Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan

DR SAMUEL GLASSTONE (3 May 1897 - 16 November 1986), founding editor of The Effects of Atomic Weapons (U.S. Department of Defense, 1950)/The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1957 complete book in low definition, 1957 key pages in high definition, 1962/1964), author of the originally secret reports, WASH-1037/8, An Introduction to Nuclear Weapons (1962, 1963, 1972a and 1972b) and co-editor - with Philip J. Dolan - of the 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed. (available as separate PDF chapter downloads here), received his PhD and DSc in 1922 and 1926, respectively, in chemistry from London University.

His first book was the 250 page-long Chemistry in Daily Life, published in 1929 while he was a Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield. In May 1928, he had broadcast five talks on ‘Chemistry in Daily Life’ for BBC radio.

He wrote in the preface of Chemistry in Daily Life that the enthusiastic response of the radio listeners had motivated him to write the book: ‘Curiously enough, amongst the letters received one came from a Harley Street doctor and another from a school-girl!’

The diagrams and manuscript were prepared for the press by Violette Collingwood, who later married him. In America, Glasstone became Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oklahoma and applied quantum mechanics to chemical reaction rates.

Altogether, he authored 40 books, ranging from chemical textbooks such as Thermodynamics for Chemists and Theoretical Chemistry, to physics and engineering textbooks such as Sourcebook on the Space Sciences (written at the request of NASA) and Nuclear Reactor Engineering, while his strong conviction against scientific prejudice led him to author the 276 page-long study Public Safety and Underground Nuclear Detonations (published by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1970), and to co-author the 400 page-long discussion, Nuclear Power and Its Environmental Effects (1980).

A President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts, in June 2005 praised Samuel Glasstone highly for his 1,300 pages long Textbook of Physical Chemistry, 1943:

'As Bruce Alberts steps down July 1 as one of the most accomplished and distinguished presidents of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), he is singularly focused on education—specifically, teaching his students about real science. He has been brewing an idea for a new science course that he would like to teach to graduate students ... Alberts' hopes for more explosions and hands-on experiments were dashed soon after he arrived at Harvard University ... Instead of self-directed learning, he found himself exposed to mind-numbing facts. "Science words are not science," Alberts says. "I always feel that I want to understand things and not just memorize them." In his physical chemistry class during his junior year, Alberts was particularly frustrated by the textbooks. "So I went to the library and found a big, fat, older physical chemistry book," he says of the 1,300-page tome written by Samuel Glasstone. "It contained a lot of words. Most of the textbooks in physical chemistry have relatively few words, and they emphasize equations," Alberts says. "But Glasstone was a person who really wanted people to understand the essence of the subject, and he wrote beautifully about it. And I discovered from his book that I could actually get the understanding that I was looking for".'

On another site, a book reviewer comments:

'Perhaps one of the best technical writers of the last century was Samuel Glasstone. His volumes on Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering were very easy to read, understand, and use. This is because he endeavored to number every new topic so that easy reference could be made. This also provided logic to the subject matter, which assisted in the flow of the information that the text was providing.'

In 1959, Glasstone was awarded the Worchester Reed Warner Medal by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for his ‘outstanding contribution to permanent engineering literature in writings on atomic energy.’ In 1968, Glasstone received the Arthur Holly Compton Award from the American Nuclear Society for his ‘distinguished contributions to nuclear science and engineering education.’

In 1972, aged 75, Glasstone wrote Inner Space: The Structure of the Atom, published as a free education by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission which explains in detail how the four quantum numbers of each atomic electron under the Pauli exclusion principle allows electron shells which predict the periodic table of chemical elements, before explaining the shell structure of the nucleus and radioactivity.

Glasstone had witnessed the exaggeration of aerial bombardment effects and its effects on appeasement of dictatorships during the 1930s, when all kinds of appeasement, treaties, embargoes, and economic sanctions fooled politicians into believing that they were safe when the dictatorships were secretly preparing for war:

'... history is apparently not among the areas of expertise claimed by IPPNW [INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIANS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR]. Its spokesmen have yet to comment on the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 (for which Kellogg and Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize), the Oxford Peace Resolution of 1934, the Munich Agreement of 1938, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, and on the effectiveness of these measures in preventing World War II. ...

'Sir Norman Angell (also a Nobel Peace Prize winner), in his 1910 best-seller entitled The Great Illusion, showed that war had become so terrible and expensive as to be unthinkable. The concept of ‘destruction before detonation’ was not discovered by Victor Sidel (Sidel, V. W., ‘Destruction before detonation: the impact of the arms race on health and health care’, Lancet 1985; ii: 1287-1289), but was previously enunciated by Neville Chamberlain, who warned his Cabinet about the heavy bills for armaments: ‘even the present Programmes were placing a heavy strain upon our resources’ (Minutes of the British Cabinet meeting, February 3, 1937: quoted in Fuchser, L. W., ‘Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement: a Study in the Politics of History’, Norton, New York, 1982). ...

'Psychic numbing, denial, and ‘missile envy’ (Caldicott, H., Missile envy: the arms race and nuclear war, New York: William Morrow, 1984) are some of the diagnoses applied by IPPNW members to those who differ with them. However, for the threats facing the world, IPPNW does not entertain a differential diagnosis, nor admit the slightest doubt about the efficacy of their prescription, if only the world will follow it. So certain are they of their ability to save us from war that these physicians seem willing to bet the lives of millions who might be saved by defensive measures if a nuclear attack is ever launched.

'Is this an omnipotence fantasy?'

- ‘INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIANS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR: MESSIAHS OF THE NUCLEAR AGE?’, The Lancet (British medical journal), 18 November 1988, pp.1185-6, by Jane M. Orient, MD.

Why grossly exaggerating the effects of aerial bombardment caused World War II

Tens of millions died in World War II because of the 1930s efforts to negotiate with totalitarians through a false fear of war due to the quantitative exaggeration of the effects of aerial attack, and a widespread belief that peace could be guaranteed by exaggerating the effects of war into a dogmatic religion of pseudo-science, which would brainwash humanity into avoiding war. This lying only encouraged the proliferation of weapons to the despotic dictatorships which wanted to have the threat of such weapons in order to achieve political intimidation, ‘peaceful invasions’ and genocide without opposition.



There is a need to debunk general Planet of the Apes style nuclear effects exaggeration hype by politicans which simultaneously encourages misguided nuclear proliferation (rogue states, dictators and terrorists think that simply having a nuclear threat will get them anything they want by intimidation, due to the exaggeration in the popular media) and discourages simple civil defense countermeasures from being taken seriously. If you're in the crater region, you don't need civil defense, but even the crater sizes have been grossly exaggerated in the public domain: the 'overkill' areas are actually trivial compared to the areas over which even the simplest informed civil defense countermeasures like duck and cover and getting out of the immediate downwind area (or under cover there) before the wind blows fallout there, is effective at saving lives.

The tragedy of the exaggeration of the offensive capabilities of aerial attack was plain to see during the 1930s. Public opinion was on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's side (appeasing Hitler) because the effects of war had been exaggerated in 1938 by the British War Office: aerial bombing was (inaccurately) predicted to cause 121 casualties/ton, and the German air force was expected (for no reason other than doom mongering, it seems) to deliver its maximum capacity of 600 tons of chemical incendiary, gas and explosive bombs daily on Britain, killing 2.2 million people per month.

Chamberlain and the British public were scared by these false "predictions" which were based on the WWI unopposed attacks in daylight and had no relevance for inaccurate nighttime bombing when enemy bombers were subject to AA and fighter defenses.

In World War II a total of 71.27 kilotons (in average units of 175 kg of explosive, according to the British Home Office) of bombs, V1 cruise missiles and V2 supersonic ballistic missiles hit Britain, killing 60,595 and injuring 86,182, a casualty rate of 2 casualties/ton, 60 times fewer than the prediction based on World War I data!

If Chamberlain and - more important - the general public had known the true civilian threat in 1938 from aerial attack instead of the hysterical exaggerations officially promoted, then Hitler might have been stopped or effectively deterred earlier on, with less cost in human lives. Delaying the war gave Germany years to prepare for war, which made the war worse than it would otherwise have been.

Herman Kahn's 1959 testimony to the 22-26 June 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War is much more concise than his books on nuclear weapons effects, so I will quote it here to show you the kind of factual arguments Kennedy heard as a Senator attending nuclear weapons effects hearings (which also led Samuel Glasstone to edit the revised 1962/4 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons so as to bring out the reasons for civil defense countermeasures in the final chapter Principles of Protection):

Page 833:

'Let me start by making some remarks about quantitative computations. The most important reason for being quantitative is because one may, in fact, be able to calculate what is happening. Many of the witnesses have emphasized the uncertainities of thermonuclear war but ... Napoleon ... would have been impressed with the relevance of quantitative calculations; impressed with the accuracy with which people predict what a nuclear war is like. ... This is of some real interest; before World War II, for example, many of the staffs engaged in estimating the effects of bombing over-estimated the effects of bombing by large amounts. This was one of the main reasons that at the Munich Conference and earlier occasions the British and the French chose appeasement to standing firm or fighting. Incidentally, these staff calculations were more lurid than the worst imaginations of fiction. [Air bombing was predicted to destroy whole cities in firestorms in a single air raid, with clouds of poison gas killing everyone for hundreds of miles downwind, like fallout exaggerations from megaton surface bursts which assume that people are constantly outdoors on a smooth infinite unobstructed plane, etc.]'

Page 904:

'I would like to emphasise: Britain declared war on Germany in 1914. Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. If they had not been able to declare war in either of those 2 years, they would have had to let the Germans do whatever they wanted to do. ... I have a book ... which I recommend to those who want to exaggerate the impact of thermonuclear war. It is called Munich: Prologue to Tragedy, by Wheeler Bennett [this book is similar in many respects to President John F. Kennedy's own excellent book written from first hand experience in London when World War II broke out, on the perils of appeasement due to exaggeration of the effects of war, Why England Slept; remember that Hitler was widely praised by pacifists globally after he announced with a lot of hype but of course no sincerity, his grand '25-Year-Peace-Plan' on March 7, 1936]. Among other things Wheeler Bennett discusses why Chamberlain and Daladier folded. When they returned from Munich [where they enjoyed lovely tea and cakes while making useless pacifist treaties on bits of paper not worth a cent with the evil Adolf Hitler in 1938, being far too fearful of Hitler's ever increasing military power and its exaggerated explosive and poison gas effects to challenge him over his evil treatment of Jews even at that time] they were cheered by their people in Paris and London, because war had been averted. Over that weekend some people began to understand that war had been averted by a sellout of the worst sort. And on Monday some few were prepared to criticize. But ... The people who critized Chamberlain and Daladier, with a couple of exceptions, did not criticize them for not going to war; they said, "Hitler was bluffing, and you should have stood your ground".

'As far as we can tell, Hitler was not bluffing. The men who were in the room with him could see he was not bluffing. It was easy for the people back home to say he was bluffing, but not for the men who had the decision to make. The German people did not want war. The German Army did not want war. ... But Hitler seems to have been willing to have a war if he couldn't have his way.'

Pages 909-15:

'Our study distinguishes three types of deterrence in examining the implications for nonmilitary defense:

'Type I - Deterrence of a direct attack on the United States. ... It is not that the Soviets could reliably expect to be untouched, but that a situation might arise in which the Soviets might feel that going to war was the least risky of the available alternatives. ...

'Type II - Deterrence of extremely provocative behavior. The Soviets ... ask themselves if they can force the United States to accept peacefully the consequences of some extremely provocative action (say a large-scale attack on Europe or a Munich-type crisis). ... If the Soviets were not deterred then the United States might actually carry out an evacuation to try to persuade them to desist. If the evacuation did not persuade the Soviets to desist, then in the last resort the United States might decide that it was less risky to go to war than to acquiesce. ...

'Type III - Deterrence of moderately provocative actions. [Berlin Wall of 1961, Cuban missiles crisis of 1962, the Soviet backed war against South Vietnam, etc.] In this case it would be wishful thinking to expect deterrence to work most of the time. However, Soviet calculations which contemplate provoking the United States might be influenced by the existence of a U.S. plan for a crash nonmilitary defense program. ... Experience has shown that attempts to conduct large and overcoordinated programs tend to create inflexibility and to stifle new, unproven ideas or independent approaches.'

In the 22-26 June 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental effects of Nuclear War following Kahn was the Nobel Laureate Willard F. Libby who stated on pages 924-5:

'We are led, when we review the history of man, ancient and modern, to the conclusion that it is wise to take out some insurance for our protection in the event that something goes wrong and peaceful international relations come to an end. The nature of the effects of modern nuclear weapons and the ranges over which these effects can produce casualties may provoke the question: "Is there really anything we can do?" My answer to this question is, "Yes." ...

'The committee will recall that we have announced that the fallout from the [15 megatons Castle-Bravo surface burst of] March 1, 1954, detonation at Bikini Atoll would have created radiation casualties in an area estimated at 7,000 square miles if no protective measures were taken. Casualties, seriously injured and dead from the initial effects of this bomb would have occurred in an area of perhaps 250 to 300 square miles [for people standing up, fully exposed to the effects of flying glass and thermal radiation from a 15 megatons bomb which is now long since obsolete and replaced by bombs with typically 100 times smaller yield, 150 kt]. There is a great difference between the two areas and I should like to focus on the need for protection and the capability for protecting the people in the 6,700 square miles or more beyond the range of initial blast, thermal and nuclear radiation. We can save them easily. We can lose them easily. ...

'The first action for anyone who does not already possess the knowledge is to learn what these weapons effects are. No one can be expected to act properly or at all for that matter on any problem unless he understands what makes it. It is necessary for people to learn about fallout, about nuclear radiation, about the effects of nuclear radiation on people, animals, plants, food, water: the things that are immutably linked to life.'

Dr Paul Tompkins of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory stated on pages 953-4 of the Hearings:

'I had the experience of being on the Manhattan Division [developing the first nuclear weapons] in 1943. I am very familiar with the psychology of revulsion against the effect these weapons can produce. ... the results are catastropic enough in their own right. They need no imaginary amplification. The facts themselves are bad enough. However, it is crucially important to look those facts squarely in the face if one is going to face the necessity for survival if against your will or despite anything you can do about it, it is imposed on you. As far as I am concerned, if the chips ever go down and avoiding a conflict is not possible in the scheme of human events of the future, I for one do not propose to see this Nation come out the loser. ...

'The world of the future is going to be dangerous. The human capacity to inflict such damage will inevitably be there. The threat of the employment of that damage is something with which we will have to live unless something very drastic changes in our international relations. ... I personally never expect to see consequences of the type displayed on these maps. ...

'As far as I am personally concerned, by looking at the problems, understanding what they are composed of, and by necessity being an incurable optimist, I never expect to see a war of this kind happen. It is possible that more limited engagements of a more sharply defined type will be fought under the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads some time in the future. If so, let us be prepared for that. So, that at least, is my personal view as to the role that the nonmilitary defense should play, and it will never be perfect.'

Chairman Holifield then concluded the 1959 Hearings on pages 954-5 with the following words:

'These long technical testimonies were necessary in order that the basic record might be presented in as fair a way as we know how. In conclusion I want to say the challenge of the nuclear age is enormous and inescapable.

'The facts of nuclear war and the effects of nuclear war once established will not fade away because they are unpleasant. If we are prudent we will not ignore them.

'They will not disappear. Each of us must accept personal responsibilities because the nuclear war is a personal threat to our survival.

'The problem is too large to leave solely in the hands of the diplomats and the generals.'

As an example, what could happen when Iran gets the U-235, and maybe gets some lithium and heavy water to make lithium deuteride to get a H-bomb (it's now known than lithium-6 deuteride isn't necessary; the 11-Mt Castle-Romeo nuclear test used only natural lithium and was a great success)? It may be just like Munich and Iran will be appeased through fear of a nuclear war, due to lying exaggerations hyped in the media just like the prediction of 2.2 million casualties per month from Nazi air raids.

Update: the nuclear weapons proliferation exaggerated threat is already causing Britain to appease Iran and take no notice of violation of human rights, according to Martin Fletcher's front page story in The Times newspaper, 24 September 2009.

Britain is appeasing Iran, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi says
by Martin Fletcher
The Times online, September 24, 2009

The only Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize accused Britain of ignoring the regime’s savage suppression of opposition in order to safeguard talks on its nuclear programme.

Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer, said that her worst fears were confirmed when she saw the British Ambassador at President Ahmadinejad’s inauguration.

“That’s when I felt that human rights were being neglected,” she told The Times. “I’m very sorry to say the West cares more about its own security than human rights. I think they’re wrong . . . Undemocratic countries are more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. It’s undemocratic countries that jeopardise international peace.”

Dr Ebadi said that sanctions should have been imposed on the Iranian regime over the alleged theft of the election and the subsequence killing, beating and imprisoning of opponents. She has called for the downgrading of Western embassies, the withdrawal of ambassadors and the freezing of the assets of Iran’s leaders.
...

Dr Ebadi plans to go home in two months, daring the regime to arrest the first Muslim woman to win a Nobel prize. In 2000 she spent three weeks in solitary confinement after lodging a complaint against Tehran’s police chief for a lethal attack on pro-democracy students.

If not imprisoned, she will fight to secure justice for the families of those killed in the crackdown — a trail that could lead all the way to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. She has been approached by the mother of Neda Soltan, the student whose death made her an icon of the opposition.

Dr Ebadi said that she was enraged by the crimes that the regime had perpetrated in the name of Islam, but that ordinary Iranians were united as never before, with women at the fore, and that they would not forgive or forget the regime’s crimes. “The opposition has gained unstoppable momentum,” she said. “The people have reached a point of no return. I am sure they will be victorious, but when? The fall of the Berlin Wall was totally predictable but no one could say when.”

Before 9/11, Weinberger was quizzed by skeptical critics on BBC News Talking Point on Friday, 4 May, 2001, Caspar Weinberger quizzed on new US Star Wars ABM plans:

‘It is like saying we don't like chemical warfare - we don't like gas attacks - so we are going to give up and promise not to have any defences ever against them and that of course would mean then we are perfectly safe. ...

‘The ... idea that you are somehow endangering people by having a defence strikes me almost as absurd as saying you endanger people by having a gas mask in a gas attack. ...

‘Now if you tell an aggressive nation that [chemical or nuclear weapons are] the one system of weapons that is never going to be defended against - what are they going to do? They are going to make every effort to get that kind of system of weapons. That is what is happening ...’

Former and future British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin stated incorrectly to Parliament in 1932: 'I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him.' Samuel Glasstone witnessed the tragic effects of the exaggeration of the effects of weapons in the lead up to World War II: the exaggeration led to a policy of appeasement during which the Nazis terrorised Jews and simultaneously rearmed with impunity. The whole problem was that the grossly exaggerated effects of aerial bombardment of civilian populations with incendiaries, high explosives and poison gas (with predicted results of many millions dead abd utter devastation forecast to be far worse than even modern day nuclear weapons could cause!) forced 1930s governments to give a free hand to terrorists, rogue nations, dictatorships, genocidal regimes, etc., rather than risk the threat of war. It was only later that it became clear that this gross exaggeration of aerial bombardment was making the situation worse: if you have some mad Hitler-like terrorist dictatorship threatening to terrorize your nation, you might have to fight even if the cost is relatively high, just to regain stability. Likewise, if you’re an ethnic minority and some thugs want to slaughter you, the risks of war might be less than the gains of fighting for survival. The pacifist case asks all the wrong questions, or it assumes that wars are all a giant misunderstanding and that something short of physically hurting evil thugs, like chatting to them or trading with them, will avert war. Nope. That was tried with Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, etc. It’s obvious why war can’t be averted: absolute power corrupts, so dictators will always be threatening/hurting others unless they are deterred by a credible threat.


Above: the recovery of Germany from World War I was impeded by the French imposed punishment of massive reparations, which crippled the Germany economy and led to hyperinflation in the early 1920s. After the global economic crisis of 1929, the extremist politician Hitler gained increasing public sympathy in Germany and became dictator in 1933. He ended unemployment by conscripting a massive army and invading the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, violating the Treaty of Versailles. Nearly universal pacifism after the destruction and loss of life in World War I, had led to disarmament and a negative public opinion towards military action in other European states, which were therefore unable to block Germany. Fear of annihilation in war led to a reduction in armaments, encouraging dictators to take advantage by building up their power and endlessly testing resolve by taking provocative actions. For example, French journalist Geneviève Tabouis wrote on page 8 of the 4th revised Penguin Books (England) edition of her popular Blackmail or War, published in May 1938 (the first Penguin edition had been published on 25 February 1938):

'Public opinion takes the point of view that war, which may perhaps be inevitable, would involve the utter ruin of our civilization.'


Above: David Low's illustration for the London Daily Express in 1936, showing Hitler free to walk over the 'spineless leaders of democracy' (the steps of Hitler are labelled 'Rearmament', 'Rhineland fortified', 'Dantzig' ... 'Boss of the Universe'). After World War I, at the insistence of French officialdom, German was made to pay £1,000,000,000 damages on account immediately, with a final settlement of £6,600,000,000 damages to be paid decided in 1921. The effect on Germany was hyperinflation and economic ruin. The resentment produced was exploited by Hitler. Simultaneously, a generation of pacifist politicians and appeasement supporting journalists were produced in reaction to the carnage of the First World War. John F. Kennedy, the future American President, worked in the American Embassy in London at the outbreak of the war and his thesis on the reasons why British politicians appeased Hitler, Why England Slept (published by Hutchinson, London, 1940) concluded:

'I believe, as I have stated frequently, that leaders are responsible for their failures only in the governing sector and cannot be held responsible for the failure of a nation as a whole.'

This is because leaders of democracy are elected to represent the people and are influenced by the free press of a democracy. They are elected to do what the majority of the people want, so instead of blaming the leaders of democracy for the failure to stand up to Hitler, a major part of the blame needs to be placed squarely upon the shoulders of those who in the media who spread false propaganda or did not take the care and trouble to debunk propaganda successfully, and thereby supported pacifism when it was clearly encouraging aggression. The major pacifist of the period was C. E. M. Joad who presented the pacifist case in the infamous Oxford Union Society debate, on 9 February 1933 (ten days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany), of the proposition: “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” Joad's eloquence led the motion to be passed by a vote of 275 to 153. Joad's argument simply omitted altogether the whole problem that if you don't fight a tyrant, the tyrant is free to massacre in cold blood, to starve ethnic minorities, and so on:



'My case is that war is not something that is inevitable, but is the result of certain man-made circumstances; that man can abolish them, as he abolished the circumstances in which plague flourished.'

- C. E. M. Joad, Why War?, Penguin Books, August 1939 (front cover).

Of course, France officially avoided war with Germany by surrendering and allowing a 'peaceful invasion' (although the Resistance fought while under occupation). The problem with simply giving up weapons is that you thereby open your door to all forms of intimidation, thuggery, dictatorship, and are unable to help those in need without being shot yourself. In the 1933 debate, Joad was asked what he would do if an enemy soldier raped his wife, and replied sarcastically that he would join in (he was a serial womanizer). This is important because it underlines the point that once the effects of weapons of war have been exaggerated sufficiently to make war seem worse than any imaginable oppression, the pacifist case is invincible and has historically ridden roughshod over all conceivable objections to surrender.

German Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers dropped a total of 0.30 kiloton of bombs on Britain in World War I, killing 1,413 people and injuring 3,407. The most efficient attacks were two daylight air raids in 1917 by Gotha bombers which dropped 6.9 tons of bombs and caused 832 casualties including 216 deaths, i.e. 121 casualties/ton. In World War II a total of 71.27 kilotons of bombs, V1 cruise missiles and V2 supersonic ballistic missiles hit Britain, killing 60,595 and injuring 86,182, a casualty rate of 2 casualties/ton. So in Britain the World War II average casualty rate from aerial bombing was only 1.7% of the most efficient bombing in World War I. Assuming (falsely) that future bombing effects with improved technology would be as efficient as the best World War I bombing, and that the German air force could deliver 600 tons of bombs daily, the 1938 British official predicted horrific effects which were actually very similar to the effects later predicted for a smaller number of individually more destructive nuclear weapons in a Soviet attack: even the supposedly 'unique' fire and fallout radiation effects were mimicked in conventional bombing by magnesium and phosphorus incendiary bombs and by the delayed effects mustard gas bombs which contaminate areas with slowly evaporating liquid mustard agent. Half of the buildings in London were predicted to be destroyed within a month, over a million people would be dead or injured despite air raid precautions and shelters, three million would be homeless and there would be four million psychiatric casualties. In 1939 the Ministry of Health printed a million burial forms to be ready for war. (Source: Peter Laurie, Beneath the City Streets: A Private Inquiry into the Nuclear Preoccupations of Government, Penguin, 1974.)

All of this was wrong, due to quantitative exaggeration and a lack of scientific understanding of the way in which countervalue uses of weapons would be deterred, hindered, and rendered ineffective. Human nature resolutely opposes the hatred manifested by indiscriminate violence by an enemy, and sees it as immoral and insane. This was why countervalue bombing during World War II was a military failure. It was found to increase rather than weaken the resolve of the attacked population to support its leadership in sustaining war against the opposition.

On 1 September 1939, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an 'Appeal against aerial bombardment of civilian populations' which stated:

'The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the past few years [e.g., in the Spanish Civil War in 1937], which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.

'If resort is had to this form of inhuman barbarism during the period of the tragic conflagration with which the world is now confronted, hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings who have no responsibility for, and who are not even remotely participating in, the hostilities which have now broken out, will lose their lives. I am therefore addressing this urgent appeal to every government which may be engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities, upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents.'

Britain abided until 15 May 1940, due to public opinion after the 'phoney war' period was ended by the German invasion of France on 10 May, and by the German air bombing of Rotterdam on 13 May. Pressure for air bombing of Germany was increased after the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in 1941, since it was the only action Britain could take to relieve pressure on the German-Russian front, and 'with the technology available at the time, the precision bombing of military targets was only possible by daylight (and difficult even then). Daylight bombing involved unacceptably high losses of British aircraft. Bombing by night led to far lower British losses, but was of necessity indiscriminate.' The German capital, Berlin, was subjected to 363 air raids and German as a whole received 1,300,000 tons of air dropped bombs (1.3 megatons, although equivalent to a lot more nuclear megatons due to the inefficiency of releasing a similar amount of energy in a single explosion) between 1940 and 1945:

'These raids caused immense devastation and loss of life in Berlin. The 22 November 1943 raid killed 2,000 Berliners and rendered 175,000 homeless. The following night 1,000 were killed and 100,000 made homeless. During December and January regular raids killed hundreds of people each night and rendered between 20,000 and 80,000 homeless each time.[17] Overall nearly 4,000 were killed, 10,000 injured and 450,000 made homeless.[18]

'Despite the devastation they caused, however, these raids failed to achieve their objectives. German civilian morale did not break, the city's defences and essential services were maintained, and war production in greater Berlin did not fall: in fact German war production continued to rise until the end of 1944. Area bombing consistently failed to meet its stated objective, which was to win the war by bombing Germany until its economy and civilian morale collapsed. ... It is generally accepted that the Battle of Berlin was a failure for the RAF ...'



Above: Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter of the RAND Corporation studied the reasons for the 7 December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. It was a military target, and substantial damage was done to American Naval capabilities by the use of specially designed torpedoes which could operate in the shallow harbour water. America had ignored the torpedo threat because the water was shallower than the usual textbook minimum depth for the use of torpedoes. The reason for the surprise attack was the result of a simple calculation by the Imperial Japanese navy, which predicted that at the end of 1941 Japan would have 70 percent of the warship strength of America, but this strength: 'would fall to 65 percent in 1942, to 50 percent in 1943, and to a disastrous 30 percent in 1944.' (Source: H. P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance, Annapolis, 1982, p. 62.) Only the bombing of military targets has achieved success: the effects of the delivery of 1.3 megatons of conventional bombs dropped on Germany in World War II failed to win Germany public support let alone the war, just as German bombing on Britain failed to achieve its objective and was largely counterproductive in hardening resolve.

'In all, there were more than 146,000 civilian casualties in Britain during the war ... Now, here’s a comparison between what actually happened in 1939-1945 and what British government officials in 1938 predicted might happen if a war started in 1939 — that’s the knock-out blow: over a million casualties per month, half of them fatalities, over only two months. Nearly two orders of magnitude more destructive than what actually happened.



'These estimates were not plucked out of thin air, but they weren’t much more than naive extrapolations from the First World War experience: divide the number of casualties between 1914 and 1918 by the tonnage of bombs dropped, and then multiply by the number of bombers the enemy had and the amount of bombs they could carry. This turned out to be a huge exaggeration, but you can see why everyone was so worried! In extreme versions of the knock-out blow, civilisation itself would collapse, as the complex webs of commerce, transport and social control which bind society together break apart, leaving people to fend for themselves as best they could. From the perspective of a later generation, this sounds a lot like the effects of nuclear war.'

- Overview of Brett Holman's PhD thesis.

‘The Hungarian revolution of October and November 1956 demonstrated the difficulty faced even by a vastly superior army in attempting to dominate hostile territory. The [Soviet Union] Red Army finally had to concentrate twenty-two divisions in order to crush a practically unarmed population. ... With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears when we think of [World War II nuclear city bombing like Hiroshima]. The high casualty estimates for nuclear war are based on the assumption that the most suitable targets are those of conventional warfare: cities to interdict communications ... With cities no longer serving as key elements in the communications system of the military forces, the risks of initiating city bombing may outweigh the gains which can be achieved. ...

‘The elimination of area targets will place an upper limit on the size of weapons it will be profitable to use. Since fall-out becomes a serious problem [i.e. fallout contaminated areas which are so large that thousands of people would need to evacuate or shelter indoors for up to two weeks] only in the range of explosive power of 500 kilotons and above, it could be proposed that no weapon larger than 500 kilotons will be employed unless the enemy uses it first. Concurrently, the United States could take advantage of a new development which significantly reduces fall-out by eliminating the last stage of the fission-fusion-fission process.’

- Dr Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Harper, New York, 1957, pp. 180-3, 228-9.

Kissinger's 1957 book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, analyzed Soviet and Chinese military policy and opposed Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s 'Massive Retaliation' policy. Kissenger argued that city bombing was obsolete and dangerous as a policy to either side in a nuclear war due to the risks of retaliation in kind, and that this would make 'countervalue' bombing (Herman Kahn's term for anti-civilian city strikes) unattractive as a political or military strategy. Instead, once the enemy has nuclear weapons (i.e., in the period after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki surprise attacks), the only use beyond deterrence for nuclear weapons is their tactical use against military targets. There would even be pressure on both sides to use nuclear weapons in such a way that collateral damage due to blast and fallout is minimised: the use of relatively clean nuclear air bursts to avert collateral damage to innocent civilians would carry a smaller risk of countervalue retaliation than an attack which caused a large number of civilian casualties and aroused anger and a determination to exact revenge. In his 1962 book Thinking about the Unthinkable (Horizon Press, New York, pp. 212-8), Herman Kahn listed the major nuclear threats from the spread of nuclear weapons as:

1. Rogue state use of nuclear weapons for intimidation, revenge, and terrorism.
2. Surprise attacks on military targets like Naval base Pearl Harbor in late 1941.
3. Diffusion of nuclear weapons to 'irresponsible private organizations'.

The credible nuclear threat against civilians is due to small scale terrorist or limited wars. The anti-nuclear politics lobby believes and promotes the false dogma that exaggerating the effects of nuclear weapons will make the world safer. In fact, that exaggeration fuels all of the threats, making them worse, at the same time as demeaning the value of civil defense countermeasures. Herbert York, a former weapons designer, claimed in a 1989 international TV series, The Nuclear Age, that a world police organization could prevent nuclear threats by analogy to the way that police prevents crime between individuals. The problem is that the police does not prevent crime, the objective of the police is to support a fair system of justice to avoid the problems of bias, prejudice, lynch mobs and the doctrine that 'might is right' which inevitably prevails where justice cannot be implemented. Even in dictatorial police states where individual liberty and freedom is curtained, where people can be detained without charge and tortured to extract information, there are often uprisings by dissenters such as the Hungarian revolution which Khrushchev ruthlessly suppressed in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968. The police must act after evidence is obtained that a crime has been committed: they cannot act before there is evidence of crime without violating the doctrine of innocent until proved guilty. In any case, the police do not always prevent crime even where they are authorized to try to do so. Therefore, Western disarmament supported by a world police system as an attempt to prevent rogue and terrorist nuclear threats from elsewhere, would not eliminate the threat.

The anti-nuclear lobby doesn't so much exaggerate as grotesquely misrepresent the effects of radioactivity, in addition to confusing the various different kinds of nuclear detonation effects instead of confronting the fact that there are many uses of nuclear weapons, and none of them can ever duplicate the incendiary effects over the 1945 wood frame cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which simply no longer exist as possible targets in the modern world.




Above: tactical nuclear warfare was rehearsed at Nevada nuclear tests during the Korean War. Here, soldiers survive in trenches and then approach the target area on foot after the May 1, 1952 deuterium-boosted 19 kt Operation Tumbler-Snapper DOG air burst at 1,040 feet altitude. Soldiers in open (uncovered) two-person foxholes 4.5 feet deep, 6 feet long and 2 feet wide, crouched low enough to avoid direct-line of sight radiation, have a protection factor against initial gamma radiation of 15 if the foxhole is side-on to the detonation, and 7.6 if the foxhole is exposed end-on. The neutron radiation dose protection factor for these foxholes was 3.4. (These data were actually measured at the 37 kt PLUMBBOB-PRISCILLA shot at 700 ft altitude: Nathaniel J. Davis, Jr., Protection Afforded by Field Fortifications Against Nuclear Weapons Effects, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Laboratories, Report AD860811, 1958, pp. xiii-xiv. That report also states that 7 by 7 foot machine gun emplacements survived a peak overpressure of 40 psi facing away from that burst but were extremely vulnerable if facing the burst or side on to the burst. The Confidential Capabilities of Atomic Weapons TM 23-200 Table 6-5 on p. 6-11 states that the protection factor for foxholes is 10-20 for initial gamma radiation, 10-50 for fallout gamma radiation, and 3.3 for neutrons.)

Above: the DOG shot in 1952 produced no fallout hazards because it was an air burst: the radioactivity at ground zero was due to neutron capture in the soil, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The neutrons emitted by the bomb are of very high energy (in the MeV range), and are not captured significantly by soil elements of low atomic weight until the neutron energy has been reduced by scattering to about the normal thermal energy of nuclei at ambient temperature, about 0.025 eV. A 1 MeV neutron from the bomb must collide with hydrogen nuclei on average 17.5 times to undergo the 40,000,000 fold loss of kinetic energy needed to thermalize it to 0.025 eV energy. If the material is carbon, 111 nuclei collisions are required; for lead, 1,800 collisions. Once the neutron is thus slowed down, it is liable to be captured by a nucleus via adhesion by the virtual pion-mediated strong attraction, instead of bouncing back (scattering), as is more likely for high energy neutrons. For this reason, neutron induced activity is dependent only on soil type and the number of neutrons emited from the bomb; there is no significant effect of the neutron spectrum because the neutrons are all scattered around a lot and degraded to thermal energy, before being captured by the soil.

