lucky enough to be inareas where the fallout level was low. Manyothers (between an estimated 2 million and 20million), would be caught without shelter, orwith inadequate shelter, and would die. Stillothers would suffer from a degree of radiationthat would make them sick, or at least lowertheir life expectancy, but would not kill them.The trials of living in fallout shelters would beintensified by the fact that many people wouldnot know which category they and their fam-ilies were in.

A comprehensive counterforce attack wouldimpose a greater burden than a countersi 10 at-tack. Many more people would be injured byprompt effects, and people near bomber andSSBN bases would have only a few minuteswarning in which to seek shelter.

Cities in the blast area –those near SSBN orbomber bases–would be heavily damaged. Afew cities, such as Charleston, SC., and LittleRock, Ark., could suffer consequences similarto Detroit in Case 1 (chapter 11) or Philadelphiain Case 2 (above in this chapter); most wouldnot. People in blast areas would face hazardsas noted in Case 1 — injuries from blast, initialnuclear radiation, and thermal radiation, andfrom such secondary effects as falling build-ings and fires. As in other cases, rescue wouldbe difficult, with streets blocked by rubble,water pressure gone, and emergency vehiclesdestroyed.

People in areas damaged by blast and in thepath of fallout would be in greatest peril. in-juries, damage to prospective shelters, damageto transportation, and damage to power andwater could make them highly vuInerable. Lit-tle Rock, Ark., for example, the site of an ICBMbase and a bomber base, would receive bothblast damage from a pattern attack (designedto destroy bombers in flight) and intensefallout radiation from the attack on ICBMs.

People in areas neither damaged by blastnor threatened by fallout would believe them-selves to be at risk from blast or, at a min-

imum, from fallout until it was clear that at-tacks had ended. To these people would fallthe burdens of producing necessities and car-ing for the injured and evacuees. Yet people inthese areas, believing themselves to be at risk,would feel compelled to seek shelter or, es-pecially in unattached cities, to evacuate spon-taneously. These actions would reduce theflow of aid to damaged areas. Indeed, theeconomy would probably shut down until peo-ple were certain that the war had ended anduntil most people could get back to work,probably until the end of the shelter period.Even if some people reported to work, produc-tion would be difficult with many absentees.There would be large credit, monetary, con-tractual, and legal problems. If productionstopped even for a week, the loss wouId be tre-mendous. This attack would disrupt the econ-omy less than Case 2, however, because mostproductive resources would remain intact.

Casualty Estimates

In seeking to estimate prompt damage fromthe attacks, fatalities are the most importantcomponent of damage and the most calcu-lable. To estimate fatalities, the critical ques-tions are which areas would be damaged byblast, and to what extent? How much falloutwould there be, and where wouId it be depos-ited? These questions cannot be answered withgreat confidence because estimates of deathsfrom these attacks are highly sensitive to at-tack parameters and civilian shelter assump-tions. However, reference can be made to sev-eral recent executive branch studies of coun-terforce attacks.

OTA drew on several executive branchstudies, conducted between 1974 and 1978, ofcounterforce attacks. These studies differedwidely in their results, primarily because of dif-ferences in the assumptions they made. OTAfelt that it would be more useful to look at theways in which these assumptions affect the re-sults than to attempt to determine the “cor-rect” assumption for each uncertainty. Conse-quently, a range of results is presented; it isbelieved that if OTA had done a new study of

84 ● The Effects of Nuclear war

this case the results would have fallen some-where within this range. 5

The executive branch countersilo studiesthat OTA drew on indicated that between 2million and 20 million Americans would diewithin the first 30 days after an attack on U.S.ICBM silos. This range of results is so wide be-cause of the extent of the uncertainties sur-rounding fallout. The key uncertainties are:

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Height of Burst.– If the fireball touchesthe ground, it vaporizes some dirt, irradi-ates it, and draws it up into the mushroomcloud. This material condenses to becomefallout. The lower the height of burst, themore of the fireball touches the ground,and the more fallout that is produced. Anair burst in which none of the fireballtouches the ground creates negligiblefallout. Because ICBM silos are very hard,a surface burst offers the greatest prob-ability of destroying the silo with one ex-plosion; it also maximizes fallout. Theprobability of destroying an ICBM silo isincreased if two warheads are targetedagainst it; opinions differ as to whetherthe most effective tactic is to use two sur-face bursts, which doubles the amount offallout, or one air burst and one surfaceburst.Weapon Design.— Some weapons derive agreater portion of their energy from fis-sion (as opposed to fusion) than others;the more fission, the more fallout. Theweapon yield affects the amount of fall-out; the higher the yield of a given explo-sion, the greater the fallout.Wind.– The speed and direction of thewind at various altitudes determines thedirections and distance from the explo-sion at which fallout is deposited, and in-fIuences fallout concentration. Winds typ-ically vary with the season; indeed, thisvariance is so great that it can affectcasualties by about a factor of three, as

‘For exdmple, after the OTA analysis, was completed,a new study was completed showing fatalities from acounterforce attack with the current U S civil defenseposture to be 8 to 12 million without warning, and 5 to 8million with warning. See Roger Sullivan et al , “CivilDefense Needs of High-Risk Areas of the United States”(Arlington, Va System Planning Corporation, 1979), p.22

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figure 16 shows. The hourly and daily vari-ation of winds also affects casualties. It isimportant to bear in mind, when consider-ing possible civil defense measures, thatwinds could not be accurately predictedeven after an attack had taken place,much less in advance.Rain. – Raindrops collect fallout particlesfrom the radioactive cloud, thereby creat-ing areas of intense fallout where it is rain-ing, and reducing fallout elsewhere.Terrain. — Hills, buildings, and ground tem-perature gradients (such as are caused byhighways and small lakes) affect the exactpattern of fallout, creating hot spots insome places and relatively uncontam-inated spots nearby.Distance.—Other things remaining con-stant, fallout decreases with distancefrom the explosion beyond roughly 50miles [80 km].

As chapter 11 explained, radiation from fall-out in large doses causes death, in smallerdoses causes illness, and in still smaller dosescreates a probability of eventual illness ordeath (hence, .Iowers life expectancy). Aschapter I I I explained, protection can be ob-tained when matter is placed between the fall-out and people— in general, the more matter(the greater the mass) between a source ofradiation and a person, the greater the protec-tion. The degree of protection offered by var-ious materials is described as a protection fac-tor (PF). The adequacy of a given PF dependson the intensity of the fallout. For example, aPF of 20 (typical of a home basement withearth piled over windows and against thewalls) would reduce an outdoor radiation levelof 60 rem per hour to an indoor level of 3 remper hour. In this case, a person outdoors for 10hours would almost certainly be killed by radi-ation, and a person in the basement shelterwould have a good chance of survival. But ifthe outdoor level is not 60 reins per hour but600 reins per hour, a PF of 20 is inadequate tosave I ives.

Calculations of deaths from fallout aremade by combining:

● an assumed distribution of fallout, withvarious intensities at various locations;

Ch. /V—Three Attack Cases ● 85

Figure 16.—Expected Casualties as a Function of Typical Monthly Winds Resulting From an Attackon Selected Military Targets in the United States

1 I 1 I I I I I I I

I I I I I I 1 I I IJ F M A M J J A s 0 N D

Typical monthly wind

● an assumed distribution of populationwithin the areas where fallout is assumedto be deposited; and

● an assumed distribution of PFs for thepopulation.

Some computer models use a grid (perhaps4,000 yards on a side for a fine-grained model,but much larger in other cases) and assumethat within each square of the grid the falloutintensity and population density are constant,with PFs mixed. Other calculations use re-gional or nationwide averages. In general, thecalculations show lower numbers of deathswhen they assume that the population is wide-ly dispersed, and higher numbers when theytake into account concentrations of popula-tion. The calculations also show lower num-bers of deaths when they assume high PFs; ingeneral, increasing PFs above 40 does notreduce casualties much in the calculations,

but that does not mean that raising a PF above40 might not save an individual’s Iife in reality.The calculations also show lower numbers ofdeaths when the winds do not blow fallout intodensely populated areas.

The studies mentioned previously madeseparate calculations for attacks includingbomber and missile submarine bases, as wellas silos. Assuming that there is no preattackevacuation, calculated deaths range from alow of 2 million to a high of 22 million. The dif-ferences result primarily from variations inassumptions regarding fallout protection: thehigh figure assumes approximately to degreeof protection which people receive in theirdaily peacetime lives (PF of 3), and the IO W

figure assumes that the entire populationmoves after the attack to fallout shelters witha PF of at least 25. A more reasonable assump-tion, that the fallout shelters which now exist

86 ● The Effects of Nuclear War -.

are utilized by people Iiving near them, pro-duces a calculation of 14 million dead. Thesame studies also assessed the effects of exten-sive preattack evacuation (crisis relocation),and found that it reduced the range of pre-dicted deaths. However, the assumptions re-garding fallout protection, both for those whoare assumed to evacuate and for those who areassumed to remain near home dominate theresults. Further detail is in appendix D.

Given the threat U.S. bombers pose to theSoviet Union, a Soviet preemptive counter-force attack on bomber bases would probablyseek to destroy the aircraft and supportingfacilities rather than cratering the runways. Todestroy airborne bombers launched on warn-ing of attack, an attacker might detonateweapons in a spaced pattern over the base. Air-bursting weapons rather than ground-burstingthem could reduce the threat of fallout but in-crease casualties from blast and thermal ef-fects; if the weapons were detonated muchabove the optimum height of burst for max-imizing overpressure on the ground, faIloutwould be negligible and blast damage wouldbe reduced. The attacks against missile sub-marine bases are much less complex. Ususallya single high-yield weapon with medium-to-good accuracy will destroy docks, piers,cranes, and other facilities — and nearby cities,factories, and people as well.

Accordingly, it is certain that if the only dif-ference between two attacks is that one at-tacks only ICBM silos and the other attacksbomber and missile submarine bases as well,the latter attack would kill more people. How-ever, the variations in assumptions madeabout attack design, weather, and fallout pro-tection obscure this. Since these variationsreflect genuine uncertainties, it is not possibleto determine which set of assumptions andwhich fatality calculation is most probable.However, some of the extreme assumptions doappear implausible. One Defense Departmentstudy notes that its highest fatality figureassumed the use of Soviet weapons larger thanthose which U.S. intelligence estimates theSoviets possess. Very low fatality estimatesassume abnormally low winds, an absence ofsurface bursts, and /or virtually perfect fallout

protection. On balance, it does not appearpossible to sustain greater precision than tosay that “studies of hypothetical counterforceattacks show deaths ranging from 1 million to20 million, depending on the assumptionsused. ” However, the low end of this range(deaths below the 8 to 10 million level) requiresquite optimistic assumptions, while the highend of the range is plausible only on theassumption that the attack is not preceded bya crisis period during which civilians areeducated about fallout protection.

The data on injuries contained in the execu-tive branch studies are quite limited; for thecounterforce attacks, however, the results sug-gest that injuries would about equal fatalities.

The Contamination Period

For several days or weeks, radioactive con-tamination would be so intense that people infallout areas would have to stay in shelters orevacuate. What might be called the “shelterperiod” begins at each location when falloutstarts arriving and ends when people can leavetheir shelters long enough to do a day’s work.The length varies from place to place; manyplaces will receive no fallout, and some hotspots will be hazardous long after surroundingareas are safe. Note, however, that peoplecould go outside for brief periods before an 8-hour day outside a shelter became safe, andcould not live in houses with a low protectionfactor for weeks afterwards. After 2 or 3months people would ignore the residual radi-ation, though it would be far higher than isconsidered “safe” in peacetime.

For the first 10 to 30 days, shelterers wouldhave to remain in shelters almost all the time.Brief excursions outside, for example, to ob-tain water or food, would substantialIy reducethe effective protection factor. Life in a shelterwould be difficult at best. People would notknow if the shelter offered a sufficient PF, orwhether further attacks were imminent. Theshelter might be dark, as power could be out,and windows would be covered with dirt. Un-less the shelter had a good air filtration system,the air would become clammy and smelly, andcarbon dioxide concentration would increase.Supplies of food and water might or might not

Ch. IV—Three Attack Cases Ž 87

be adequate, depending on what peoplebrought and how many people were in a shel-ter. Unless the shelter were specially stocked,medical supplies would probably be inade-quate. This would be a severe problem in lightof unhealthy conditions in shelters. Peoplewho required special medicines would bethreatened unless they could obtain an ade-quate supply. While most people would haveradios to receive broadcasts, few would havetwo-way radios to transmit. While phonesmight or might not work, it would be difficultto obtain help, as anyone in a contaminatedarea who left shelter would be in jeopardyfrom radiation. In particular, medical carewould probably be unavailable because of theradiation risk of going to a hospital and thetremendous number of patients seeking help atthe few hospitals that remained open.

Radiation sickness would present specialproblems. Exposures too low to cause acuteradiation sickness nevertheless weaken bodilyresistance to infection. Resistance would alsobe weakened by a deterioration in sanitation,prolonged exposure to heat or cold, lack ofmedical care, psychological shock, and inade-quate food, water, and medicine. Hence shel-terers would be especially vulnerable to con-tagious diseases, ranging from colds and in-fluenza to typhoid fever. There is a trend in theUnited States away from immunization; as aresult, many would contract diseases theyotherwise wouId not.

While many people would contract radia-tion sickness and Iive, it is very difficult for thelayman to determine whether an individualshowing pronounced symptoms of radiationsickness has received a moderate, severe, orlethal dose of radiation. Moreover, acute psy-chological shock induces symptoms similar toradiation sickness, and vomiting— a symptomof both— is contagious in small spaces. Thus,someone who vomited would not know if hehad received a moderate, severe, or lethal doseof radiation; if he had severe psychologicalshock; if he had vomited because of con-tagion; or if he had some other illness. Thisuncertainty about one’s own condition andthat of one’s loved ones, and nausea itself,

would increase the tension in a shelter. More-over, nausea weakens people.

Some people will be better off than others:people in adequately equipped shelters ofgood PF; people who are neither very young,very old, or ill; people who have received littleor no radiation before entering the shelter;people in less-crowded shelters. Moderate am-bient temperature would be better than hot,and hot would be better than cold. People insnow zones in the winter, however, would bemore Iikely than others to have adequate pro-visions as a precaution against being strandedat home by snow. I n addition, much would de-pend on how shelterers used their time beforefallout arrived to prepare the shelter.

Even if the winds were perverse, there wouldbe substantial areas of the country that wouldreceive little or no fallout. I n some cases (e. g.,Oregon), it would be evident that no falloutcould be expected unless the war continuedafter the counterforce attack; in other cases itwould be several days before people in an un-contaminated area were certain that they hadbeen among the lucky ones. Once it becameclear that a given area had been spared, thepeople living there could be expected to stepup their normal pace of activity. To the extentpossible, help would be offered to the contam-inated areas. Depending on circumstances,there might be large numbers of evacuees tocare for. The major task, however, would be tokeep the country going until the other surviv-ors could emerge from shelters. Intense butrather disorganized activity would be likely,and essential production would probably takeplace.

Most productive resources would surviveunscathed, but would shut down until thethreat of attack had ended; those in falloutareas would remain closed until radiationlevels had diminished, with the possible excep-tion of such critical services as radio stations,water pumping facilities, and sewage disposalunits. Some plants, and some sectors of theeconomy, would use productive resources asintensively as possible to meet the demands ofthe damaged areas and the injured, and tocompensate for loss of production elsewhere.The burden imposed on the economy by the


Armed Forces would depend on the interna-tional situation.

Economic Disruption

Most economic damage would occur fromlost production, but there would be otherlosses as well: fires would burn unchallenged,and machinery would suffer damage frombeing shut down in haste or not at all, or frombeing left outside unprotected. The majordamage to the economy, however, would re-sult from deaths and long-lasting injuries (toconsumers and producers), and persona I trag-edies and other traumas making people lessable to work. The magnitude of economic losscould be expected to vary with the number ofdeaths.

The attack would cause considerable eco-nomic disruption in the uncontaminated area.Facilities there would need to produce a vastlydifferent mix of goods and cope with the ab-sence of goods that normally come from con-taminated areas. Until people acted as if theybelieved the war was over, it could prove dif-ficult to organize production in the uncon-taminated areas. Uncertainties about the legaland financial arrangements that support pro-duction (money, contracts, credit, etc.) follow-ing a nuclear attack might impede productionin the uncontaminated areas. Some workers,fearing further attacks, would spontaneouslyevacuate. Public disorder could also impedeproduction. The changes and uncertaintieswould cause some economic disruption; how-ever, the greater effort put forth would prob-ably more than compensate for it.

Recuperation

Economic viability would not be at issuefollowing a counterforce attack. Because theattack seeks no economic damage, it would befar less likely than a deliberate strike oneconomic targets to create any bottlenecksthat would greatly hinder recovery. The Nationwould be able to restore production and main-tain self-sufficiency. The attack would causeenormous economic loss, but the Nation’s ca-pacity for growth would be at worst only slight-

ly impaired. The major task would be endingdisruption and disorganization rather thanrebuilding the economy — putting the piecesback together. Most likely these tasks wouldbe accomplished by a mixture of individual,local, State, and Federal initiatives, withFederal intervention used as a last resort.

The main problem areas would be:

1. Agriculture. The attack could be expectedto destroy a tiny fraction of farmland withblast and fire; of much greater significance,fallout would contaminate a substantial frac-tion of cropland because many ICBMs are in ornear the Great Plains. Other cropland wouldescape with little or no fallout. It is unlikelythat more than a fraction of the livestock innearby fallout areas would be adequately pro-tected. Fallout would affect agriculture in twoways: by killing livestock and crops, and bypreventing farmers from working in the fields.

Damage from fal lout contaminat ion ofcrops would depend on the time of year. Mostcrops take up relatively Iittle fallout and exter-nal irradiation does not contaminate them.Moreover, it is easy enough to remove falloutparticles from food. However, the vulnerabil-ity of crops to fallout varies significantly withthe type of crop and the stage of its growth.For example, yield of various crops can bereduced 50 percent by the following doses, inroentgens (R): peas, less than 1,000 R; rye, 1,000to 2,000 R; wheat, corn, cucumber, 2,000 to4,000 R; cotton, melons, 6,000 to 8,000 R; soy-beans, beets, 800 to 12,000 R; rice, straw-berries, 12,000 to 16,000 R; and squash, 16,000to 24,000 R. At the same time, young plants aremost vulnerable to radiation, whiIe those nearmaturity are least vulnerable.