Above: the gamma radiation decay rates of Nevada and other soil and sand neutron induced activity, normalized to identical dose rates at 1 hour after burst. For a given type of nuclear weapon detonated over each of the different kinds of soil, the relative gamma dose rates at ground zero at 1 hour after burst will be 4,540 units/hour for Hawaiian lava clay (due to its massive manganese content, producing a vast amount of Mn-56), 379 units/hour for Nevada desert soil (sodium and manganese), 41.7 units/hour for Liberian soil in Africa, and 1 unit/hour for Pensacola beach sand (which is very nearly pure silicon dioxide, with only a trace of sodium). At times less than 1 hour after burst, aluminium-28 predominates in each case. There was great interest in the neutron induced activity on beaches due to air bursts in the 1950s, because it was realized that nuclear weapons would be used to clear beach defenses prior to an amphibious invasion like the D-Day landings. The main hazard covers a small area and the peak neutron induced activity occurs at a depth of 6-7 cm under the top of the ground, so the radiation emitted by the neutron induced activity is shielded by the ground to a considerable extent. A similar effect occurs in salt water, but the radioactive surface water layer is rapidly mixed by wave action with water at greater depths, diluting the activity and causing a great deal more shielding by the water mass.

Tactical and strategic uses were taken seriously because the one military use of nuclear weapons ever made was to end a war, to prevent a million deaths in the conventional invasion of Japan. Not even the worst dictators in history like Hitler or Stalin started a war in which they tried immediately to kill as quickly as possible as many of the enemy's civilians as possible by aerial bombardment and poison gas. Nuclear war could not consist of an all-out anti-civilian action of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki kind, because nuclear weapons are no longer genuinely capable of such action unless somehow they could be used against cities of wood-frame houses with bamboo and paper furnishings plus overturnable breakfast (Hiroshima) or lunch (Nagasaki) charcoal filled braziers:

(1) The very large size of the explosion (compared to conventional explosives) causes the various effects like initial hydrodynamic-enhanced fission product radiation and thermal radiation to be released slowly enough - and for blast and fallout to be released with sufficient delay time during its transit from source to personnel - for even the slowest people to take simple, cheap and effective protective actions for saving lives. The only exceptions are at distances so close to ground zero that the effects are lethal anyway; we will prove this fact later in this post using data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki which shows the immense value of any form of thermal shadowing in raising the nuclear radiation LD50 (lethal dose for 50%) due to the synergism mechanism; nuclear radiation proves lethal at small doses in combination with thermal blistering or charring because nuclear radiation can suppress the white blood cell count substantially for two months following exposure, during which infection in burns wounds will easily prove lethal. Avoid infected burns, and the LD50 rises sharply.

(2) Unlike the case of low yield conventional weapons, the areas affected by blast are so large that popularized unobstructed desert data is false due to the scientific fact that blast energy depletion is caused as the blast uses up its energy destroying buildings one after another in any radial line from ground zero, which though not an immense effect in old inflammable wood-frame cities (as measured at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by British investigator Penney in 1945) reduces the blast pressure areas dramatically in modern brick and concrete cities. This blast energy use will be discussed in physical detail later in this post.

(3) Thermal ablation occurs during exposure, so smoke-shadowing prevents fires.

(4) You don't need fallout sheltering downwind if you simply walk in the crosswind direction out of a visibly dangerous fallout area, before getting a sufficient dose to cause injury. This is possible due to the slow diffusive build-up of fallout which isn't all deposited instantaneously. The vertical fallout activity deposition rate is independent of wind speed. Rainout flushes fallout down drains or deep into the ground, where it is shielded by soil.

Politics is about 'groupthink' and its fashionable consensus; science by contrast is diametrically opposed to any form of ignorant fashionable consensus by definition, for science - unlike consensus and voting - is just about facts regardless of the widely held pseudoscientific political consensus and propaganda lies/'expert opinions' to the contrary:

‘Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.’ - R. P. Feynman (quoted by Smolin, The Trouble with Physics, 2006, p. 307).

The issuing of properly tested civil defense countermeasures like general purpose gas masks and air raid shelters to all civilians in Britain before World War II helped to deter Hitler, who was unable to effectively use tabun and sarin nerve gases for fear of retaliation by British mustard gas because of the lack of German gas masks due to rubber shortage. Radar automated anti-aircraft guns and other technology also make enemy attacks less effective than predicted, even in WWI.

Herman Kahn used a 44-rung escalation ladder to explain the facts of history that lead from political disagreement to warfare and then up to anti-personnel attacks in his 1965 book On Escalation (Pall Mall, London). A dozen of the most important escalations are:

1. Disagreement over principles (democracy versus dictatorship)

2. Technology race (European arms race of 1914, space race of 1957-69)

3. Declarations of principles (e.g., Marxist world revolution)

4. Confrontations of words (verbal attacks on statements of enemy leaders)

5. Economic sanctions

6. General war talk and civil defense planning (Berlin, 1961)

7. Ultimatums and threats of war (Hitler: Munich, 1938)

8. Mobilization of military forces

9. Naval blockage or arms embargo (Cuban missiles crisis, 1962)

10. Conventional military confrontations (Korea 1953, Vietnam 1975)

11. Limited nuclear warfare within a conventional war or deliberate 'demonstration test' with the media invited to report the effects (Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks, 1945; CROSSROADS fission air drop demonstration to Soviet Union via the world's media attending Bikini Atoll, 1946; REDWING-CHEROKEE thermonuclear air drop demonstration to Soviet Union via world's media attending Bikini Atoll, 1956; BOMBA TSAR 50 Mt thermonuclear air drop demonstration to United States, Novaya Zemlya, 1961)

12. Serious civil defense countermeasures analogous to the September 1939 evacuation of children and mothers in England from potential target cities and their dispersal and billeting into the countryside to minimise tragedy in war and to increase the credibility of the military deterrence for political leverage ('this is your last chance to come to the table and negotiate a peaceful settlement, before we destroy you, we're ready for war').

Although anti-civil defense propaganda always falsely presents evacuation as risking a pre-emptive strike, in fact the enemy would gain nothing by attacking during evacuation (effects would be much worse if the enemy attacks before evacuation begins, i.e. today!). A pre-emptive strike is always fruitless where the other side has a protected second-strike (retaliation) capability such as nuclear submarines hidden at sea. This protected second-strike capability takes away any incentive for the other side to strike first (contrary to the propaganda against civil defense). Herman Kahn added in that book that nuclear testing offers a wide range of psychological possibilities short of anti-civilian capabilities:

'Consider ... the use of nuclear weapons to coerce an opponent by means of a spectacular show of force. In this case, it is clear that there is an almost continuous spectrum of alternatives available. They can be ranked as follows:

'1. Testing a large weapon for purely technical reasons almost as part of a normal test programme.

'2. Testing a very large weapon, or testing on a day that has particular political significance, or both.

'3. Testing a weapon off the coast of the antagonist so that the populace can observe it.

'4. Testing a weapon high in outer space near the antagonist's airspace [EMP].

'5. Testing lower in outer space, or directly over the opponent's country [EMP].

'6. Testing so low that the shock wave is heard by everybody, and perhaps a few windows are broken.'

Above: President John F. Kennedy at the Nevada Test Site on 8 December 1962. Kennedy was the president who authorized the first Nevada test firing of Samuel Cohen's neutron bomb. The data from the 1962 atmospheric tests authorized by Kennedy led to the vital discovery of the magnetic dipole EMP mechanism from high altitude bursts, and clarified many other aspects of nuclear effects phenomenology, leading to revised editions of Glasstone's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons and Dolan's Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, and providing data which was still being analyzed by increasingly sophisticated mathematical models and computer calculations in the 1990s.



Above: discussion of the Glasstone book based 'Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer' begins at 1 minute 40 seconds in this clip: Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr Strangelove was marketed by sending out the plastic circular slide rules from the 1962 edition of Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons. However, there is no relationship between the actual computer's decay rate where the radiation drops by a factor of 10 for every 7-fold increase in time after detonation (which is for fission products, 72% of which have half lives under 24 hours and only 4% of which have half lives exceeding 1 year) and the totally fictional 100 year shelter period Dr Strangelove 'calculates':





Above: Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, a commonplace 1960s satirical attack directed at the American military-political complex in general and - in particular - the ex-Nazi military scientists recruited by the American military-scientific establishment, like Dr Wernher von Braun. Click here for Tom Lehrer's 1960s song attacking Dr von Braun's development of Hitler's V2 missile before he developed the Saturn V to put American astronauts on the Moon before that decade was out, in accordance to President Kennedy's space-race against Communism: 'Vee do not care where the rockets come down; vee only care when the rockets go up'). Kubrick's film deliberately abuses the facts of nuclear weapons effects by including Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers, who earlier starred in Kubrick's 1962 film Lolita) using the 'Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer' from the April 1962 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons to "calculate" (falsely!) that people would need to shelter underground for 100 years from a cobalt-cased bomb.

Actually, the amount of residual nuclear radiation energy given off by cobalt-60 or anything else that simply captures neutrons is at most similar to that given off by the fission products: it takes the same one neutron to produce one atom of neutron induced activity or to cause one fission in a U-238 jacket on a hydrogen bomb.

If there is a cobalt jacket, you get a few MeV of radiation energy spread out over many years per neutron captured by cobalt-59, creating cobalt-60; but if the jacket is U-238 you get 200 MeV of prompt blast, heat and cratering energy as well as more residual radiation energy than you would get from using the same neutron to change cobalt-59 into cobalt-60. Therefore, you lose effects including residual radiation energy by using a cobalt jacket instead of a U-238 (natural uranium) jacket to the bomb's fusion stage, and you don't gain anything by having less radiation energy given off very slowly, spread over many years by cobalt-60, because the lower dose rate you get from spreading out a fixed amount of energy as radiation exposure over long times rather than having it concentrated into a shorter time interval (higher dose rate). Cobalt-60 is thus less effective than a U-238 jacket on a thermonuclear bomb because it

(1) permits decontamination (you sweep or flush it away, where it doesn't get naturally flushed down the drain by rain or washed/plowed deeply into the soil, which shields the radiation) before getting a significant dose, and

(2) spreading out the same few MeV per neutron capture over many years with cobalt-60 allows biological repair to proceed while the dose is accumulated: low level doses have been observed in properly controlled studies to not have the harmful short or long effects which can be extrapolated linearly from large doses. The whole basis of Kubrick's film is a lie, exaggerating the threat and promoting quack civil defense countermeasures.

A nuclear attack cannot be in the form of complete annihilation for basic scientific reasons justified by evidence form Hiroshima, Nagasaki and nuclear tests which we will explain in detail in the post, and it cannot come in the form of a massive fast nuclear war for historically defensible political reasons: an all-out war would by definition use up all second-strike capabilities so both sides would be left without any bargaining chips. The 2005 Nobel Laureate Thomas C. Schelling of RAND Corp., a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense from 1960-64, forcefully argued for the counterforce strategy against military targets to replace the older World War II countervalue (industrial and city targetting) bombing policy. Counterforce became military policy for the capabilities of nuclear weapons (as we will show with extracts from the declassified manuals by Philip J. Dolan), to save the enemy civilians as 'hostages' in order to de-escalate a nuclear war without a massacre of civilians. This was possible as missile accuracy improved. In World War II, aircraft bombing had a very low accuracy and could not target military bases without immense collateral damage. The accuracy of the early V1 missile in World War II was 10 miles, so it was only of use against large city targets. Improvements to the accuracy of missiles permitted a change in bombing strategy toward military targets, accompanied by a reduction of yield to reduce and in many cases totally eliminate collateral damage and fallout hazards. As missile accuracy improves, the nuclear explosive yield needed to achieve a constant probability of target destruction is reduced. So the major threat is from terrorism and limited warfare.

In 1979, as a result of having seen the appalling consequences of irrational anti-civil defense groupthink scare-mongering in allowing Hitler to build up enough power unopposed to start World War II despite Germany disarmament after World War I (because of irrational fear of even a minor war if Hitler had been opposed before he had enough armaments for a major war!), Glasstone helped Cresson H. Kearny to improve the nuclear weapons information in the official Oak Ridge National Laboratory Cold War-focussed civil defence manual, Nuclear War Survival Skills:

'Many strategists believe that the United States is more likely to suffer a relatively small nuclear attack than an all-out Soviet onslaught. These possible smaller nuclear attacks include:

' ° A limited Soviet attack ...

' ° An accidental or unauthorized launching ...

' ° A small attack on the United States by the fanatical ruler of an unstable country that may acquire small nuclear weapons and a primitive delivery system.

' ° A terrorist attack, that will be a more likely possibility once nuclear weapons become available in unstable nations. Fallout dangers could extend clear across America. For example, a single small nuclear weapon exploded in a West Coast city would cause lethal fallout hazards to unsheltered persons for several miles downwind from the part of the city devastated by blast and fire. It also would result in deposition of fallout in downwind localities up to hundreds of miles away, with radiation dose rates hundreds of times higher than the normal background. Fallout would be especially heavy in areas of rain-out; pregnant women and small children in those areas, following peacetime standards for radiation protection, might need to stay sheltered for weeks. Furthermore, in localities spotted across the United States, milk would be contaminated by radioiodine.'

“The foliage making up the crowns [upper branches and leaves] of the trees, while it has a high probability of being exposed to the full free-field radiation environment from air bursts... may, however, materially reduce the exposure of the forest floor by generating quantities of smoke and steam, as well as by direct shading.” - Philip J. Dolan, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency, 1978 revision, Secret – Restricted Data, Chapter 15, Damage to Forest Stands, paragraph 15-9.

"Green leaves and needles on tree crowns smoke and char but do not ordinarily sustain ignition. This smoke production materially reduces the radiant exposure of the ground surface." - Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, TM 23-200, Confidential, 1960, page 11-2.

“Fuels seldom burn vigorously, regardless of the wind conditions, when fuel moisture content exceeds about 16 percent. This corresponds to an equilibrium moisture content for a condition of 80 percent relative humidity. Rainfall of only a fraction of an inch will render most fuels temporarily nonflammable and may extinguish fires in thin fuels... Surface fuels in the interior of timber stands are exposed to reduced wind velocities; generally, these fuels retain their moisture as a result of shielding from the wind and shading from sunlight by the canopy.” - Philip J. Dolan, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency, 1978 revision, Secret – Restricted Data, Chapter 15, "Damage to Forest Stands", page 15-60. (This material can also be found in the U.S. Department of Defense's Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, TM-23-200, Confidential, 1960, p. 11-3.)



Above: Figure 6.24a of the 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons showing effect of a nuclear explosion giving a peak overpressure of 3.8 psi to a natural Pisonia dominated forest stand (similar to American beech forests) with a mean tree height of 50 feet and a mean diameter at the stem base of 2 feet (note that the test report WT-921 states that at 8,800 feet where the peak overpressure was 4.2 psi some 58% of trees were snapped so the figure of 90% given by Glasstone 1957 is not justified; about 50% of the trees were broken by 3.8 psi not 90%); this photo is identified as Bikini Atoll's Eniirikku (codenamed Uncle by America) Island, at a position just 9,300 feet from the 110 kt CASTLE-KOON nuclear surface burst test of 1954 in Figure 3.8 on page 38 of the originally Secret - Restricted Data report on forest stands exposed at Operation Castle, WT-921. Notice that the forest was not ignited; it did not burn contrary to anti-civil defense lies which are popularized by propaganda (which we will discuss in detail later).



Above: Fig 6.24b in the 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons: 175 trees/acre natural Pisona tree stand on Rukoji (codenamed Victor by America) Island of Bikini Atoll, subjected to 2.4 psi peak overpressure at 62,500 ft or about 12 miles from CASTLE-BRAVO 14.8 Mt surface burst ground zero, Bikini Atoll, 1954. This photo is identified for distance and nuclear test at 33 minutes and 17-22 seconds time in the declassified film Military Effects Studies on Operation Castle, below. Pisona is a beech-like broadleaf tree and those in this forest stand has an average height of 80 feet with an average stem diameter at its base of 3 feet. Where 30% of the trees are blown down by the blast wind pressure, the overall effect is similar to the much longer-lasting 95 miles/hour winds of a natural hurricane. Notice that neither natural forest stand at Bikini Atoll was incinerated by fire!

According to Glasstone 1957, this forest stand suffered 30% tree stem breakage, but report WT-921 page 43 states that 65% of the tree stems in this stand were snapped. Glasstone 1957 just used the photographs to illustrate its predictive system which is based on 30% and 90% tree breakage, instead of reporting the actual percentage damage reported in WT-921. The CASTLE-BRAVO shot also produced light tree damage (no stem breakage, just 30% branch breakage) to a Pisonia forest on Eniirikku (codenamed Uncle by America) Island, 75,400 feet or about 14 miles from ground zero, where the peak overpressure was 1.7 psi, according to page 28 of W. L. Fons and Theodore G. Storey, Operation Castle, Project 3.3, Blast Effects on Tree Stand, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Division of Fire Research, Secret - Restricted Data, report WT-921, March 1955.

Other reports on Nevada effects on trees and forest stands are Operation Tumbler-Snapper report WT-509, 1953, and Operation Upshot-Knothole report WT-731, 1954. The Upshot-Knothole experiment exposed a coniferous tree stand of 145 ponderosa pine trees 51 feet in average height to 4.5 psi peak overpressure. The forest stand smoked during the thermal pulse, but did not ignite. Hence, both in Pacific and Nevada tests, trees did not burn even relatively close to ground zero. E. H. Engquist C. W. Forsthoff of Chemical and Radiological Labs., Maryland, reported in Operation Upshot-Knothole, Project 8.4-2, Evaluation of a Thermal Absorbing Carbon Smoke Screen, WT-769, February 1954, that a smoke screen similar in height to that produced by thermal radiation on a forest canopy, 80-90 feet above the ground, produced by burning about 275 gallons of carbon containing material per square mile, absorbed 78-90% of the thermal radiation on the ground.



These photos were both published in the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, but they were deleted from all subsequent editions of that unclassified book: they appeared ultimately in the highly classified (Secret - Restricted Data) film of the military effects of the test series and the locations are also identified in the report Operation Castle, Project 3.3, Blast Effects on the Tree Stand, weapon test report WT-921, U.S. Forest Service, W. L. Fons (Project Officer). The lack of thermal ignition of forests even using very high yield nuclear weapons was deemed secret. This hindered civil defense, by obfuscating the facts. Flawed thermal ignition tests and a thermal radiation transmission theory which grossly exaggerated the thermal effects both combined to exaggerate effects and make civil defense appear useless. (The nuclear test data was secret, with limited print runs that nobody in a position to repudiate anti-civil defense propaganda had proper access to - or if they did have access to it - they were prevented from publishing it by the severe penalties laid down in laws such as the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.)


Above: the gross exaggeration of the effects of nuclear weapons in mainstream, groupthink literature:

'Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance.'



Above: a page from the 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons indicating the reason why the trees didn't burn is the same as the reason why this wooden house didn't burn: the thermal pulse from a nuclear weapon is too brief to do more than ablate a thin surface layer of the material, literally creating a smoke screen which immediately protects the underlying material from ignition. Dolan explains this in the 1,651 pages long 1972 Secret - Restricted Data U.S. Department of Defense Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons but - although he and Glasstone explained it clearly in the 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons - the point was not widely grasped. There were relatively few fires in nuclear tests, compared to what propaganda forecasts by the use of totally naive assumptions concerning thermal radiation transmission through the atmosphere, and the energy needed to ignite materials. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were burned entirely by means of the blast wave overturning charcoal cooking braziers in thousands of homes at the breakfast and lunch times of the bombings, as was revealed in polls of survivors when the secret volumes of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey were eventually declassified, which we will discuss later in this post.




Above: pages 514-517 (click on pages to enlarge) from the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, showing the terrific effectiveness of simple civil defense countermeasures against blast damage in Nagasaki and the terrific effectiveness of simple countermeasures against the dynamic pressure (air drag or wind pressure) in Nevada nuclear tests: any terrain feature like a ditch or a shallow trench will protect you from the wind pressure of the blast wave which causes displacement! The wind of the blast wave is directional and just blows over the top of a ditch because it can't be deflected into it, unlike the overpressure which diffracts into the trench but then isn't accompanied by displacement-causing wind pressure. These simple facts were removed from future editions of the book. Unfortunately, the only way to get a complete understanding of the problem is to plough through all the different editions and also Dolan's declassified 1,651 pages long Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. This is what we will do in this blog post, to expose the facts.

Editions of U.S. nuclear weapons effects publications

Samuel Glasstone was the Executive Editor of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory 456 pages long book The Effects of Atomic Weapons, published by the U.S. Department of Defense in June 1950 and revised in September 1950. Based on kiloton-range explosion data on blast, thermal and radiation effects from the 16 July 1945 TRINITY nuclear test in New Mexico, the nuclear air bursts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the CROSSROADS-ABLE and -BAKER tests in 1946. Includes radiation dose patterns showing base surge and contamination from the 1946 CROSSROADS-BAKER underwater test (deleted from later editions), and the upwind fallout pattern from the first ever nuclear test, TRINITY shot (but is misleading and does not include the secret downwind pattern).

A Secret - Security Information supplement with further information, called Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, TM 23-200, was issued July 1951 and revised editions were issued in October 1952, June 1955, and November 1957 (when it was regraded Confidential - Restricted Data). A new edition of this supplement was renamed Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons on 16 November 1964 and the final single volume edition appeared in January 1968. On 1 July 1972 a major 1,651 pages two-volume revision of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Defense Nuclear Agency Effects Manual Number 1, DNA-EM-1, classified Secret - Restricted Data, edited by Philip J. Dolan, was published, which we shall discuss in detail.

These secret manuals became the basis for the revisions of Glasstone's 579 pages long unclassified book, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, first published June 1957, the rewritten and expanded 730 pages long edition published in April 1962, and the revision containing corrected thermal ignition data in February 1964.

The June 1957 edition 'Acknowledgement' page by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission states: ‘Dr. Samuel Glasstone was responsible for the compiling, writing, and editing and, largely, for its successful completion.’ The Foreword by Charles E. Wilson (U.S. Secretary of Defense) and Lewis L. Strauss (Chairman, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission) states: ‘This handbook, prepared by the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project ... is a comprehensive summary of current knowledge on the effects of nuclear weapons.’

This was incorrect: the June 1957 edition only contained data for Japan-type air bursts and surface bursts. Full blast data as a function of burst altitude, plus the known thermal ‘precursor’ effect on the blast waves in Nevada tests, and data on the radio-flash (radiated electromagnetic pulse, EMP) were all excluded even a brief mention until the April 1962 edition. Even then, all data on damage caused by EMP during nuclear tests was still excluded. Research into the damage from EMP had begun in 1945, when the TRINITY electronic piezo-electric blast pressure waveform gauges were overloaded by EMP induced currents in cables (as reported in K. T. Bainbridge, editor, Trinity, Los Alamos report LA-1012, 1946, declassified and released as LA-6300-H, p. 53, in 1976), although the terrific collection of data on EMP induced damage at later tests was accidentally withheld from the U.S. Department of Defense by testing electronics contractor E.G. and G. until B. J. Stralser's Secret - Restricted Data report of 30 April 1961, Electromagnetic effects from nuclear tests, Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier, Inc; while the dust loading of the blast wave was known from the TRINITY films in 1945 and the actual blast precursor was first photographed at the low-altitude shot DOG of TUMBLER-SNAPPER in the Nevada in 1952. Precursor effects on increasing drag damage by dust loading of the blast winds over a certain range of distances where the ground thermal popcorning coincides with the passage of the blast wave (like a sandstorm with hurricane winds) were later proved by comparison of the ENCORE and GRABLE test data in 1953. The second test was at lower altitude so the thermal radiation was able to popcorn the desert effectively, creating a hot dust layer through which the blast was modified into a precursor, with high density (due to the dust) and therefore vastly greater effects than ENCORE at the same overpressures for drag effects on jeeps, trucks, and other dynamic-pressure sensitive targets.


Above: in 1960, E. G. & G. developed this 4-inch diameter 'Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer', a plastic circular slide rule based on the data in the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, with an instruction leaflet stating: 'As a convenience to those interested in the effects of nuclear weapons, this circular computer was designed to make data easily available on various weapon effects - some as functions of both yield and range and others on yield alone ... The weapons data incorporated in this computer were taken from the very informative and useful text, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, edited by Samuel Glasstone for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project of the Department of Defense.'




Above: the April 1962 and February 1964 reprint contained a pocket inside the back cover for a double-sided plastic circular slide rule, the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer, for quickly calculating (for both surface bursts and for effect-optimising air bursts over ideal terrain) the main blast, thermal, initial nuclear radiation, cratering, and fallout decay effects. The slide rule was not included in the $3 price of the book in 1962/4 but was sold separately for $1 by the U.S. Government Printing Office for those years (there was no computer issued with the 1950 or 1957 editions, although E. G. & G. developed one based on the 1957 edition in 1960, which was the forerunner to the ones developed by the Lovelace Foundation and issued for the 1962/64/77 printings). The December 1977 hardback edition came boxed, complete with a revised version of the slide rule inside the back cover. See the report by E. Royce Fletcher, Ray W. Albright, Robert F. Perret, Mary E. Franklin and I. G. Bowen, Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer (Including Slide-Rule Design and Curve Fits for Weapons Effects), U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Civil Effects Tests Operations, report ADA384998, February 1963:

'Based on data from the 1962 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, a circular slide rule was designed to evaluate 28 different effects of nuclear weapons. Of these 28 different effects, 13 relate to blast, 5 to thermal radiation, 1 to initial nuclear radiation, 2 to early fallout, 6 to crater dimensions, and 1 to fireball dimensions. Most of the parameters are presented as functions of range and yield (1 kt to 20 Mt). Simple techniques are described which make it possible to estimate most of the effects parameters for yields greater than 20 Mt or smaller than 1 kt. The report presents (1) curve fits of weapons-effects data, (2) design analysis for the slide rule, and (3) instructions for use of the rule along with some of the implications of the data in regard to biological and structural damage. The machine techniques are mentioned which were used to prepare the original graphs necessary for the production of the slide rule.'

The 1962 edition Preface by Glasstone states: ‘After the cessation of U.S. nuclear tests at the end of October 1958, it was decided to prepare a revision ... A new chapter has been included on the effects of nuclear explosions on radio communications and radar ...’ The Foreword to the 1962 edition, signed by Robert S. McNamara (U.S. Secretary of Defense) and Dr Glenn T. Seaborg (Chairman, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission) states: ‘There is a need for widespread public understanding of the best information available on the effects of nuclear weapons.’

The 1962 edition was first to disclose in passing that, in 50% fission nuclear weapons, the low-energy (easily shielded) gamma rays from neutron capture activities (like Np-239 and U-237) contribute up to 40% of the radiation dose rate during the critical sheltering period of 20 hours to 2 weeks after burst.

Unfortunately, today all the hard facts from World War II conventional and nuclear weapons effects experience are ignorantly dismissed by cynical and anti-civil defence exaggerations of nuclear phenomenology for political purposes which have become fashion. The popular idea today is that people should have no knowledge of the facts which would make the free world better prepared and therefore stronger against terrorists. In fact, today the U.S. ‘Triad’ of nuclear silos, bombers and submarine missile platforms permitted the tactics of ‘cross-targeting’ (using different delivery platforms like aircraft and missiles) and ‘layering’ (multiple hits with very low yield weapons). Such tactics limit the risk of individual failures and simultaneusly reduces individual bomb yields to a minimum, which minimises or eliminates civilian collateral damage altogether, a fact not understood or rather not wanted by the enemies of freedom, but well emphasized by President John F. Kennedy in his television broadcast to the American public, 26 July 1963:

‘It is true that the Soviets have tested nuclear weapons of a yield higher than that which we thought necessary, but the 100-megaton bomb of which they spoke two years ago does not and will not change the balance of strategic power. The United States has chosen, deliberately, to concentrate on more mobile and more efficient weapons, with lower but entirely sufficient yield ...’

To give an idea of how Glasstone's collaborative editorship worked, there is an account of Glasstone's role in preparing for the press the book Theory of Rate Processes (which was published in 1941 and was the first book to apply quantum mechanics to chemical reaction rates, which up to that time had been empirically formulated as the exponential Arrhenius rate equation) in the journal Current Contents, No. 46 (November 14, 1988), 'This Week's Citation Classic: Glasstone S, Laidler K J & Eyring H., The theory of rate processes: the kinetics of chemical reactions, viscosity, diffusion and electrochemical phenomena, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1941. 611 pages.'

This article is by Glasstone's co-author Keith J. Laidler, an Oxford graduate who went to Princeton University aged 22 in 1938 to do a PhD under Henry Eyring. Erying had come up with a controversial theory of chemical reaction rates in 1935, which had been initially rejected by the Journal of Chemical Physics. As a result of the lack of comprehension with which his radical theoretical paper was greeted, Laidler realised that he would need to write a book in order to: 'present the basic theory in a fairly detailed way, discuss its implications and assumptions, and apply it to rate processes of various kinds. Eyring knew that he would find it difficult to settle down to long sessions of writing, which are necessary to produce a book. He therefore invited me to collaborate with him on the book, with the arrangement to be that I would do the actual writing, in regular consultation with him.'

Laidler undertook the writing of the book while working on his PhD, but Samuel Glasstone took over the editing in 1939 after arriving at Princeton:

'In the summer of 1939 Samuel Glasstone arrived in Princeton as a research associate in the Department of Chemistry. Glasstone, then aged about 40, had already had a successful research career at the University of Sheffield and was the author of several very successful books on physical chemistry. In view of his background, it was natural to enlist his help with the writing of the book, especially since it would be necessary for me to leave Princeton in 1940 to carry out war research. I provided Glasstone with everything I had written and continued to give him material as I wrote it during my second year at Princeton. At the same time, Glasstone, Erying, and I collaborated on research on overvoltage, a subject on which Glasstone had previously worked.

'Glasstone greatly supplemented the material I gave him for the book, and he put everything into final form. Eyring himself did hardly any of the writing, but he made numerous and valuable comments on everything we wrote, and I well remember many vigorous but always very friendly arguments on a number of fundamental points. Although World War II interrupted most basic scientific work for a few years after the book’s publication in 1941, the book attracted much attention from the start, particularly as it was the first comprehensive treatment of the new rate theory and of its applications to a variety of chemical and physical processes; it also contained a good deal of previously unpublished material. ... In 1948 a pirated Russian translation of the book appeared, and there have also been Japanese and Spanish editions.'

The hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb was first tested in 1952, and on 2 December 1954 Dr W. F. Libby, on the board of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, announced openly that a new revised edition of The Effects of Atomic Weapons was being prepared.

In the February 1955 U.S. Congressional Hearings presided over by Senator William Stuart Symington on the hydrogen bomb’s fallout and other effects, Dr Willard Libby (who won the Nobel Prize in 1960 for the discovery of how naturally radioactive carbon-14 can be measured to accurately find the age of dead objects thousands of years old) was interrogated on the reason why the nuclear test effects reports on fallout were remaining secret:

Senator Symington: ‘Do you believe that the Soviets have exploded a hydrogen bomb?’
Dr W.F. Libby: ‘Yes, I believe so.’
Senator Symington: ‘Well, then, most of this information is available to them, isn’t it?’
Dr W.F. Libby: ‘It is a hard job to collect it.’

Almost all of the Soviet nuclear weapons tests were air bursts, and therefore produced no local fallout information. Soviet military planners well recognised that an effect like fallout, depending on the wind direction after the explosion, was not a dependable military capability and so they concentrated on measuring the heat, blast, initial radiation and EMP effects from air bursts. Most of the nuclear effects subjects of greatest importance, therefore, were irrelevant to the enemy and need not have been kept secret, as Dr Willard F. Libby’s argued to the U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, 22-26 June 1959, pp. 924-5:

‘No one can be expected to act properly, or at all for that matter, on any problem unless he understands what makes it. It is necessary for people to learn about fallout, about nuclear radiation, about the effects of nuclear radiation on people, animals, plants, food, water: the things that are immutably linked to life.’

For a good idea of the sort of careful checking Glasstone did before including suggestions from scientists in the book, see his letter dated 1 February 1957 to Colonel Dent L. Lay, Chief, Weapons Effects Division, U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, Washington, D.C., a PDF file on the U.S. Government Opennet, on the topic of proposed revision of the Worldwide Fallout chapter in the draft for the June 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. On page 4 of that letter, Glasstone writes of some calculations of global fallout of Sr-90 in children's bones, with various assumptions about the continued rate of atmospheric nuclear testing: 'The extrapolation beyond June 1956 is terrifying! I wonder if it is correct, and if so how wise it would be to put out anything of this kind. This requires careful consideration.'

The new edition of The Effects of Atomic Weapons was delayed, since it took time to assemble and evaluate the effects of the early hydrogen bombs, and in June 1957 the revised handbook, clearly renamed The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, was published containing an Acknowledgement by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission:

‘At the request of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project prepared this book with the assistance of the Commission. Dr. Samuel Glasstone was responsible for the compiling, writing, and editing and, largely, for its successful completion.’

The Foreword to the book was jointly signed by Charles E. Wilson, U.S. Secretary of Defence, and Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission:

‘This handbook, prepared by the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project of the Department of Defence in coordination with other cognizant governmental agencies and published by the Atomic Energy Commission, is a comprehensive summary of current knowledge on the effects of nuclear weapons. The effects information contained herein is calculated for yields up to 20 megatons and the scaling laws for hypothetically extending the calculations beyond this limit are given. The figure of 20 megatons however is not to be taken as an indication of capabilities or developments.’

In the Preface, Dr Glasstone stated:

‘The main purpose of this new handbook is to describe, within the limitations set by national security, the basic phenomena and the most recent data concerning the effects associated with explosions of nuclear weapons ... It is for use in planning against possible nuclear attack that this volume is intended.’

Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation stated in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War, Princeton University Press, p 24:

‘... those waging a modern war are going to be as much concerned with bone cancer, leukemia, and genetic malformations as they are with the range of a B-52 or the accuracy of an Atlas missile.’

'[There is] a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered looks strange; what looks strange is therefore improbable; what seems improbable need not be considered seriously.'

- Thomas C. Schelling, in Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, Stanford University Press, 1962, p. vii.

In February 1962, a revised edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons was issued, in the Preface of which Dr Glasstone (then based at Los Alamos) stated:

‘When ‘The Effects of Atomic Weapons’ was published in 1950, the explosive energies of the atomic bombs known at that time were equivalent to some thousands of tons (i.e., kilotons) of TNT. The descriptions of atomic explosions and their effects were therefore based on a so-called ‘nominal bomb’ with an energy release equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT. With the development of thermonuclear (hydrogen) weapons, having explosive energies in the range of millions of tons (i.e., megatons) of TNT, it became necessary to provide an entirely new presentation, ‘The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.’ The first edition of this work, issued in 1957, gave the best information then available concerning the effects on man and materials of nuclear weapons with explosive energy yields up to the equivalent of 20 megatons of TNT. After the cessation of U.S. nuclear tests at the end of October 1958, it was decided to prepare a revision of ‘The Effects of Nuclear Weapons’ incorporating new information which had become available. Although the testing of nuclear weapons has since been resumed, the time is nevertheless opportune for the publication of this revised edition ...

‘The material on the protection against nuclear explosions has been rewritten from a new standpoint so as to bring out the principles involved ... A new chapter has been included on the effects of nuclear explosions on radio communications and radar, and appendices dealing with nuclear weapons safety and methods for detecting distant nuclear explosions have been added. A list, with dates, times, and other unclassified information, of announced weapons tests, made by all countries prior to September 1961, is also provided.’

The Foreword to the 1962 edition by Robert S. McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defence, and Dr Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, states:

‘There is a need for widespread public understanding of the best information available on the effects of nuclear weapons.’


The Effects of Nuclear Weapons

‘I think it probably is inevitable that a nuclear device will be used by terrorists at some time in the future, either as a serious threat or with an actual explosion ...’ – Philip J. Dolan, 1984, in J. C. Greene and D. J. Strom (Editors), Would the Insects Inherit the Earth? (Pergamon Press, London, 1988).

» CHAPTER-I-General Principles of Nuclear Explosions

Characteristics of Nuclear Explosions, 1
Scientific Basis of Nuclear Explosions, 12

» CHAPTER II-Descriptions of Nuclear Explosions. 26

Introduction. 26
Description of Air and Surface Bursts. 27
Description of High-Altitude Bursts. 45
Description of Underwater Bursts. 48
Description of Underground Bursts. 58
Scientific Aspects of Nuclear Explosion Phenomena. 63

» CHAPTER III-Air Blast Phenomena in Air and Surface Bursts. 80

Characteristics of the Blast Wave in Air. 80
Reflection of Blast Wave at a Surface. 86
Modification of Air Blast Phenomena. 92
Technical Aspects of Blast Wave Phenomena. 96

» CHAPTER IV-Air Blast Loading 127

Interaction of Blast Wave with Structures. 127
Interaction of Objects with Air Blast. 132

» CHAPTER V -Structural Damage from Air Blast. 154

Introduction. 154
Factors Affecting Response. 156
Commercial and Administrative Structures. 158
Industrial Structures 165
Residential Structures 175
Transportation 189
Utilities. 195
Miscellaneous Targets 206
Analysis of Damage from Air Blast 212

» CHAPTER VI-Shock Effects of Surface and Subsurface Bursts. 231

Characteristics of Surface and Shallow Underground Bursts. 231
Deep Underground Bursts 238
Damage to Structures. 241
Characteristics of Underwater Bursts. 244
Technical Aspects of Surface and Underground Bursts. 253
Technical Aspects of Deep Underground Bursts. 260
Loading on Buried Structures. 263
Damage from Ground Shock 265
Technical Aspects of Underwater Bursts. 268

» CHAPTER VII-Thermal Radiation and Its Effects. 276

Radiation from the Fireball 276
Thermal Radiation Effects 282
Incendiary Effects. 296
Incendiary Effects in Japan 300
Technical Aspects of Thermal Radiation. 305
Radiant Exposure-Distance Relationships. 316

» CHAPTER VIII-Initial Nuclear Radiation. 324

Nature of Nuclear Radiations 324
Gamma Rays. 326
Neutrons. 340
Transient-Radiation Effects on Electronics (TREE) 349
Technical Aspects of Initial Nuclear Radiation. 353

» CHAPTER IX-Residual Nuclear Radiation and Fallout. 387

Sources of Residual Radiation. 387
Radioactive Contamination from Nuclear Explosions. 409
Fallout Distribution in Land Surface Bursts. 414
Fallout Predictions for Land Surface Bursts. 422
Attenuation of Residual Nuclear Radiation. 439
Delayed Fallout. 442
Technical Aspects of Residual Nuclear Radiation. 450

» CHAPTER X-Radio and Radar Effects. 461

Introduction 461
Atmospheric Ionization Phenomena. 462
Ionization Produced by Nuclear Explosions 466
Effects on Radio and Radar Signals. 479
Technical Aspects of Radio and Radar Effects. 489

» CHAPTER XI-The Electromagnetic Pulse and its Effects. 514

Origin and Nature of the EMP 514
EMP Damage and Protection 523
Theory of the EMP 532

» CHAPTER XII-Biological Effects. 541

Introduction 541
Blast Injuries. 548
Burn Injuries 560
Nuclear Radiation Injury. 575
Characteristics of Acute Whole-Body Radiation Injury. 583
Combined Injuries. 588
Late Effects of Ionizing Radiation. 589
Effects of Early Fallout 594
Long-Term Hazard from Delayed Fallout. 604
Genetic Effects of Nuclear Radiation. 609
Pathology of Acute Radiation Injury. 614
Blast-Related Effects 618
Effects on Farm Animals and Plants. 618

» Glossary. 629
» Guide to S I Units 642
» Index. 644

Since 1977, the secret Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons is the most important book to have undergone further revisions and updates, although various summaries of it have appeared such as J. A. Northrop, Editor, Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from DWSA's Effects Manual One (EM-1), 1996. A revised version of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons has been issued for official use only, and is not publically available. In addition, an excellent far more technical 535 pages long book called Introduction to the Physics of Nuclear Weapons Effects by Professor Charles J. Bridgman of AFIT was published in hardback in July 2001 by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and although it contains three chapters on weapons design principles and is 'Distribution Limited', I was able to buy an original complete with dustwrapper on Amazon.com! It is very useful for providing a summary of American defense establishing knowledge on nuclear effects as of 2001, but it concentrates on the fundamental mathematical physics of nuclear explosion design principles of relevance for predicting various types of radiation outputs and physical phenomena, rather than focussing on summarizing and reconciling all of the weapons effects data from the thousands of nuclear test effects reports, which EM-1 focusses on and which is generally more relevant for the civil defense countermeasures we need.

PHILIP J. DOLAN, editor of the first two-part edition of the U.S. Department of Defense’s ‘Secret – Restricted Data’ 1,651 pages long manual, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons (DNA-EM-1, 1 July 1972) and co-editor of the Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1977 edition, graduated in physics from West Point in 1945 and was assigned to the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, in 1948. Later U.S. Army assignments included the U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project in Albuquerque and the Defense Atomic Support Agency in Washington, D.C.

In 1956, he received his MSc from the University of Virginia. He later calculated the neutron induced activity in the soil, and predicted the hazard from the rainout of radioactivity from air bursts in thunderstorms. In August 1959, Dolan’s secret report, Theoretical Dose Rate Decay Curves for Contamination Resulting from Land Surface Burst Nuclear Weapons (DASA-528), was the first study to take account of fission product thermal fractionation and bomb neutron-induced activities (including Np-239, U-240, and U-237) in fallout. Glasstone used Dolan's decay curves in the 1962 and later editions of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Dolan held posts ranging from 'Instructor in Nuclear Weapons Employment,' at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, to 'Nuclear Effects Project Officer' for the Ballistic Missile Defense Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

After retiring from the U.S. Army in 1967, Dolan managed the Nuclear Studies Program at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), and in 1981 joined Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, by which time he had published over 70 technical papers, reports, and books.



In 1963, Dolan compiled the famous U.S. Army Field Manual, Nuclear Weapons Employment, FM 101-31. Professor Freeman Dyson reviewed it in his 1984 book, Weapons and Hope:

‘The military doctrines summarised in FM 101-31 were valid... when tactical nuclear wars might have been small-scale and truly limited. The handbook represents a sincere attempt to put Oppenheimer’s philosophy of local nuclear defence into practice.’

Oppenheimer said: 'I am not qualified, and if I were qualified I would not be allowed, to give a detailed evaluation of the appropriateness of the use of atomic weapons against any or all such (military) targets; but one thing is very clear. It is clear that they can be used only as adjuncts in a military campaign which has some other components, and whose purpose is a military victory. They are not primarily weapons of totality or terror, but weapons used to give combat forces help that they would otherwise lack. They are an integral part of military operations. Only when the atomic bomb is recognized as useful insofar as it is an integral part of military operations, will it really be of much help in the fighting of a war, rather than in warning all mankind to avert it.'

This quotation is from Samuel T. Cohen's book Shame (online 2nd ed., 2005 version, page 99). Sam Cohen's earlier book, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb: the Inventor of the Bomb Speaks Out, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1983, on page 30 gives the source of this quotation as Oppenheimer's speech 'Comments on the Military Value of the Atom', given to the American Bar Association in February 1951. That of course was during the Korean War, which was eventually ended with a cease fire in 1953 due to an indirect threat from President Eisenhower to deploy nuclear weapons against China (which was supporting the war effort of North Korea).

On 1 May 1948, communists in Pyongyang, North Korea, proclaimed a People’s Republic for the whole of Korea. On 10 May 1948, United Nations supervised elections were held in South Korea; delegates from North Korea were invited too, but the invitation was ignored. America foolishly withdrew combat troops and vital military hardware from Korea, leaving just 472 advisers to train an army of 50,000 South Korean soldiers without any tanks or aircraft; while the Soviet Union provided 7,000 advisers to train an army of 250,000 North Koreans, including pilots for the MIG-15 jet fighter-bombers they gave the North Koreans together with T-34 tanks! (France in 1954 in Vietnam copied the American act that had led to the Korean War, by withdrawing all its troops from Vietnam, sowing the seeds of the Vietnam War.) North Korea also had 38,000 experienced soldiers who had just seen service with the Chinese communists in the Chinese revolution that overthrew Chiang Kai-skek. On 9 September 1948, Kim Il Sung became President of the communist Korean People’s Democratic Republic, and modelled North Korea on the Soviet Union. On 25 June 1950, his 90,000 soldiers using 150 Soviet made T-34 tanks invaded South Korea (the border consisted of one American adviser and 12,000 South Koreans who simply broke rank and ran away under attack). The next day President Truman ordered American military support for South Korea, but it was too late to prevent Seoul, the capital of South Korea, being seized by the communists on 28 June.

As a result, Truman had to sign a bill to extend the U.S. military draft (conscription) in order to provide sufficient ground troops. General Douglas MacArthur recaptured Seoul on 26 September, then with United Nations support he invaded the North and captured Pyongyang on 20 October. However, a 100,000-strong Chinese force then entered the battle and recaptured Pyongyang from the United Nations on 5 December, then they invaded the South and recaptured Seoul on 4 January 1951. A United Nations offensive then recaptured Seoul on 14 March. General MacArthur threatened to resign if President Truman would not authorize the use of nuclear weapons and radiological warfare (a belt of radioactive waste between North and South Korea, to prevent further invasions). Truman then fired MacArthur from command of the United Nations force. Tragically, President Truman had made a secret promise to the half-witted British Prime Minister Clement Attlee not to use nuclear weapons in Korea without authority from Britain (which would refuse). This secret promise was leaked to the Soviets and thus to the North Koreans by the communist spies Philby, Burgess and MacLean who had infiltrated the British government. As a result, the communists were assured that Truman would not use nuclear weapons in Korea. President Eisenhower was elected in November 1952 and ended the Korean War on 27 July 1953 by threatening to use the 1,350 nuclear weapons in the American stockpile against North Korea, which was ten times the Soviet stockpile. A total of 116,000 United Nations troops (including 54,000 Americans) and a million North Koreans and Chinese had been killed. Today, North Korea is ruled by Kim Jong-il, the late president Kim Il-sung’s son, and has 6 nuclear reactors producing plutonium and a plutonium extraction (reprocessing) plant.

Oppenheimer's outlook on tactical nuclear warfare was echoed by Robert S. McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defence, in his 25 September 1961 television interview at the Pentagon during the Berlin crisis (when the Soviet Union aggressively built a wall in Augist 1961 to trap East Berliners in the Soviet sector and murdered any who tried to climb the wall, leaving them to bleed to death after being shot in full view of the world's outraged media):

Interviewer: ‘Do you mean to imply, Sir, that you would then perhaps use nuclear weapons in connection with the Berlin situation?’

U.S. Defense Secretary McNamara: ‘Yes, I definitely do. We will use nuclear weapons whenever we feel it necessary to protect our vital interests. Our nuclear stockpile is several times that of the Soviet Union, and we will use either tactical weapons or strategic weapons in whatever quantities, wherever, whenever it is necessary to protect this nation and its interests.’

In his speech of 18 September 1967 to the United Press International Editors and Publishers, U.S. Secretary of Defence McNamara explained why such a strong will is required to deter aggression:

‘The point is that a potential aggressor must himself believe that our assured destruction capability is in fact actual, and that our will to use it in retaliation to an attack is in fact unwaivering.’

The determination by Kennedy and McNamara to stand up to fanatical Soviet evil was briefly lost, due entirely to Robert McNamara's Vietnam War financial and military disaster at a time when the Soviet nuclear stockpile and conventional tank stockpile in the Warsaw Pact began to exceed the 1,000 American Minuteman missiles and Western conventional arms (any war of insurgency against snipers is like 'cutting soup with a knife' as T. E. Lawrence said, and is even worse in Vietnamese jungle conditions with camouflaged pitfall traps, regardless of how much is spent in terms of money and human lives), until President Reagan appointed Caspar Weinberger as U.S. Secretary of Defense and went back to outbuilding the Soviet Union by spending money on nuclear deterrence to forcefully preserve peace:

'During the 1950s and 1960s we had a first-strike capability. This was one of the strongest preservatives of peace, and that was lost. Now we have got to regain it.'

- U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, 1981.

'I think of World War II and how long it took to prepare for it, to convince people that rearmament for war was needed. I fear we will not be ready. I think time is running out ... but I have faith.'

- U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, New York Times, August 1982.

'History always vindicates those on the side of freedom.'

- Caspar W. Weinberger, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 1981-1987.

After Weinberger's death on March 28, 2006, President George W. Bush issued the following public statement:

'Caspar Weinberger was an American statesman and a dedicated public servant. He wore the uniform in World War II, held elected office, and served in the cabinets of three Presidents. As Secretary of Defense for President Reagan, he worked to strengthen our military and win the Cold War.'

Weinberger's endorsement for the Star Wars SDI 'Nuclear Explosion Pumped X-Ray Laser', which was tested underground in Nevada as CABRA shot on March 26, 1983, resulted in marginally positive readings but the later research on the weapon was highly successful in leading to 'a superior mammographic technique for early detection of breast cancer.' Quoted in: Legacy of the X-Ray Laser Program, published in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory magazine, Energy and Technology Review (E&TR), November 1994, page 14, linked here. See also Joseph Nilsen, Legacy of the X-Ray Laser Program, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, report UCRL-LR-114552, 1993.

Before 9/11, Weinberger was quizzed by skeptical critics on BBC News Talking Point on Friday, 4 May, 2001, Caspar Weinberger quizzed on new US Star Wars ABM plans:

‘The [ABM] treaty was in 1972 ... The theory ... supporting the ABM treaty ... that it will prevent an arms race ... is perfect nonsense because we have had an arms race all the time we have had the ABM treaty, and we have seen the greatest increase in proliferation of nuclear weapons that we have ever had. We are up to 7,000 plus, the Russians are up to 6,900 plus. On intercontinental missiles the Russians have 23,000 nuclear warheads. So the ABM treaty preventing an arms race is total nonsense. ... I don't know how any networking is going to prevent North Korea from doing everything it can to get more nuclear weapons than they have now particularly when China and Russia are perfectly willing to sell them all of the technology required. Intelligence sources aren't going to prevent a country from doing it.

‘You have to understand that without any defences whatever you are very vulnerable. It is like saying we don't like chemical warfare - we don't like gas attacks - so we are going to give up and promise not to have any defences ever against them and that of course would mean then we are perfectly safe. ...

‘The Patriot was not a failure in the Gulf War - the Patriot was one of the things which defeated the Scud and in effect helped us win the Gulf War. One of two of the shots went astray but that is true of every weapon system that has ever been invented. ...

‘The fact that a missile defence system wouldn't necessarily block a suitcase bomb is certainly not an argument for not proceeding with a missile defence when a missile that hits can wipe out hundreds of thousands of lives in a second. ...

‘The curious thing about it is that missile defence is not an offensive weapon system - missile defence cannot kill anybody. Missile defence can help preserve and protect your people and our allies, and the idea that you are somehow endangering people by having a defence strikes me almost as absurd as saying you endanger people by having a gas mask in a gas attack. ...

‘My worry is when we have Russia and China being the most vociferous opponents of the plan to abandon the ABM treaty and go to a defensive system. Why are they so vociferous about their hatred of the idea of having a defensive system? The answer, I am afraid is rather clear - it is because they have offensive plans that they think would be thwarted by a defensive system and so they are doing everything they can to try to block it. ...

‘Tensions are on the rise because very aggressive powers know that the one system that will never be defended against if we follow the ABM treaty ... are these nuclear and chemical warhead carrying missiles. Now if you tell an aggressive nation that is the one system weapons that is never going to be defending against - what are they going to do? They are going to make every effort to get that kind of system of weapons. That is what is happening and that is why there is an increased tension. The greatest force for proliferation is the ABM treaty.

‘So that is why it seems to me that it is vital that we get rid of the ABM treaty concept as soon as possible and proceed with the construction of an effective defence to protect ourselves and our allies. ...

‘President Bush said that we were going ahead with the defensive system but we would make sure that nobody felt we had offensive intentions because we would accompany it by a unilateral reduction of our nuclear arsenal. It seems to me to be a rather clear statement that proceeding with the missile defence system would mean fewer arms of this kind.

‘You have had your arms race all the time ABM treaty was in effect and now you have an enormous accumulation and increase of nuclear weapons and that was your arms race promoted by the ABM treaty. Now if you abolish the ABM treaty you are not going to get another arms race - you have got the arms already there - and if you accompany the missile defence construction with the unilateral reduction of our own nuclear arsenal then it seems to me you are finally getting some kind of inducement to reduce these weapons.’

Above: Philip J. Dolan's Staff Officers Field Manual: Nuclear Weapons Employment Effects Data, U.S. Army Field Manual FM 101-31-2, classified Secret - Restricted Data, was revised and issued on 20 December 1995 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) as Joint Publication 3-12.2. According to an unclassified review of it by Dr David W. Bash in the Spring/Summer 1998 issue of the NBC Report (pages 12-13):

'Joint Pub 3-12.2 is a comprehensive presentation of the specifications and performance capabilities of the whole range of U.S. nuclear weapons and, as such, is a major analytical work. About 90 percent of the data used to generate the joint publication has been revised since the late 1980s and is based upon a large body of new research. That research includes work from Defense Special Weapon Agency (DSWA, formerly the Defense Nuclear Agency) documents: EM-1, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons; U.S. Nuclear Weapons/Devices Output Handbook; and Nuclear Weapon Characteristics Report. ...

'The new publication considers nuclear weapons effects of all U.S. nuclear weapon systems, and there is a separate chapter for each system. Weapons effects considered are: safety and collateral damage distances, personnel effects, materiel damage effects, exposed personnel coverage, personnel in open foxholes coverage, personnel in tanks coverage, and moderate damage to materiel coverage. The personnel response data are from the new but published Personnel Risk and Casualty Criteria (PRCC) document written by USANCA (U.S. Army Nuclear and Chemical Agency). These new analyses have also led to better definitions and more accurate data about human responses. ... For the first time, Joint Pub 3-12.2 combines thermal radiation injury with nuclear radiation injury for latent ineffectiveness casualties of exposed personnel.

'Joint Pub 3-12.2 also includes a detailed description of all targetting techniques (which were previously published in a separate manual), and thus, the current publication now is a complete stand alone targeteering document. ... An addendum to the Joint Pub 3-12.2 for the earth penetrating modification to the B61 bomb, the mod-11, has been pepared for use by USSTRATCOM.'

FM 101-31 is available in three parts, part 1, 'Nuclear Weapons Employment, Doctrine and Procedures' (FM 101-31-1, unclassified) which in February 1963 was 165 pages with 89 illustrations, part 2, 'Nuclear Weapons Employment Effects Data' (FM 101-31-2, classified Secret - Restricted Data), and part 3, 'Nuclear Weapons Employment Effects Data' (FM 101-31-3, unclassified). Notice that anyone is allowed access to the political side (doctrine and procedural) of nuclear information, and the secrecy is confined to the scientific facts. However, some vital data relevant to making the civil defence aspects of nuclear weapons effects more clearly and scientifically known, has now been declassified and we will discuss the following manual in detail:



Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1
Philip J. Dolan (Editor), Stanford Research Institute
July 1, 1972
Change 1: July 1, 1978
Change 2: August 1, 1981
DEFENSE NUCLEAR AGENCY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Declassified on 13 February 1989.

PDF download of Philip J. Dolan (Editor), DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Part 1 preliminary pages and contents pages, Change 2, August 1981 (45 pages, 1.6 MB) These pages are also available here.

Part 1. Phenomenology.

Chapter 1. Introduction. 30 pages.
Chapter 2. Blast and Shock Phenomena. 306 pages. Blast wave section is here and ground shock/cratering/water bursts/underwater bursts section is here.
Chapter 3. Thermal Radiation Phenomena. 114 pages.
Chapter 4. X-Ray Radiation Phenomena. 30 pages.
Chapter 5. Nuclear Radiation Phenomena. 151 pages.
Chapter 6. Transient-Radiation Effects on Electronics (TREE) Phenomena. 16 pages.
Chapter 7. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Phenomena. 40 Pages.
Chapter 8. Phenomena Affecting Electromagnetic Propagation. 94 pages.

PDF download of Philip J. Dolan (Editor), DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Part 2 preliminary pages and contents pages, Change 2, August 1981 (50 pages, 1.7 MB)

Part 2. Damage Criteria.

Chapter 9. Introduction to Damage Criteria. 187 Pages.
Chapter 10. Personnel Casualties. 38 Pages.
Chapter 11. Damage to Structures. 50 Pages.
Chapter 12. Mechanical Damage Distances for Surface Ships and Submarines Subjected to Nuclear Explosions. 147 Pages.
Chapter 13. Damage to Aircraft. 81 Pages.
Chapter 14. Damage to Military Field Equipment. 46 Pages.
Chapter 15. Damage to Forest Stands. 64 Pages.
Chapter 16. Damage to Missiles. 121 Pages.
Chapter 17. Radio Frequency Signal Degradation Relevant to Communications and Radar Systems. 32 pages.

Appendices A-F. 112 pages.

Dolan's Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense manual EM-1 (1651 pages in two parts, 'Phenomenology' and 'Damage Criteria'; both originally loose-leaf binders to allow page updates) is the massive and complete 'Secret-Restricted Data' classified nuclear weapons effects compendium source used to write the relatively brief and less detailed unclassified book, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. The problem with the latter is that it omits vital nuclear effects data for civil defence, which we will review below. Now Dolan's massive secret compilation of nuclear test facts and computer simulation results is going online as PDF files. One thing that is blanked-out in DNA-EM-1 is the graph showing predicted EMP electric field strengths at the earth's surface from high altitude nuclear detonations of various yields and altitudes, but that graph occurs in another declassified document as explained in a post on high altitude EMP effects, http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/emp-radiation-from-nuclear-space.html.

PDF download of Philip J. Dolan (Editor), DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons preliminary pages and contents pages, Change 2, August 1981 (45 pages, 1.6 MB) These pages are also available here.

The contents of DNA-EM-1 has altered greatly since 1981, with the longer chapters being subdivided to produce extra chapters as we shall discuss below.



The secret ‘Capabilities’ series was published by the American nuclear weapons effects organisation. To oversimplify the history a little, from 1945-7 this was the Manhattan Engineering District (MED); from 1947-59 it was the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP); from 1959-71 it was the Defence Atomic Support Agency (DASA) [with the longer-term Defence Atomic Support Information Analysis Centre (DASIAC)]; from 1971-96 it was the Defence Nuclear Agency (DNA); from 1996-98 it was the Defence Special Weapons Agency (DSWA); and from 1998 it is the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Until the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954 defined the designator Restricted Data, ‘Security Information’ was used. The prefixes remained Top Secret, Secret and Confidential. Top Secret was reserved for weapons design information, Secret for weapons effects data which could not be shared even with allies like Britain, and Confidential was used for weapons effects data which could not be openly published but could be exchanged allies for foreign weapon test effects data. There is a 467-pages long history of the Defense Nuclear Agency and related organizations published online by the Defence Threat Reduction Agency in 2002 covering the period 1947-97. According to page 318 of this report, in 1993: 'Integration and declassification of effects knowledge was underway in the new Handbook of Nuclear Weapons Effects (Calculational Handbook), that drew upon the agency's authoritative 22-volume Effects Manual One (EM-1).' Page 380 states:

'Nov. 16, 1964. Research on weapons effects summarized in the classified publication Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Publication later replaced by January 1968 edition and later by new manual, Effects Manual 1 (EM-1) in 1972.'

There is also a briefer, full colour-illustrated 35 pages long summary brochure, Defense Special Weapons Agency 1947-1997, online which was published in 1997, covering the period of 1947-97, which contains a photograph of the SAGE group which studied nuclear weapons effects and states on page 15:

'With DDR&E assent in October 1964, the DASA Director began sponsorship of the McMillan Panel. From 1966 to 1993, the panel was referred to as the Scientific Advisory Group on Effects (SAGE). The SAGE Panel was disbanded after its 1993 meeting as part of a government-wide move to reduce the number of federal advisory groups. [Presumably, Philip J. Dolan was the Chair of the SAGE Panel during his editorship of the first two-part Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons issued in 1972 with page changes 1 in 1978 and page changes 2 in 1981; Harold L. Brode was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group (SAGE) to DASA/DNA, serving from 1961 to 1992, and chairing it from 1980-92 when he edited a major revision of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1 expanding it to 22 chapters]. ... The SAGE Panel recommended priorities for HA [high altitude detonation] effects analysis. In the 1960s, DASA advanced the understanding of both weapons effects and planetary physics through analyses of tests conducted in 1958-1962. The SAGE Chairman also served as Chairman of the Special Weapons Effects Group (SWEG), which analyzed the 1962 Soviet high altitude tests. Suspected nuclear effects, such as EMP disruption of buried communication links, were confirmed by Russian scientists in 1995.'

Above: SAGE Panel in August, 1966.

Page 16 states: 'Information Systems: Beginning in 1960, DASA sponsored the Defense Atomic Support Information Analysis Center (DASIAC). The initial purpose for the DASIAC program was to ensure the collection and preservation of the HA[High Altitude] nuclear test data and the establishment of a center of knowledge on it. Subsequently, DASIAC’s mission expanded to include similar activities for all types of nuclear effects. ... Tools for War Plans: In the 1960s, DASA maintained and refined models of nuclear effects and radioactive transport, which helped SAC develop options for a strategy of controlled response. ...

'Integrating Nuclear-Based Science and Technology: Under DASA’s July 1964 charter, a civilian Deputy Director (Science and Technology) oversaw radiation, blast and shock, biomedical, and test plans and programs activities. With just four percent of DASA staff in 1965 (290 positions), science and technology research and test staff managed more than three-quarters of the agency’s budget. In November 1964, DASA consolidated nuclear effects knowledge in the classified publication, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. A revised edition was published in 1968. These publications preceded the two-volume Effects Manual-1 (EM-1), first published in 1972.'

Page 29 states: 'Integration and declassification of effects knowledge is underway in the new EM-1 Technical Handbook, scheduled for release in early 1997 [this manual, Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from DSWA's Effects Manual One (EM-1) was edited by John Northrop, and was in fact published by the Defense Special Weapons Agency in September 1996]. This handbook will draw upon the authoritative 22-volume EM-1.'



Above: John Northrop's 736 pages long Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from DSWA's Effects Manual One (EM-1) in September 1996 briefly summarized the formulas from the multi-thousand pages long 22-volume Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, while in July 2001 the 535 pages long first edition of Charles Bridgman's Introduction to the Physics of Nuclear Weapons Effects summarized the physics behind the formulae in Northrop's book.

In December 1992, a year before SAGE was disbanded, the U.S. Defence Nuclear Agency spent $288,500 on contracting 200 Russian scientists to produce a 17-chapter analysis of effects from the Soviet Union’s nuclear tests, which included vital data on three underwater nuclear tests in the arctic, as well three 300 kt high altitude tests at altitudes of 59-290 km over Kazakhstan. In February 1995, two of the military scientists, from the Russian Central Institute of Physics and Technology, lectured on the electromagnetic effects of nuclear tests at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Above: USSR Test ‘184’ on 22 October 1962, ‘Operation K’ (ABM System A proof tests) 300-kt burst at 290-km altitude near Dzhezkazgan. Prompt gamma ray-produced EMP induced a current of 2,500 amps measured by spark gaps in a 570-km stretch of 500 ohm impedance overhead telephone line to Zharyq, blowing all the protective fuses. The late-time MHD-EMP was of low enough frequency to enable it to penetrate the 90 cm into the ground, overloading a shallow buried lead and steel tape-protected 1,000-km long power cable between Aqmola and Almaty, firing circuit breakers and setting the Karaganda power plant on fire.

The Soviet Union had first suffered electromagnetic pulse (EMP) damage to electronic blast instruments in their 1949 test. Their practical understanding of EMP damage eventually led them, on Monday 22 October 1962, to detonate a 300 kt missile-carried thermonuclear warhead at an altitude of 300 km (USSR test 184). That was at the very height of the Cold War and the test was detected by America: at 7 pm that day, President John F. Kennedy, in a live TV broadcast, warned the Soviet Union’s Premier Khrushchev of nuclear war if a nuclear missile was launched against the West, even by an accident: ‘It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retalitory response upon the Soviet Union.’ That Russian space missile nuclear test during the Cuban missiles crisis deliberately instrumented the civilian power infrastructure of populated areas, unwarned, in Kazakhstan to assess EMP effects on a 570 km long civilian telephone line and a 1,000 km civilian electric power cable! This test produced the worst effects of EMP ever witnessed (the more widely publicised 1.4 Mt, 400 km burst STARFISH EMP effects were trivial by comparison, because of the weaker natural magnetic field strength at Johnston Island). The bomb released 10²⁵ MeV of prompt gamma rays (0.13% of the bomb yield). The 550 km East-West telephone line was 7.5 m above the ground, with amplifiers every 60 km. All of its fuses were blown by the induced peak current, which reached 2-3 kA at 30 microseconds, as indicated by the triggering of gas discharge tubes. Amplifiers were damaged, and lightning spark gaps showed that the potential difference reached 350 kV. The 1,000 km long Aqmola-Almaty power line was a lead-shielded cable protected against mechanical damage by spiral-wound steel tape, and buried at a depth of 90 cm in ground of conductivity 10^-3 S/m. It survived for 10 seconds, because the ground attenuated the high frequency field, However, it succumbed completely to the low frequency EMP at 10-90 seconds after the test, since the low frequencies penetrated through 90 cm of earth, inducing an almost direct current in the cable, that overheated and set the power supply on fire at Karaganda, destroying it. Cable circuit breakers were only activated when the current finally exceeded the design limit by 30%. This limit was designed for a brief lightning-induced pulse, not for DC lasting 10-90 seconds. By the time they finally tripped, at a 30% excess, a vast amount of DC energy had been transmitted. This overheated the transformers, which are vulnerable to short-circuit by DC. Two later 300 kt Soviet Union space tests, with similar yield but low altitudes down to 59 km, produced EMPs which damaged military generators.



Above: the formerly secret report ‘Survey of Weapons Development and Technology’, WR708, releases this highly useful summary of quantitative nuclear weapons effects data for various burst altitudes, which is partially blanked out in the earlier (1989) declassified version of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, EM-1. By collecting various sources, it is possible to collect odds and ends and thereby build up declassified data into a complete mosaic. E.g., that document using Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, EM-1, states that 3.5 psi peak overpressure overturns a typical missile launcher while 49 psi destroys a tank. While this is not of direct concern to civil defense, it is indirectly useful because tactical nuclear weapons would be used against such targets, and these figures prove what overpressures are needed and thereby indicate the risk of collateral damage to the nearby civilian infrastructure near the target areas. This shows the threats that people would need to mitigate by expedient countermeasures, to avoid being hurt. This kind of background knowledge of how such weapons might be used is useful for civil defence in limited, tactical nuclear warfare, such as would possibly occur in the situation of an attack by rogue states.

In the following review, we will explain the changes which have since been made to this edition of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. The report here shows that progress is still being made towards a complete analysis of all the nuclear test data.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Chapter 1. Introduction. - Effects manual no. 1, Defense Nuclear Agency, Washington, DC. 30 pages, August 1981, 1.5 MB download, report AD-A955404.

This chapter begins with a summary of information similar in style, but with better nuclear test photographs (showing the same detonation at a number of different times after burst without changing the camera zoom, so that you can see how the fireball transforms into the cloud, and the correct relative scale), to the first couple of chapters in Glasstone and Dolan 1977; then it differs by moving on to discuss then-classified aspects of specific high altitude nuclear detonations: 7 kt, 148 km burst altitude CHECKMATE, 3.8 Mt, 77 km burst altitude TEAK, and 410 kt, 48 km burst altitude BLUEGILL; comparing photographs of each shot taken 100 seconds after detonation, and giving the dimensions of each fireball at that time, as well as explaining the effects sequence from each detonation. The CHECKMATE fireball at 100 seconds after detonation was already being striated along Earth's magnetic field, while the BLUEGILL fireball at that time was a torus; TEAK was a gigantic fireball rising ballistically. It also has a diagram which shows the high altitude phenomenology as a function of yield and burst altitude, such as the heights of burst required for ballistic as opposed to buoyant fireball rise as a function of yield (when the fireball's vertical diameter is bigger than the relaxation length of the atmosphere, i.e. the height over which air density falls by a factor of e ~ 2.718, the fireball rises ballistically, much faster than predicted by buoyant rise theory).



Above: as a multimedia supplement to the Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, this excellent originally secret U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency film, High-Altitude Nuclear Weapons Effects: Part One, Phenomenology (20 minutes) discusses in detail, using nuclear test film clips, the effects of 1962 high altitude nuclear tests BLUEGILL, KINGFISH, and STARFISH. It is mainly concerned with fireball expansion, rise, striation along the Earth's natural magnetic field lines, and air ionization effects on radio and radar communications, but it also includes a section at the end explaining the high altitude EMP damage mechanism.




Above: BLUEGILL (410 kt, 48 km detonation altitude, 26 October 1962) fireball was still fully ionized at a temperature of about 10,000 K and 'several kilometres in diameter' when the shock wave departed from the fireball at 0.1 second. The fireball expanded to 10 km in diameter at 5 seconds, at which time it was buoyantly rising at 300 m/sec. It was filmed from below and within a minute transforms while rising into a torus or doughnut shape, as shown in the photograph above. It attained a diameter of 40 km at 1 minute, and stabilised at an altitude of 100 km a few minutes later. (The sequence of still frames is from a speeded-up film, but indicates the relative time of each frame from detonation time. It should be possible to work out the absolute time of each frame using the published photo taken at 100 seconds after burst in Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, but that will have to wait for a while, as we have severe time limitations.)