Knowledge about radiation effects on cropsis, however, limited because much more isknown about how gamma radiation affectscrops than about beta radiation effects. Sincefallout emits both types, and since beta dosesto plants could be from 1 to 20 times the gam-ma dose, this is a major uncertainty.

Fallout would prevent farmers from workingin fields for a time. Fallout does decay, and

Ch. IV— Three Attack Cases . 89

weathering would further reduce its effects onpeople. By a year after the attack, falloutwould no longer be of consequence to farm-workers in most areas. How soon after the at-tack they could begin work would depend onthe amount of fallout deposited on a field.

The effects would thus depend significantlyon time of year. An attack between Octoberand January would have little effect, as falloutwould have decayed enough by planting timeto permit farmers to work the fields and toavoid serious damage to crops. Radiation onfields could be substantially reduced by plow-ing the fallout under or by scraping off the toplayer of dirt. An attack in February or MarchwouId delay planting, reducing crop yields ormaking it necessary to shift to crops thatmature more quickly. An attack between Apriland June could kill the entire crop. An attackin July or August could conceivably have littleeffect, if the plants were undamaged by radia-tion. But the resulting crop should be safe forhuman consumption in an emergency. An at-tack during or just before the harvest couldresult in the loss of the whole crop, not bydamaging the plants, but by prevent ingfarmers from harvesting.

Fallout would be more damaging to live-stock than to plants. Animals are only slightlymore resistant to radiation than are people; forsheep, cattle, and pigs in barns, where they areprotected from direct contact with the inges-tion of fallout, a dose of 400, 500, and 600 R,respectively, will kill half these animals. Themedian lethal dose is considerably lower foranimals in pastures, where they can eat falloutalong with grass. Poultry are considered moreresistant; a dose of 850 R will halve the poultryin a barn. Many animals in heavy fallout areaswould probably be killed, as farmers generallyhave no fallout shelters for animals. Moreover,depending on the damage the attack wreakson human food crops, it might be necessary touse animal feed as human food. The conse-quence could be that it would take many yearsto rebuild the national livestock supply, anduntil then meat would become a scarce luxury.

2. Decontamination. Cities, farms, and fac-tories in contaminated areas would requiredecontamination in order to reopen for humanuse. Decontamination involves moving falloutto areas where it can do less harm in order toreduce the dose rate to people in certainplaces. It can be done with bulldozers, streetsweepers, firehoses, brooms, etc. It does,however, require people to place themselvesat risk. Would enough people be willing to runthese risks? Training is required for people toknow that certain doses are tolerable andother doses are not; this training would makepeople less unwilling to face these risks, butwiII enough people have received this training?

3. Public health standards would have to belowered following the attack. in peacetime,standards are often set cautiously; when ac-ceptable exposure risk is unknown, it is pref-erable to err on the side of safety. Followingthe attack, that luxury would not be possible.Fields would be farmed while low-level radio-activity persisted; the risks, quite unaccept-able in peacetime, wouId be preferable to star-vation. The cost-benefit ratio would change:the benefits of individual safety would need tobe weighed against the costs of foregoingcritical production. Moreover, how applicablewould our knowledge be for setting standardsfor the entire population after an attack?Could enough instruments be made availableto enable everyone to know what dose theywere receiving? And what role wouId politicsplay in setting standards when “acceptablerisk” rather than “negligible risk” was at issue?Society would be running greater risks withoutknowing just how great the risks were; so doingwouId increase low-level radiation sickness,cancers, genetic damage, and so on.

4. Burdens on society would increase, remov-ing people from production while increasingdemand on production. Many people wouldsuffer long-lasting, permanent, or debilitatinginjuries. Demands for more military forcecould well increase. Inefficiencies stemmingfrom economic dislocation would reduce theoutputs from any given set of inputs. Decon-taminat ion and civ i l defense would drawresources.


5. Economic disorganization would be a prob-lem, possibly a severe one. Once people wereconfident that the war had ended, moneywould retain its value, and so would propertyin uncontaminated areas. But the marketplacethat organizes the American economy wouldbe severely disrupted by abrupt shifts in de-mand, abrupt changes in supply, questionsabout the validity of contracts involving peo-ple or things in contaminated areas, etc. In ad-dition, a major question would develop overhow to share the losses from the attack in anequitable way.

Long-Term Effects

The main long-term damage would becaused by countersilo strikes, which releasethe great bulk of radiation even if bomber andmissile submarine bases are also attacked.Radiation has long-term health consequences,such as cancers, other illnesses, deaths, andgenetic damage, that blast does not.

Simi lar ly, ecological damage would becaused mainly by countersilo attacks; thistopic is dealt with in chapter V.

In the long run, the economy would recover,although it would be some decades before thepeople killed would be “replaced” in either ademographic or an economic sense. Therewould undoubtedly be permanent shifts in de-mand (e. g., there might be little market forhouses without basements or fallout shelters),and supply of some goods (notably meat )might be scarce for some time.

An imponderable is the psychological im-pact. The United States has never suffered theloss of millions of people, and it is unlikelythat the survivors would simply take it instride. The suffering experienced by the Southin the decade after 1860 provides the nearestanalogy, and a case can be made that these ef-fects took a century to wear off.

CASE 3: A COUNTERFORCE ATTACKAGAINST THE SOVIET UNION

As in the case of the Soviet counterforce at-tack on the United States (described in the pre-vious section), the main threat to the civiIianpopulation, economy, and society is derivedfrom fallout, while the damage done to thestrategic forces is outside the scope of thisstudy. Here too OTA drew on the executivebranch for calculations, and here too the un-certainties are very great.

The First Day

Each of the parameters mentioned in theprevious section as affecting the damage tothe United States would also affect the dam-age to the Soviet Union. An additional sourceof variation is pertinent: the U.S. missiles most-ly carry smaller warheads than their Sovietcounterparts, but U.S. bombers carry weaponswith quite high yields. Ground bursts of bomb-er-carried weapons (which are especialIy Iikely

in an attack on Soviet bomber bases) wouldcreate very large amounts of fallout.

As in the case of a counterforce attack onthe United States, sheltering is preferable toevacuation for protection provided there areno subsequent attacks. Depending on the timeof year, the Soviets might have more difficultythan the United States in improvising falloutprotection (both frozen earth and mud wouldcreate problems); on the other hand, Sovietpreparations for such sheltering in peacetimeare more extensive than their U.S. counter-parts.

The executive branch has performed severalcalculations of fatalities resulting from coun-terforce attacks, and variations in the assump-tions produce a range of estimates. All thesestudies except one assume a Soviet first strikeand a U.S. retaliatory strike. As a result, esti-mates of Soviet fatalities are lower than theywould be for a U.S. counterforce first strike,


partly because the United States would havefewer ICBMS available for a second strike, andpartly because the Soviets are more likely totake precautionary civil defense measuresbefore a Soviet first strike than before a U.S.first strike. All of these studies consider onlyfatalities in the so days following the attack;they exclude later deaths resulting from rela-tively less intense radiation or the effects ofeconomic disruption.

For both counterforce and countersilo at-tacks, with an in-place Soviet population, thefatality estimates are very similar: for theformer, from less than 1 to 5 percent of thepopulation; for the latter, from less than 1 to 4percent. The low end results from usingsmaller weapons air burst, while the high endresults from using larger weapons groundburst. A comprehensive counterforce attackcan logically be expected to kill more peoplethan the countersilo attack because the latteris a subset of the former. However, other fac-tors have a greater influnce on numbers of fa-talities: A full counterforce attack in which theUnited States deliberately tried to minimizeSoviet fatalities by using small weapons airburst, in which winds were favorable, and inwhich the Soviets had tactical or strategicwarning, would kill far fewer people than acounters ilo-only attack in which the UnitedStates used one large weapon ground burstagainst each ICBM silo.

An unpublished Arms Control and Disarma-ment Agency (AC DA) analysis highlights theimportance of sheltering and attack character-istics for fatal ities from a U.S. countersilo at-tack. One estimate is that, with the urbanpopulation 90-percent sheltered and the ruralpopulation given a PF of 6, Soviet fatalitieswould range from 3.7 million to 13.5 million,depending on attack parameters. With a de-graded shelter posture (urban population 10-percent sheltered and rural population given aPF of 6), fatality estimates for the same set ofattacks range from 6.0 m i I I ion to 27.7 miIIion.

The Shelter Period

If bomber bases (or airfields with long run-ways that were attacked even though r-to

bombers were present) are attacked, tacticalwarning could be of great importance to peo-ple living nearby. There would be an area neareach base (roughly, the area more than 1 mile[2 km] but less than 10 miles [16 km] from a sur-face burst) in which people who were shelteredat the moment of the blast would have a muchgreater chance of survival than those who wereunsheltered. Soviet civiI defense plans envis-age that civilians in such high-threat areaswould receive some warning, but it cannot besaid to what extent this would actually be thecase.