When BLUEGILL was detonated during the Cuban missiles crisis: 'Observers at Johnston Island saw a brilliant white flash, and a noticeable thermal pulse could be felt on bare skin. A slightly distorted bright moon-like sphere was observed - yellow at first and gradually showing hues of green, pink, and violet - and blue-purple streamers were formed. At 10 minutes the glow was bright enough that a watch could be read in the dark and it persisted for at least 30 minutes. At Samoa, observers saw a pink band at the horizon, which faded after about 10 minutes to gray. ... Two men on Johnston Island sustained burns on the retinas of their [accidentally unprotected eyes, either by watching the missile without goggles or by seeing the reflection of the bright immediate flash by a metal or glass surface] ... One Air Force enlisted man ... observed blurring and a dark spot in front of each eye. ... initially his vision was 20/400 O.U. His vision improved [over 29 days to] 20/30 in both eyes ... his vision continued to improve and was 20/25 O.U. for distance and 20/20 O.U. for near in 1963 [reference: DASA-544]. A Navy enlisted man ... had an immediate after-image of a large, round, white ball, which lasted for an hour but returned when he awoke early the next morning. ... his central visual acuity was less than 20/400. The best visual acuity was 20/60 to 20/70 looking off-center. His vision did not improve ... However, the patient noticed an increased ability to compensate for the loss of central visual acuity [reference: DASA-1576].' (Defense Nuclear Agency report DNA-6040F, AD-A136820, pp. 242-4.)





Above: KINGFISH (410 kt, 95 km detonation altitude, 1 November 1962) initially had a fireball size is 10 times bigger than BLUEGILL, because of the lower air density at the higher detonation altitude. The KINGFISH fireball rises ballistically (not buoyantly) at 1,500 m/sec (which is 5 times faster than the buoyant rise speed of the lower altitude detonation BLUEGILL). The fireball diameter longways is 300 km at 1 minute, and it is elongated along the natural geomagnetic field lines while expanding. It reaches a maximum altitude of 1,000 km in 7.5 minutes before falling back to 150-200 km (it falls back along the magnetic field lines, not a simple vertical fall). The settled debris has a diameter of 300 km and a thickness of 30 km, emitting beta and gamma radiation which ionize the air in the D-layer, forming a ‘beta patch’. Photographs of beta radiation aurora from the fireball are included in the film: beta particles spiral along the Earth's magnetic field lines and shuttle along the field lines from pole to pole. The film above has a speeded-up film showing the development of the magnetically striated fireball from the KINGFISH fireball (the frames in the photo of the KINGFISH striation sequence shown above is only labelled with relative time units from the time of first flash, because it was obtained from the speeded-up film).

When KINGFISH was detonated: 'Johnston Island observers saw a yellow-white, luminous circle with intense purple streamers for the first minute. Some of these streamers displayed what appeared to be a rapid twisting motion at times. A large pale-green patch appeared somewhat south of the burst and grew, becoming the dominant visible feature after 5 minutes. By one hour, the green had become dull gray, but the feature persisted for 3 hours. At Oahu a bright flash was observed and after about 10 seconds a great white ball appeared to rise slowly out of the sea and was visible for about 9 minutes.' (Defense Nuclear Agency report DNA-6040F, AD-A136820, p. 247.)




Above: the CHECKMATE (7 kt, 147 km detonation altitude, 19 October 1962) fireball after it has just started to become striated along the natural magnetic field (vertically aligned in this photo taken from below the detonation). The dotty lines near the middle are the wind-blown exhaust trails left behind, below the fireball, by the rocket delivery system that carried the warhead up to the detonation altitude.


Above: CHECKMATE detonation horizontal view (seen from a distant aircraft) compared to the view looking upwards from Johnston Island. The analysis of CHECKMATE on the right was done by the Nuclear Effects Group at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, and was briefly published on their website, with the following discussion of the 'UV fireball' regime which applies to bursts at altitudes of 100-200 km: 'the debris blast wave expands and sweeps up air which becomes very hot. This then radiates UV, which is readily absorbed by the cold air in front of the blast wave, resulting in ionised air which is approximately transparent to further UV radiation from the blast wave. These bursts are therefore characterised by two "fireballs" - the debris air blast wave expansion is preceded by a radiation/ionisation front. The radiation front will be up/down asymmetric since mean free paths are longer in the less dense air above the detonation altitude. An example is the CHECKMATE event where both fronts are clearly visible in the photograph taken from Johnston Island.'

When CHECKMATE was detonated during the Cuban missiles crisis: 'Observers on Johnston Island saw a green and blue circular region surrounded by a blood-red ring formed overhead that faded in less than 1 minute. Blue-green streamers and numerous pink striations formed, the latter lasting for 30 minutes. Observers at Samos saw a white flash, which faded to orange and disappeared in about 1 minute.' (Defense Nuclear Agency report DNA-6040F, AD-A136820, p. 241.)



Above: the STARFISH (1.4 Mt, 400 km detonation altitude, 9 July 1962) detonation, seen from a mountain above the low-level cloud cover on Maui, consisted of a luminous debris fireball expanding in the vacuum of space with a measured initial speed of 2,000 km/sec. (This is 0.67% of the velocity of light and is 179 times the earth's escape velocity. Compare this to the initial upward speed of only 6 times earth's escape velocity, achieved by the 10-cm thick, 1.2 m diameter steel cover blown off the top of the 152 m shaft of the 0.3 kt Plumbbob-Pascal B underground Nevada test on 27 August 1957. In that test, a 1.5 m thick 2 ton concrete plug immediately over the bomb was pushed up the shaft by the detonation, knocking the welded steel lid upward. This was a preliminary experiment by Dr Robert Brownlee called 'Project Thunderwell', which ultimately aimed to launch spacecraft using the steam pressure from deep shafts filled with water, with a nuclear explosion at the bottom; an improvement of Jules Verne's cannon-fired projectile described in De la Terre à la Lune, 1865, where steam pressure would give a more survivable gentle acceleration than Verne's direct impulse from an explosion. Some 90% of the radioactivity would be trapped underground.) The film: 'shows the expansion of the bomb debris from approximately 1/3 msec to almost 10 msec. The partition of the bomb debris into two parts ... is shown; in particular the development of the "core" into an upwards mushroomlike expansion configuration is seen clearly. The fast moving fraction takes the shape of a thick disc. Also the interaction of the bomb debris with the booster at an apparent distance (projected) of approximately 1.5 km is shown.' (Page A1-38 of the quick look report.)

In this side-on view the fireball expansion has a massive vertical asymmetry due to the effects of the device orientation (the dense upward jetting is an asymmetric weapon debris shock wave, due to the missile delivery system and/or the fact that the detonation deliberately occurred with 'the primary and much of the fusing and firing equipment' vertically above the fusion stage, see page A1-7 of the quick look technical report linked here): 'the STARFISH test warhead was inverted prior to the high-altitude test over Johnston Island in 1962 because of concerns that some masses within the design would cause an undesirable shadowing of prompt gamma rays and mask selected nuclear effects that were to be tested.' (April 2005 U.S. Department of Defense Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Weapon Effects Test, Evaluation, and Simulation, page 29.). The earth's magnetic field also played an immediate role in introducing asymmetric fireball expansion as seen from Maui: 'the outer shell of expanding bomb materials forms ... at ... 1/25 to 1/10 sec, an elongated ellipsoidal shape with the long axis orientated along the magnetic field lines.' (Page A1-12 of the quick look report.)

The STARFISH test as filmed from Johnston Island with a camera pointing upwards could not of course show the vertical asymmetry, but it did show that the debris fireball: 'separated into two parts ... the central core which expands rather slowly and ... an outer spherically expanding shell ... The diameter of the expanding shell is approximately 2 km at 500 microseconds ...' (William E. Ogle, Editor, A 'Quick Look' at the Technical Results of Starfish Prime, August 1962, report JO-600, AD-A955411, originally secret-restricted data, p. A1-7.) Within 0.04-0.1 second after burst, the outer shell - as filmed from Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, had become elongated along the earth's magnetic field, creating an ellipsoid-shaped fireball. Visible 'jetting' of radiation up and southward was observed from the debris fireball at 20-50 seconds, and some of these jets are visible in the late time photograph of the debris fireball at 3 minutes after burst (above right).

The analysis of STARFISH on the right was done by the Nuclear Effects Group at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, and was briefly published on their website, with the following discussion of the 'patch deposition' phenomena which applied to bursts above 200 km: 'the expanding debris compresses the geomagnetic field lines because the expansion velocity is greater than the Alfven speed at these altitudes. The debris energy is transferred to air ions in the resulting region of tightly compressed magnetic field lines. Subsequently the ions, charge-exchanged neutrals, beta-particles, etc., escape up and down the field lines. Those particles directed downwards are deposited in patches at altitudes depending on their mean free paths. These particles move along the magnetic field lines, and so the patches are not found directly above ground zero. Uncharged radiation (gamma-rays, neutrons and X-rays) is deposited in layers which are centered directly under the detonation point. The STARFISH event (1.4 megatons at 400 km) was in this altitude regime. Detonations at thousands of kilometres altitude are contained purely magnetically. Expansion is at less than the local Alfven speed, and so energy is radiated as hydromagnetic waves. Patch depositions are again aligned with the field lines.'




The Atomic Weapons Establishment site also showed a Monte Carlo model of STARFISH radiation belt development, indicating that the electron belt stretched a third of the way around the earth's equator at 3 minutes, and encircled the earth at 10 minutes. The averaged beta particle radiation flux in the belt was 2 x 10¹⁴ electrons per square metre per second at 3 minutes after burst, falling to a quarter of that at 10 minutes. As the time goes on, the radiation belt pushes up to higher altitudes and becomes more concentrated over the magnetic equator. For the first 5 minutes, the radiation belt has an altitude range of about 200-400 km and spans from 27 degrees south of the magnetic equator to 27 degrees north of it. At 1 day after burst, the radiation belt height has increased to the 600-1,100 km zone and the average flux is then 1.5 x 10¹² electrons/m²/sec. At 4 months the altitude for this average flux (plus or minus a factor of 4) is confined to altitudes of 1,100-1,500 km, and it is covering a smaller latitude range around the magnetic equator, from about 20 degrees north to about 20 degrees south. At 95 years after burst, the remaining electrons will be 2,000 km above the magnetic equator, the latitude range will be only plus or minus 10 degrees from the equator, and the shell will only be 50 km thick.

When STARFISH was detonated: 'The large amount of energy released at such a high altitude by the detonation caused widespread auroras throughout the Pacific area, lasting in some cases as long as 15 minutes; these were observed on both sides of the equator. In Honolulu an overcast, nighttime sky was turned into day for 6 minutes (New York Times, 10 July 1962). Observers on Kwajalein 1,400 nautical miles (about 2,600 km) west reported a spectacular display lasting at least 7 minutes. At Johnston Island all major visible phenomena had disappeared by 7 minutes except for a faint red glow. The earth's magnetic field [measured at Johnston] also was observed to respond to the burst. ... On 13 July, 4 days after the shot, the U.K. satellite, Ariel, was unable to generate sufficient electricity to function properly. From then until early September things among the satellite designers and sponsors were "along the lines of the old Saturday matinee one-reeler" as the solar panels on several other satellites began to lose their ability to generate power (reference: The Artificial Radiation Belt, Defense Atomic Support Agency, 4 October 1962, report DASA-1327, page 2). The STARFISH detonation had generated large quantities of electrons that were trapped in the earth's magnetic field; the trapped electrons were damaging the solar cells that generated the power in the panels.' (Defense Nuclear Agency report DNA-6040F, AD-A136820, pp. 229-30.)



Above: the conjugate region aurora from STARFISH, 4,200 km from the detonation, as seen from Tongatapu 11 minutes after detonation. (Reference: W. P. Boquist and J. W. Snyder, 'Conjugate Auroral Measurements from the 1962 U.S. High Altitude Nuclear Test Series, in Aurora and Airglow, B. M. McCormac, Ed., Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1967.) A debris aurora caused by fission product ions travelling along magnetic field lines to the opposite hemisphere requires a burst altitude above 150 km, and in the STARFISH test at 400 km some 40% of the fission products were transported south along the magnetic force field into the conjugate region (50% was confined locally and 10% escaped into space). The resulting colourful aurora was filmed at Tongatapu (21 degrees south) looking north, and it was also seen looking south from Samoa (14 degrees south). The STARFISH debris reached an altitude of about 900-km when passing over the magnetic equator. The debris in the conjugate region behaves like the debris remaining in the burst locale; over the course of 2 hours following detonation, it simply settles back down along the Earth’s magnetic field lines to an altitude of 200 km (assuming a burst altitude exceeding 85 km). Hence, the debris is displaced towards the nearest magnetic pole. The exact ‘offset distance’ depends simply upon the angle of the Earth’s magnetic field lines. The ionisation in the debris region is important since it can disrupt communications if the radio signals need to pass through the region to reach an orbital satellite, and also because it may disrupt radar systems from spotting incoming warheads (since radar beams are radio signals which are attenuated).

In the Pacific nuclear high altitude megaton tests, communications using ionosphere-reflected high frequency (HF) radio were disrupted for hours at both ends of the geomagnetic field lines which passed through the detonation point. However, today HF is obsolete and the much higher frequencies involved do not suffer so much attenuation. Instead of relying on the ionosphere and conducting ocean to form a reflecting wave-guide for HF radio, the standard practice today is to use microwave frequencies that penetrate right through the normal ionosphere and are beamed back to another area by an orbital satellite. These frequencies can still be attenuated by severe ionisation from a space burst, but the duration of disruption will be dramatically reduced to seconds or minutes.

‘Recently analyzed beta particle and magnetic field measurements obtained from five instrumented rocket payloads located around the 1962 Starfish nuclear burst are used to describe the diamagnetic cavity produced in the geomagnetic field. Three of the payloads were located in the cavity during its expansion and collapse, one payload was below, and the fifth was above the fully expanded cavity. This multipoint data set shows that the cavity expanded into an elongated shape 1,840 km along the magnetic field lines and 680 km vertically across in 1.2 s and required an unexpectedly long time of about 16 s to collapse. The beta flux contained inside the cavity was measured to be relatively uniform throughout and remained at 3 × 10¹¹ beta particles/cm² s for at least 7 s. The plasma continued to expand upward beyond the fully expanded cavity boundary and injected a flux measuring 2.5 × 10¹⁰ beta particles/cm² s at H + 34 s into the most intense region of the artificial belt. Measured 10 hours later by the Injun I spacecraft, this flux was determined to be 1 × 10⁹ beta particles/cm² s.’ - Palmer Dyal, ‘Particle and field measurements of the Starfish diamagnetic cavity’, Journal of Geophysical Research, volume 111, issue A12, page 211 (2006).

Palmer Dyal was the nuclear test Project Officer and co-author with W. Simmons of Operation DOMINIC, FISH BOWL Series, Project 6.7, Debris Expansion Experiment, U.S. Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Kirkland Air Force Base, New Mexico, POR-2026 (WT-2026), AD-A995428, December 1965:

'This experiment was designed to measure the interaction of expanding nuclear weapon debris with the ion-loaded geomagnetic field. Five rockets on STARFISH and two rockets on CHECKMATE were used to position instrumented payloads at various distances around the burst points. The instruments measured the magnetic field, ion flux, beta flux, gamma flux, and the neutron flux as a function of time and space around the detonations. Data was transmitted at both real and recorded times to island receiving sites near the burst regions. Measurements of the telemetry signal strengths at these sites allowed observations of blackout at 250 MHz ... the early expansion of the STARFISH debris probably took the form of an ellipsoid with its major axis oriented along the earth's magnetic field lines. Collapse of the magnetic bubble was complete in approximately 16 seconds, and part of the fission fragment beta particles were subsequently injected into trapped orbits. ...

‘At altitudes above 200 kilometres ... the particles travel unimpeded for several thousands of kilometres. During the early phase of a high-altitude explosion, a large percentage of the detonation products is ionized and can therefore interact with the geomagnetic field and can also undergo Coulomb scattering with the ambient air atoms. If the expansion is high enough above the atmosphere, an Argus shell of electrons can be formed as in the 1958 and 1962 test series. ... If this velocity of the plasma is greater than the local sound or Alfven speed, a magnetic shock similar to a hydro shock can be formed which dissipates a sizable fraction of the plasma kinetic energy. The Alfven velocity is C = B/(4*{Pi}*{Ion density, in ions per cubic metre})^1/2, where ... B is the magnetic field ... Since the STARFISH debris expansion was predicted and measured to be approximately 2 x 10⁸ cm/sec and the Alfven velocity is about 2 x 10⁷ cm/sec, a shock should be formed. A consideration of the conservation of momentum and energy indicates that the total extent of the plasma expansion proceeds until the weapon plasma kinetic energy is balanced by the B²/(8{Pi}) magnetic field energy [density] in the excluded region and the energy of the air molecules picked up by the expanding debris. ... An estimate of the maximum radial extent of the STARFISH magnetic bubble can be made assuming conservation of momentum and energy. The magnetic field swept along by the plasma electrons will pick up ambient air ions as it proceeds outward. ...’

Conservation of momentum suggests that the initial outward bomb momentum, M_BOMBV_BOMB must be equal to the momentum of the total expanding fireball after it has picked up air ions of mass M_{AIR IONS}:

M_BOMBV_BOMB = (M_BOMB + M_{AIR IONS})V,

where V is the velocity of the combined shell of bomb and air ions. The expansion of the ionized material against the earth’s magnetic field slows it down, so that the maximum radial extent occurs when the initial kinetic energy E = (1/2) M_BOMBV_BOMB² has been converted into the potential energy density of the magnetic field which stops its expansion. The energy of the magnetic field excluded from the ionized shell of radius R is simply the volume of that shell multiplied by the magnetic field energy density B²/(8{Pi}). By setting the energy of the magnetic field bubble equal to the kinetic energy of the explosion, the maximum size of the bubble could be calculated, assuming the debris was 100% ionized.

For CHECKMATE, they reported: ‘Expansion of the debris was mostly determined by the surrounding atmosphere which had a density of 4.8 x 10¹⁰ particles/cm³.

Chapter 2: Blast and Shock Phenomena

Chapter 2. Blast and Shock Phenomena. 306 pages. Blast wave section is here and ground shock/cratering/water bursts/underwater bursts section is here.

The first 150 pages are document AD-A955405 and deal with blast wave phenomenology including non-ideal blast waves like precursor predictions which are not available in the Glasstone and Dolan book, which only has the height of burst curves for 'nearly ideal conditions'. In addition, it includes curves showing the overpressure and dynamic pressure impulses and the height of the Mach stem to the triple point as the blast from low air bursts at various altitudes progress outward. This is not included in Glasstone and Dolan 1977, but it is useful for determining whether the upper parts of a tall building will experience two separate shock waves or the fused Mach stem from an air burst (download here: 8.3 MB PDF file).

Section 2, Airblast Over Real (Non-Ideal) Surfaces, of chapter 2 on blast has recently been expanded in the later (still classified) version of the manual, to include an appendix which describes a methodology to construct non-ideal (precursor-type) dynamic pressure waveforms as well as non-ideal static pressure waveforms using thermal radiation transmission, thermal blow-off of the ground surface, thermal layer growth, blast wave modification and resulting precursed air blast environments. This was accomplished by the synthesis of the non-ideal (precursor) pressure waveforms from Nevada nuclear explosions MET, PRISCILLA, and HOOD, to give the blast dynamic pressure environment over desert surfaces for events ranging in yields from 8 to 74 KT and scaled (1-kt) heights of burst from 140 to 340 scaled feet (using reports WT-1109, Operation TEAPOT, Airblast Overpressure and Dynamic Pressure over Various Surfaces, WT-1110, Operation Teapot, Special Measurements of Dynamic Pressure Versus Time and Distance, WT-1155, Operation TEAPOT, Measurements of Air-Blast Phenomena with Self Recording Gages, WT-1401, Operation PLUMBBOB, Basic Airblast Phenomena, WT-1403, Operation PLUMBBOB, Air-Blast Phenomena in the High Pressure Region, WT-1472, Operation PLUMBBOB, Effects of a Precursor Shock Wave on Blast Loading of a Structure, and the compendium DASA 1200, Nuclear Weapons Blast Phenomena).

See also: Real Surface (Non-Ideal) Effects on Nuclear Explosion Airblast from PRISCILLA-Type Events, Part 1: Comparison and Evaluation of Ideal and Non-Ideal Airblast from PRISCILLA Computations; and Part 2: SHARC Hydrocode Calculations of the PRISCILLA Event (Phase 1), Report ADA302079 online by Noel H. Ethridge, John H. Keefer, Joseph E. Crepeau, Robert G. Ekler, and Lynn W. Kennedy of Applied Research Associates Inc., October 1, 1995, 367 Pages. See also Extended Desert Calculation Results with Comparisons to PRISCILLA Experimental Data and a Near-Ideal Calculation, ADA298300, and Extended Grassland Calculation Results With Comparisons to PRISCILLA Experimental Data and a Near-Ideal Calculation, ADA298081.

The remaining 156 pages of chapter 2 is document AD-A955386, and deals with ground shock, cratering analysis, and the water shock, base surge, etc., from underwater bursts. It also includes a valuable analysis of test data on water surface wave heights from water surface burst nuclear tests. However, the crater size scaling law for yield, used by Glasstone and Dolan, does not properly model gravity effects, as discovered in 1987:

‘Data on the coral craters are incorporated into empirical formulas used to predict the size and shape of nuclear craters. These formulas, we now believe, greatly overestimate surface burst effectiveness in typical continental geologies ... coral is saturated, highly porous, and permeable ... When the coral is dry, it transmits shocks poorly. The crushing and collapse of its pores attenuate the shock rapidly with distance ... Pores filled with water transmit the shock better than air-filled pores, so the shock travels with less attenuation and can damage large volumes of coral far from the source.’

– L.G. Margolin, et al., Computer Simulation of Nuclear Weapons Effects, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCRL-98438 Preprint, 25 March 1988, p. 5.

‘DNA [Defense Nuclear Agency, which has since evolved into the DTRA] has recently completed an "end-to-end" cratering validation program that resulted in dramatic reduction of the crater size thought to result from the surface detonation of modem strategic weapons.’

- Appendix A of Ernest Bauer's report Variabilities in the Natural and Nuclear Endoatmospheric Environment (Institute for Defense Analyses, Virginia, IDA Document D-1085, April 1992).

This reduction is in part due to a switch over from the predominance of hydrodynamic to gravitational work energy as the crater mass and depth increases with increasing yield. At low yields, gravitational work energy in ejecting soil mass M from depth d to the lip is trivial, E = gdM, but at high yields this use of energy is massive due to the large mass and depth of the crater, so gravitational work energy competes with the energy available to hydrodynamically excavate the soil.

It turns out that if the crater's apparent radius to depth ratio is constant, this gravitational work effect makes the linear dimensions scaling law vary from 1/3 power of yield at low yields to 1/4 power of yield at high yields. There are also other factors involved in reducing crater dimensions at high yield which Glasstone and Dolan ignored, such as a fall in bomb case shock energy for high yield-to-mass ratio devices, where most the initial energy is released as X-rays which are less efficient at cratering than dense bomb vapours. The revised model circa 1991 for a 1 Mt surface burst on dry soil predicts a crater radius of 58 m, compared to 148 m in Glasstone and Dolan 1977.

The original 306 pages-long chapter 2 in DNA-EM-1 has been broken up into separate chapters on blast and cratering: since 1984 Chapter 3 has been, Cratering, Ejecta, and Ground Shock, and is prepared by Titan Research and Technology Division (TRT) of the Titan Corporation. The latest major revision (since which there have merely been page changes) is the 1 January 1992 edition edited by by Anne V. Cooper et al., Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, Chapter 3, Cratering, Ejecta and Ground Shock, Titan Corporation, Defense Nuclear Agency, Washington, D.C., report DNA-EM-1-CH-3. It is classified secret-restricted data, but the abstract is unclassified:

'A methodology is presented for predicting crater dimensions and ejecta characteristics resulting from near-surface and deeply buried explosions of nuclear weapons. This chapter contains the description of ground shock associated with nuclear weapon bursts. Material properties and the parameters important to estimating ground shock are discussed. Formulas for peak values of pressure, acceleration, velocity and displacement are presented along with methods for estimating waveforms. Airblast-induced, outrunning and surface wave ground shock are all treated herein. The Dug method for down-axis motions is included. The effect of slightly elevated or shallow buried bursts is also discussed in terms of an effective yield factor. Finally, a description of block motion, tilt and rotation is included.'

Section III of that chapter is 'Nuclear Ground Shock Effects' by E. Rinehart, A. V. Cooper, and S. H. Schuster. The engineer and computer programmer Anne V. Cooper is currently the primary editor of Chapter 3 revisions. At Titan, she was the main compiler and also joint editor (with S. H. Schuster and F. Sauer) of the June 1987 revision of the U.S. Air Force Manual for the Design and Analysis of Hardened Structures, AFWL-TR-87-57. She authored the interactive computer program INEES which computes nuclear effects using the methods presented in that Air Force manual.

In the spring of 1992, Tony Frederickson and Ed Tremba of the Defense Nuclear Agency were chartered to assemble a set of numerical models of nuclear weapon effects from Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons in a usable computer program format. They set up the Model Development Working Group (MDWG) consisting of Ed Tremba of DNA, Tom Dowler of LANL, Jim Drake of ARA, Archie Farnsworth of SNL, Ted Harvey of LLNL, Rob Managan of LLNL, Rob Managan of LLNL, Shel Schuster of TRT, Dev Srinivasa of RDA, Bill Woolson of SAIC, Joe Zelasko of WES, and A. V. Cooper of Titan who also wrote the resulting computer code, appropriately named NEMESIS (Nuclear Effects Models for Estimating Sensitivities to Input Scenarios): Anne V. Cooper, et al., NEMESIS - Nuclear Effects Models for Estimating Sensitivities to Input Scenarios, report WES-CR SL-95-1, February 1995. NEMESIS includes air blast, cratering, ejecta, fallout, radiation, thermal and ground shock algorithms. NEMESIS replaces the obsolete computer programs called 'Blast Effects' and 'Weapons Effects' which were developed in December 1984 by Horizons Technology, Inc., of California for the Defense Nuclear Agency. She now runs a helpful programming assistance internet site which states:

'Cooper Internet Services is available to help you with programming solutions. From nuclear weapons effects programs to a Wordsearch Generator and Trivia Quizzes to search engines for Reading Counts book lists, we can design the right application for you.'

Useful extracts from revised versions of EM-1 are given on page 1-37 (crater dimensions for 10 kt surface bursts on various types of soil, giving 27 m diameter and 11 m depth for dry soft rock) of the White House civil defence planning manual here. The latest crater scaling laws are given in the report:

R. M. Schmidt, K. R. Housen and K.A. Holsapple, Gravity Effects in Cratering, DNA-TR-86-182, Defense Nuclear Agency, Washington D.C., 1988.

In the range of 1 kt – 10 Mt there is a transition from cube-root to fourth-root scaling, and the average scaling law suggested by Nevada soil and Pacific coral Atoll data, W^0.3 (used by Glasstone and Dolan) was shown to be wrong in 1987 because empirical data was too limited (the biggest Nevada cratering test was Sedan, 104 kt) and the W^0.3 empirical law ignored energy conservation at high yields, where gravity effects kick in and curtail the sizes predicted by hydrodynamic cratering physics.

The W^0.3 scaling law used in Glasstone and Dolan 1977 is false because it violates the conservation of energy, used by the explosion in ejecting massive amounts of debris from the crater against gravity. The yield-dependent scaling for crater dimensions (radius and depth) transitions from the cube-root of yield scaling at low yields (below 1 kt) to fourth-root at high yields, because of gravity. At low yields, the fraction of the bomb energy used to physically dump ejecta out of the crater against gravity (to produce the surrounding lip and debris) is trivial compared to the hydrodynamic energy being used used to physically break up the soil. But at higher yields, the fact that the crater is deep means that a significant amount of bomb energy must now be employed to do work excavating earth against gravity.

Consider the energy utilisation in cratering. The total energy done by cratering is the sum of the hydrodynamic energy and gravitational work energy. The hydrodynamic term is shown to be proportional to the cube of the crater radius or depth, as shown by the reliability of cube-root scaling at subkiloton yields: the energy needed to hydrodynamically excavate a unit volume of soil by hydrodynamic cratering action is a constant, so the energy required for hydrodynamic pulverization of crater mass m is E = mX where X is the number of Joules needed in cratering for the hydrodynamic excavation of 1 kg of soil.

But where the crater is deep in bigger explosions, the gravitational work energy E = mgh needed to eject crater mass m the vertical distance h upwards out of the hole to the lip, against gravitational acceleration g (9.8 ms^-2)becomes larger than the hydrodynamic energy needed to merely break up the matter, so the gravity work effect then governs the crater scaling law. The total energy used in crater formation is the sum of two terms, hydrodynamic and gravitational: E = (mX) + (mgh).

The (mX)-term is proportional to the cube of the crater depth (because m is the product of volume and density, and volume is proportional to depth-cubed if the crater radius/depth ratio is constant), while the (mgh)-term is proportional to the fourth-power of the crater depth because m is proportional to the density times the depth cubed (if the depth/radius ratio is constant) and h is always directly proportional to the crater depth (h is roughly half the crater depth), so the product mgh is proportional to the product of depth cubed and depth, i.e., to the fourth-power of crater depth. So for bigger craters and bigger bomb yields, a larger fraction of the total cratering energy then gets used to overcome gravity, causing the gravity term to predominate and the crater size to scale at most by W^1/4 at high yields. This makes the crater size scaling law transition from cube-root (W^1/3) at low yields to fourth-root (W^1/4) at higher yields!

It’s fascinating that, despite the best scientific brains working on nuclear weapons effects for many decades - the Manhattan Project focussed a large amount of effort on the problem, and utilised the top physicists who had developed quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, and people like Bethe were still writing secret papers on fireball effects into the 1960s - such fundamental physical effects were simply ignored for decades. This was due to the restricted number of people working on the problem due to secrecy, and maybe some kind of ‘groupthink’ (psychological peer-pressure): not to upset colleagues by ‘rocking the boat’ with too much freethinking, radical questions, innovative ideas.

The equation E = mgh isn't a speculative theory requiring nuclear tests to confirm it, it's a basic physical fact that can be experimentally proved in any physics laboratory: you can easily measure the energy needed to raise a mass (the amount of electric energy supplied to an electric motor while it winches up a standard 1 kg mass is a simple example of the kind of physical fact involved). In trying to analyse the effects of nuclear weapons, false approximations were sometimes used, which then became imbedded as a doctrine or faith about the ‘correct’ way to approach or analyze a particular problem. People, when questioned about a fundamental belief in such analysis, then are tempted respond dogmatically by simply referring to what the ‘consensus’ is, as if accepted dogmatic religious-style authority is somehow a substitute science, which is of course the unceasing need to keep asking probing questions, checking factual details for errors, omissions and misunderstandings, and forever searching for a deeper understanding of nature.

For example, in the case of a 10 Mt surface burst on dry soil, the 1957, 1962, and 1964 editions of Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons predicted a crater radius of 414 metres (the 10 Mt Mike test in 1952 had a radius of over twice that size, but that was due to the water-saturated porous coral of the island and surrounding reef, which is crushed very easily by the shock wave at high overpressures). This was reduced to 295 metres in Glasstone and Dolan, 1977, when the scaling law was changed from the cube-root to the 0.3 power of yield. The 1981 revision of Dolan's DNA-EM-1 brings it down to 145 metres, because of the tiny amount of energy which goes into the bomb case shock for a modern, efficient 10 Mt class thermonuclear warhead (Brode and Bjork discovered this bomb design effect on cratering in 1960; high-yield efficient weapons release over 80% of their yield as X-rays which are inefficient at cratering because they just cause ablation of the soil below the bomb, creating a shock wave and some compression, but far less cratering action than the dense bomb case shock wave produces in soil). Then in 1987, the introduction of gravity effects reduced the crater radius for a 10 Mt surface burst on dry soil to just 92 metres, only 22% of the figure believed up to 1964!

‘It is shown that the primary cause of cratering for such an explosion is not “airslap,” as previously suggested, but rather the direct action of the energetic bomb vapors. High-yield surface bursts are therefore less effective in cratering by that portion of the energy that escapes as radiation in the earliest phases of the explosion. [Hence the immense crater size from the 10 Mt liquid-deuterium Mike test in 1952 with its massive 82 ton steel casing shock is irrelevant to compact modern warheads which have lighter casings and are more efficient and produce smaller case shocks and thus smaller craters.]’ - H. L. Brode and R. L. Bjork, Cratering from a Megaton Surface Burst, RAND Corp., RM-2600, 1960.


Above: even with a relatively heavy design and casing (thus maximum cratering action relative to modern lighter weapons of comparable yield), the TRINITY (19 kt, 30 m altitude, 16 July 1945) test left the foundations of the steel tower behind in the middle of the crater, as photographed on 11 September 1945. A wide shallow crater was scoured out by the shock wave, but hardened underground structures could have survived, which is why surface bursts are required to destroy such targets.

Above: The Apollo 16 astronauts safely using the 8 December 1968, 31 kt SCHOONER nuclear test crater at the Nevada test site in November 1970 to simulate the South Ray crater which was their intended target on the Moon, complete with nicely enhanced nuclear radiation (the radioactivity level on the Moon like outer space generally is 100 times that on the Earth even at solar minimum, due to the lack of any atmosphere to absorb most cosmic radiation!). Niel Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first people to land on the Moon (20 July 1969), spent time at Nevada studying the geology of the 1962 Nevada SEDAN nuclear test crater in February 1965. The SEDAN crater was caused by a 104 kt, 30% fission nuclear explosion in July 1962, and the lip had a dose rate of 500 R/hr at 1 hour after detonation. The decay rate of SEDAN radioactivity was influenced by large quantities of radioactive tungsten produced by neutron capture in the tungsten pusher in the weapon, which replaced the usual uranium tamper of such thermonuclear fusion stages. The SEDAN lip was first approached on foot 27 days after detonation, when it had a radioactivity level of 500 mR/hr (1000 times less than at 1 hour after burst). The first human visit to the bottom of the crater occurred 167 days after detonation, when the radioactivity level there was 35 mR/hr. In 1990, the dose rate at the visitors box on East side of the crater was 0.020 mR/hr (little more than the natural background radioactivity in London), although the West side of the crater still gave a reading of 0.053 mR/hr. (These data are from the sign at the visitors box on the crater lip.)

Chapter 3: Thermal Radiation Phenomena

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Change 1. Chapter 3. Thermal Radiation Phenomena. 114 pages, DNA-EM-1, July 1978, AD-A955387, 3.2 MB PDF file.

Above: American toroidal fireball nuclear test films.


Above: British toroidal fireball nuclear test films.



Above: effect of ozone on early thermal radiation emission from a nuclear explosion. The first graph above shows the thermal radiation calculated by computer when ozone is ignored, while the second shows how it reduces the (mainly ultraviolet) radiation emission from the very hot fireball at early times, before the shock wave has formed and penetrated through the 'veil' or shell of ozone caused by the intense high energy X-ray and gamma radiation interacting with the air just around the fireball. (Thermal Radiation From Nuclear Weapons, Defense Nuclear Agency, February 1991.)

The fact that nuclear explosions produce ozone was first published in paragraph 6.26 on page 190 of the 1950 U.S. Department of Defense book, The Effects of Atomic Weapons: 'there may be some absorption of ultraviolet radiation by ozone which is produced by interaction of gamma rays from the atomic explosion with atmospheric oxygen.' Herman Hoerlin states on page 43 of his 1976 Los Aamos report LA-6405 United States High Altitude Test Experiences: 'significant amounts of ozone are produced in sea-level explosions.' (Hoerlin cites as reference: H. E. DeWitt, A Compilation of Spectroscopic Observations of Air Around Atomic
Bomb Explosions, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory report LAMS-1935, June 1955.) However, since the time that was written, full calculations have been performed which show that high altitude nuclear detonations (above 100 km altitude) produce large excess amounts of ozone, strengthening rather than depleting the ozone layer. Finally, sampling of the cloud of a 1976 atmospheric Chinese megaton range test showed confirmed that there was no ozone depleting nitrogen dioxide: it reacts with water vapour to form nitric acid, instead of destroying ozone! Anyway, nitrogen dioxide is only formed in high pressure shock waves from low altitude detonations, not from high altitude bursts, which produce an excess of ozone. This debunks the claims of ozone depletion by nuclear warfare made in the 1977 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.

Nitric acid (HNO₃) production from the mixing with nitrogen dioxide and water vapour in the fireball is described by the reaction:

3NO₂ + H₂O -> 2HNO₃ + NO

then the nitrogen oxide, NO, itself gets oxidized into nitric acid by the reaction:

4NO + 3O₂ + 2H₂O -> 4HNO₃

It was a bigger hoax than Piltdown Man to suggest that nitrogen oxides from nuclear bomb tests could break down ozone; they instead get oxidised into nitric acid by atmospheric moisture and oxygen before they can reach the ozone layer. For a published discussion of the nitric acid production in the air around the fireball from an atmospheric nuclear explosion, see Murray Scheibe, The Increased Attachment Due to Ionization-Induced Smog in EMP Environments, Mission Research Corporation, California, MRC-R-532, DNA5077F, ADA087850, 1979: 'The increased electron attachment due to HNO₃ production in the EMP source region is investigated. The HNO₃ produced is found to be roughly linear with the total ionization up to an ionization value of about 2 x 10 to the 16th power ion pairs. Above this, the HNO₃ production is less than linear.'

This chapter on thermal phenomenology is very different from the material given in Glasstone and Dolan 1977, which made no attempt to show the thermal pulse shapes quantitatively from high altitude bursts. It shows how the thermal pulse shape varies with burst altitude and also goes into detail about how to calculate the thermal yield from any nuclear explosion, including allowance for the efficiency of the bomb in initially radiating energy: i.e., the distinction between 'hot' X-ray efficient compact nuclear weapons which reach up to 400 million Kelvin and emit hard X-rays of typically up to 10 keV or so, and inefficient very heavy, low yield-to-mass ratio old bomb designs which were relatively 'cold' X-ray sources, reaching temperatures of only 1 million Kelvin or so and emitting X-rays of typically only 1 keV or so. These nuclear bomb design differences are generally very important for early-time thermal phenomena, cratering and blast, and are particularly important for thermal effects from high altitude bursts since many modern nuclear weapons are more efficient than the bomb designs tested in the atmosphere back in 1962.

'As stated ... weapons that have enhanced radiation outputs, i.e., weapons that produce a large fraction of their output in the form of neutrons, gamma rays, or X-rays ... will, in most cases, generate a weaker blast wave than a nominal weapon of the same yield. Similarly, the thermal pulse from such special weapons may be weaker than that from a nominal weapon. The explanation for the reduced thermal output is the same explanation for a weaker blast wave: neutrons, gamma rays, and high energy X-rays travel much farther through the atmosphere than the energy from a conventional [nuclear] weapon; therefore, a large portion of the weapon energy may be absorbed by air far from the burst. This air will not become sufficiently hot to contribute effectively to either the blast wave or to the thermal pulse.

'The terms "nominal weapon" and "conventional weapon" used in the preceding paragraph refer to a nuclear weapon that radiates 70 to 80 percent of its energy as X-rays ... and retains nearly all of the remaining energy as thermal and kinetic energy of the weapon debris ... The modified thermal effects produced by weapons with enhanced outputs may be calculated in terms of an effective thermal yield. This is defined as the yield that a nominal warhead would have in order to radiate the same thermal energy as the special weapon. ... Effective thermal yield means the effective value of total yield to be used in thermal calculations. ...

'Effective thermal yield is roughly th amount of energy that the nuclear source deposits within a sphere the size of the fireball at the time of the principal minimum [in the radiating thermal power versus time curve]. This radius is

R_min = 29W^0.36/{ratio of air density at burst height to air density at sea level, i.e. about e^-H/6.9) where H is burst altitude in km} metres,

where W is the weapon yield in kilotons ... Energy that is deposited beyond the radius R_min is assumed to make a negligible contribution to the energy radiated by the fireball.' - Philip J. Dolan, Editor, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Chapter 3, Thermal Radiation Phenomena, DNA-EM-1, 1972, pp. 3-56 to 3-58.

In order to calculate the amount of energy contained within that radius (29 metres for 1 kt), Dolan states that you should assume that 100% of the debris is within that radius, and then calculate the amount of radiation energy deposited within the radius. For each type of radiation, the fraction of that radiation deposited within a radius R is equal to: f = 1 - e^-R/X where X is mean free path (if all the energy is effectively deposited upon first scatter for the radiation in question) or absorption relaxation length, which has different values for initial gamma rays, neutrons and soft X-rays. After the total amount of energy deposited within 29 metres from a 1 kt sea level air burst is determined for both a nominal nuclear weapon (70-80% energy in soft X-rays) and the special weapon in question (e.g., a neutron bomb), then the ratio of these energy deposits is equal to the ratio of thermal energy yields for the two weapons being compared, and allows the thermal yield of the neutron bomb to be determined.

The thermal transmission controversy in DNA-EM-1 and related manuals


Above: some early thermal transmission curves comparison by H. L. Brode, A Review of Nuclear Explosion Phenomena Pertinent to Protective Construction, the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, Report R-425-PR, May 1964. Brode reproduces the Glasstone 1962/4 thermal transmission curves on page 15 of his report Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Explosions, RAND Corp. paper P-2745, 1963. These Glasstone 1962/64 edition curves were originally taken from the curves for air bursts in Figure 3-5B on page 3-15 of the Confidential manual Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, TM 23-200, November 1957, which states on page 3-3 that the 50 miles visibility curve is for a water vapour concentration in the air of 5 grams/cubic metre, the 10 miles visibility curve is for 10 grams/cubic metre of water vapour, and 2 miles visibility corresponds to 25 grams/cubic metre (water molecules have a band absorption which is elatively effective at absorbing red light and infrared radiation, but is less effective at absorbing other wavelengths).

These Glasstone 1962/64 thermal transmission curves can be summarised by the formula T = exp[-(R/V)^1/2] where R is distance from ground zero and V is visibility distance in similar units. The earlier Glasstone 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons massively exaggerated the transmission at long distances by using the theoretical curve T = 0.48 + [0.52*exp(-4R/V)]. The theoretical basis for the thermal transmission curve in the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons is given by A. G. McDonald of the U.K. Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch in his paper on thermal radiation in the July 1957 National Archives report HO 228/21 Report of a course given to university physics lecturers at the Civil Defence Staff College 8-11 July 1957 (this is an originally classified set of lectures on nuclear weapons effects which also included a detailed paper by Frank H. Pavry on the then-secret thermal precursor blast wave mechanism and the height-of-burst effects on blast optimization in Nevada tests; the Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch by then had access by to secret American research on the effects of nuclear weapons). It is basically just a simple adjustment of the transmission formula used for the curves in the still earlier Glasstone 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons which used T = exp(-4R/V), underestimating the long range transmission! Glasstone's 1950 T = exp(-4R/V) formula is valid for infrared and ultraviolet radiation because infrared is rapidly absorbed by water vapour and carbon dioxide in the air while ultraviolet is rapidly absorbed by oxygen and ozone, but it does not adequately represent visible radiation which is far more penetrating. Hence, Glasstone's June 1957 edition tried to correct T = exp(-4R/V) by having it represent only the 52% of the total radiation consisting of the infrared and ultraviolet from a fireball with a time-averaged radiating temperature of 6000 K; the other 48% is visible light and this was in Glasstone 1957 wrongly assumed to travel without any absorption at all, leading to a massive exaggeration of the long range thermal effects from high yield weapons, and criticism from Dr Carl F. Miller who worked for the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at later nuclear tests to measure fallout on ships with washdown safeguards that were sailing under the expanding mushroom clouds:

‘Reliance on the Effects of Nuclear Weapons has its shortcomings... I was twenty miles from a detonation ... near ten megatons. The thermal flash did not produce the second-degree burn on the back of my neck, nor indeed any discomfort at all.’ - C. F. Miller, February 1966 Scientist and Citizen. (This journal was titled Nuclear Information August 1964 when it became Scientist and Citizen; it has since been renamed Environment magazine.)

In an attempt to resolve the confusion in July 1963, Ruth W. Shnider of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, California, wrote the 43-page Secret - Restricted Data report, Compilation and Empirical Analysis of Thermal Exposure Data from Nuclear Surface Bursts, USNRDL-TR-658:

'A tabulation is presented of all available radiant-exposure data from nuclear surface bursts. The data are separated into surface exposures and airborne (measured in aircraft) exposures, and pertinent information, such as instrumentation and cloud cover, are included when available. The empirical analysis presents one set of Radiant Exposure versus Range curves for surface exposures, and another set for airborne exposures. Both sets are normalized to 1 kt, and distinguish between Nevada Test Site atmosphere (excellent thermal transmission [average visibility 50 miles due to the low water vapour content of the desert air]) and Pacific Proving Ground atmosphere (average-to-low thermal transmission [average visibility 10 miles due to the high humidity and hence high water vapour content in the mid-Pacific such as Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls]). It is recommended that these curves be employed for prediction of radiant exposures from nuclear surface detonations, rather than other methods in current literature.'



Above: Shnider's curves, taken from this declassified handbook.

Nuclear test data from the Nevada test site comes from various times of year and times of day (typically pre-dawn), and the visibility, as well as the temperature and humidity (which together determine the water vapour content in grams per cubic metre), varied considerably. However, an average 50 miles (very clear) visibility existed in general for the Nevada sky, while the average humidity was only about 40%, corresponding to 4 grams per cubic metre of water content at a typical pre-dawn temperature of 10 C. Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls near the equator suffered much less variability in temperature (which is almost always close to 27 C) and humidity (always close to 80%), so they have a usual visibility of 10 miles and a water vapour content of about 21 grams of water vapour per cubic metre.

The Pacific test data (10 miles visibility and 21 grams/cubic meter of water vapour) and the Nevada test data (50 miles visibility and 4 grams/cubic metre of water vapour) therefore represent two useful extremes in thermal radiation transmission: the former applicable for coastal cities and the latter applicable to the drier interior regions of continents like deserts.

The thermal transmission implied by the nuclear test data thermal measurements in the graph above is approximately just T = exp(-R/V) = e^-R/V. Although the Confidental U.S. Department of Defense November 1957 Capabilities of Atomic Weapons TM 23-200 Figure 3-5B on page 3-15 gave air burst thermal transmission curves that correspond to T = exp[-(R/V)^1/2], and are fairly accurate for distances near the visibility range, i.e. V = R, and were later used in Glasstone 1962/64 for both air and surface bursts, Figure 3-5B gave extremely inaccurate surface burst transmission curves because it wrongly assumed on page 3-2 that a surface burst had an average radiating temperature of only 3000 K (compared to 6000 K for an air burst). Because 3000 K blackbody radiation is almost entirely easily-absorbed infrared radiation, Figure 3-5B in TM 23-200 for surface bursts underestimated thermal transmission greatly, since it corresponds to T = exp[-2(R/V)^1/2] for surface bursts as compared to T = exp[-(R/V)^1/2] for air bursts. By 1962 it was known from an analysis of nuclear test data that Figure 3-5B exaggerated transmission for surface bursts, so only the TM 23-200 curves for 6000 K blackbody thermal radiation from air bursts were presented in Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1962/64, and this air burst thermal transmission data was there used for both air and surface bursts. The explanation for why the empirical data supports simply T = exp(-R/V) rather than a faster or slower fall at long distances is that there are two competing factors which work in opposite directions at long distances:

(a) the greater the distance, the more penetrating the remaining radiation is (because the less penetrating frequencies in the radiation spectrum have already been absorbed by the intervening air), which tends to increase relative transmission at great distances

and

(b) the greater the distance, the greater the build-up of scattered radiation with degraded (lower energy), which gets absorbed more rapidly, tending to decrease relative transmission at great distances.

Hence, the filtered-spectrum effect, (a), increases the penetrating power of distant thermal radiation, but the build-up of scattered radiation with degraded energy, (b), decreases transmission. Thus, the filtering and scattering transmission effects offset each other so that the total transmission remain a simple exponential attenuation law, T = exp(-R/V).

An example of an error in thermal transmission data which completely ignores this phenomenon is M. G. Gibbons Transmissivity of the Atmosphere for Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, report USNRDL-TR-1060, August 1966, which is a study of transmission based on just a single wavelength of light, 0.65 microns wavelength for free air bursts and 0.55 microns wavelength for surface bursts and tower bursts where the fireball touches the ground. This analysis of transmission of monochromatic (single frequency) light transmission is wrong for nuclear weapons thermal radiation because it ignores the filtering effect [(a) above] of a wide spectrum source, so the only effect differing from exponential attenuation was the build-up of scattered radiation. However, Gibbons claims (providing no evidence or comparison to support his statement, presumably due to classification) that his transmission equation can be made to fit nuclear test data by using suitably selected values for the thermal yield fraction: namely 21% for surface bursts and 33% for air bursts. Gibbons' report is used by Dolan in the Thermal Radiation Phenomena chapter of the 1972-81 versions of DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, and it is also cited as the source for thermal transmission graphical data given by Glasstone and Dolan, 1977.

However, none of these references seem to actually give Gibbons data: Gibbons gives the formula for surface bursts by the equation T = e^-2R/V(1 + 1.4R/V) where e^-2R/V is for absorption and (1 + 1.4R/V) represents the build-up of scattered radiation. This formula is also given in Brode's 1964 report. Dolan's 1972 EM-1 gives a highly altered version of this: T = e^-2.9R/V(1 + 1.9R/V). Notice that both of the numerical factors have been increased by a third or so. Dolan in 1972 indirectly explains this change in the footnote on page 3-8 of EM-1: the definition of "clear" atmospheric visibility given by Gibbons 12 miles while the revised definition of "clear" atmospheric visibility given by Dolan in EM-1 is 16 miles, one-third greater. Simply to allow for 33% increase in the numerical definition of the standard average "clear" visibility range, Dolan in 1972 revised Gibbons' formula T = e^-2R/V(1 + 1.4R/V) by increasing the numerical coefficients to incorporate the redefinition of "visibility", giving the new formula: T = e^-2.9R/V(1 + 1.9R/V).

Glasstone and Dolan's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977, reverts specifies Gibbons 1966 range of 12 miles for "clear" visibility, rather than Dolan's 1972 EM-1 value of 16 miles. The transmission data given in Glasstone and Dolan 1977 is closer to Gibbons' 1966 original formula than to Dolan's 1972 EM-1 formula:


Above: thermal transmission data for nuclear explosions from Dr Harold L. Brode and Richard D. Small, Fire Damage and Strategic Targeting, Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation, Los Angeles, California, Defense Nuclear Agency report DNA-TR-84-272 (1 June 1984), accession number ADA159280 which is partly discussed near the end of the post http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/08/nuclear-weapons-1st-edition-1956-by.html.

Professor Charles J. Bridgman in his book Introduction to the Physics of Nuclear Weapons Effects, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2001, pages 252-4, presents data for thermal transmission from James M. Leonard's 1985 Air Force Institute of Technology MSc thesis, Nuclear Thermal Transmittance in the Atmosphere Using LOWTRAN-6 Computer Code, Air Force Inst. of Tech., Wright-Patterson AFB, OH. School of Engineering, report AFIT/GNE/ENP/85M-13, also AD-A154 669/6, which is a theoretical computer calculation of transmission using the known properties of air to absorb different components of the thermal spectrum. For a distance equal to the visibility range (i.e., for V = R), a surface burst and a target on the ground, Bridgman's curves based on Leonard's report all show only 7% transmission. The Pacific nuclear test data of indicate a transmission of 37% for this situation of V = R.

It turns out that this large difference is due mainly to the vertical height of several kilometres for the fireballs in the megaton range Pacific tests, which allowed much of the thermal radiation transmission path to a distant target to be through air of lower water vapour concentration than the sea level air, but also partly to the channelling of thermal radiation between the reflective ocean and the base of the cloud cover in the sky above the fireball in some tests. These effects of source altitude (e.g. vertical fireball height for a high yield surface burst) and channelling between a reflective ground or ocean surface and the base of a layer of cloud cover, are revealed by the graphs in Figures 39-44 published in the revision to DNA-EM-1 made in report DNA-TR-84-388, which we will discuss in detail next.

DNA-EM-1 thermal transmission formulae were updated in the 1980s as a result of a study by John R. Keith and Anthony F. Portare, An Analysis of Army Thermal Transmissivity Calculations, Kaman Sciences Corp., Arlington, VA., report DNA-TR-84-388, available as ADA176959, November 1984: 'This report covers a review of the present procedures employed by the Army in calculating thermal transmissivity. As result of the analysis it was determined that the present approach does not accurately predict the transmissivity. The report discusses a comparison between the present methodology and that employed in the revised DNA EM-1 handbook. A procedure is recommended which will correct existing deficiencies.'

This 136-page long report compares George F. Riley's report, Empirical Determination of Scattered Light Transport Through the Lower Atmosphere, U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, AFCRL-68-0256, AD0673999, May 1965 and the U.K. Atomic Weapons Research Establishment report AWRE-O28/75 (1975), Thermal transmissivities in North-West Europe, with a rigorous theoretical thermal radiation emission and transmission analysis method developed by Kaman Sciences Corporation as an update to Dolan's DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. It summarizes all of the new revisions (including thermal partitions, thermal output curves as a function of yield, height of burst, and interaction of the fireball with the surface, as well as thermal transmission through the atmosphere) made to the updated thermal radiation phenomena chapter of Dolan's DNA-EM-1, although its main focus is on the prediction of thermal transmission from tactical nuclear explosions by the U.S. Army to order to defend Northwest Europe (specifically giving data for Germany and Britain) in the event of a Russian invasion, like the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

For Britain, it gives a mean atmospheric H₂O content of 3.467 g/m³ for the cold, dry fall-winter seasons (falling exponentially with increasing altitude, so that at 5 km height the concentration is 9.2 times lower), and 13.87 g/m³ for the warmer and hence more humid spring-summer seasons (falling with increasing altitude by a factor of 14 at a height of 5 km). The all-year mean sea level water content of the atmosphere in the U.K. is therefore about 8.7 g/m³. The CO₂ content of the atmosphere is assumed to be 0.0314% irrespective of altitude. Kaman Sciences Corporation (KSC) developed the TRAX computer code with 18 wavelength bands from 0.25-3.8 microns to accurately evaluate atmospheric transmission with infrared absorption by H₂O, CO₂ and CH₄, ultraviolet absorption by O₂ and O₃, and absorption and scattering by atmospheric dusts and aerosols. [For some background research on this, see: Ralph G. Eldridge and John C. Johnson, "Distribution of Irradiance in Haze and Fog," Journal of the Optical Society of America, vol. 52, pp. 787-791 (1962); Matthew G. Gibbons, Frank I. Laughridge, John R. Nichols, and Nicholas A. Krause, "Transmission and Scattering Properties of a Nevada Desert Atmosphere under Cloudy Conditions," Journal of the Optical Society of America, vol. 52, 38-39 (1962); and A. K. Ghosh, “Effect of Scattering by Haze on the Spectral Distribution of Light and Its Colour Coordinates”, Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy, vol. 39A, pp. 348-63 (1973).]

It also includes a proper treatment of the reflection of scattered and direct radiations by various types of ground surface and by a cloud layer at various altitudes. It begins by updating the theoretical models used to calculate fireball phenomenology and the emission of nuclear weapons thermal radiation.

Discussion of detailed thermal revisions presented in John R. Keith and Anthony F. Portare, An Analysis of Army Thermal Transmissivity Calculations, Kaman Sciences Corp., Arlington, VA., report DNA-TR-84-388 (1984)

One of the most important things this report presents is the disclosure that the time to the final peak radiating power was underestimated by the 1960s and 1970s computer simulations of nuclear fireballs, because although those computer codes included fireball opacity due to air ionization, they failed to include the extra opacity due to the presence of the bomb debris which soon mixes with the ionized air in the fireball, slowing down the rate that thermal radiation is emitted from the surface of the fireball, and protracting the duration of the thermal pulse while reducing the effective radiating temperature and the thermal power. (Similarly, the soil or other surface material incorporated within the fireball in a surface burst increases the opacity, slowing thermal emission, reducing the radiating power and increasing the time to final thermal maximum, as the report states on page 45: "The surface burst has a much smaller second [final] thermal power maximum and a somewhat longer time to second [final] maximum [than an air burst near sea level].")

Page 31:

"The basic data used in the free air burst model are based upon a set of four detailed theoretical radiation-hydrodynamic code calculations run with the RHGEN code at yields of 4, 14, 100, and 6600 kt. The first three correspond to three U.S. nuclear atmospheric bursts which have been measured and analyzed in great detail. The RHGEN code contains the latest air opacity data, a realistic [bomb] debris mixing model and an improved technique for shock front location which is necesssary to provide good definition of the early time pulse characteristics. The [bomb] debris mixing model was found to be necessary to provide good comparisons with measured second maxima times and powers [the earlier version of the fireball thermal emission theory, which omitted the mixing of debris with the ionized air in the fireball, did not fit nuclear test data well, as shown in Dolan's 1972 DNA-EM-1 comparison curves].

"... The increased opacity due to the [bomb] debris contribution seems to slow the radial heat flow near the time of minimum, increases the pressure in the fireball, causing a continued expansion with a resulting delay in the time of second maximum. The increased opacity causes an increase in the effective fireball radius, a decrease in the effective temperature, and a lower power.

"... The time of breakaway is about one-third that of minimum so that a very small amount of energy is released prior to this time [thus the final pulse is the most important for thermal emission calculations]."

Page 33:

"The surface burst model is based to a large extent on analysis of nuclear test results because of the difficulty in representing the experimental results entirely from theoretical results ... For times through minimum the fireball development is the same as that for a free air burst but with a different effective yield. The parameters needed to obtain the spectral power at the later times were determined from experimental data. ...

"If the fireball contacts the surface prior to shock formation, the low altitude air burst is [then] transformed into a surface burst. The spectral power computed in the code always refers to that radiated from a sphere. For the surface burst an effective yield factor of 1.96 is used ... [Diagrams show the fireball from a low air burst expanding spherically until it intersects the ground, after which it reflects off the grouns, becoming effectively a hemisphere as in a surface burst, when the fireball radius exceeds about twice the altitude of burst.]"

On pages 35-7, a model is given for the interaction of the air burst with the surface in the event that the contact of occurs after the shock wave has formed: "negligible energy is transmitted to the surface". The shock wave simply bounces off the ground and flattens the base of the fireball, so that the fireball changes shape into a truncated sphere (for nuclear test data on this effect, see Eric M. Jones and Jeffrey D. Colvin, Fireball Shape as a Height-of-Burst Diagnostic, Los Alamos report LA-7833-MS, 1979):

Chapter 4: X-Ray Radiation Phenomena

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Change 1. Chapter 4. X-Ray Radiation Phenomena. 38 pages, July 1978, AD-A955388.

Treatment of X-ray radiation output from nuclear weapons of different designs, from 'cold' (1 keV initial radiating temperature, high mass-to-yield ratio designs) to 'hot' (10 keV, low mass-to-yield ratio) X-ray weapons, from the perspective of the use of X-rays by ABM warheads to damage missiles in space by the recoil from ablation. Since recoil forces from ablation caused by X-rays from a fission primary bomb are used to compress and heat fusion materials in Teller-Ulam weapons, this chapter is best not discussed in detail. The enhanced neutron weapon is employed in ABM warheads to melt down the fissile material inside the warheads of incoming ICBMs by using neutrons. The weight of useful neutron shields for high-energy neutron exposure to ICBM warheads is prohibitive in terms of the numbers and sizes of warheads and decoys that ICBMs can carry.

Chapter 5: Nuclear Radiation Phenomena

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Change 1. Chapter 5. Nuclear Radiation Phenomena. 152 pages, July 1978, AD-A955389, 4.6 MB PDF file

This chapter provides initial nuclear radiation predictions in detail for eight different designs of weapons including the neutron bomb, the detailed neutron induced activity from an air burst over various types of soil, the radiation dose prediction for 1 kt, 10 kt and 100 kt yield underwater nuclear explosions of various yields for various wind and ocean water current conditions, and the accurate prediction of fallout patterns for various wind speeds - the more detailed and accurate basis for the far more simplified and approximate scaling system provided in Glasstone and Dolan, Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977. (After 1984, the 8 categories of nuclear weapon design used from 1972-84 for predicting initial nuclear radiation outputs, was extended to 13 categories; modern nuclear weapons have far less high explosive and tamper thicknesses and generally emit far more initial radiation than did the heavy Nagasaki bomb.) It also discusses detailed predictions of water surface burst fallout and rainout dose hazards from air bursts where part of the mushroom cloud encounters a rainstorm, which is particularly important in lower yield nuclear detonations below 60 kt, where the cloud height is not too high and so is more likely to mix with the rain-making parts of rainclouds or thunderstorms. The updated August 1981 page changes to this chapter provide detailed quantitative predictions of rainout doses.



Above: the older January 1968 single volume Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DASA EM-1 (see A. Schiff, Problems with Predicting Fallout Radiation Hazard in Tactical Battlefield Situations, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report UCRL-51440, ADA385024, 1973, pp. 4-5), used the 4 October 1956 Australian-British Buffalo-R2 1.5 kt surface burst at Maralinga for an independent check of a 1 kt fallout prediction based on scaling fallout data from American tests in the Nevada and Pacific. This was confusing, since the Buffalo-R2 shot was fired under rare conditions of extreme wind shear to contain the surface burst fallout locally around the test site at Maralinga in Australia, and in any case the north-eastern part of the fallout pattern was suspect as it had to be corrected for contamination remaining from the Buffalo-R1 tower burst which had taken place a week earlier. One of the great strengths of Dolan's revision of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons was the move away from scaling American test data and trying to check the validity against independent British fallout data, to use instead a computer fallout prediction system called DELFIC (DEfense Land Fallout Interpretative Code) based on theoretical physics and chemistry, and compare those purely theoretical predictions (which calculates cloud rise based on the empirically-justified assumption that 45% of the detonation energy is waste heat left in the hot air behind the shock wave, which gets drawn into the fireball by the reversed winds, causing the mushroom cloud to rise buoyantly as soon as the fireball reaches pressure equilibrium with the surrounding atmosphere). DELFIC fundamentals are summarized in the PDF report here.

Above: Dolan's comparison of a DELFIC-derived idealized gamma dose rate fallout pattern with the observed fallout from the 1.65 kt Nevada 1962 surface burst Small Boy, in Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons DNA-EM-1, 1972, page 5-69 (R/hr at 1 hour after detonation). The Small Boy test fallout situation had an effective wind velocity of 8 knots and an effective wind directional shear of 30 degrees between the ground and cloud top. The idealized prediction is for 10 knots and 15 degrees shear, and includes corrections for terrain shielding and instrument response. The measured 10 R/hr contour extended for 9 statute miles downwind from ground zero. The agreement between the DELFIC-based idealized prediction and data is good, taking account of the differences in windshear and wind speed.Above: 1 hour reference time (assuming fallout is deposited by then, which is not the case for large yields) gamma ideal plane fallout dose rates from DELFIC calculations, as predicted in Philip J. Dolan's originally secret manual Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 5, Nuclear Radiation Phenomena, August 1981 revision. DELFIC calculations used a lognormal particle size-activity distribution (median radius 123 microns), based on ground-collected fallout from the Teapot-Ess shallow underground test.



The later March 1990 revision of the DNA-EM-1 Nuclear Radiation Phenomena chapter (AD-C045890) is based on DNAF-1 and provides curves for yields of 0.003 kt - 100 Mt and winds of 0.5-100 m/s, and gives a catalogue of 27 precalculated fallout patterns covering 9 different yields and 3 different wind speeds. DNAF-1 is a simplified version of DELFIC, using a fixed fission product bomb deposit activity to gamma dose rate conversion factor of 6,973 (R/hr)/(kt/km²) for ideal surfaces (substantially higher than the figure of 5,180, used in the WSEG-10 fallout model, but lower than the figure of 7,770 used in the SEER3 model). However, it should be noted that fallout analyst Dr R. Robert Rapp of the RAND Corporation in his December 1966 report RM-5164-PR, An Error in the Prediction of Fallout Radiation, argued for a figure of only 2,300 (R/hr)/(kt/km²) from the 1.2 kt Nevada 1951 Jangle-Sugar surface burst data (see A. Schiff, Problems with Predicting Fallout Radiation Hazard in Tactical Battlefield Situations, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report UCRL-51440, ADA385024, 1973, page 12). The Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1957, 1962/64 and 1977 use values of about 3,200, 10,000, and 7,500, respectively. (The effects of terrain roughness, instrument response, instrument shielding by the body of the person holding the radiation meter, and fallout composition variations due to fractionation of fission products and neutron induced activity are given for a large number of American and British nuclear tests in the report here. Generally the body of the person holding a radiac meter reduces the reading by 25% for gamma radiation from deposited fallout, while terrain irregularities absorb another 25% of the gamma dose that would be received over a smooth infinite contaminated surface.) Because DELFIC fission product fractionation calculates indicate that on average 67% of the 1-hour local fallout activity is from refractory decay chains distributed through the volume of molten particles at early times and 33% is from volatile decay chains distributed on the surfaces of particles after they have condensed, DELFIC decay rate calculations showing that the local fallout gamma dose rate is proportional to t^-1.26 (which fits DELFIC output to within 10 percent between 15 minutes and 1,000 hours after burst) is used for land surface bursts in the revised March 1990 DNA-EM-1 chapter Nuclear Radiation Phenomena, instead of the older t^-1.2 Way-Wigner decay rule used by Glasstone and Dolan. The use of the t^-1.26 decay rate for gamma dose rates from land surface bursts in the revised chapter gives long-term dose predictions slightly smaller than predicted using t^-1.2. This is not important because in reality fractionation varies with particle size and therefore downwind distance (the smaller fallout particles far downwind are less depleted in volatile decay chains, see the reports here, here, here, here, here and here), which alters the decay rate slightly downwind, and neutron induced activities in fallout also affect the decay rate. The March 1990 revision includes a better fallout prediction system for shallow underground bursts caused by earth-penetrator warheads which destroy hardened targets by ground shock and cratering action: see the reports here and here.

Above: example of an underwater burst base surge dose rate and expansion prediction given in Philip J. Dolan's originally secret manual Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 5, Nuclear Radiation Phenomena, August 1981 revision.Above: example of an underwater burst expanding water pool dose rate prediction given in Philip J. Dolan's originally secret manual Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 5, Nuclear Radiation Phenomena, August 1981 revision.

Philip J. Dolan's 1972 DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons gives a far more complete treatment of all the underwater burst problems than unclassified sources, and older confidental manuals. The final sections of Chapter 2 on blast and shock phenomena (306 pages) includes water shock, base surge, water waves from surface and underwater bursts, and so on, while chapter 5 on nuclear radiation phenomena gives computer predictions of base surge and water 'pool' dose rates and accumulated doses for yields of 1, 10 and 100 kt for various depths underwater and proximities of the bomb to the ocean bottom (the 1958 Umbrella test was detonated on the seabed, so there is evidence to validate such a preduction). The base surge part of that computer model was developed by I. O. Huebsch of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense laboratory; see his 106 pages long May 1963 report USNRDL-TR-653, A Model for Computing Base-Surge Dose-Rate Histories for Underwater Nuclear Bursts (Confidential-Formerly Restricted Data):

'A model for calculating transit-radiation dose rates and doses from the base surge of an underwater nuclear burst is described. Calculated values are compared with measurements made at Hardtack Wahoo and Umbrella, Crossroads Baker, and Wigwam, and with predicted values for two proposed underwater shots. The model is a geometrical-radiological representation of the base surge, whose characteristics depend on weapon yield, burst depth and surface wind speed. The model is estimated to be valid for 1-kt to 100-kt underwater bursts for minimum depths of 20 to 90 ft, respectively, and for times at least 30 seconds after burst. Dose rates and doses can be computed for either fixed or moving points in the radiation field. The comparisons show that the calculated values, in almost all cases, agree within +/- 50% of the measured values. (Abstract UNCLASSIFIED.)'

This base surge radiation model for underwater bursts was later supplemented with a code that predicts dosage from the expanding 'pool' of contaminated water (which is water that has been heated and contaminated with fission products by the pulsating bubble of the detonation as it rises, before erupting through the water). In nuclear tests, underwater radiation probes were able to distinguish this effect from the base surge radiation which was measured by probes above the water. The full computer code was finished in 1968 and is called 'Daedalus' (the 'cunning worker' of Greek mythology), the underwater equivalent of the land surface burst fallout computer code DELFIC:

Edward A. Schuert, et al., DAEDALUS: A Gamma Exposure Rate Prediction Code for Underwater Nuclear Explosions, U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, report USNRDL-TR-68-137, July 1968, Secret-Formerly Restricted Data.

Above: typical composition of representative soil types for calculating neutron induced activity, given in Philip J. Dolan's originally secret manual Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 5, Nuclear Radiation Phenomena, August 1981 revision.

For air bursts that do not produce early fallout unless there is rainout, neutron induced activity is treated in detail in Dolan's manual which makes it clear that the gamma dose rate at 1 hour after burst above ground due to neutron induced activity can vary by a factor of 4,540, depending on the amounts of manganese and sodium in the soil. The minimum gamma hazard from neutron induced activity would occur clean Pensacola sand (99.982% pure silicate) which is 0.001% sodium, 0% manganese, and 46.65% silicon by mass. For such almost pure silicate sand, silicon-31 is the only significant gamma dose contributor, although it is trivial in other soils (because they contain higher manganese or soldium levels).

Because there is so little sodium-24 in this soil, Si-31 stands out initially (at 1 hour after burst, 52% of the gamma dose rate would be due to Si-31 with a 2.62 hr half life, and 48% to Na-24 with a 15.0 hr half life). The worst neutron induced activity danger, 4,540 times more intense, would come from Hawaiian lava clay soil, which is 2.94% manganese by mass, resulting in a massive amount of Mn-56 (2.58 hr half life), although no other significant gamma dose contributors. The hazards from all other soils and also from sea water (containing sodium chloride) fall between these two extreme examples, and is mainly due to sodium-24 and manganese-56.


Above: decay rates of the different soil neutron induced activities, given in Philip J. Dolan's originally secret manual Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 5, Nuclear Radiation Phenomena, August 1981 revision.

The gamma dose rate variations due to the type of soil far outweigh possible variations due to the design of the nuclear weapon used. Hence a reasonable prediction is possible provided that the target is known. The peak neutron induced activity generally occurs at a depth of 6-7 cm so there is considerable self-shielding by the soil which makes the hazard far less than you would naively expect if assuming the activity is in the top surface layer of soil.