Many millions of Soviet citizens Iive in areasthat would receive substantial amounts of fall-out from such an attack. Those far enoughaway from the explosions to be safe from blastdarnage would have some time (a range from30 minutes to more than a day) to shelter them-selves from fallout, but evacuation from high-faliout areas after the attack would probablynot be feasible. The Soviet civil defense pro-gram gives attention to blast shelters ratherthan fallout shelters in urban areas (seechapter I I l), and while such blast shelterswould offer good protection against fallout,some of them may not be habitable for thenecessary number of days or weeks for whichprotection would be required.

The sheltering process would be much moretightly organized than in the United States.The Soviet Government has extensive civildefense plans, and while Americans would ex-pect to try to save themselves under generalguidance (informational in character) from theFederal authorities, Soviet citizens would ex-pect the Government to tell them what to do.This introduces a further uncertainty: efficientand timely action by the authorities would bevery effective, but it is also possible thatSoviet citizens would receive fatal radiationdoses while waiting for instructions or follow-ing mixed-up instructions. I n any event, somehours after the attack would see a situation inwhich a large number of people in contam-inated areas were in fallout shelters, otherswere receiving dangerous doses of radiation,and those outside the fallout areas were con-gratulating themselves on their good luck

92 • The Effects of Nuclear War— . — — — . . ——.——. —— .— ———. - .———...— .——.—-.—

while hoping that no further attacks wouldtake place.

Would Soviet shelterers be better off thantheir American counterparts? They have sev-eral advantages. They are more accustomed tocrowding and austerity than are Americans, sowould probably suffer less “shelter shock. ”They would be more accustomed to followingGovernment orders, so to the extent thatorders proved correct and were correctly im-plemented, they would be more evenly distrib-uted among shelters. Training in first aid andcivil defense is widespread, which would im-prove people’s ability to survive in shelters. Ifthe U.S. attack used low-yield warheads, fall-out would be less widespread and less intense.

Soviet shelterers face some problems thatAmericans would not. They would be more vul-nerable than Americans to an attack in winter.The Soviet economy has less “fat,” so otherthings being equal, Soviet citizens could bringless food and supplies into shelters than couldAmericans.

Public health is a major uncertainty. To theextent that shelters are well stocked, providedwith adequate medications and safe ventila-tion, have necessary sanitary facilities, arewarm and uncrowded, and have some peoplewith first aid knowledge, health would be lessof a problem. If Soviet citizens receive lessfallout than Americans, they would be lessweakened by radiation sickness and more re-sistant to disease. If conditions were austerebut reasonably healthy, public health in shel-ters would be mainly a matter of isolating illpeople and practicing preventive medicine forthe others. Doctors would be unnecessary formost such tasks; people trained in first aid, es-pecially if they have some access (by phone orradio) to doctors, could perform most tasks. Tobe sure, some people would die from being un-treated, but the number would be relativelysmall if preventive care worked. However, iso-lating the ill would not be easy. It is likely thatmany people would be moderately ill (fromflu, etc.) when they entered their shelter, andradiation would make the others more sus-ceptible to contamination. The Soviet Govern-

ment might send medical teams to contami-nated areas, especially to shelters containingworkers with key skills. The Soviet Army hasbuilt tanks and some other military vehicleswith protection against fallout, and has trainedits soldiers for operations in areas contami-nated with fallout. In addition, as in the UnitedStates, military helicopters could ferry peopleand supplies into contaminated areas withlimited exposure to crews. Using such re-sources would obviously improve health ofshelterers, but priority military tasks mightmake these miIitary resources unavailable.

People in hasty shelters, if they could bebuilt, would face worse health problems,despite the legendary ability of Russians to en-dure hardships. Presumably these shelterswould have inadequate supplies, heat, air fil-tration, sanitary facilities, waterproofing, andso on. Placing people in a cold, damp hole inthe ground for 2 weeks with little food andmakeshift toilets would make many peoplesick even in peacetime; how well would suchproblems be overcome in war?

Soviet civil defense presents a large ques-tion mark. Some believe that the Soviets havemassive food stockpiles, meticulous plansdetailing where each person should go, ampleshelter spaces, subways and buildings converti-ble to shelters, and so on that would be valu-able in the shelter period. Others contend thatthese claims are vastly overstated and confusespeculation about a plan with its existence andthe existence of a plan with its operational ef-fectiveness. (See chapter III on civil defense.)If Soviet civil defense works well, it would savemany lives; if it doesn’t, Soviet sheltererswould face conditions at least as hazardous astheir American counterparts.

Agricultural losses would, as in the UnitedStates, depend on the time of the year whenthe attack came and on the precise patterns offallout. In general, Soviet agriculture appearsmore vulnerable because it borders on inade-quacy even in peacetime–even relativelyminor damage would hurt, and major croplosses could be catastrophic. On the otherhand, for this very reason the Soviets would


know how to handle agricultural shortages:surviving production and stockpiles (the extentof Soviet food stockpiles is a matter of con-troversy, apart from the fact that they arelowest just before each harvest) would prob-ably be used efficiently.

The economy outside the contaminatedarea would continue to function. There wouldbe more than enough industrial facilities in un-contaminated areas to keep necessary produc-tion going. The key task facing Governmentplanners, however, would be using availableworkers and resources to best advantage. Howfast could planners generate new economicplans that were detailed enough for that task?Because the Soviet economy operates closerto the margin than does that of the UnitedStates, the Soviets could tolerate less loss ofproduction than could the United States. Thiswould make superproduction the norm, withkey factories working all the time. It wouldlead to suspending production of many con-sumer goods. It would probably lead the Cov-ernment to begin decontamination earlier andto take more risks with radiation exposure thanwould the United States. These actions to in-crease production would be aided in generalby the Government’s control of the economy,and in particular by keeping work groupstogether in shelters and host areas.

Recuperation

As in the United States, economic viabilitywould not be threatened. The key question,which would begin to be answered in the shel-ter period, is how appropriate Soviet emer-gency plans are and how rapidly planning mis-takes could be corrected. Major shifts, and theinefficiencies that accompany them, would beinevitable. To what extent could planningminimize them? Could a command economydo better under the circumstances than amixed economy? The Soviet Union’s long ex-perience with central planning would meanthat the changes would involve details withinthe existing system rather than changing fromone economic system to another.

In the U. S. S. R., as in the United States, thecrop loss caused by the attack would dependon season, fallout deposition, which cropswere hit by fallout, and so on. Similarly, theamount of food reserves would vary with theseason. The immediate goal for agriculturewould be to send adequate food supplies tocities. Presumably, the Government would tryto meet this goal by tightening controls ratherthan by giving farmers more capitalistic incen-tives. For a moderate attack like this one, withlittle physical damage, controls would prob-ably work.

It is questionable whether adequate laborwould be available for agriculture. Dependingon the situation, millions of men might bemobilized into the Army. On the other handthe Soviets have well-established proceduresfor getting military personnel, factory workers,and others to help with harvests; moreover,following a nuclear attack, some workers innonessential industries would be out of work,and could be sent to farms. The large numberof farmers (perhaps 35 to 40 percent of theSoviet work force is in agriculture, comparedto 2 or 3 percent in the United States), thefallout contaminating some farmland, and ac-cepting more exposure to radiation would in-crease the Soviet population’s exposure toradiation.

If a year’s crop were lost, would there beausterity, short rations, or starvation? Howmuch surplus food is there? In particular,would there be enough to maintain a livestockindustry, or would meat be seen as a nonessen-tial consumer good and feed grains divertedfor human use?

As in the United States, the attack wouldcreate many burdens for the Soviet economy.Mi l i tary expenditures would probably in-crease; people injured by the attack wouldneed care, and fewer people would be aliveand well to care for them; major changes in theeconomy would cause inefficiencies; loweredpublic health standards would increase earlyproduction at the expense of later healthburdens.


The Soviet Union would not face certainproblems that a market economy faces. Thelegal and financial devices supporting produc-tion – money, credit, contracts, and ownershipof productive resources — would be far less im-portant than in the United States. Instead,Soviet production would be guided by a cen-tral plan. There are reports that contingencyplanning has been done for postwar recupera-tion; such contingency plans (or the peacetimeplan if there are no applicable contingencyplans) would have to be adjusted to take ac-count of the actual availability of survivingworkers and economic assets. Without doubtsuch adjustments would be made, thoughthere would be some waste and inefficiency.

CASE 4: A LARGEU.S. MILITARY AND

This case discusses a massive attack thatone normally associates with all-out nuclearwar. The attack uses thousands of warheads toattack urban-industrial targets, strategic tar-gets, and other military targets. The number ofdeaths and the damage and destruction in-flicted on the U.S. society and economy by thesheer magnitude of such an attack wouldplace in question whether the United Stateswould ever recover its position as an orga-nized, industrial, and powerful country.

OTA favored examining purely retaliatorystrikes for both sides, but all of the availableexecutive branch studies involved Soviet preemption and U.S. retaliation. However, the dif-ferences between a Soviet first strike and aretaliation do not appear to be appreciablylarge in terms of damage to the civilian struc-ture. Like the United States, the Soviets have asecure second-strike force in their SLBMs andare assumed to target them generally againstthe softer urban-industrial targets. Moreover, aU.S. first strike would be unlikely to destroythe bulk of Soviet ICBMs before they could belaunched in retaliation.

The effects of a large Soviet attack againstthe United States would be devastating. The

Long-Term Effects

Chapter V discusses the likely long-termhealth hazards from such an attack.

All things considered, an attack of thisnature could be somewhat less damaging thanWorld War II was to the Soviet Union, andSoviet recovery from that conflict was com-plete. However, it helped that in 1945 theSoviets were victorious and able to draw onresources from Eastern Europe. Much woulddepend on whether the aftermath of this at-tack found the Soviet people pleased or ap-palled at the results of the war and on therelative power and attitudes of the Soviets’neighbors.

SOVIET ATTACK ONECONOMIC TARGETS

most immediate effects would be the loss ofmillions of human lives, accompanied by simi-lar incomprehensible levels of injuries, and thephysical destruction of a high percentage ofU.S. economic and industrial capacity. The fullrange of effects resulting from several thou-sand warheads — most having yields of a mega-ton or greater— impacting on or near U.S.cities can only be discussed in terms of uncer-tainty and speculation. The executive branchstudies that addressed this level of attackreport a wide range of fatality levels reflectingvarious assumptions about the size of the at-tack, the protective posture of the population,and the proportion of air bursts to groundburst weapons.

The DOD 1977 study estimated that 155 mil-lion to 165 million Americans would be killedby this attack if no civil defense measures weretaken and all weapons were ground burst.DCPA looked at a similar attack in 1978 whereonly half the weapons were ground burst; itreduced the fatality estimate to 122 million.ACDA’s analysis of a similar case estimatedthat 105 million to 131 million would die.

If people made use of existing shelters neartheir homes, the 155 million to 165 million


fatality estimate would be reduced to 110 mil-lion to 14s million, and the 122 million fatal-ities to 100 million. The comparable ACDAfatality estimate drops to 76 million to 85million. Again ACDA gets a lower figurethrough assuming air bursts for about 60 per-cent of the incoming weapons. Finally, if urbanpopulations were evacuated from risk areas,the estimated prompt fatality levels would besubstantially reduced. The DOD study showedfatalities of 40 million to 55 million, withDCPA showing a very large drop to 20 millionfrom the 100 mill ion level. The primary reasonfor the 2-to-1 differential is the degree of pro-tection from fallout assumed for the evac-uated population.

In summary, U.S. fatality estimates rangefrom a high of 155 million to 165 million to alow of 20 million to 55 million. Fatalities of thismagnitude beg the question of injuries to thesurvivors. None of the analyses attempted toestimate injuries with the same precision usedin estimated fatalities. However, DCPA didprovide injury estimates ranging from 33 mil-lion to 12 million, depending on circum-stances. An additional point worth noting isthat al I of the fatality figures just discussed arefor the first 30 days following the attack; theydo not account for subsequent deaths amongthe injured or from economic disruption anddeprivation.

The First Few Hours

The devastation caused by a single l-Mtweapon over Detroit (chapter I l), and of twosimilar weapons denoted near Philadelphia,have been described. In this attack the samedestruction would take place in 30 or so othermajor cities (with populations of a million orgreater). Many cities with smaller populationswould also be destroyed. The effects on U.S.society would be catastrophic.

The majority of urban deaths will be blast in-duced, e.g., victims of collapsing buildings, fly-ing debris, being blown into objects, etc. Ex-cept for administering to the injured, the nextmost pressing thing (probably ahead of han-

dling the dead) for most survivors would be toget reliable information about what has oc-curred, what is taking place, and what is ex-pected. Experience has shown that in a disasterSituation, timely and relevant information iscritical to avoiding panic, helpful in organizingand directing productive recovery efforts, andtherapeutic to the overall psychological andphysical well being of those involved. Presum-ably, the civil preparedness functions wouldbe operating well enough to meet some of thisneed.

Rescuing and treating the injured will haveto be done against near insurmountable odds.Fire and rescue vehicles and equipment not de-stroyed wil I find it impossible to move about inany direction. Fires wilI be raging, water mainswill be flooding, powerlines will be down,bridges will be gone, freeway overpasses willbe collapsed, and debris will be everywhere.People will be buried under heavy debris andstructures, and wi thout proper equipmentcapable of lifting such loads, the injured can-not be reached and will not survive. The for-tunate ones that rescuers can reach will thenbe faced with the unavailability of treatmentfacilities. Hospitals and clinics in downtownareas would likely have been destroyed alongwith most of their stocks of medical supplies.Doctors, nurses, and technicians needed toman makeshift treatment centers are likely tohave been among the casualties. The entirearea of holocaust will be further numbed byeither the real or imagined danger of fallout.People will not know whether they should tryto evacuate their damaged city, or attempt toseek shelter from fallout in local areas andhope there will be no new attacks. No doubtsome of both wouId be done.

If this situation were an isolated incident oreven part of a smalI number of destroyed citiesin an otherwise healthy United States, outsidehelp would certainly be available. But if 250U.S. cities are struck and damaged to similarlevels, then one must ask, “Who is able tohelp?” Smaller towns are limited in the amountof assistance they can provide their metropoli-tan neighbors. It is doubtful that there wouldbe a strong urge to buck the tide of evacuation

in order to reach a place where most of thenatives are trying to leave. Additionally, thesmaller cities and towns would have their ownpreparedness problems of coping with the an-ticipated arrival of fallout plus the influx ofrefugees. In light of these and other considera-tions, it appears that in an attack of thismagnitude, there is Iikely not to be substantialoutside assistance for the targeted areas untilprospective helpers are convinced of twothings: the attack is over, and fallout intensityhas reached safe levels. Neither of these condi-tions is likely to be met in the first few hours.

The First Few Days

Survivors will continue to be faced with thedecision whether to evacuate or seek shelter inplace during this interval. The competence andcredibility of authority will be under con-tinuous question. Will survivors be told thefacts, or what is best for them to know, andwho decides? Deaths will have climbed due tountreated injuries, sickness, shock, and poorjudgement. Many people will decide to at-tempt evacuation simply to escape the realityof the environment. For those staying, it likelymeans the beginning of an extended period ofshelter survival. Ideally, shelters must protectfrom radiation while meeting the minimums ofcomfort, subsistence, and personal hygiene.Convincing people to remain in shelters untilradiation levels are safely low will be difficult,but probably no more so than convincing themthat it is safe to leave on the basis of a radi-ation-rate meter reading. There w i l l beunanswerable questions on long-term effects.

Sheltering the survivors in the populousBoston to Norfolk corridor will present un-precedented problems. Almost one-fifth of theU.S. population lives in this small, 150- by 550-mile [250 by 900 km] area. Aside from thethreat of destruction from direct attack, thesepopulations are in the path of fallout from at-tacks on missile silos and many industrial tar-gets in the Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Duluth tri-angle. Depending on the winds at altitude, thefallout from the Midwest will begin arriving 12to 30 hours after the attack.

At the time when fallout radiation first be-comes intense, only a fraction of the survivingurban population will be in adequate falloutshelters. Those that are sheltered will face avariety of problems: making do with existingstocks of food, water, and other necessities orelse minimizing exposure while leaving theshelter for supplies; dealing with problems ofsanitation, which will not only create healthhazards but also exacerbate the social tensionsof crowds of frightened people in a smallspace; dealing with additional people wantingto enter the shelter, who would not only wantto share scarce supplies but might bring con-tamination in with them; dealing with disease,which would be exacerbated not only by theeffects of radiation but by psychosomatic fac-tors; and finally judging when it is safe to ven-ture out. Boredom will gradually replacepanic, but will be no easier to cope with. Thosewith inadequate shelters or no shelters at allwill die in large numbers, either from lethaldoses of radiation or from the combination ofother hazards with weakness induced by radia-tion sickness.

The conditions cited above are generallymore applicable to urbanites who are trying tosurvive. The problems of rural survivors aresomewhat different, some being simpler—others more complex. With warning, peopleliving in rural areas could readily fabricateadequate fallout shelters. However, it might bemore diifficult for a rural shelteree to have cur-rent and accurate information regarding fall-out intensity and location. The farm family islikely not to have suffered the traumatic ex-posure to death and destruction, and conse-quently is probably better prepared psycho-logically to spend the required time in a shel-ter. (Possible consequences to livestock andcrops are addressed later in this section. )

Outdoor activity in or near major cities thatwere struck would likely be limited to emer-gency crews attempting to control fires or con-tinuing to rescue the injured. Crews wouldwear protective clothing but it would be neces-sary to severely limit the total work hours ofany one crew member, so as not to risk danger-ous accumulations of radiation. Areas not


threatened by fallout could begin more delib-erate fire control and rescue operations.Whether a national facility would survive toidentify weapons impact points and predictfallout patterns is doubtful.

The extent of death and destruction to theNation would still be unknown. For the mostpart, the agencies responsible for assemblingsuch information would not be functioning.This task would have to wait until the numbingeffect of the attack had worn off, and theGovernment could once again begin to func-tion, however precariously.