Above: neutron induced activity dose rates, decay rates, and doses for Hiroshima and Nagasaki air bursts where fallout was negligible at ground zero ("DS02" indicates 2002 dosimetry system, the latest data). Notice that although the gun-type assembly Hiroshima bomb had a smaller total yield (16 kt), it leaked far more neutrons than the implosion type 21 kt Nagasaki bomb, hence creating more neutron-induced activity in the ground below! This was because the light hydrogen nuclei (protons) predominating in the exploded TNT molecules (surrounding the core of the Nagasaki bomb) slowed down neutrons very efficiently, unlike the case of the steel Hiroshima bomb. In an head-on elastic collision, by the principles of conservation of momentum and energy, a neutron scattered by a proton (hydrogen nucleus) can lose all of its energy (like a head on billiard ball collision!), whereas a neutron elastically scattered by a heavy nucleus like iron only loses a trivial amount of energy (although in practice, elastic collisions are rare and inelastic collisions occur, where the heavy nucleus absorbs more of the energy and then emits that excess energy as a gamma ray). This is why the heavier iron atoms in the steel nose forging of the Hiroshima bomb scattered neutrons without absorbing much neutron energy, whereas the thick TNT layer around the core of the Nagasaki bomb reduced the escaping neutron fluence markedly. Bomb design details are thus vitally important for accurate neutron induced activity calculations.

Chapter 6: Transient-Radiation Effects on Electronics (TREE) Phenomena

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Change 1. Chapter 6. Transient-Radiation Effects on Electronics (TREE) Phenomena. 16 pages, July 1978, AD-A955390.

Concerned with close-in intense initial nuclear radiation effects on electronics in missiles subjected to high altitude nuclear explosions from ABM warheads, etc. In November 1990, this material was used to create the new Chapter 22, Damage to Space Systems.

Chapter 7: Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Phenomena

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Change 1. Chapter 7. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Phenomena. 40 pages, July 1978, AD-A955391, 1.3 MB PDF file.

This vital chapter has some graphs deleted for high altitude bursts which are now available from another document but provides complete, quantitative surface burst EMP source region data that is lacking from Glasstone and Dolan, 1977. For example, the July 1978 page changes to this chapter includes graphs (Figures 7-25 to 7-35) showing all of the calculated EMP peak field strengths, including transverse and radial electric field, azimuth magnetic field and air condutivity versus time, for 100 kt and 1 Mt surface bursts compared to the peak air overpressure at the corresponding distances, plus the waveforms for four locations and the frequency spectra derived from the waveforms using Fourier analysis. The graph showing the radial Compton current in a surface burst has been deleted from the chapter, but it can be seen from another report openly available on surface burst EMP physics: see Fig 3-2 on page 34 of the report by Conrad L. Longmire and James L. Gilbert, Theory of EMP Coupling in the Source Region, Defense Nuclear Agency, report DNA 5687F, DTIC document reference ADA108751. Also Fig 3-3 on page 37 gives air conductivity, although this data is only partially deleted from DNA-EM-1 Chapter 7, since although one graph of air conductivity versus time at 500 m distance is deleted, another set of curves are included giving air conductivity versus time for four separate distances corresponding to various peak air blast overpressures which include 500 m for the highest intensity. The chapter also gives the data available on prompt gamma ray outputs for different yields of nuclear weapon, showing that the fraction of bomb yield radiated in prompt gamma rays can vary from 0.5% for small inefficient designs to 0.1% for efficient typical megaton yield warheads. In addition, it shows that the peak E-field at the deposition region radius in a surface burst varies as a weak function of yield, from 1,300 v/m for 1 kt and 1,670 v/m for 10 Mt. The deposition region radius is 5.8 km for 100 kt and 7.2 km for 1 Mt. This deposition region radius is defined by Glasstone and Dolan as the range where the peak air conductivity attained due to ionization is 10^-7 mho/m (S/m in SI units). The radiated peak electric field outside the deposition region (inside that region the EMP is far more complicated, due to the effect of the air's conductivity on the EMP radiation) at distance R from ground zero in a surface burst is E = E₀(R₀/R) volts/metre, where E₀ is the peak electric field at the deposition radius (about 1,650 v/m in a 1 Mt surface burst) and R₀ is the deposition region radius (7.2 km for a 1 Mt surface burst). Hence at 7.2 km from a 1 Mt surface burst, the vertically polarized (horizontally propagating) radiated EMP has a peak electric field strength of 1,650 v/m, and at double that distance the field is half as strong.

Chapter 8: Phenomena Affecting Electromagnetic Propagation

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 1. Phenomenology. Change 1. Chapter 8. Phenomena Affecting Electromagnetic Propagation. 94 pages, July 1978, AD-A955392, 3.6 MB PDF file. This chapter is also available here.

Essential data on fireball rise, expansion and settling back for high altitude bursts, predictions of debris transfer across the magnetic equator to conjugate regions, and the calculation of ionization patch-caused attenuation of radio and radar signals in decibels from these bursts for radio transmissions that require ionospheric reflection or penetration of the ionosphere to reach satellites (uplink), and also the problem of receiving communications from satellites where the transmitter power is limited and can't be increased to overcome attenuation (satellite downlink). Professor David Jenn gives some extracts from the revised version of this chapter here. 'Scintillation' is the fading and waveform distortion effect caused by multipath propagation through the striated fireball plasma which has been produced by the interaction of the expanding ionized fireball with the earth’s magnetic field.




‘For detonations below about 80 km and weapon yields greater than 100 kt, absorption through the fireball is expected to exceed 25 decibels for about 50 seconds at 10 gigahertz and for longer than 100 seconds at 1 gigahertz.’ – DNA-EM-1, 1978, c. 8, p. 19.

PDF download of Philip J. Dolan (Editor), DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Part 2 preliminary pages and contents pages, Change 2, August 1981 (50 pages, 1.7 MB)

Chapter 9: Introduction to Damage Criteria

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 9. Introduction to Damage Criteria. 187 pages, July 1978, AD-A955393

Extensive tables, graphs and nuclear test data for correlating the phenomenology of the explosion with damage results; much essential background data such as the EMP energy needed to damage different kinds of electronic component.

Chapter 10: Personnel Casualties

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 10. Personnel Casualties. 38 pages, July 1978, AD-A955394

‘

Collapse of a brick house is expected to result in approximately 25% mortality, 20% serious injury and 10% light injury to the occupants. Reinforced concrete structures, though much more resistant to blast forces, will produce almost 100% mortality on collapse ... based on data from British World War II experience ... for cases where the population expects bombing and most personnel have selected the safest places in the buildings.’ – Philip J. Dolan, editor, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defence, DNA-EM-1, 1978, c. 10, p. 5, Secret – Restricted Data.

Similar to Glasstone and Dolan 1977, but also includes a set of very detailed graphs showing the time-dependent incapacitation response of humans to extremely high initial radiation doses from enhanced neutron weapons, based on human irradiation accidents and animal experiments. Useful extracts from revised versions of EM-1 are given on pages 1-26 and 1-27 (new data on acute radiation effects versus dose, giving the mid-line LD50 as 385 rem) of the White House April 2005 National Planning Scenarios civil defence planning manual here, see also the document on treatment for radiation casualties (here), and the NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of NBC Defensive Operations, AMedP-6(B), U.S. Army Field Manual FM 8-9, February 1996, which gives the following illustration on neutron bomb radiation effects from this chapter of DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons:



Above: ‘These figures have been developed from subhuman primate studies at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (for times less than 60 minutes, postexposure) and from an assessment of how radiation sickness signs and symptoms will affect the performance of combat tasks (for times greater than 60 minutes, postexposure). ... The prediction associated with those identified as being "combat effective" is that they will be suffering radiation sickness signs and symptoms of such a nature that they will be able to maintain their performance of at least 75 percent of their preexposure performance level. Those predicted as being "performance degraded" could be operating at a performance level between 25 and 75 percent of their preexposure performance. Those predicted as being "combat ineffective" should be considered as being capable of performing their tasks at 25 percent (at best) of their preexposure performance level. Of course, these predictions are based on combatants suffering only one stressor, that being ionizing radiation exposures. The prediction of performance capacity of those having received ionizing radiation exposures will now have to be considered together with how other stressors (conventional injury, endemic disease, continuous duty (sleeplessness), time in combat, fatigue, etc.) might affect the total performance capability of the force.’

See also the report by Siegmund J. Baum, et al., Nuclear Weapon Effect Research at PSR (Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation) - 1983: Symptomatology of Acute Radiation Effects in Humans after Exposure to Doses of 75 to 4500 Rads (cGy) Free-in-Air, report ADA166280, August 1984, and the Medical NBC Battlebook, USACHPPM Tech Guide 244, May 2000. Page 388 of David E. Hogan's Disaster Medicine (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2nd ed., 2007) shows that 0 of 53 Chernobyl personnel exposed in 1986 to whole body gamma doses of 200-400 cGy died, 7 out of 23 exposed to 420-630 cGy died at 2-7 weeks post exposure, and 17 out of 20 exposed to doses of 500-1,600 cGy died at 4-50 days post exposure. This purely radiation data naturally indicates a much higher LD50 than the synergism results of combined thermal and nuclear radiation casualty data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Thermal burns lower the nuclear radiation LD50 if the wounds tend to become infected, since radiation reduces the white blood cell count for a few weeks following exposure, preventing the body from coping with infections.)



Using the DNA-EM-1 manual, USAF Intelligence Targetting Guide, Air Force Pamphlet 14-210 Intelligence, 1998, Attachment 7 Collateral Damage states that negligible collateral damage to personnel is defined as 2/3rds of the thermal exposure required to produce 1st degree burns to bare skin (moderate sunburn type injury), 5 R of nuclear radiation, or 3 psi peak overpressure; moderate collateral damage to personnel is 1st degree burns (moderate sunburn) to bare skin, 20 R of nuclear radiation or 5 psi peak overpressure, and emergency collateral damage is 2/3rds of the thermal exposure for 2nd degree bare skin burns (severe sunburn, i.e., blistering), 100 R of nuclear radiation, or 10 psi peak overpressure:

'When nuclear weapons are employed at a considerable distance from friendly troops, safety is a matter of concern from the following viewpoints:

'Areas of fallout contamination from surface bursts may preclude or interfere with friendly force use of, or passage through, these areas.

'A reasonable margin of safety must be provided for military and civilian populations of friendly and neutral countries in accordance with the area commander's weapons restraint policy.

'Temporary dazzle during daylight conditions, loss of night visual adaptation, or retinal burns may handicap friendly forces if they are not warned to protect their eyes at the time of detonation. ... detailed target analysis collateral damage avoidance tables for each weapon system and yield can be obtained in FM 101-31-2/ AFP 200-31, Volume II, Nuclear Weapons Employment Effects Data.'

Chapter 11: Damage to Structures

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 11. Damage to Structures. 50 Pages, July 1978, AD-A955385.

Above: This railroad bridge segment at 1,800 feet from the 37 kt PRISCILLA Nevada test in 1957 survived a peak overpressure of 450 psi but had severe distorting to its internal structure.

Buildings and bridges (a summary of data from the Defense Intelligence Agency Physical Vulnerability Handbook).

Chapter 12: Mechanical Damage Distances for Surface Ships and Submarines Subjected to Nuclear Explosions

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 12. Mechanical Damage Distances for Surface Ships and Submarines Subjected to Nuclear Explosions. 147 pages, July 1978, AD-A955396.

Above: the multimedia supplement to this chapter is this U.S. Navy film, Nuclear Effects at Sea which states that for destroyer-type ships, a peak air blast overpressure of 3 psi (20 kPa) produces injury to personnel due to debris and bodily displacement, 6 psi (40 kPa) causes light damage to the superstructure equipment such as radar dishes, 10 psi (70 kPa) causes moderate damage, while 14 psi (100 kPa) causes severe damage (defined as hull rupture, flooding and sinking).

Chapter 13: Damage to Aircraft

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 13. Damage to Aircraft. 81 pages, July 1978, ADA955397, 4.8 MB PDF file.

In June 1992 this chapter on aircraft damage was rewritten by J. R. Drake, et al., to include the effects of nuclear cloud dust intake and resulting jet aircraft engine performance (Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons,, DNA-EM-1, Chapter 20, Damage to Aircraft, RDA-TR-2-2261-2201-001, June 1992. There is also a separate Handbook for Analysis of Nuclear Weapons Effects on Aircraft, DNA 2084-1 Volume 1 and DNA 2084-2 Volume II.)

Chapter 14: Damage to Military Field Equipment

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 14. Damage to Military Field Equipment. 46 pages, July 1978, AD-A955398.

Page 1 states: ‘One of the primary uses of nuclear weapons would be for the destruction of military field equipment.’




Above: tank (460 m from ground zero) and machine gun emplacement (1,550 m from ground zero) surviving the 31 kt CHARLIE nuclear air drop from a B-50 bomber, detonating at 1,050 m altitude at Nevada on 22 April 1952 (the first nuclear explosion to be broadcast live on TV; the vacuum tube electronics survived the EMP with just a click and brief interference due to temporary ‘radioflash’).



This chapter uses and cites in its bibliography both American and British atmospheric nuclear test data. There are a relatively large number of useful reports on British tests on military field equipment in Maralinga, since those tests - although far fewer in number than the American tests at Nevada - were utilised for many experiments. In particular, British policy at nuclear tests was to leave military vehicles exposed to tests with their engines running, which helped to evaluate the risks of ignition due to blast damage (due to carburetor damage or fuel line rupture, etc.) rather than just thermal ignition. See also the blast damage tables compiled in the Medical NBC Battlebook, USACHPPM Tech Guide 244, May 2000.

Chapter 15: Damage to Forest Stands

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 15. Damage to Forest Stands. 64 pages, July 1978, AD-A955399.

This chapter is extremely important and detailed, showing detailed test results for the blowdown and thermal ignition of different types of forests as a function of blast pressure, thermal exposure, tree density, humidity, and elevation angle of the burst. Thermal ignition in forests depends on holes in the leaf canopy and on the amount of dry leaf litter on the ground: green leaves were found to shield thermal radiation by giving off clouds of black smoke during exposure at nuclear tests. The smoke shielded the ground from thermal radiation, so ignition is not nearly as easy as you might naively expect. This is why forest stands did not burn in nuclear tests (although Lynn Eden, author of the damnably lying Whole World on Fire anti-civil defence spin will, I expect, probably resort to politically expedient lying claims that the test trees survived fire by 'heroic' countermeasures like magic, instead of the failure of a brief pulse of heat to ignite fires!). There is no information about any of this in Glasstone and Dolan 1977.


Above: Operation BLOWDOWN, an Australian-British-American 0.05 kt test on a 43 m high tower in a rainforest at Iron Range, Northern Queensland, on 18 July 1963 to assess the dynamic pressures required for tree blowdown, and the difficulty in moving through the blowdown area.

'The foliage making up the crowns [upper branches and leaves] of the trees, while it has a high probability of being exposed to the full free-field radiation environment from air bursts ... may, however, materially reduce the exposure of the forest floor by generating quantities of smoke and steam, as well as by direct shading.' - Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, - Chapter 15, Damage to Forest Stands, paragraph 15-9.

'Fuels seldom burn vigorously, regardless of the wind conditions, when fuel moisture content exceeds about 16 percent. This corresponds to an equilibrium moisture content for a condition of 80 percent relative humidity. Rainfall of only a fraction of an inch will render most fuels temporarily nonflammable and may extinguish fires in thin fuels ... Surface fuels in the interior of timber stands are exposed to reduced wind velocities; generally, these fuels retain their moisture as a result of shielding from the wind and shading from sunlight by the canopy.' - Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, 1978 revision, Chapter 15, Damage to Forest Stands, page 15-60.

This chapter on forest damage was later partitioned to treat separately blast blowdown (chapter 18, Airblast Damage to Forests, edited by Applied Research Associates of Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1993) and thermal ignition of fires (chapter 16, Fires from Nuclear Weapons, was edited by Pacific-Sierra Corporation, California, in 1992; and chapter 17, Fire Damage to Forests, deals specifically with forest fires).

See also the reports linked here and here.
Chapter 16: Damage to Missiles

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 16. Damage to Missiles. 121 pages, July 1978, AD-A955400.

Explains how thermal radiation ablation can degrade thin missile metal skins before blast arrival, and how thermal ablation or blast waves can cause large g-forces to the missiles. Generally missiles can withstand head-on blast and heat very well since they are designed to take atmospheric drag forces and re-entry ablation in their stride, but a side-on exposure is more serious. There is also the issue of how hard missiles are while in storage on the ground in silos or on mobile platforms. Missiles in hardened, reinforced concrete silos can withstand vast peak air overpressures, 1,000-3,000 psi (or more with a suitable silo lining), but they are still vulnerable to excessive ground shock and cratering action. Damage to Missiles was later moved to Chapter 21 of EM-1, and in 1996 was updated to include terrorist/rogue nation missiles carrying warheads that include chemical or biological weapons.


Above: illustration in DNA-EM-1 (1978) for analyzing the vulnerability of a major threat from proliferation: cheap and portable thermonuclear battlefield SRBM weapons. Above 30-km, X-rays and other radiation are the most potent means to destroy a missile in flight. Below 30-km altitude, missiles are vulnerable to blast, while their plutonium is still vulnerable to meltdown due to neutron radiation. 130-kPa peak overpressure from a 1-kt detonation or 83-kPa from 300-kt would destroy a missile. The heat flash needed to burn through a metal missile skin would only occur well within the fireball, but lesser heating softens the metal and makes it more vulnerable to subsequent blast. Shooting down a missile is easiest while it is in its initial ‘boost phase’, immediately after launch. ICBM and SLBM weapons take about 3 minutes of boost phase to reach an altitude of 200 km. The individual warheads then separate from the missile ‘bus’. Attempts to confuse radar using metal balloons (as decoy warheads), and pieces of wire chaff to reflect back false signals, can actually be counter-productive, as they simply create a bigger overall radar signal. A sufficiently powerful ABM warhead detonated in space can affect a very wide area, encompassing both the decoys and the real warheads! The use of specially designed 95% clean ABM weapons can avert a destructive ground-level EMP and fallout risks.

Chapter 17: Radio Frequency Signal Degradation Relevant to Communications and Radar Systems

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Chapter 17. Radio Frequency Signal Degradation Relevant to Communications and Radar Systems. 32 pages, July 1978, report reference: AD-A955401.

Professor David Jenn gives some extracts from the revised version of this chapter here.



Above: as a multimedia supplement to the Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, this excellent originally secret U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency film, High-Altitude Nuclear Weapons Effects: Part Two, Systems Interference (16 minutes), discusses the interference to radio and radar signals by high altitude nuclear detonations.



Above: the planned U.S. ABM system's missile detector radars and communications satellites must overcome signal attenuation due to atmospheric ionization by a detonation.

Appendices A thru F

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. Damage Criteria. Change 1. Appendices A thru F. 112 pages, July 1978, AD-A955402.

Dolan's derivation of the Rankine-Hugoniot equations of shock waves and also brief but very detailed and useful summary-abstracts from all the secret reports used in the compilation of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, reports like DASA-1200 (Nuclear Weapons Blast Phenomenology) and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company extensive series of reports Theoretical Models for Nuclear Fireballs, giving the results of computer simulations for nuclear fireballs. These appendices also provide tabular data on the overpressures and dynamic pressures required to cause differing degrees of damage the structure classes listed in Chapter 11, such as all the different types of buildings and bridges known, as a function of yield (pressures to cause damage vary according to the duration of the blast wave, which is yield-dependent particularly for big buildings and/or for wind drag/dynamic pressure sensitive targets).

The early history of the Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons


Above: Dr. Gerald Woodrow Johnson as Test Director of OPERATION PLUMBBOB, 1957. Johnson (born 1917), graduated from Washington State College in 1937, received the MSc degree from the same college in 1939, and was awarded a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1947. He was active in the testing of nuclear weapons.

'After teaching physics at Washington State University for two years, Johnson began working in solid state and neutron physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1949. In 1951 he headed the Analysis Branch, Nuclear Weapons Effects, in the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. Johnson joined the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in 1953 and was later named associate director for testing, responsible for nuclear testing in Nevada and the Pacific. In 1957, he became the laboratory's first director of the Plowshare Program, an effort to develop civil, industrial, and scientific uses of nuclear explosives. From 1961 to 1963 Johnson worked in the Kennedy Administration as chairman of the military liaison committee to the Atomic Energy Commission and also as special assistant to the Secretary of Defense for atomic energy. In this position, Johnson was responsible for the safety of nuclear weapons and the introduction of permissive action links into the U.S. and NATO stockpiles. From 1963 to 1966 he was associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory...'

Until Dolan's 1972 edition of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, it had been a single volume based on test data deemed too sensitive to be allowed widespread general release. The first version, Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, TM 23-200, was edited by Dr Gerald W. Johnson (Chief of the Analysis Branch, U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project) and had been issued in July 1951 and revised in October 1952 as a secret supplement to Glasstone's 456 pages-long openly published Effects book. It was stated to be: 'a special supplement prepared for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory'. The total number of copies of Capabilities of Atomic Weapons printed for use by the U.S. Department of Defense (including the U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project), in each edition was 1,079.

It was initially classified 'Secret - Security Information', which was redefined 'Secret - Restricted Data' after the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Before the Mike thermonuclear weapon test of November 1952, 100 copies of a separate Super Effects Handbook (AFSWP 351-B, second revision in December 1953, Secret - Restricted Data) was issued to top ranking military commanders who had to decide how to deploy megaton yield bombs, but in June 1955 that handbook was incorporated into an updated 530 pages long edition of the Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, and on 30 November 1957 this manual was revised and degraded from 'Secret - Restricted Data' to 'Confidential - Restricted Data'. This confidential manual was given to Britain in exchange for British nuclear test effects data, and was used for British civil defence planning by the Home Office's Scientific Advisory Branch, headed by Dr R. H. Purcell (the Home Office Chief Scientific Advisor).

TM 23-200, Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, is a single volume consisting of 441 pages in 12 sections divided into 2 parts (it has only about a quarter as many pages as Dolan’s 1651 pages long 2-volume 1972 revision DNA-EM-1):

Contents of Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, Washington, D.C., technical manual TM 23-200, November 1957, Confidential (declassified in 1997)

Preliminary pages (22 pages consisting of title pages, distribution list, contents pages, page locator for physical phenomena figures and tables, and foreword)

Part 1: Physical Phenomena

Section 1: Introduction (13 pages)
Section 2: Blast and Shock Phenomena (95 pages)
Section 3: Thermal Radiation Phenomena (19 pages)
Section 4: Nuclear Radiation Phenomena (87 pages)

Part 2: Damage Criteria

Section 5: Introduction (21 pages)
Section 6: Personnel Casualties (20 pages)
Section 7: Damage to Structures (54 pages)
Section 8: Damage to Naval Equipment (15 pages)
Section 9: Damage to Aircraft (11 pages)
Section 10: Damage to Military Field Equipment (23 pages)
Section 11: Forest Stands (15 pages)
Section 12: Miscellaneous Radiation Damage Criteria (10 pages)

Appendix 1: Supplementary Blast Data (32 pages)
Appendix 2: Useful Relationships (10 pages)
Appendix 3: Glossary (7 pages)
Appendix 4: Bibliography (9 pages)

Page 4 of this bibliography cites the report: J. F. Canu and P. J. Dolan, Prediction of Neutron-Induced Activity in Soils, AFSWP-518, June 1957, Secret – Restricted Data.




It has a Foreword on page xxii by Edward N. Parker (Rear Admiral, USN), Chief, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, stating:

'The purpose of this manual is to provide the military Services with a compendium of the phenomena manifested by the detonation of nuclear weapons and the effects thereof in terms of damage to targets of military interest.

'This edition of Capabilities of Atomic Weapons represents the continuing effort by the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project to make available the progressively improved data resulting from field testing, scaled tests, laboratory and theoretical analyses.

'... Every effort has been made to include the best available data which will assist the using Services in meeting their particular operational requirements. As additional or better data becomes available it will be incorporated herein.'

Concerning the early history of EMP as a damaging effect of nuclear weapons, a very brief and but pertinent discussion of EMP effects from low altitude and surface bursts occurs in the November 1957 edition of the Confidential (classified) U.S. Department of Defense, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project manual TM 23-200, Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, section 12, Miscellaneous Radiation Damage Criteria, page 12-2, paragraph 12.2c:

'Electromagnetic Radiation. A large electrical signal is produced by a nuclear weapon detonation. The signal consists of a rather sharp transient signal with a strong frequency component in the neighborhood of 15 kilocycles. Field strengths greater than 1 volt per metre have been detected from megaton yield weapons at a distance of about 2,000 miles. Electronic equipment which responds to rapid, short duration transients can be expected to be actuated by pickup of this electrical noise.'

Capabilities of Atomic Weapons was renamed Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons in 1964:

'In November 1964, DASA (Defence Atomic Support Agency) consolidated nuclear effects knowledge in the classified publication, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. A revised edition was published in 1968. These publications preceded the two-volume Effects Manual-1 (EM-1), first published in 1972. ... Integrating Knowledge: In 1972, DNA published a two-volume nuclear weapons effects manual called Effects Manual-1 (EM-1). Two years later, DNA issued a NATO-releasable [less classified] version of EM-1. These volumes provided critical planning information for unified and specified CINCs, civilian civil defense activities, and NATO officials.' - pages 16 and 19 of the colourful booklet, Defense Soecial Weapons Agency, 50th Anniversary 1947-1997. For a 466 page review published by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in 2002, see AD-A412977 (35.3 Mb).


All civil defence planning is either directly or indirectly (via Glasstone and Dolan Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1977) based on Dolan's Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons. The latest official American civil defence manual, for example, cites directly the secret 1988 revision of 'DNA EM-1 (Effects Manual 1), Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Chapter 10, July 1, 1972'; 'NATIONAL PLANNING SCENARIOS: Created for Use in National, Federal, State, and Local Homeland Security Preparedness Activities, Version 21.2 DRAFT, February 2006'. (The hyperlink for the last named article has been changed to earlier, April 2005, version hosted by the Washington Post newspaper after the later version was deleted from an internet site. There is little difference.)



Above: Cresson Kearny explains how to shield against fallout by making a 'core shelter' inside a building: put cardboard boxes on top of, and around, a strong table that you can shelter under: then put two large waterproof plastic waste bags inside one another in each box, and simply fill them up with water. This saves you messing around with dirt for shielding. Just 5 inches of water halves the intensity of 1 MeV gamma radiation penetrating it. Actually, dirty bombs with U-238 jackets produce a great deal of softer gamma rays from Np-239 (which has a half life of 56 hours and thus contributes a peak percentage to fallout radiation at a time of 1.73 X 56 = 4 days after burst) and U/Np-240, as well as U-237 which has a longer half life and contributes substantially during the two week sheltering period. So protection is even more efficient than Kearny quotes, due to the lower-energy of fallout from dirty hydrogen bombs with neutron capture in U-238. American experiments on fallout shielding by buildings used cobalt-60 gamma rays, which have a mean energy of 1.25 MeV (see page 120, 'Transmission Factors' in the PDF file of the U.S. Army Field Manual 3-3-1, Nuclear Contamination Avoidance, linked here) whereas dirty (high fission yield) thermonuclear weapons which contaminate large areas all expose U-238 to neutrons which always results in large amounts of non-fission neutron captures in U-238, creating large amounts of very low-energy gamma emitting Np-239, U-240, and U-237. The time that any neutron induced species contributes a peak percentage of the radiation from fallout is equal to 1.73 times its half-life (the 1.73 factor is simply the ratio 1.2/ln2, where 1.2 is the decay exponent of time for the overall mixture of nuclides in fallout, while ln2 is the factor which converts the average life of a particular nuclide into its half-life, which is always a factor 1.44 smaller than its average life). Thus, for Np-239 which has a half life of 56 hours and emits gamma rays of mean energy just 0.14 MeV, the peak percentage contribution it gives to fallout radiation occurs 4 days after detonation. U-237, which emits gamma rays of mean energy just 0.10 MeV, has a half-life of 6.8 days, so contributes a peak percentage to fallout radiation 12 days after detonation.

Fractionation of fission products (the loss of slowly-condensing gaseous fission product decay chains from fast-falling large particles of fallout which exit the fireball before the slowly condensing nuclides have solidified, and are thus depleted in many fission product species) also affects the spectrum of gamma ray energy in a predictable way, softening the spectrum to lower mean energies in the close-in (depleted) fallout. Dr Terry Triffet first made this effect public in the 22-26 June 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings on The Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, pages 61-111. Triffet in that testimony, with more details in in his declassified weapon test report WT-1317, 1961 (see also Dr Carl F. Miller's 1961 report USNRDL-466 for detailed REDWING fallout station distances from ground zero, nuclide measured fractionation ratios and neutron induced activity data), showed that at 1 week after burst, the mean gamma ray energy of fractionated fallout 8 statute miles downwind on Bikini Lagoon barge YFNB29 due to 5.01 Mt burst 87% fission REDWING-TEWA in 1956 was just 0.25 MeV (4.5 grams per square foot of fallout was deposited there, giving a peak dose rate on the barge of 40 R/hr at 2.7 hours after burst), while at 60 statute miles on ship LST611 downwind it was 0.35 MeV (due to less depletion of high energy fission products at greater distances, a fractionation effect) where only 0.06 gram/square foot of fallout was deposited giving a peak dose rate of 0.25 R/hr at 14 hours after burst. On page 205 of those June 1959 hearings, Triffet explained:

'I thought this might be an appropriate place to comment on the variation of the average energy. It is clear when you think of shielding, because the effectiveness of shielding depends directly on the average energy radiation from the deposited material. As I mentioned, Dr Cook at our [U.S. Naval Radiological Defense] laboratory has done quite a bit of work on this. ... if induced products are important in the bomb [dirty bombs with U-238 jackets], there are a lot of radiations emanating from these, but the energy is low so it operates to reduce the average energy in this period and shielding is immensely more effective.'

Fractionation of fission products in the condensing fireball has two mechanisms:

(1) the lower the boiling point temperature of a fission product element, the longer a fallout particle must remain in the cooling fireball in order to have that element deposited upon it. If the fallout particle is large and falls out of the fireball before a given fission product element itself condenses, the fallout will be lacking (depleted in) that particular fission fragment. Large particles of the heated soil condense into solids and fall out of the fireball without before slower condensing (still gaseous) fission products are condensed upon them.

(2) fission products are formed in a series of beta radioactive decays called a 'decay chain'. Where the initial nuclide in the chain is a permanent gas like xenon or krypton, it cannot condense on to a solid particle of soil until it has first decayed into a solid fission product elements (the emission of a beta particle increases the atomic number one unit, changing the element). Therefore, in this case, fractionation is controlled by radioactive decay (which is independent of weapon yield or fireball cooling time), not just by the comparison of the time taken for a particle to fall out of the hot fireball and the time taken for the fireball to coll below the solidification temperature of fission products.

The large particles of fallout near ground zero is therefore missing many nuclides, which include iodine-131, cesium-137 and strontium-89.

Even for the small particles of fallout which do get contaminated, the cooling phenomenon produces an effect on the distribution of radioactivity within the fallout particle, which affects solubility and thus biological uptake of the fission products. Some fission products have boiling points lower than the melting point of soil, so they are relatively 'volatile' and condense only upon the outside of already-solidified fallout particles, producing relatively soluble fallout radioactivity. The fission products with high boiling points are relatively 'refractory' and condense at early times onto molten soil particles, so they can diffuse into the internal volume of the particle before it solidifies, forming fallout with relatively insoluble radioactivity for those fission products.

These fractionation and solubility mechanisms were first observed and measured in the 1951 GREENHOUSE test series at Eniwetok Atoll, and are documented in nuclear weapon test report WT-4, Fallout Phenomenology. Further studies were done at later tests, particularly REDWING and HARDTACK.



Above: Home-Made Self-Calibrating Kearny fallout meter (see Kearny's Oak Ridge National Laboratory book Nuclear War Survival Skills for instructions on building it, PDF version linked here; the self-calibrating radiation measurement accuracy data can be found in the original report ORNL-5040 linked here) being tested with a dental X-ray machine. The charged foil plates discharge and visibly fall together as soon as the X-ray machine is turned on. This is just a simple electroscope dosimeter, using the same principle as the pocket quartz fibre dosimeter, although it is in some respects better since you can clearly see the effects of radiation on discharging the plates.

You make it by taking two pieces of aluminium foil and folding them repeatedly until you have two 8-ply (8-layer) pieces of square shape and 2 inch long sides (this ensures the calibration). You hang each square in contact with the other by electrically non-conducting threads or thin non-conducting fishing line (any thin thread which has not been given anti-static treatment will do!) inside a can or jar. To get it to work you do need to have dry air inside the can (in high humidity air, you can't charge it since the water molecules almost immediately discharge the comb before it can even charge up the foil plates, so you need to put the whole thing inside a "dry bucket" with a transparent cover, adding some heated hydroscopic gypsum from plaster or re-heated silica gel to the bottom of the can, which comes in little paper packets in the packaging of all kinds of items these days, preventing moisture damage).

The top of the can is just covered by kitchen clear plastic wrap, with a little millimetre-calibrated scale on it to measure the distance between the aluminium plates when charged. A piece of wire like a straightened paperclip poked through the plastic wrap is used to charge the foil leaves; you simply bring a hair-charged plastic comb (or some other source of static electricity like a plastic ruler rubbed in a rolled up newspaper) to the charging wire, and the plates are charged. Because similar electric charges repel, the plates then move apart from one another! As air is ionized by radiation, charged air ions move between the plates, discharging them. The speed with which the plates are discharged therefore tells you the radiation level. Simple!

In reality, of course, hazardous fallout has always proved to be extremely visible, once the political pseudoscientific fallout quackery, hype and spin (claiming that natural cancer deaths are due to radiation exposure, and other lunacy) is rejected. A land surface burst (water surface bursts produce even more!) as proved by all the American tests ALWAYS creates roughly 200 tons of sand like fallout contaminant per kiloton of total yield, so if the 1-hour exposure rate conversion factor is taken to be typically 2000 (R/hr)/(kt/sq. mile) then the 2000 R/hr at 1 hour after bursts corresponds to 200 tons of fallout mass per square mile or 77 grams per square metre. Try sprinkling 77 grams of sand or flour per square metre. It's visible. Even when the particles themselves (like tiny flour grains) are too small to be seen, the bulk of material is visible. Similarly, atoms aren't visible to the eye, but if you have enough atoms, the bulk of material becomes visible! That's the whole reason why we can see matter in bulk, despite the individual fundamental particles of matter being individually too small to see! Rainout from air bursts is visible as rain, and runs down the drain or soaks deep into the ground (which attenuates the radiation) in the same way as rain. Ocean surface burst fallout arrives as tiny non-depositing wind-carried dry salt crystals if the humidity is very low, or as wet salt-slurry droplets in a high humidity atmosphere; the depositing droplets are visible. Anti-civil defense propaganda covers up the nuclear test data on fallout particle deposits and covers up the difference between radiation and fallout to make people confused about the danger and make it seem mysterious and fearful. Actually, you can wash fallout away, you can brush dry fallout away, it can be swept up and buried under the soil while it decays. There are numerous ways to successfully decontaminate and shield the danger. (On military ships, turning on the fire sprinklers on decks during fallout deposition was found to decontaminate the ships clean while fallout landed; it went straight down the drains, and the dose rate from surrounding contaminated water was 535 times lower than on land due to the mixing and sinking of fallout in the water, which shields most of the radiation! A favourite trick is to use large sheets of plastic to collect fallout. Once fallout has deposited, you roll them up and bury them, so that the fallout is shielded underground, meaning that you don't need to take shelter!