The Shelter Period (Up to a Month)

As noted earlier, after the initial shockperiod, including locating and getting settledin shelters, the problem of sheltering largemasses of people will be compounded as theshelter time extends. Survival will remain thekey concern. People will experience or witnessradiation death and sickness for the first time.Many previously untreated injuries will requiremedical attention, if permanent damage ordeath to the individual is to be avoided. Stock-piles of medical, food, and water supplies aresure to become items of utmost concern.Whether some people can safely venture out-side the shelter for short periods to forage foruncontaminated supplies will depend on fall-out intensity, and the availability of reliablemeans of measuring it.

This period will continue to be marked bymore inactivity than activity. Many areas willhave been freed from the fallout threat eitherby rain, shifting winds, or distance from thedetonations. But economic activity will notresume immediately. Workers wilI remain con-cerned about their immediate families andmay not want to risk leaving them. Informa-tion and instruction may not be forthcoming,and if it is, it may be confusing and misleading,and of little use. Uncertainty and frustrationwill plague the survivors, and even the mostminor tasks wilI require efforts far out of pro-portion to their difficulty. Many will interpretthis as symptomatic of radiation effects andbecome further confused and depressed. The

overall psychological effects will likely worsenuntil they become a major national concern,perhaps on the same level with other incapaci-tating injuries.

Deaths occurring within the first 30 days ofan attack are categorized as prompt fatalities.This duration is a computation standard morethan it is related to specific death-producingeffects, and is the basis for most fatalityestimates. However, deaths from burns, in-juries, and radiation sickness can be expectedto continue far beyond this particular interval.

The Recuperation Period

Whether economic recovery would takeplace, and if so what form it would take, woulddepend both on the physical surv ival ofenough people and resources to sustain recov-ery, and on the question of whether these sur-vivors couId adequately organize themselves.

Physical survival of some people is quiteprobable, and even a population of a few mil-lion can sustain a reasonably modern economyunder favorable circumstances. The survivorswould not be a cross-section of prewar Amer-ica, since people who had Iived in rural areaswould be more likely to survive than the inhab-itants of cities and suburbs. The survivingpopulation would lack some key industrial andtechnical skills; on the other hand, rural peopleand those urban people who wouId survive aregenerally hardier than the American average.

While the absolute level of surviving stocksof materials and products would seem low byprewar standards, there would be a muchsmaller population to use these stocks. Apartfrom medicines (which tend to have a shortshelf life and which are manufactured exclu-sively in urban areas), there would probablynot be any essential commodity of which sup-plies were desperately short at first. A lack ofmedicines wouId accentuate the smallness andhardiness of the surviving population.

Restoring production would be a much moredifficult task than finding interim stockpiles.Production in the United States is extremelycomplex, involving many intermediate stages.


Photo credit: U.S. Air ForceA part of Hiroshima after atomic blast

New patterns of production, which did not relyon facilities that have been destroyed, wouldhave to be established.

It cannot be said whether the productivefacilities that physically survived (undamagedor repairable with available supplies and skills)would be adequate to sustain recovery. Itseems probable that there would be enoughequipment and that scavenging among theruins could provide adequate “raw materials”where natural resources were no longer ac-cessible with surviving technology.

The most serious problems would be organi-zational. Industrial society depends on thedivision of labor, and the division of labordepends on certain governmental functions,

Physical security comes first—a person is re-luctant to leave home to go to work withoutsome assurance that the home will not belooted. While some degree of law and ordercould probably be maintained in localitieswhere a fairly dense population survived, theremaining highways might become quite un-safe, which would reduce trade over substan-tial distances. The second requirement is someform of payment for work. Barter is notorious-ly inefficient. Payment by fiat (for example,those who work get Government ration cards)is inefficient as well, and requires a Govern-ment stronger than a postwar United Stateswould be Iikely to inherit. A strong Govern-ment might grow up, but most survivin g citi-zens would be reluctant to support a dictator-

Ch. IV—Three Attack Cases • 99

ship by whatever name. The best solution is aviable monetary system, but it would not beeasy to establish. Regions or localities mightdevelop their own monies, with “foreign”trade among regions.

The surviving resources might not be usedvery efficiently. Ideally one would want toconduct a national survey of surviving assets,but the surviving Government would probablynot be capable of doing so, especially sincepeople would fear that to acknowledge a surviv-ing stock was to invite its confiscation. Tomake use of surviving factories, workers wouldhave to live nearby, and they might be unwill-ing to do so in the absence of minimally ade-quate housing for their families. Ownership ofsome assets would be hopelessly confused,which wouId diminish the incentives for invest-ment or even temporary repairs.

There is a possibility that the country mightbreak up into several regional entities. If thesecame into conflict with each other there wouldbe further waste and destruction.

In effect, the country would enter a race,with economic viability as the prize. The coun-try would try to restore production to the pointwhere consumption of stocks and the wearingout of surviving goods and tools was matchedby new production. If this was achieved beforestocks ran out, then viability would be at-tained. Otherwise, consumption would neces-sarily sink to the level of new production andin so doing would probably depress productionfurther, creating a downward spiral. At somepoint this spiral would stop, but by the time itdid so the United States might have returnedto the economic equivalent of the MiddleAges.

The effect of an all-out attack would beequally devastating to the U.S. social struc-ture. Heavy fatalities in the major urban areaswould deprive the country of a high percent-age of its top business executives, GovernmentofficiaIs, medicaI speciaIists, scientists,educators, and performers. There is no meas-ure for estimating the impact of such lastinglosses on our society. In addition to the ir-replaceable loss of genius and talents, the

destruction of their associated institutions isstill another compounding of effects that isoverlooked by some recovery estimates. Whocould calculate how long to get over the lossof Wall Street, an MIT, a Mayo Clinic, and theSmithsonian?

The American way of life is characterized bymaterial possessions, with private ownershipof items representing substantial long-term in-vestments (such as homes, businesses, andautomobiles) being the rule rather than excep-tion. Widespread loss of individual assets suchas these could have a strong, lasting effect onour social structure. Similarly, the question ofwhether individual right to ownership of sur-viving assets would remain unchanged in apostattack environment would arise. For exam-ple, the Government might find it necessary toforce persons having homes to house familieswho had lost their homes.

The family group would be particularly hardhit by the effects of general nuclear war.Deaths, severe injuries, forced separation, andloss of contact could place inordinate strainson the family structure.

Finally, major changes should be antici-pated in the societal structure, as survivors at-tempt to adapt to a severe and desponding en-vironment never before experienced. The lossof a hundred million people, mostly in thelarger cities, could raise a question on the ad-visability of rebuilding the cities. (Why recon-struct obvious targets for a nuclear Armaged-don of the future?) The surviving populationcould seek to alter the social and geopoliticalstructure of the rebuilding nation in hopes ofminimizing the effects of any future confIicts.

How well the U.S. political structure mightrecover from a large-scale nuclear attack de-pends on a number of uncertainties. First, withwarning, national level officials are presumedto evacuate to outlying shelter areas; State andlocal authorities will take similar precautions,but probably with less success, especially atthe lower levels. The confidence and credibili-ty of the system will come under severe strainsas relief and recovery programs are implemented. Changes in an already weakened


structure are sure to result as many normalpractices and routines are set aside to facili-tate recovery. Survivors may demand more im-mediate expressions of their likes, dislikes, andneeds. Widespread dissatisfaction could resultin a weakening of the Federal process, leadingto a new emphasis on local government. An

CASE 4: A LARGESOVIET MILITARY AND

A U.S. retaliatory attack against the SovietUnion would destroy 70 to 80 percent of itseconomic worth. The attacking force wouldconsist primarily of U.S. strategic bombers andPoseidon/Polaris SLBMs, since most U.S. land-based ICBMs are assumed lost to a Soviet firststrike. Bombers carry gravity bombs and short-range attack missiles having yields of about 1Mt and 200 kt respectively. Poseidon SLBMsnominally carry up to 10 RVs of 40 kt each.

The attack would strike the full set of Soviettargets —strategic offensive forces, other mil-itary targets, economic targets, and cities.Population would in fact be struck, althoughkilling people would not be an attack objec-tive in itself. The objectives would be to causeas much industrial damage as possible and tomake economic recovery as difficult as possi-ble. The attacks might not be limited in time.Concentrations of evacuees would probablynot be struck, but industries that recoveredvery quickly after the attack could be.

The immediate effects of the attack wouldbe death and injury to millions of Soviet citi-zens, plus the destruction of a large percent-age of Soviet economic and industrial capaci-ty. As with the all-out Soviet attack, the execu-tive branch studies provided a wide range ofcasualty estimates. Since the thrust of thoseanalyses was to look at the potential effec-tiveness of Soviet civil defense, casualtieswere estimated under various assumptions reIated to the posture of the population.

If the Soviet population remained in-place,fatality estimates range from a high of 64 mil-lion to 100 million (26 to 40 percent of the

alternative possibility is martial law, whichmight be controlled in theory but decentral-ized in practice.

All of this assumes that there would be nosignificant ecological damage, a possibilitydiscussed in chapter V. Chapter V also dis-cusses long-term health hazards.

U.S. ATTACK ONECONOMIC TARGETS

Soviet population) to a low of 50 million to 80million (20 to 32 percent). The high-value rangeis due to the different data bases used by DODand ACDA and the higher protection levelsassumed by AC DA. The low-value range resultsfrom the use of day-to-day alert status by theinteragency intelligence study as compared toACDA’s use of generated forces, and the typesof weapons used against the economic targetbase in the two studies. With evacuation, theACDA study estimated that fatalities would bereduced to 23 million to 34 million. It is dif-ficult to judge whether these figures representa high or low estimate. They could be consid-ered as representing the low side because ofthe coarseness of Soviet data as used byACDA. On the other hand, some would saythat the evacuation scheme assumed by ACDAwas unrealistic, and the results should be con-sidered a high estimate. Nevertheless, Sovietfatalities are lower than the United States forboth in-place and evacuated population pos-tures. The lower Soviet fatalities are again pri-marily due to major differences in the yields ofthe weapons detonating in each country, andto the greater proportion of Soviet populationthat lives in rural areas.

As to the cause of fatalities (blast, thermalradiation, and direct nuclear radiation versusfallout radiation), DCPA data suggests that, inlarge attacks, that is, attacks that includeeconomic or economic and population targets,fatalities are primarily due to prompt effectsas opposed to fallout. Prompt effects accountfor at least 80 percent of the fatalities for allpopulation postures when economic targets orpopulation are included in the attack. ACDA


notes a similar result in its study for attacksthat include counterforce and other militarytargets. The reason for this is that in attacks ontargets near urban areas, that is, attacks involv-ing economic targets or popuIation, those pro-tected enough to survive the blast effects alsohave enough protection to survive the fallout.Conversely, those who do not have enoughprotection against fallout in urban areas neartargets will not have enough protection againstprompt effects and will already be dead beforefallout has an effect.

Estimates of Soviet injuries were generallynot included in the analyses. However, onestudy suggested that injuries might be roughlyequal to fatalities under certain attack and ex-posure assumptions.

The First Few Hours

As chapter 11 I notes, Soviet civil defense canhave substantial impact on the full range of ef-fects. Fallout shelters, blast shelters, and in-dustrial hardening can reduce the overall dam-age from nuclear attack. First aid and civildefense training can ameliorate health prob-lems. Storing supplies in shelters lengthensshelter stay time. Thus, the issue is how wellSoviet civil defense would in fact work. Manyunknowns— numbers of shelters, amount off o o d a n d m e d i c i n e stock piIes, small eramounts of surplus resources than the UnitedStates–prevent a judgment in detail. It seemssafe to assume, however, that Soviet civiI de-fense measures would be at least as effectiveas U.S. measures and probably better.

Preattack preparations would have a de-cided influence on damage caused. Since aU.S. retaliatory attack is by definition pre-ceded by a Soviet first strike, it would seemlogical that some evacuation would have oc-curred. However, there are reasons why evac-uation might not have taken place. These in-clude the following Soviet concerns: an evac-uation could increase the risk of a U.S. attack;the U.S. attack might be so close at hand thatan evacuation couId increase casualties; a pro-longed evacuation might be such an economicdisruption that it would be better to wait until

war appeared certain; or war through miscal-culation. I n any event, a Soviet decision tostrike first would allow the Soviets to makepreparations—distribute supplies, improveand stock shelters, increase production ofessential goods, harvest grain, protect Iive-stock, conduct civil defense training, hardenindustrial facilities, and so on. These actionswould also make Soviet citizens more respon-sive to civil defense instructions, especially toa warning that an attack was underway. Whilethese actions would be observed by the UnitedStates, they would be more ambiguous than anevacuation, so the United States could seethem as safeguarding against an attack ratherthan preparing for one.

The effects of evacuation in reducing casu-alties could be diluted to some extent by vary-ing U.S. attack strategy. Spreading the attackover a period of time could extend shelter peri-ods, enhance economic disruption, and delayrescue and emergency operations.

The Soviet Union, despite its vast geograph-ical size, is vulnerable to an urban/industrialattack in many of the same ways as the UnitedStates. Although there has been extensive pub-licity on their reported dispersal of industry, in-dications are that population and industry arebecoming more and more concentrated. Whilesome industries may have been moved awayfrom cities, many others have been built nearcities. Indeed, some of the industries recentlybuilt away from cities are themselves so con-centrated that they form new targets of theirown. Hedrick Smith describes

the Kama River Truck Plant as an arche-type of the gigantomania of Soviet planners,as a symbol of the Soviet faith that biggermeans better and the Soviet determination tohave the biggest at any cost.

Kama is the kind of massive crash projectthat appeals to Russians. It emanates brutestrength. In 1971, Soviet construction brigadesstarted from scratch to build the wor ld ’slargest truck plant in the open, rolling, wind-swept plains about 600 miles east of M o s -cow Kama was not just one factory but six,all huge The production complex, costingin the bilIions, occupies 23 square miles, anarea larger than the entire island of Manhat-


tan. At full capacity, Kama is slated to pro-duce 150,000 heavy trucks and 250,000 dieselengines a year, dwarfing anything in Detroit orthe German Ruhr.6

The attack could cause “derussification. ”The U.S.S.R. is a nation of nationalities, ofwhich Great Russians — who dominate politics,industry, and much else— comprise about 48.5percent of the population. Most Great Rus-sians live in cities, so an attack would reducetheir numbers and influence. Derussificationcould weaken Great Russians’ control of theU. S. S. R., with unforeseeable consequences.

Timing makes a critical difference in de-struction. An attack at night would have peo-ple with their families and more dispersed;they would seek shelter in apartment build-ings. An attack during the day would strikepeople at factories and offices; to the extentthey left to find family members, chaos wouldresult as in the United States, but to the extentthey sought shelter at work, they would be or-ganized by economic task. Such organizationwould be useful for postattack recovery.

An attack in winter would expose more peo-ple to bitter cold and impede evacuation; anattack in spring or fall, when many roads aremade impassable by mud, would hinder evac-uation by motor vehicle. An attack near har-vest time could result in the loss of an entireyear’s crop, thus leaving food reserves at a lowpoint. This effect could be magnified if theUnited States attacked agricultural targets,such as storage silos, dams, and drainage facil-ities.

Even time of month makes a difference be-cause of the Soviet practice of “storming.” TheSoviet factory month in practice divides intothree periods: “sleeping,” the first 10 days;“hot” work, the second 10; and “feverish”work, the third. This division occurs becausethe economic plan calls for a specified outputfrom each plant by the end of the month, butthe inputs needed often arrive only after the15th or 20th of the month. Thus, perhaps 80

‘Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York: BallantineBooks, 1977), p. 241.

percent of a factory’s output is produced inthe last 10 or 15 days of the month. (This 80percent is typically of such reduced qualitythat Soviet consumers often refuse to buy mer-chandise made after the 20th of a month. ) Hy-pothetically, an attack around the 15th or 20thof a month would cause the loss of most of amonth’s production, and would destroy thelarge inventory in factories of partially com-pleted goods and of inputs that cannot be useduntil other inputs arrive.

On the other hand, the U.S.S.R. has severalstrengths. Cities are in general less flammablethan U.S. cities, as there are more large apart-ment buildings and fewer wood frame houses.These buildings would also provide bettershelter, especially those that have sheltersbuilt in. People would expect to follow instruc-tions and would be less likely to evacuatespontaneously. The Party apparatus wouldprobably survive with a far lower casualty ratethan the population at large because it is welldistributed and because blast shelters havebeen constructed for party members. Russiansare likely to be less traumatized by shelter con-ditions, as they are more accustomed to aus-terity and crowding. The nation is larger, whichin theory provides more land area over whichpeople could relocate, but much of the area ismountain, desert, or arctic.

The First Few Days

Actions in this period would greatly affectthe number of casualties and the amount ofeconomic damage. Obviously, much damagewould have been caused in the first hour.Many people trapped in the rubble could berescued, would be seriously injured but couldsurvive with medical care or first aid, would beable to seek shelter or evacuate, could preparehasty fallout shelters, could improve existingshelters, and so on. Some industries would bedamaged but not destroyed; if small fires wereextinguished, undamaged equipment hard-ened against blast, exposed equipment pro-tected from rust, and so on, more resourceswould be available for recovery. Likewise,farms could harvest crops, shelter livestock,

Ch. IV—Three Attack Cases • 103

and protect harvested crops in the few daysbefore fallout deposition.

The issue is not what could be done butwhat would be done. Proper use of time— or-ganization and prioritization to get the mostimportant tasks done with the least wasted ef-fort and resources —would be critical. TheSoviet system offers a major advantage in thisperiod. As we noted in the case of a counter-force attack, the Government’s role in thiscrisis would be more clearly defined, and itscontrol over individual action and the econ-omy would be much stronger than that of theU.S. Government in a comparable situation. Itsexperience with central planning and a com-mand economy would be good preparation forthe actions needed —decisions involving largeshifts in behavior and resources, obeyedwithout argument. Its decisions would savesome people and industries and condemnothers, but delay in order to make better deci-sions could easily condemn more. Evacuationwould have to be ordered in this period, or elsewould-be evacuees would have to wait untilradiation had reached safe levels. For citiesdamaged only slightly, evacuation wouldprove difficult but not impossible. With manyrail yards and some key bridges out, it wouldbe difficult to get trains to smaller cities.Destruction of petroleum refineries, somepetroleum storage capacity (especially thatlocated in rail marshaling yards that were at-tacked), and some electric power generators,would further impede evacuation by train.Fallout contours would be difficult to predict,so it would be hard to select the best evacua-tion routes and relocation centers. An attack inwinter wouId add other problems.