‘A number of factors make large-scale decontamination useful in urban areas. Much of the area between buildings is paved and, thus, readily cleaned using motorized flushers and sweepers, which are usually available. If, in addition, the roofs are decontaminated by high-pressure hosing, it may be possible to make entire buildings habitable fairly soon, even if the fallout has been very heavy.’ – Dr Frederick P. Cowan and Charles B. Meinhold, Decontamination, Chapter 10, pp. 225-40 in Dr Eugene P. Wigner (editor), Survival and the Bomb, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1969.

For dry road sweeper decontamination data see D. E. Clark, Jr., and W. C. Cobbin, Removal of Simulated Fallout from Pavements by Conventional Street Flushers, report USNRDL-TR-797, 1964. For a typical U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory report on the decontamination of streets by high pressure hosing, click here (USNRDL-TR-1049, 1965).

Small areas of fallout contamination, such as indoor ingressed fallout contamination, are always in practice found to make totally and utterly negligible contributions to gamma ray doses by comparison to the gamma hazard from the wide areas of fallout outdoors, because most of the gamma dose rate comes from large distances horizontally across a vast uniformly contaminated plane, and that coming vertically upwards from the small amount of fallout under your feet or nearby is trivial by comparison, so the ingress of fallout into damaged buildings makes no significant difference to gamma doses!


Above: 'The three factors which count in gaining protection are the distance from the radioactive dust, the weight of material in between, and the time for which one remains protected while the radioactivity decays. A slit trench with overhead cover of two or three feet of earth would give very good protection against fall-out, as well as protection against blast, but the occupants would have to remain in the trench for forty-eight hours or more while the radioactivity surrounding them decayed. ... A prepared refuge room inside a house could be made to give good protection against fall-out (although not so good as a covered slit trench) and it would also be much less uncomfortable for a period of two days or more. A cellar or basement would be by far the best place for a refuge room; next best would be the room with the fewest outside walls and the smallest windows. The windows would need to be blocked with solid material, to the thickness of the surrounding walls at least. It would help if the walls themselves were thickened, not necessarily to their full height, with sandbags, boxes filled with earth, or heavy furniture. The occupants of the refuge roof would have to remain in it until told that it was safe to come out - perhaps for a period of days - and the room would have to be prepared and equipped accordingly.’ - British Home Office civil defence booklet, The Hydrogen Bomb (Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1957, 32 pages.)



Above: The car-over-trench expedient fallout shelter from G. A. Cristy and C. H. Kearny, Expedient Shelter Handbook, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, August 1974, report AD0787483, 318 pages. In place of a car, doors, felled logs, or planks of wood heaped with soil can be used instead, depending on the resources to hand. Kearny showed in a later Oak Ridge National Laboratory book, Nuclear War Survival Skills, 2nd ed., 1987, how to build improvised efficient, self-calibrating radiation dosimeter (a comb-charged jam-jar electroscope, calibrated accurately by the size of the aluminium foil leaves which carry the charge; the charges keeps the leaves separated against gravity until air is ionized by radiation, when the leaves lose charge and fall together, the amount of declease in separation distance in millimetres being accurately correlated with radiation dose as proved by laboratory tests!) that can be quickly made by anyone with kitchen odds and ends in an emergency, a hand-powered simple string-pulled hinged panel air cooling pump for such shelters in hot weather, and how to obtain food and water in a nuclear war.



The most important for emergency use (where rapid protection is desirable) are the 'car over trench shelter' (dig a trench the right size to drive your car over, putting the excavated earth to the sides for added shielding, then drive your car over it), "tilt up doors and earth" shelter (if your house is badly damaged, build a fallout shelter against any surviving wall of the house by putting doors against it and piling earth on top in accordance to the plans), and the "above ground door-covered shelter" (basically a trench with excavated earth piles at the sides, doors placed on top, then a layer of earth piled on top of the doors).








All these shelters can be constructed very quickly under emergency conditions (in a time of some hours, e.g., comparable to the time taken for fallout to arrive in the major danger area downwind from a large nuclear explosion). For the known energy of gamma rays from fallout including neutron induced activities with low energy gamma ray emission (Np-239, U-237, etc.), a thickness of 1 foot or 30 centimetres of packed earth (density 1.6 grams per cubic centimetre) shields 95% of fallout gamma radiation, giving an additional protective factor of about 20. A thickness of 2 feet or 60 centimetres of packed earth provides a protective factor of about 400. Caravans have a protective factor of 1.4-1.8, single storey modern bungalows have a protection factor of 5-6, while brick bungalows have a protective factor of 8-9. British brick multi-storey buildings have protection factors of 10-20, while British brick house basements have protective factors of 90-150. These figures can easily be increased by at least a factor of 2-3 by making a protected ‘inner core’ or ‘refuge’ within the building at a central point, giving additional shielding:



In 1964, Britain conducted experiments with Co-60 sources to validate the ‘core’ Protect and Survive shelter plan (above videos): A. D. Perryman, Experimental Determination of Protective Factors in a Semi-Detached House With or Without Core Shelters, U.K. Home Office report CD/SA117. Using Co-60, the dry fallout protective factor was 21 on the ground floor of a brick house, increasing to 39 in a core shelter, made using furniture piled near an inner wall. For real fallout with less than the 1.25 MeV mean gamma ray energy of Co-60, the protection would be far greater. See also the 75-pages long American report on these 'Protect and Survive' core shelter experiments in Britain by Joseph D. Velletri, Nancy-Ruth York and John F. Batter, Protection Factors of Emergency Shelters in a British Residence, Technical Operations Research, Burlington, Massachusetts, report AD439332, 1963.

John Newman examined effects of fallout blown into a buildings, due to blast-broken windows, in Health Physics, vol. 13 (1967), p. 991: ‘In a particular example of a seven-storey building, the internal contamination on each floor is estimated to be 2.5% of that on the roof. This contamination, if spread uniformly over the floor, reduces the protection factor on the fifth floor from 28 to 18 and in the unexposed, uncontaminated basement from 420 to 200.’

But measured volcanic ash ingress, measured as the ratio of mass per unit area indoors to that on the roof, was under 0.6% even with the windows open and an 11-22 km/hour wind speed (U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory report USNRDL-TR-953, 1965). The main gamma hazard is from a very big surrounding area, not from trivial fallout nearby!

Dr Saad Z. Mikhail's paper, Beta-Radiation Doses from Fallout Particles Deposited on the Skin (Environmental Science Associates, Foster City, California, report AD0888503, 1971) quantified the beta contact hazard for fallout particles while they are descending in the open:

'A fission density of 10¹⁵ fissions per cubic centimeter of fallout material was assumed. Comparison of computed doses with the most recent experimental data relative to skin response to beta-energy deposition leads to the conclusion that even for fallout arrival times as early as 16.7 minutes post-detonation, no skin ulceration is expected from single particles 500 micron or less in diameter. Absorbed gamma doses calculated for one particle size (100 microns) show a beta-to-gamma ratio of about 15. Dose ratio for larger particle sizes will be smaller. Doses from arrays of fallout particles of different size distributions were computed, also, for several fallout mass deposition densities; time intervals required to accumulate doses sufficient to initiate skin lesions were calculated. These times depend strongly on the assumed fallout-particle-size distribution. Deposition densities in excess of 100 mg per square foot of the skin will cause beta burns if fallout arrival time is less than about three hours, unless the particles are relatively coarse (mean particle diameter more than 250 microns).'


Keeping the highly visible particles off the skin by wearing clothing, or removing them quickly by brushing or washing after contamination, eliminates the beta burn hazard, as demonstrated by the examples of Marshallese Islanders who washed after fallout contamination:

U.S. Congressional Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, The Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man, 27 May - 3 June 1957, pages 173-216 where Dr Gordon M. Dunning testified that fallout beta burns only occur where fallout is in direct contact with the skin and dose not occur to people wearing clothing which covers the skin, or people who wash the fallout off the skin instead of leaving it there for two days:

‘In the case of the Marshallese who were in the fallout from the detonation at the Pacific on March 1, 1954, most of the more heavily exposed showed some degree of skin damage, as well as about half of them showing some degree of epilation [hair loss] due to beta doses. However, none of these effects were present except in those areas where the radioactive material was in contact with the skin, i.e., the scalp, neck, bend of the elbow, between and topside of the toes. No skin damage was observed where there was a covering of even a single layer of cotton clothing. ... The Marshallese were semiclothed, had moist skin, and most of them were out-of-doors during the time of fallout. Some bathed during the two-day exposure period before evacuation, but others did not; therefore, they were optimal conditions for possible beta damage. The group suffering greatest exposure [Rongelap Islanders, 175 R gamma dose from 4 hours to 2 days after burst, plus 2,000 R beta dose to sweaty areas of bare skin which retained a similar contamination density to the ground deposit density] showed 20 percent (13 individuals) with deep lesions; 70 percent (45 individuals) superficial lesions; and 10 percent (6 individuals) no lesions. Likewise, 55 percent (35 individuals) showed some degree of epilation followed by a regrowth of hair.'




Above: the top photo shows that the CASTLE-BRAVO device was detonated in the midst of a the coral reef on the Northern extremity of Bikini Atoll, upon an artificial island made from coral sand dredged up from Bikini Lagoon, to the West of Namu Island (to which the bomb island was joined by a 2,900 ft long causeway, allowing radiation to be piped through vacuum tubes to detectors 7,500 ft from the bomb which could survive the EMP, blast, ground shock and cratering action unlike nearby instruments which would be destroyed). Therefore it was a land surface burst, although the fireball and cratering action extended over shallow water above the nearby reef and deeper water in the ocean to the North and the lagoon to the South. Most of the fallout was incinerated coral, reduced by the fireball heat from calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. This, and the calcium hydroxide which forms when calcium oxide encounters moisture, is an irritant. The irritating effects of the fallout disappeared when it was washed off after 64 highly contaminated Rongelap people 115 miles downwind were evacuated 2 days after detonation. The fallout had arrived at 5 hours. The evacuation was delayed because of an unnecessary panic when the more nearby Enyu Island firing party were hit with fallout (they had a heavily protected bunker to survive in, but it caused alarm and they were nevertheless evacuated by helicopter once the fallout had stopped descending). While this drama unfolded, the test commander's attention was diverted from the danger further downwind. The second photo taken 46 days after detonation shows beta burns to a young boy who was contaminated heavily by the fallout, which was visible and looked like snowflakes on Rongelap (this photo is from the 22-26 June 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War). He has beta burns and depigmentation to the bare areas of skin which retained fallout, principally the sweaty areas. The third photo shows hair loss in a young girl due to beta exposure to the scalp from fallout retained in coconut oil-dressed hair, and the full recovery 6 months later.

On pages 944-948 of the 1957 U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man, Dr Eugene P. Cronkite testified:

'The fallout material consisted predominantly of flakes of calcium oxide resulting from the incineration of the coral [reef near Namu Island at Bikini Atoll]. Upon the flakes of calcium oxide fission products were deposited. At Rongelap Atoll the material was visible and described as snowlike. ... To arrive at some physical estimate of the skin dose, an attempt must be made to add up the contributions of the penetrating gamma, the less penetrating gamma, the beta bath to which the individuals were exposed from the relatively uniform deposition of fission products in the environment, and the point contact source of fallout material deposited on the skin. By all means, the largest component of skin irradiation resulted from the spotty local deposits of fallout material on deposited surfaces of the body. To put it in reverse, the individuals who remained inside had no skin burn. It was only on those on whom the material was directly deposited on the skin that received burns. ... Itching and burning of the skin occurred in 28 percent of the people on Rongelap, 20 percent of the group on Ailinginae, and 5 percent of the Americans [weather station staff exposed to fallout on Rongerik Atoll]. There were no symptoms referable to the skin in the individuals on Utirik. In addition to the itching of the skin there was burning of the eyes and lacrimation in people on Rongelap and Ailinginae. It is probable that these initial skin symptoms were due to irradiation since all individuals who experienced the initial symptoms later developed unquestioned radiation-induced skin lesions that will be described later in detail. It is possible, however, that the intensely alkaline nature of the calcium oxide [produced when the coral i.e. calcium carbonate was heated in the fireball] when dissolved in perspiration might have contributed to the initial symptoms. ...

'Burns were caused by direct contact of the radioactive material with the skin. The perspiration as common in the tropics, the delay in decontamination and the difficulties in decontamination certainly favored the development of the skin burns. Those individuals who remained indoors or under trees during the fallout developed less severe skin burns. The children who went wading in the ocean developed fewer lesions of the feet and most of the Americans who were more aware of the dangers of the fallout, took shelter in aluminum buildings and bathed and changed clothes. Consequently they developed only very mild beta burns. Lastly, a single layer of cotton material offered almost complete protection, as was demonstrated by the fact that skin burns developed almost entirely on the exposed parts of the body.’


Above: the Kearny Fallout Meter, first described in Oak Ridge National Laboratory report ORNL-5040. In actual fact, scientifically validated, statistically significant, non-lying, non-noise injury from fallout (i.e., excluding the statistical "noise" from the completely non-radiation natural cancer rates in a properly matched non-exposed control group) has only ever occurred where the deposit of fallout has been clearly visible, as airborne ash, rainout or "snowflakes", and as a deposit. Therefore, you don't need a radiation meter to detect fallout, you can feel and see it. A radiation meter indicates how much nuclear radiation is being given off by the clearly visible dangerous fallout.
Above: visible appearance of a typical deposit of dangerous fallout; this is a secret photo from WT-1317 of a fallout tray automatically exposed for just 15 minutes at 1 hour after detonation of the 3.53 megaton, 15% fission surface burst Redwing-Zuni at Bikini in 1956. The fallout illustrated occurred on barge YFNB 13, located 20 km North-North-West of ground zero (downwind). The circular tray’s inner diameter is 8.1 cm. This 15 minute sample is only 22% of the total deposit of 21.9 g/m² which occurred at that location. The barge’s radiation meter recorded a peak gamma intensity of 6 R/hr at 1.25 hours after the explosion.

Because fallout sinks in the ocean (which shields the fallout quite effectively, giving only a small dose rate) and the barge deck is much smaller than a land area, the barge radiation meters record only about 25% of those on land which are contaminated to the same extent. So on land the peak gamma ray intensity for this fallout would have been 4 x 6 = 24 R/hr at 1.25 hours. Correcting from 15% fission yield to 100% fission yield would increase this to 160 R/hr. The infinite time fallout dose is 5 times the peak intensity times the time of that intensity as measured from the time of explosion. Hence the infinite dose outdoors on land for pure fission would be 5 x 160 x 1.25 = 1000 R which is lethal. Any house would provide enough protection to save your life, however. (The dose law of 5 times intensity times arrival time is based on the t^-1.2 decay law. Obviously it is well known that the fallout intensity drops below that law within 200 days, and a better law is 4 times intensity times arrival time. On the other hand, some radiation is received before the peak dose rate occurs, so it is sensible to use the factor of 5 multiplication as a rough approximation.)

Above: Kearny air pump, a simple but highly efficient string-pulled swinging panel with slats to ensure a one-way air flow that sucks fresh air through a shelter to prevent stagnation and heat exhaustion in hot weather.

Robert Ehrlich (Physics Department, George Mason University, Virginia) and Jane Orient, MD, ‘The Case for Civil Defense in Nuclear War Education’, Physics and Society, vol. 19, no. 2, April 1990, pp. 3-5:

‘A majority of educators teaching courses on nuclear war and peace profess to believe in the importance of presenting both sides of controversial issues. Yet the pro side of the civil defense issue is seldom presented without the ridicule often used by its detractors. In fact, many nuclear war courses do not include any significant amount of material on civil defense. This may be because most educators feel very strongly that nuclear war is unsurvivable, or perhaps that thoughts of nuclear war survivability are an obstacle to peace. This article argues that civil defense advocates should be allowed to make their own case, so students can decide for themselves whether or not the idea deserves to be ridiculed. ...

‘For many Americans the thought of experiencing the kind of unpleasant hand-to-mouth existence prevalent in 90 percent of the Third World today, a realistic prospect for survivors, is simply unimaginable. It is more comforting to imagine one’s instantaneous annihilation in a nuclear war. In reality, of course, far more people would suffer slow, painful deaths, especially those who died from radiation sickness – deaths that could be prevented by taking precautions, some of a relatively simple nature.

‘For example, fallout radiation (present on dust particles) can be simply washed off food without the food being contaminated afterwards, and contaminated water can easily be decontaminated by simply filtering it through an earthen filter. Another simple protective measure unknown to many civil defense skeptics who think in terms of special purpose fallout shelters is the simple expedient of survivors staying in their own home basements for a week or two following a nuclear war. ...

‘Civil defense critics often portray the situation otherwise by speaking of the vast land area that can be “contaminated” by a single nuclear explosion. ... everyone on earth is contaminated right now [with natural uranium, radon, carbon-14, and best yet the naturally radioactive potassium-40, which has “scary” 1,248,000,000 years half-life that makes the 24,000 years half-life of plutonium-239 look trivial and safe] ...

‘In discussing the dangers of fallout from nuclear weapons, people often mention the islands in the Pacific that remain “contaminated” as a result of U.S. nuclear testing ... The Northern Marshall Islands Radiological Survey conducted in 1978 showed that on most of the islands the annual dose due to fallout was about 0.006 rems from all exposure pathways, including food, or about 4 percent of the average annual external background dose in the U.S. On Bikini Island, one of the most heavily contaminated areas, the maximum dose to those eating locally contaminated food was less than 2 rems. [Note that in the 1990s, KCl added to the coral soil of Bikini Atoll (scene of 76.8 Mt of tests) reduced the Cs-137 in coconuts by 95% from 3,700 Bq/kg to 185 Bq/kg.] ...




‘The primary human hazard of a depleted ozone layer would be an increase in skin cancers due to ultraviolet radiation. Calculations by the National Academy of Sciences estimate the rate of increase following a nuclear war to be about 10 percent for Northern Hemisphere survivors – roughly one tenth the increase in danger faced by someone who today chose to move from Minnesota to sunny Texas! ...

‘As S. L. Thompson and S. H. Schneider note: “On scientific grounds the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis can now be relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability.’ (“Nuclear Winter Reapraised,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 64, 1986, pp. 981-1005). ...

‘Disinterest in civil defense is not a global phenomenon. The Soviet Union, for example, spends over 20 times as much as the U.S. does on civil defense every year. Despite assertions about the unsurvivability of nuclear war made by Mikhail Gorbachev in his 1987 book, thre is no sign of slackening in Soviet civil defense efforts. ...

‘At the same time that many deride civil defense as being incapable of coping with an all-out attack by the Soviet Union, there is a growing perception that better U.S.-Soviet relations make such an attack less likely, perhaps even the least likely, of potential nuclear threats. If that is the case, civil defense deserves reconsideration even by Doomsday theorists. The proliferation of nuclear weapons (and worse, long-range delivery systems) to Third World nations, or even to terrorist groups, poses a growing though clearly non-apocalyptic threat. Civil defense could also make a considerable difference in coping with the aftermath of the accidental launch of a few weapons.’

Nancy Deale Greene's article, 'Civil Defense and the Strategic Balance', in the Journal of Civil Defense, Vol. 15, No. 4, August 1982, pp. 6-9, stated:

'The Soviets spend the U.S. equivalent of about $2 billion annually on civil defense [this figure comes from the CIA report Soviet Civil Defense, July 1978, which worked out the cost of the immense Soviet civil defense program in terms of American wages if it were implemented in America, and found it would cost $2,000 million]. This compares to about $128 million annually by the United States ... Only about 5,000 people in the United States work in civil defense, including agency employees, compared with 100,000 permanent civil defense workers in the U.S.S.R., and an additional 20 million part-time trained civil defense workers. ... Every school child in the U.S.S.R. learns about civil defense; a five-year course is required at higher education levels. ... A people without weapons are defenseless, but weapons without a people are purposeless. ... (Only about 2 percent of the United States is targetted, but about 60 percent of the population lives in the 2 percent.) ...

'Unfortunately, most Americans believe the oft-repeated myth that nuclear weapons are a thousand times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb because they may be a thousand times more powerful [the area damaged is not directly proportional to the energy/power of the explosion, but scales up more slowly, particularly for city-type devastation where the fact of conservation of energy tells us that - contrary to the claim in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons - the blast wave irreversibly loses at least 1% of its energy, which gets degraded to waste warmth of the rubble, each time it blows up a house along any given radial line outward from ground zero; thus after a few hundred houses in any given radial line have been totalled, the resulting exponential energy loss in the blast wave means that the ideal-terrain blast overpressure predictions are falsely way too high, as Lord Penney, et al., observed from a detailed analysis of accurate damage blast indicators for both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their 1970 paper]. But a foxhole ... and 12 to 18 inches of dirt over one's head, can provide good protection. ... most citizens do not know that closing the drapes could be a life-saving act fifteen miles from ground zero [against the light and thermal flash and the blast window fragments, which are not propelled very forcefully by the weak blast winds at that distance, and so can be caught and stopped by curtains]. ... Marxist-Leninist theory supports "the initiation of war as a deliberate act of policy ... if the Soviet Union is virtually certain of winning and the gains clearly outweigh the cost." (Michael McGuire: International Security, Vol. 3, No. 4, Spring, 1979.) ... One expects to live a long life, but most carry life insurance. The life insurance policy of the United States is in its people, not in its weapons.'

In 1950, the first editions of Glasstone’s two most widely reprinted and cited works, Sourcebook on Atomic Energy and The Effects of Atomic Weapons, were both published while he was working at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory as consultant to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. His job was to teach courses in these subjects, and prepare study materials. The main problem with The Effects of Nuclear Weapons and also its secret companion Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons is the numbered logical arrangement of information into chapters by effects, which occurred in 1950, not by types of burst. This gives all readers the entirely mistaken belief that all nuclear explosions are very similar in qualitative nature, with merely some quantitative differences in the different effects. However, the effects are so entirely different for different types of burst, say compare an under water burst to a detonation in outer space, that this is really misleading. This confusion gives most people the impression that the same general effects are associated with all detonations, which is totally false. However, the books were a major advance and the 1957-64 editions contained a chapter on civil defence (dropped from the 1977 edition which was published during President Carter's administration which also considerately delayed the neutron bomb deployment, at the request of Moscow as we shall see).

‘During World War II many large cities in England, Germany, and Japan were subjected to terrific attacks by high-explosive and incendiary bombs. Yet, when proper steps had been taken for the protection of the civilian population and for the restoration of services after the bombing, there was little, if any, evidence of panic. It is the purpose of this book to state the facts concerning the atomic bomb, and to make an objective, scientific analysis of these facts. It is hoped that as a result, although it may not be feasible completely to allay fear, it will at least be possible to avoid panic.’

– Dr George Gamow (the big bang cosmologist and nuclear weapons expert), Dr Samuel Glasstone (Executive Editor), and Professor Joseph O. Hirschfelder, The Effects of Atomic Weapons, (S. Glasstone, Executive Editor), U.S. Department of Defense, September 1950, chapter 1, p. 1, paragraph 1.3.

'The penalty of a loss of confidence is illustrated by the depression of 1929. The physical plant of our society did not shrink, the skills of the people did not grow less, yet production fell by more than 40 per cent and millions were unemployed.'

- Dr Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1957, pp. 65-6. (Or, as T. S. Eliot wrote, ‘This is the world ends: not with a bang but with a whimper’.)

‘The consequences of a multiweapon nuclear attack would certainly be grave ... Nevertheless, recovery should be possible if plans exist and are carried out to restore social order and to mitigate the economic disruption.’

- Philip J. Dolan, Stanford Research Institute, Appendix A of the U.S. National Council on Radiological protection (NCRP) symposium The Control of Exposure to the Public of Ionising Radiation in the Event of Accident or Attack, 1981.



Philip J. Dolan noted there that 20% of the U.S. urban population and 19% of the rural population have access to protection factors from fallout of over 1,000 in subways and basements, while 75% of the urban population and 43% of the rural population have access to a protection factor of 100 or more. In that report, assuming an attack on U.S. military, industrial and civilian targets with 1,444 weapons with a total yield of 6,559 megatons with 50% fission yield, of which 5,051 total yield megatons were surface bursts, including 113 ground bursts of 20-Mt yield each, Dolan found that 92 million people lived in areas where the 1-hour reference gamma dose rate would be 300-3,000 R/hr, and that they would receive an outdoor exposure of 360-5,400 R over 4 days. This implies that the effective fallout arrival time for those people ranges from 3.9-9.2 hours, thus most people would have many hours to prepare and take cover against wind carried fallout. Surveying the actual risk of such a nuclear war, Dolan cited an army calculation that estimated 3% per decade, while averaged public opinion polls forecast a risk of about 10% per decade. In response to such concerns, between 1955-64 America invested $53 million in buying 3,117,201 self-reading 0-200 R gamma electroscope dosimeters, 515,032 dosimeter chargers, 567,457 ion chambers for 0-500 R/hr to be used during fallout sheltering, and 452,558 Geiger counters for 0-50 mR/hr, to aid the decontamination of water, food, and clothing at later times.

Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation in the 22-26 June 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental effects of Nuclear War pp. 913-5 recommended spending $100 million on buying 2 million dose rate fallout survey meters and 10 million quartz fibre dosimeters with charging units. He also recommended on p. 915 that $50 million be spent on 'identifying, counting and labeling the various structures that either provide valuable levels of fallout protection as they now stand or that can easily be modified to do so. [Another $100 million] would be spent for such supplies as radios, minimal toilet equipment ... and possibly even minimal food supplies ... or materials for improving the protection of the shelter.' Kahn justified the expense on p. 913: 'It costs from $50 to $100 million to develop an engine for a military airplane. It costs $100 to £200 million to develop an interceptor aircraft and $500 million to $1 billion to develop an intercontinental bomber. The ICBM development program cost between $1 and $2 billion. The Department of Defense spends $5 billion every year on research and development. We are saying that a complete nonmilitary defense program is at least as complicated as an interceptor aircraft.' On 15 September 1961, just after the construction of the Berlin Wall, President John F. Kennedy adopted some of Kahn's 1959 civil defense expedient shelter recommendations and had the following letter published in that issue of LIFE magazine, which made civil defense the cover story, called How You Can Survive Fallout:

The White House
September 7, 1961

My Fellow Americans:

Nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are facts of life we cannot ignore today. I do not believe that war can solve any of the problems facing the world today. But the decision is not ours alone.

The government is moving to improve the protection afforded you in your communities through civil defense. We have begun, and will be continuing throughout the next year and a half, a survey of all public buildings with fallout shelter potential, and the marking of those with adequate shelter for 50 persons or more. We are providing fallout shelter in new and in some existing federal buildings. We are stocking these shelters with one week's food and medical supplies and two weeks' water supply for the shelter occupants. In addition, I have recommended to the Congress the establishment of food reserves in centers around the country where they might be needed following an attack. Finally, we are developing improved warning systems which will make it possible to sound attack warning on buzzers right in your homes and places of business.

More comprehensive measures than these lie ahead, but they cannot be brought to completion in the immediate future. In the meantime there is much that you can do to protect yourself - and in doing so strengthen your nation.

I urge you to read and consider seriously the contents in this issue of LIFE. The security of our country and the peace of the world are the objectives of our policy. But in these dangerous days when both these objectives are threatened we must prepare for all eventualities. The ability to survive coupled with the will to do so therefore are essential to our country.

John F. Kennedy

Above: Kennedy speaking in Berlin on 26 June 1963 in reference to the Berlin Wall put up in 1961 by the communists to prevent people escaping to freedom from the Eastern dictatorship (those who tried to climb the wall were shot by border guards acting on Soviet Premier Krushchev's orders and left there to bleed to death):

Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was: ‘civis Romanus sum.’ Today – in the world of freedom – the proudest boast is: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ I appreciate my interpreter translating my German! There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin! There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin! And there are some who say – in Europe and elsewhere – we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin! And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen! Let them come to Berlin! Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in – to prevent them from leaving us! ... You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow; beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin – or your country of Germany – to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind. Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we look – can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country, and this great Continent of Europe, in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. All free men – wherever they may live – are citizens of Berlin. And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’

Above: President Kennedy's policy of civil defense and strength against the Communist threat was viciously opposed by CND, which exaggerated the effects of nuclear weapons to play down the effectiveness of civil defense (CND also ignored entirely the threat to survival from aggressive Communist dictatorships!). It's on the face of it totally bizarre that pacifism took off in Britain in the 1930s, insisting that Hitler be allowed to do whatever he wanted without a preventative war when such a war would have been successful (Germany was initially disarmed after defeat in World War I). But the combination of (initially) pacifism plus (later, when Hitler had an airforce and a massive army) gross exaggeration of the effects of conventional aerial bombardment warfare and poison gas threats against civilian targets, led to endless appeasement while the threat grew ever more serious. Kennedy himself witnessed this while in Britain at the outbreak of the war, and wrote an excellent book about the perils of appeasement which is still worth reading today, Why England Slept. This is one reason he stood up to Soviet tyranny.



Above: Kennedy's TV broadcast at 7 pm on Monday 22 October 1962, warning the Soviet Union’s Premier Khrushchev of nuclear war if a nuclear missile was launched against the West, even by an accident:

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retalitory response upon the Soviet Union.

Above: CND propaganda exaggerating the effects of nuclear weapons and ignoring even the most elementary concept of equivalent megatonnage, i.e. the relative inefficiency of large explosions due to the waste of energy as we will explain below. (In addition, they ignore the fact that nuclear weapons effects are easily defended against. Contrary to all films of nuclear explosions, the blast does not accompany the visible flash but is delayed like thunder after lightning, giving people the opportunity to take cover. Similarly, fallout is delayed, again giving people the chance to get under cover or out of the downwind hotspot area.)



Above: President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara on risk of nuclear war during the Berlin wall crisis of August 1961 when the Soviet Union aggressively built a wall to keep its citizens from escaping from East Berlin, and deliberately murdered people who tried to climb over it and at the Cuban missiles crisis of 1962 when Kennedy threatened to retaliate in full against the Soviet Union if even a single nuclear missile was launched from Cuba against any Western nation. McNamara emphasises the role of pure luck in preventing a nuclear war during such crises (e.g., if the nuclear missiles on Cuba had been launched against Washington, D.C., by accident or in panic or by nefarious decisions of terrorist states or dictatorships, there would have been an all-out nuclear war). This reliance on luck is why it is so important to have civil defense and understand the capabilities of nuclear weapons while they continue to exist today!

If we don't extend our nuclear deterrent against terrorist, we must instead risk the banal appeasement of Hitler-like dictatorial terrorist nations and groups until they have so much military power that the danger to civilization is overwhelming so that there is public support for action (which will occur when it is too late for effective action), and then we will be forced to fight against invasions or wanton acts of terrorist like 9/11. President Kennedy explained the dictatorial challenge to freedom as follows in his 1963 State of the Union Message:

In Vietnam we are determining whether or not the free world can help a nation defend itself against the subversion and guerrilla warfare which make up the 'war of national liberation' tactics. I think it is fair to say that we have largely stopped the Communist thrust all around the world in conventional and nuclear arms. We are now confronted by a new kind of threat, and we have to a degree invented a new kind of response to meet it. All of the underdeveloped nations of the world are watching the event. If South Vietnam falls, their will to resist this kind of aggression will be weakened and the whole fabric of free-world strength and determination damaged thereby.

Exactly as Kennedy there predicted, by the time that America withdrew in failure from Vietnam in 1975, the Soviet Union's power was at its peak, and as a result it set about a series of invasions and sponsored communist revolutions worldwide, culminating in setting up a dictatorship in Afghanistan. In their unbiased and widely-praised factual compendium, Nuclear War File (Ebury Press, London, 1983, pp. 26-7), Christopher Chant and Ian Hogg explained Soviet superiority in terms of equivalent megatonnage (the diffraction type overpressure-damaged ground area being proportional to the two-thirds power of individual bomb yields):

'... while the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. enjoy an approximate parity in ICBM and SLBM warheads (about 7,500 each) ... [using equivalent megatonnage] we must come to another conclusion, namely that the U.S.S.R. has an advantage of the U.S.A. of about 2.65:1 in ICBMs and SLBMs, or of about 1.6:1 if aircraft-delivered warheads are included.'

Professor Richard E. Pipes had explained the reason for this superiority in his article, ‘Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War,’ Commentary, July 1977, p. 21:

‘The strategic doctrine adopted by the USSR over the past two decades calls for a policy diametrically opposite to that adopted in the United States by the predominant community of civilian strategists: not deterrence but victory, not sufficiency in weapons but superiority, not retaliation but offensive action.’

At the 14-25 February 1956 Soviet Communist Party 20th congress in Moscow, leader Khrushchev destroyed Stalin’s reputation, exposing his crimes. But in November 1956, the Soviet Union put down an uprising against communism in Hungary with brutal military force, tanks and bullets.

The hard-line communism which maintained the Soviet Union’s power in the 1960s was demonstrated when the Czechoslovakian communist party leader Alexander Dubcek in 1968 invented the heretical policy of ‘socialism with a human face.’ Dubcek reduced state suppression on freedom of speech in public and in newspaper reporting. On 29 April, the Soviet Union cut off food supplies to Czechoslovakia, followed by an invasion with 220,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact soldiers and paratroops plus tanks on 20 August. Within 72 hours, Dubcek was jailed, and the opposition by the Czech people to the invasion merely increased the presence of Soviet troops to 650,000. The brief period of liberty was called the ‘Prague Spring’.

This is explained by J. R. Thackrah’s prologue to Politics Made Simple (Heinemann, London, 1987): ‘Stresses which lead to a weakening of political integration must be reduced by appropriate responses from the political authorities, otherwise the system will tend to divide or will collapse entirely.’

Back in 1949, Vannevar Bush had written in Modern Arms and Free Men (Simon and Schuster, New York, pp. 200-1):

‘The weakness of the Communist state resides in its rigidity, in the fact that it cannot tolerate heresy, and in the fact that it cannot allow its iron curtain to be fully penetrated. ... Dictatorship can tolerate no real independence of thought and expression. Its control depends entirely upon expressed adherence by all to a rigid formula, the party line. Its secret police must be ever alert to purge those who would depart from discipline and think their own thoughts, for departure would soon lead to a vast congeries of independent groups defying central authority, and the system would break.’

President Nixon had initiated 1970s ‘peace’ initiatives in a cynical public relations attempt to get his Watergate scandal out of the newspapers. In 1975, America signed the Helsinki Act, for the first time agreeing to the borders of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact in Europe. This officially handed over those countries and people to Soviet control. After it was signed, the Chairman of the Soviet KGB (secret police), Yuri Andropov, stated in a letter to the Soviet Central Committee on 29 December 1975: ‘It is impossible at present to cease criminal prosecutions of those individuals who speak out against the Soviet system, since this would lead to an increase in especially dangerous state crimes and anti-social phenomena.’