Survivors in Soviet cities would face thesame severe problems as those in U.S. cities.Many would be injured, trapped in rubble, ir-radiated with initial nuclear radiation, etc.Many shelters would be destroyed or dam-aged. Power would be out, so water pressurewould be too low for fighting fires. Rubblewould impede rescue.

Undamaged areas, especially those notthreatened by heavy fallout, wouId face severeburdens. They would receive many evacuees inthe first few days, would send rescue teamsand resources to devastated areas, and wouldstrive to produce as much as possible. Evac-uees in undamaged areas would be pressedinto work in fields and factories, and would besheltered in public buildings or private homes.The performance of undamaged areas wouldthus largely determine the nation’s ability toprosecute the war and to achieve economicviability. The Government would, however,face a dilemma in how to use resources surviv-ing in undamaged areas: it could maximizecurrent production, leaving workers and re-sources vulnerable to further attacks, or itcould seek to protect workers and resources,thus reducing current production. The specificchoices wouId depend on the likelihood of fur-ther attacks, criticality of various products,and so forth, but the dilemma would stand.

An all-out attack would exacerbate the inef-ficiencies that Soviet industry has in peace-time. The Government would have to decidewhat it needed to have produced, and whetherthe factories existed to have them produced.The Government would have far more difficul-ty correlating inputs and outputs and arrang-ing for their transportation. It would have toassign people to jobs, and arrange to transport,shelter, and care for workers. Many workerswould be sick, in shelters, killed, traumatized,or debilitated by radiation sickness. However,the Government would probably be able tocontrol what movement of people did takeplace. Even in peacetime, the Government hasvery high control over mobility. People are notin the habit of going anywhere without permis-sion, and everyone’s actions must be justifiedand accounted for. There is little independenttravel. The internal passport system strength-ens these controls. I n wartime, the Govern-ment would presumably strengthen its controlof transportation. People would have nowhereto go where they could be sure of shelter fromfallout unless the Government arranged theirtransportation and shelter. This control would

104 “ The Effects of Nuclear War

help the Government maintain economic orga-nization following attack.

The Shelter Period

By all reports, the Soviets are better pre-pared than Americans to spend extended peri-ods of time in shelters. In their literature well-conceived protective structures are seen thatshould af ford good survivabi l i ty. Li fe inshelters and evacuation areas would in someways be similar to that described in earliercases. Actions taken before fallout depositionwould affect casualties. Public health, numberand quality of shelters, and amount of foodand medicine stockpiled are uncertainties.Civil defense and first aid training wouldmitigate deaths, but to an unpredictable ex-tent. People in uncontaminated areas wouldbe best off, followed by those in fallout shel-ters in contaminated areas, those in securefallout shelters in blast areas, and those inhasty shelters in contaminated areas.

One public health problem would be espe-cially acute in this case. Antibiotics, which areinvaluable in fighting many diseases, are inshort supply in the U.S.S.R. even in peacetime.Antibiotics have a short sheIf life and cannotbe frozen. Large doses of radiation destroymost of the body’s antibodies, which fight dis-eases. Antibiotics are typically used to com-pensate for the drastic decrease in antibodiesin radiation victims, as it takes the body a longtime to rebuild its antibodies after large radia-tion doses. Because of the U.S.S.R. ’S limitedsupply of antibiotics, many people could beexpected to die from diseases.

In areas contaminated by fallout but un-damaged by blast, shelter life would be less in-tolerable. Utilities might be working, buildingswould be undamaged so would offer bettershelter, people would be uninjured, therewould be time to prepare and provision shel-ters, there would be less incl inat ion toevacuate, and there would be less pressure toleave shelters prematurely.

Fallout deposition patterns would becomeclear in this period, and would largely deter-

mine the damage to agriculture and which in-dustries would need to remain closed. Harvest-ing crops uncontaminated by fallout would beimpeded by fuel shortages, but evacueeswould be plentiful and could harvest crops byhand. Similarly, evacuees could work in surviv-ing industries in uncontaminated areas.

The key issue that the Government wouldface would be successful organization. Pro-duction would be far below prewar levels. Itwould take some time before the Governmentcould take inventory, set priorities, arrange forinputs of workers, resources, and power, andtransport the outputs. Most needs in thisperiod would be met from inventory. The Cov-ernment would thus need to establish strictcontrols over inventory; it could be necessaryto implement severe rationing of food, as wasdone in Leningrad in World War 11.

Problems of organization would be especial-ly critical in light of the intense struggle forresources and the need to use resources aswidely as possible. The competition for petro-leum, discussed previously in Case 2, would beminimal compared to the competition here.The military, agriculture, industry, transporta-tion, and life support systems would all haveurgent claims on resources. Everything wouldbe in short supply; there would be hundreds ofbottlenecks instead of one. How would theGovernment mediate among these claims?There would be far less margin for error than inpeacetime, and a decision to use resources forone purpose would almost automatically preelude other courses of action. Viability wouldbe at issue, and deaths would increase becauseof delays in achieving it.

What sacrifices would the Government de-mand? Obviously, each critical sector wouldbe called on to make some, and consumergoods would probably be sacrificed complete-Iy. Public health would be sacrificed to someextent by starting production in contaminatedareas early and by giving people contaminatedfood rather than nothing.

The Government would probably be able tomaintain control. Food rationing, control oft ransportat ion and shel ters, and internal


passports would help the Government restartthe economy. Its economic plans would be theonly alternative to chaos, and people wouldexpect to obey them and their demands evenwithout controls. Many party members wouldsurvive. Contenders for resources wouId strug-gle inside the Government, but externalthreats, the specter of chaos, the urgency ofdecisions, and the recognized impossibility ofgetting everything needed would dampen thedebate. All sectors would make sacrifices. Themilitary, for example, might be forced toforego fuel-intensive training. In agricultureand industry, manual labor—which would beplentiful – would substitute for machinery.People would use wood for fuel where possi-ble; many would go cold. Coal-burning loco-motives woud Iikely be taken from storage.Decisions would be taken quickly and set rigid-ly, Productivity would decrease before it in-creased. The standard of living would be farlower, and some would die in this period andthe next as a result. The question is— howmany?

Recuperation

Production– and with it, standard of livingand the number of people production couldsupport —would go down before it went up. In-dustries would use inventories of supplies forproduction, then would have to close until sup-ply could be reestablished. TransportationwouId wind down as petroleum refining wascut off, and petroleum supplies became ex-hausted or requisitioned by the military. Peo-ple would be diverted from production by be-ing sick or injured, caring for the sick or in-jured, or being drafted for military service.What production took place would be far lessefficient. Many workers would be debilitatedby minor cases of radiation sickness, other ill-ness, malnutrition, psychological shock, and soon. Many would be called on to do tasks forwhich they lacked the training or the physicalstrength. Factories would be damaged or couldnot obtain necessary parts, so industrial proc-esses would have to substitute labor for capitalor use shortcuts that would reduce the qualityof the product or the efficiency of the process.

If things went well, production would sta-bilize at a level that made good use of surviv-ing resources, and would recover from there.The Government would increase its controlover people and the economy, production ofconsumer goods wouId be delayed, many re-sources would flow to the military, publichealth would be lower, but sacrifices wouldpay off. Soviet engineers and plant managersreputedly are skiIIful at improvising solutionsto mechanical problems. Such skills, Govern-ment organization and control, and bruteforce could overcome bottlenecks, use pro-duction to expand capacity, and give peopleaustere but adequate food, housing, medicalcare, and other necessities.

The recovery could go poorly, however. Agreat many people could require medical carethat could not be provided, and would die. Theharvest could be lost, and more would die.Starving people would find and eat grain to beplanted next year, reducing that crop and caus-ing others to starve. Transportation could col-lapse, preventing factories from obtaining in-puts and making it impossible for their prod-ucts to be distributed, forcing them to close.Hardening might save key machine tools, butthese tools might be buried under tons of rub-ble or be in intensely radioactive areas, preeluding their use. The Government might beunable to conduct a detailed resource inven-tory that could integrate these tools into theeconomy, or there might be no way of trans-porting them to a factory that could use them.A war or threat of war, from NATO, China, orboth, might divert surviving industry and mate-rials into producing for the war effort andaway from the economy. Which way the econ-omy would go is unpredictable, for there arefar too many unknowns. But should economicproductivity fall precipitously, for whateverreason, the economy couId support fewer peo-ple, and more would die. Indeed a failure toachieve viability could cause as many Sovietdeaths as the attack itself.

I n summary, the effects of a large-scale nu-clear attack against Soviet military and urban-industrial targets wouId remove that nationfrom a position of power and influence for the


remainder of this century. Soviet fatalities, due ing industry would be less severely damagedto asymmetries in weapons yields and popula- than their U.S. counterparts. Nor is there anytion densities, would be lower than those for evidence that the Soviets face a lower risk ofthe United States. However, there is no evi- finding themselves unable to rebuild an indus-dence that the Soviet economy and its support- trial society at all.

Chapter THREE ATTACK CASES - Princeton University

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