On 12 July 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced his consideration of a plan to deploy the anti-tank neutron bomb to Europe to deter the 1,000,000 Soviet soldiers and 25,000 tanks amassed for an invasion. The co-ordinated Soviet response was for 28 communist parties to publish condemnations of the anti-tank neutron weapon. The Soviet ‘World Peace Council’ called an ‘international week of action’ in August 1977. The small yield and range of the neutron bomb (suiting only as a deterrent for massed tank invasions) was ignored, and the Soviet Union falsely portrayed it as a weapon which threatened people in general, not just the crews of 25,000 offensive Soviet tanks.

Within a year, Carter gave in to the false propaganda and demonstrations, and stopped deployment of the neutron bomb. Paul Mercer reports in his 465 pages long book 'Peace' of the Dead: The Truth Behind the Nuclear Disarmers (Policy Research Publications, London, 1986), page 96:

'[Soviet news agency] TASS reported during the campaign [against deployment of Sam Cohen's neutron bomb, 25 July - 14 August 1977] that: "Soviet Baptist leaders today condemned production of the neutron bomb as 'contrary to the teachings of Christ' and urged fellow Baptists in the United States to raise their voices in defense of peace." [Quoted in John Barrow, 'The KGB's Magical War for "Peace",' Reader's Digest (US Edition), October 1982, p. 226.] Jimmy Carter was, of course, a devoted Baptist, and this initiative had the effect of "peace" protesters in the United States taking the hint and disrupting services at his church, the First Baptist Church, in Washington, on three separate occasions.'

In 1979, the European threat from Soviet SS-20 missiles was countered by a NATO plan to deploy Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. Brezhnev responded with a paltry promise to remove a mere 20,000 soldiers and 1,000 tanks from East Germany as a peace gesture, and claimed that NATO would be guilty of escalating the arms race if it introduced Cruise and Pershing missiles. At first, Brezhnev received wide praise and support for his false ‘peace talk,’ but that finally evaporated when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

The Soviet Union’s peace offensive installed dictatorships in Congo and Syria in 1968, South Yemen and Libya in 1969, Somalia in 1970, Guinea in 1971, Iraq in 1972, Zambia in 1973, Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam in 1975, Angola and Mozambique in 1976, Ethopia in 1978, and Afghanistan in 1979. By 1977, Western Europe was outnumbered by Soviet weapons poised for attack: the Soviets had a 4.6 times as many tanks and 4 times as much artillery as the west, with 4.8 million full-time military personnel compared to only 2.1 million on the American side. President Carter therefore proposed deploying Dr Samuel Cohen’s neutron bomb to deter the Soviets from mounting a concentrated tank invasion of Western Europe. The Soviets had 584 major offensive submarines and ships, compared to 289 on the American side; and they had by 1978 some 3,909 strategic and intermediate offensive weapons, compared to only 2,125 on the American side. Moreover, the Soviet weapons were less accurate and therefore more threatening to sprawling civilian cities than to hardened military bases.

'I went to Czechoslovakia again in May 1983. As part of the Soviet Union's so-called "peace-offensive" the Czechoslovak authorities were holding a conference of peace organizations: The World Assembly for Peace and Life, Against Nuclear War. It was mostly a propaganda show against NATO's plans to install medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe. There was little evidence of new thinking about it.'

- BBC correspondent John Simpson, Despatches from the Barricades: An Eye-Witness Account of the Revolutions that Shook the World 1989-90, Hutchinson, London, 1990, p. 160.



Above: Ronald Reagan, the former actor and ex-lifeguard who had saved 77 lives, introduced the 'Peacekeeper' missile, a new civil defence propaganda assault and on 23 March 1983 a 'Star Wars' ABM research programme on 'Excalibur', Edward Teller's X-ray laser as well as chemical lasers. One thing that keeps getting forgotten in ABM discussions is that ABM is not new. In the 1960s, ABM was successfully tested over Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. It works. The American 'Sentinel' ABM system was briefly deployed in the 1970s to protect missile silos, but was simply too expensive to protect all American cities to a high degree of reliability and was also liable to produce EMP collateral damage owing to the high yield X-ray ablation mechanism Spartan missiles used for long-range intercepts above 35 km altitude. The full Sentinel system would have consisted of six Perimeter Acquisition Radar to cover the entire United States and detect and track enemy reentry vehicles when they rose over the horizon into view (at a range of 4,000 km, or 10 minutes warning time). Individual ABM launchers also had a shorter-range Missile Site Radar to target Spartan and Sprint missiles. The Spartan missiles with large warheads would be deployed to destroy the missiles by X-ray ablative recoil forces at altitudes above 35 km. If Spartan failed, then short-range Sprint missiles would be used for interception at altitudes below 35 km. Sprint used clean neutron bomb warheads to melt down the fissile material in enemy warheads (shielding such warheads would be prohibitive in terms of the number of warheads the missile could carry, just as decoys and chaff is a waste of time as a penetration aid; it just makes a bigger radar signal and bigger target to aim for). The whole advantage of civil defense (cheap) and ABM (expensive) countermeasures against attack is that they reduce the reliance on mutual deterrence, which is dependent on the goodwill of both sides (you would be foolish to rely entirely on the goodwill of a volatile dictatorship for peace and security).

Reagan's move towards lasers was to avert the collateral damage risks from blast and EMP of defensive nuclear detonations. An ordinary 1 kW carbon dioxide gas based laser, as used in industry, will burn through 1 mm thick steel plate at the rate of 8 cm per second. The thickness vaporized is proportional to the square root of the laser power. Lasers all work on the same quantum principle: the energy of a photon emitted by a quantum energy level transition is also the energy required to promote an electron to that energy level. By saturating a suitable, pure material with photons, the electrons will begin absorbing and emitting radiation of a specific wavelength (line spectra). The laser generally uses a rod with a reflector at one end and a partial reflector at the other, to allow many quantum transitions to build up radiation coherence before emission: coherent radiation builds up and stimulates the emission of similar radiation. Incoherent radiation is pumped into the sides of the rod, and the coherent beam emerges from the partial reflector in a narrow beam dependent on the diameter of the rod. This is the Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER) principle.

Chemical lasers which fire at missiles within the atmosphere simply have to burn a hole in the missile skin, to allow the air drag force on the missile to crush it. This was proved in tests where the air drag force was simulated with hydraulic rams and a laser burned a hole in the missile skin. The orbital X-ray laser is for use outside the atmosphere, where X-rays can travel without attenuation. A nuclear explosion in Excalibur would release 80% of its energy as a blackbody spectrum of light-velocity 'hot' X-rays (mostly above 10 keV). These would pour into laser rods consisting of very low density (non-ablative) plastic foam like expanded polystyrine containing a small quantity of uranium-238 as the laser material. The inner electrons of ionized uranium-238 can be raised to energy levels as high as 10 keV, resulting in coherent X-ray emission. The rods would contain thick beryllium at one end as an X-ray mirror, and thin beryllium at the other end as a partial reflector (which emits the coherent X-ray beam after pumping of the uranium-238 atomic electrons in the rod). Based on the results of a Nevada underground test of Excalibur, a compact version would be too inefficient and for high efficiency very long laser rods would be required. X-ray laser rods 1 mm in diameter would need to be 1 km long to achieve the efficiency claimed by Edward Teller in 1983.

However, lower efficiencies are still practical for ABM purposes, and it is easy to design a system with coiled up expanded plastic laser rods like string, which could be stretched out inside long telescopic metal tubes (like those used for telescopic antennae). X-rays pumped into such metal tubes would enter the laser rods along the sides of the rods. Telescopes associated with each laser rod would focus them on nuclear missiles. This low-yield nuclear X-ray laser would be kept in a suitable orbit over the earth (it is generally not possible to launch it to a high enough altitude to shoot down enemy missiles over a large area when an attack is detected) to replace the high-yield 'Spartan' nuclear X-ray ablation warhead ABM developed successfully by America in the 1960s and 1970s, but never deployed for fear of EMP collateral damage. Ablation can be explained very simply and is very well understood because it's the mechanism by which fission primary stages ignite fusion stages inside thermonuclear weapons: 80% of the energy of a nuclear explosion is in X-rays and the X-ray laser would make those X-rays coherent and focus some of them on to the metal case of an incoming enemy missile. The result is the blow-off or 'ablation' of a very thin surface layer of the metal (typically a fraction of a millimetre). Although only a trivial amount of material is blown off, it has a very high velocity and carries a significant momentum. The momentum isn't immense but it creates a really massive force on account of the small time (about 10 nanoseconds) over which it is imparted (this is because force is the rate of change of momentum, i.e. F = dp/dt), and since pressure is simply force per unit area, you get an immense pressure due to Newton's 3rd law of motion (action and reaction are equal and opposite, the rocket principle).

Hans Bethe and W. L. Bade in their paper Theory of X-Ray Effects of High Altitude Nuclear Bursts and Proposed Vehicle Hardening Method (AVCO Corp., Mass., report RAD-TR-9(7)-60-2, April 1960) proposed that missiles can be hardened against X-ray induced ablative recoil by using a layer of plastic foam to absorb reduce the force within the missile by spreading out the change of momentum over a longer period of time, but although this will protect some internal components from shock damage, the missile skin can still be deflected, dented and destroyed by ablation recoil. Inside the atmosphere, low-yield neutron bomb warheads in 'Sprint' missiles were developed in the 1960s and 1970s for ABM inception (penetrating neutrons would heat up the fissile material in warheads, melting it out of shape and making the bombs fizzle), and Star Wars proposed to replace them with chemical lasers.



Above: President Ronald Reagan’s 12 June 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate of the 1961 Berlin Wall:

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control. Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace – if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – if you seek liberalization: come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent - and I pledge to you my country's efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defences of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides. Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter deployment, there were difficult days - days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city-and the Soviets later walked away from the table.

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then - I invite those who protest today - to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table.

Above: on 9 November 1989, the people of a free Berlin tore down the Wall because the failure of communist will in the face of overwhelming Western strength had demoralized the hard liners and permitted Gorbachev to gain power and reform the Soviet Union, withdrawing the 500,000 Soviet troops in Eastern Europe who were required to keep the population from staging an uprising. With the troops and tanks gone, the people could demolish the wall with relative impunity.

'It is natural, after a series of events such as this book has dealt with, to look for some single underlying cause which links them all. In the inmediate aftermath of the revolutions some right wing journalists and politicians in Western Europe, innately suspicious of the influence of television over the minds of people, ascribed the revolutionary process to the influence of broadcasters. It won't do, of course. Television may have alerted people to the revolutionary moment in Romania, but only by accident. In East Germany and Czechoslovakia it remained in the hands of Party loyalists until the critical moment had come and gone; people saw little or nothing of the revolution on their television screens.

'There is a far more obvious link between each of the major events I have dealt with in these pages. Hungary and Poland eased away from Soviet Authority with the tacit approval of Mikhail Gorbachev. His policies and his visit to Peking encouraged Chinese students and intellectuals to occupy Tiananmen Square [that revolt against communism in China was suppressed, unlike the revolt in Europe in 1989, because Gorbachev had removed 500,000 Soviet troops from Europe and paved the way for reform; which was not the case in hard line controlled China in 1989]. At the very least, the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe took place because he disapproved of the old leaders and made it clear he would not intervene to save them.'

- BBC correspondent John Simpson, Despatches from the Barricades: An Eye-Witness Account of the Revolutions that Shook the World 1989-90, Hutchinson, London, 1990, p. 309.

On 1 September 1983, the evil Soviet General Secretary Andropov's orders to frontier guard troops and air defense forces to shoot down any 'intruder' aircraft caused the murder of 269 passengers aboard Korean Airlines flight KE007, which accidentally used a magnetic compass not inertial guidance for its automatic pilot and as a result entered the edge of Soviet airspace. President Reagan called it the 'murder of 269 innocent people in a defenseless airliner'. He was opposed by Andropov who lied on the 28 September 1983 that the airliner was on 'a militarist course which poses a grave threat to peace ... engineered by U.S. special services.' Apologists for Andropov blamed Reagan for Navy Secretary John Lehman's military overflights of Soviet airspace to test their air defenses, but that sick claim is precisely the same fanatical propaganda as the fascist blaming of the West for the Holocaust by saying that 'Hitler would never have had to gas 6 million Jews if the West hadn't put pressure on the Nazi regime by fighting it'. In other words, these apologists for dictatorships are nefarious. This incident gave Reagan the moral authority to oppose the Soviet Union by declaring it to be an 'evil' empire, just as Kennedy had stated in his 26 June 1963 speech in Berlin (above). Furthermore, Reagan used a variety of tactics to demoralize the Soviet Union's military might and encourage reform. E.g., Reagan's 'Evil Empire' speech on 8 March 1983 to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida:

The reality is that we must find peace through strength. I would agree to a freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze. A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to verify. Such a major effort would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving substantial reductions. ... It was C. S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable 'Screwtape Letters,' wrote: 'The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.' Well, because these 'quiet men' do not 'raise their voices,' because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they're always making 'their final territorial demand,' some would have us accept them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom. So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals and one day, with God's help, their total elimination. While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith. ... I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: 'He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength. ... But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary. ...' Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, 'We have it within our power to begin the world over again.' We can do it, doing together what no one church could do by itself. God bless you, and thank you very much.

Soviet General Secretary Andropov was quoted on 27 March 1983 in Pravda responding to Reagan in the following clearly demoralized way:

The intention to secure for itself the possibility of destroying, with the help of the ABM defenses, the corresponding strategic systems of the other side, that is of rendering it unable of dealing a retaliatory strike, is a bid to disarm the Soviet Union in the face of the U.S. nuclear threat.

In London, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) which had been a self-appointed committee from 1959-65 when it became a membership organization, staged a demonstration against Reagan in Hyde Park on 22 October 1983. Journalist Ann Leslie wrote about it in her Daily Mail newspaper article published on 25 October 1983, How Mothers Like Me are Driven to Join the Big Peace Demos; CND blackmail at our school gates:

On Friday morning, the day before the demos, I and other mothers were delivering our tiny sons and daughters to their North London primary school. This humdrum, happy, chattering little scene was briefly overshadowed by a sudden glimpse of apocalyptic terror in the form of two leaflets handed out to use at the gates. The first said: 'October 23. Where will you be?' The second, from the Camden Labour Party, told us why we should be there on Saturday. Cruise missiles, due to be installed in December, will 'make nuclear war more likely. ...' It didn't of course mention that the Soviets already have over 150 SS20s installed, each with three warheads, two-thirds of which are targeted on Western Europe. ... Nor is there any illusion at NATO ... that America could fight a limited nuclear war in Europe. As General Rogers, the American Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, said: 'The Soviets have said that any American weapon system being fired at Soviet soil will be cause for her to attack the United States with strategic weapons.' ... Many in the crowd used the demonstration to promote a whole variety of separate causes. Like the seller of the Hard-Left newspaper who told me we must 'defend the Soviet Union against Western imperialism.'

The Marxist historian E. P. Thompson, an elected CND National Council member, wrote a book called 'Protest and Survive' to attack the government's 'Protect and Survive' civil defense campaign (while ignoring all the scientific facts about civil defense). On 18 June 1982, journalist Marjory Davidson had written an article in The Sun newspaper called CND, Is It All a Russian Con Trick - Moscow's making fools of our ban the bomb brigade:

The 19 very important visitors were welcomed to Moscow in the style of Heads of State. Police escorted their motorcade as it swept through red lights on the way from Sherenritovo Airport to a downtown hotel. Visits to the Bolshoi Ballet, the old Czarist capital, Leningrad and the fabled cities of Tashkent and Samarkand were on the programme. And it was red carpet treatment all the way. ... Who were the lucky 19? Not pop stars, or soccer players or even astronauts. They were members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and fellow sympathisers ... They are part of a campaign that is orchestrated and financed [via the Soviet funded so-called 'World Peace Council', which was strongly linked to CND, et al.] by the Soviet Union with the direct purpose of weakening the West, her resolve and her strength, while Russia continues to build up the most fearsome military machine in history. ... The naive band of travellers were campaigning for Britain to scrap all nuclear weapons. When they hesitantly asked the Kremlin to make a possible 10% reduction in its nuclear arsenal, the reply was a brutal 'Niet.' In Britain, the ban-the-bomb campaign is booming. Membership has increased from 3,000 to 37,000 in 18 months and includes many idealistic young people. Brezhnev flew from Moscow to meet the 1,000 Soviet-subsidised deligates in Sofia. ... They seek a power base in Britain. They aim to get it by exploiting the fear and horror felt by decent men and women at the idea of nuclear war. They have formed special sections - Youth CND and Christian CND - to extend their sphere of influence.

Paul Mercer gives the following 1983 flowchart in his excellent anti-propaganda book, 'Peace' of the Dead: The Truth Behind the Nuclear Disarmers (Policy Research Publications, London, 1986), page 91:

Soviet Union Politburo, Candidate Member: Boris Ponomarev
|
Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, Secretary: Boris Ponomarev
|
International Department, Head: Boris Ponomarev; Oleg Kharkhardin (Vice-President of Soviet Peace Committee)
|
World Peace Council, President: Romesh Chandra; Oleg Kharkhardin (Vice-President of Soviet Peace Committee)
|
International Liaison Forum of Peace Forces, Chairman: Romesh Chandra; Executive Secretary: Oleg Kharkhardin; Vice-Chairmen: Arthur Booth and Sean MacBride
|
(member body)
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International Peace Bureau, Chairman: Arthur Booth; President: Sean MacBride; Vice-President: Bruce Kent
|
(member body)
|
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), General Secretary: Bruce Kent; Irish CND Committee: Sean MacBride

Mercer states that the delegation which CND sent to Moscow in May 1982 consisted of Lord Hugh Jenkins (1980-1 CND Chairman), Joan Ruddock (then the current CND Chairman), Roger Spiller (who was soon to be elected Vice-Chairman of CND), Sally Davison (full-time National Organiser of CND, 1979-81), and Gerard Holden. On 31 May 1982, Joan Ruddock, the Chairman of CND, was in session with Yuri Zhukov, the Chairman of the Soviet 'World Peace Council' anti-Western propaganda lobby. Soviet news agency TASS on 28 May 1982 reported that Lord Jenkins said CND 'had a high opinion of the Soviet peace initiative', neglecting all the Soviet funded invasions and wars on democracy throughout the world! CND's control by Soviet communism continued right up to the end of the Cold War. For example, see Dr Julian Lewis's article, 'CND's New Stalinist Leader' in the December 1990 issue of Freedom Today (available online):

'CND has appointed the former National Organiser of the British branch of the World Peace Council (WPC) as its new General Secretary – the position held by Bruce Kent when leading CND in the early 1980s. Mr Gary Lefley, who takes up CND's top full-time salaried post in the new year, can accurately be described as an agent of President Brezhnev's propaganda machine at the height of the Soviet "peace offensive" against NATO's planned deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles. ... Before the 1983 General Election, CND published a list of 120 Labour MPs amongst its members. This total had risen to 133 by the time of the 1987 General Election. Currently, CND refuses to reveal either the total or the names of their supporters in the Parliamentary Labour Party. This is undoubtedly because it would run counter to Labour's attempts to conceal its continuing unilateralism. Now that the organisation is to be run by a propagandist for the Brezhnev regime, there is yet another reason for Labour's CND MPs to keep their membership a secret.'


Above: the British media was the stage for a war of terror between nuclear weapons effects exaggerating CND and Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher's pro-civil defence, pro-deterrence, anti-intimidation elected government. At the 1983 General Election, CND went so far as to try to get voters to elect Neil Kinnock's Labour Party due to its declared unilateral nuclear disarmament policy, which would have removed Britain from its 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' role for American nuclear weapons in the effort to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe! CND did this by exaggerating the effects of nuclear weapons as well as downplaying the horrendous suffering that living under communist dictatorship would entail and also downplaying the incredible effectiveness of simple civil defense countermeasures against thermal radiation, blast and fallout radiation! Despite all her widely-attacked and tragic failings on domestic policy, Thatcher stood up for freedom effectively in foreign policy: unlike most scientifically inept politicians, she was a former research chemist, who - despite her widely perceived domestic policy failings as a right-wing woman - backed the morality of civil defence and on foreign policy issues stood up to terrorist state dictator Leonid Brezhnev like a man, echoing Clayton's pragmatic outlook on war in her address to the United Nations General Assembly on disarmament on 23 June 1982, when she pointed out that in the years since the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 10 million people were killed by 140 non-nuclear conflicts, so:

‘The fundamental risk to peace is not the existence of weapons of particular types. It is the disposition on the part of some states to impose change on others by resorting to force against other nations ... Aggressors do not start wars because an adversary has built up his own strength. They start wars because they believe they can gain more by going to war than by remaining at peace.’

Charles J. Hitch and Roland B. McKean of the RAND Corporation in their 1960 book The Economics of Defence in the Nuclear Age, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, p. 310, stated:

‘With each side possessing only a small striking force, a small amount of cheating would give one side dominance over the other, and the incentive to cheat and prepare a preventative attack would be strong... With each side possessing, say, several thousand missiles, a vast amount of cheating would be necessary to give one side the ability to wipe out the other’s striking capability.’

For example, America used two nuclear weapons against Japan in desperation to stop World War II fighting when it had no nuclear stockpile at all, but resisted from using nuclear weapons at all when it had a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, even when it had superiority over the Soviet Union until the 1960s. At the end of The Economics of Defence in the Nuclear Age, p. 357, the authors stress: ‘the more extensive a disarmament agreement is, the smaller the force that a violator would have to hide in order to achieve complete domination. Most obviously, “the abolition of the weapons necessary in a general or ‘unlimited’ war” would offer the most insuperable obstacles to an inspection plan, since the violator could gain an overwhelming advantage from the concealment of even a few weapons.’

Thus, reducing the scale of nuclear deterrence may not result in increased security. This fact is not opinion, and it doesn't matter if it opposes 'consensus thinking' or 'groupthink'. Such a fact is not a pro-nuclear bias, or propaganda, but is countering lying propaganda. We have to work with natural facts in the real world, regardless of whether popular ideologies and utopias are contrary to them.

The popular theories of nuclear disarmament campaigners ignore these facts, and claim that the massive number of nuclear weapons in existence is due to misunderstanding of the ‘total annihilation’ effects of nuclear weapons by insane politicians and scientists. Similarly, many oppose American anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems as being contrary to deterrence. However, Hitch and McKean on page 180 of the same book in 1960 pointed out:

‘An American force that can make a devastating first strike but is easily destroyed on the ground is more likely to invite direct attack than to deter it.’

For this reason, a first strike capability alone is not a sufficient capability to deter war, and may cause a war instead. To resist intimidation, it is necessary to be credibly able to survive a first strike by the enemy so you have control over how you decide to respond later. If your forces are 'soft targets', i.e., are not protected from the effects of a first-strike by the enemy, then you will have no choice but to launch all your weapons in panic when you detect a first-strike coming. This won't help you, and makes deterrence unstable because false alerts could cause you to start a nuclear war by accident (e.g., missile tests, asteroid showers, confusion during training exercises, etc., could set off a war in the absence of a second-strike capability).

Only with such a second strike capability, i.e., the ability to fight a nuclear war slowly without panic or total annihilation, are you able to intimidate the opponent into deciding not to start a war with you. Furthermore, if you have both a first and a second strike capability, you may have political leverage to bring to bear on an opponent that goes past merely preventing war. After all, deterring Germany in 1939 from provoking a war would have prevented war but it would not have prevented ill-treatment of the Jews. Only by having more capability than is merely required for deterrence, can you hope to intimidate an evil dictatorship into political reform. E.g., on 29 October 1982, British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher stated of the Berlin Wall:

‘You may chain a man, but you cannot chain his mind. You may enslave him, but you will not conquer his spirit. In every decade since the war the Soviet leaders have been reminded that their pitiless ideology only survives because it is maintained by force. But the day comes when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it. Then the edifice cracks: the mortar crumbles ... one day, liberty will dawn on the other side of the wall.’

Leonid Brezhnev fortunately died on 10 November 1982, while Reagan and Thatcher challenged the Soviet Union's nuclear superiority with increased civil defence efforts coupled to military expenditure in a successful effort to bankrupt and reform the corrupt Soviet terrorist system.

On 22 November 1990, Thatcher was able to declare:

‘Today, we have a Europe ... where the threat to our security from the overwhelming conventional forces of the Warsaw Pact has been removed; where the Berlin Wall has been torn down and the Cold War is at an end. These immense changes did not come about by chance. They have been achieved by strength and resolution in defence, and by a refusal ever to be intimidated.’

A Gallup Poll in Britain in 1983 found that 67% of the population opposed CND's stated objective of unilateral (i.e., Britain only) disarmament. On October 1983, the London Guardian newspaper commissioned an opinion poll which showed that 77% of Britain's population were in support of either keeping or improving Britain's nuclear deterrent in the face of the Soviet threat. Despite these facts, the antinuclear-biased BBC gave enormous coverage to the CND anti-nuclear protests and the British Labour Party took up a pro-CND unilateral disarmament policy, which was one reason why it lost the general election on 9 June 1983 owing to unpopularity. (CND supporters then set up so-called 'Nuclear Free Zones' in the false belief that signposts would protect people against radiation from fallout, which was disproved when the Soviet Chernobyl reactor exploded in April 1986, contaminating such propaganda-spin zones!)

Traditionally, bigoted anti-ABM, pro-appeasement physicists like Nobel Laureate Dr Hans Bethe would attack any new ABM idea, but they were unable to effectively discredit Reagan's Star Wars because if they debunked Star Wars, then they would be discrediting Andropov's claim that Reagan's ABM really was a threat! So they were caught in a trap: whatever they said would help Reagan! Reagan, by threatening to make Soviet military might impotent and obsolete, stumped the whole basis of Marxist ideology which was a substitute for religion: the belief that in the future they would one day force a world revolution. By taking away that Marxist belief system, the Soviet Union had to change its belief from one based on military might to one based on capitalism.

Gorbachev was born in 1931 and saw his own family suffer when Stalin used mass starvation to force Soviet farmers to give up all they owned and move on to collective farms. Any who tried to defend themselves from the lazy, dictatorial Bolsheviks with their hunting guns were simply outnumbered and murdered, and their children and wives were then carted off to collective farms. They had no chance, no hope of freedom, not even to live simple lives off their land. His wife Raisa, whom he met in 1953 at Moscow University, had suffered a similar childhood. Gorbachev was nominated to lead the U.S.S.R. by the disillusioned Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko (the liar who had tried to delude President Kennedy over the Cuban missiles crisis, claiming that none of the weapons the Soviet Union supplied Cuba were offensive in nature) on 11 March 1985.

Gorbachev then replaced Gromyko with Anatoly Chernyaev, who was keen for reform. Due to their personal experiences of the terror of totalitarian evil, they had a sympathy with President Reagan's hopes for freedom and reform. Gorbachev required merely two Russian words, glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), to describe the changes he wanted to make to the Soviet Union. When German student pilot Matthias Rust was able to penetrate Soviet air defenses and land his plane in Red Square, Gorbachev used the event as leverage to purge his military of all remaining resistance to perestroika. On 7 December 1988, Gorbachev initiated the withdrawl of 500,000 troops from Eastern Europe, allowing the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. A year later, in November 1990, the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty was signed which forced the Soviets to destroy 28,000 battle tanks in order to equalize Warsaw Pact and NATO forces. Finally in August 1991, a hard line communist coup was attempted which arrested Gorbachev but not Boris Yeltsin, who took control of the U.S.S.R. and signed a draft for its dissolution at a December 1991 meeting with the leaders of the Ukraine and Belarus. Gorbachev, his presidency then obsolete, resigned on 25 December 1991. It is instructive when considering The Effects of Nuclear Weapons to examine the relevant background, the Cold War and the use of nuclear weapons effects for intimidation by all parties.

1994 revised Introduction to Kearny’s Nuclear War Survival Skills, by Dr Edward Teller, January 14, 1994:

‘If defense is neglected these weapons of attack become effective. They become available and desirable in the eyes of an imperialist dictator, even if his means are limited. Weapons of mass destruction could become equalizers between nations big and small, highly developed and primitive, if defense is neglected. If defense is developed and if it is made available for general prevention of war, weapons of aggression will become less desirable. Thus defense makes war itself less probable. ... One psychological defense mechanism against danger is to forget about it. This attitude is as common as it is disastrous. It may turn a limited danger into a fatal difficulty.’

Before 9/11, Weinberger was quizzed by skeptical critics on BBC News Talking Point on Friday, 4 May, 2001, Caspar Weinberger quizzed on new US Star Wars ABM plans:

‘The [ABM] treaty was in 1972 ... The theory ... supporting the ABM treaty ... that it will prevent an arms race ... is perfect nonsense because we have had an arms race all the time we have had the ABM treaty, and we have seen the greatest increase in proliferation of nuclear weapons that we have ever had. We are up to 7,000 plus, the Russians are up to 6,900 plus. On intercontinental missiles the Russians have 23,000 nuclear warheads. So the ABM treaty preventing an arms race is total nonsense. ... I don't know how any networking is going to prevent North Korea from doing everything it can to get more nuclear weapons than they have now particularly when China and Russia are perfectly willing to sell them all of the technology required. Intelligence sources aren't going to prevent a country from doing it.

‘You have to understand that without any defences whatever you are very vulnerable. It is like saying we don't like chemical warfare - we don't like gas attacks - so we are going to give up and promise not to have any defences ever against them and that of course would mean then we are perfectly safe. ...

‘The Patriot was not a failure in the Gulf War - the Patriot was one of the things which defeated the Scud and in effect helped us win the Gulf War. One of two of the shots went astray but that is true of every weapon system that has ever been invented. ...

‘The fact that a missile defence system wouldn't necessarily block a suitcase bomb is certainly not an argument for not proceeding with a missile defence when a missile that hits can wipe out hundreds of thousands of lives in a second. ...

‘The curious thing about it is that missile defence is not an offensive weapon system - missile defence cannot kill anybody. Missile defence can help preserve and protect your people and our allies, and the idea that you are somehow endangering people by having a defence strikes me almost as absurd as saying you endanger people by having a gas mask in a gas attack. ...

‘My worry is when we have Russia and China being the most vociferous opponents of the plan to abandon the ABM treaty and go to a defensive system. Why are they so vociferous about their hatred of the idea of having a defensive system? The answer, I am afraid is rather clear - it is because they have offensive plans that they think would be thwarted by a defensive system and so they are doing everything they can to try to block it. ...

‘Tensions are on the rise because very aggressive powers know that the one system that will never be defended against if we follow the ABM treaty ... are these nuclear and chemical warhead carrying missiles. Now if you tell an aggressive nation that is the one system weapons that is never going to be defending against - what are they going to do? They are going to make every effort to get that kind of system of weapons. That is what is happening and that is why there is an increased tension. The greatest force for proliferation is the ABM treaty.

‘So that is why it seems to me that it is vital that we get rid of the ABM treaty concept as soon as possible and proceed with the construction of an effective defence to protect ourselves and our allies. ...

‘President Bush said that we were going ahead with the defensive system but we would make sure that nobody felt we had offensive intentions because we would accompany it by a unilateral reduction of our nuclear arsenal. It seems to me to be a rather clear statement that proceeding with the missile defence system would mean fewer arms of this kind.

‘You have had your arms race all the time ABM treaty was in effect and now you have an enormous accumulation and increase of nuclear weapons and that was your arms race promoted by the ABM treaty. Now if you abolish the ABM treaty you are not going to get another arms race - you have got the arms already there - and if you accompany the missile defence construction with the unilateral reduction of our own nuclear arsenal then it seems to me you are finally getting some kind of inducement to reduce these weapons.’

On 29 September 1982, Elliott Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs in the U.S. Government, gave the following brilliant address to the Chicago World Affairs Council:

It was primarily two things that saved us from the danger of nuclear war which we faced in the 1950s. The first was the development in the mid-1950s of an intellectual understanding of deterrence: that what deters nuclear war is not simply more weapons but a protected strategic force that can strike back even if it is attacked first. Such a force removes the temptation to strike first. It is vital to realize that the development of the theory of deterrence was the most important act of arms control in the postwar era; more important than any negotiation or treaty we have engaged in. The second thing that kept nuclear annihilation at a distance was the development of new weapons that were shaped by this theory of deterrence. ... The missile silo ... able to last out a first strike and retaliate; The ballistic missile submarine, which was more invulnerable because it was hidden in the depths of the sea; and the spy satellite, which for the first time gave an accurate accounting of the other side's strategic forces, thus reducing uncertainty and nervousness. Arms control agreements like SALT 1 (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, number 1) would not have been possible without this weapon, because they would have been wholly impossible to verify.

These facts constitute a genuine paradox: that the moral result of avoiding nuclear war was achieved through certain weapons. I believe we must face this paradox squarely ... We face an appalling danger in nuclear war and have limited resources to cope with it. Since the 1950s, one of the resources that has been most useful is the redesign of weapons so that they will contribute to a true deterrent.

The neutron bomb, which we will discuss in detail below since both Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan have analyzed it in detail, is one example of a possible future for the decreasing nuclear deterrent. The neutron bomb is a miniature Teller-Ulam thermonuclear weapon which, in addition to a very small primary stage fission yield, has a deuterium-tritium fusion yield of 1 kt and would be detonated at a sufficient height (500 metres or so) to prevent local fallout and any serious blast or thermal effects on the ground: the energy partition of both of these effects is suppressed, since in deuterium-tritium fusion the products are an alpha particle and a neutron which have equal momentum, hence the neutron moves four times faster than the alpha particle, and thereby takes 4/5ths or 80% of the total kinetic energy of the fusion process! If the high-yield nuclear stockpiles of the free world were replaced with neutron bombs, collateral damage would be averted and thus nuclear deterrence would be grossly enhanced!

The nuclear threat from North Korea is a good example of the need to publish for the first the unbiased, uncensored, untwisted facts about the effects of radiation, etc., from nuclear weapons testing: terrorist dictatorships are today being encouraged to go into nuclear proliferation by groupthink-based obscene exaggerations from the well-known terrorist-supporting fascist propaganda groups of the effects of nuclear weapons which we expose below. Mainstream physicists in the West have lied that there is no such thing as effective easy improvised civil defense against the bomb, while exaggerating the effects of nuclear weapons in total disagreement with the hard facts from Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other nuclear explosions, as we will see in this blog post.

This exaggeration is the cause of nuclear proliferation, and the cause of the threat to civilization. What the evil, groupthink-obsessed scum don’t realize is that no amount of pacifist hot air will protect you against radiation, but civil defense countermeasures will! No amount of sanctions will do anything but increase the suffering of the oppressed people, and harden the resolve of the leadership which isn’t affected by the sanctions anyway. Sanctions punish the innocent. Political diplomacy and sanctions are no use against dictatorship, as proved by the case of dictatorships in history. All they do is to hand the dictatorship some real facts to supplement its lying propaganda, showing that the West really increases the suffering of its perfectly innocent, impoverished people out of Western paranoid delusions, etc., and claiming that it is merely trying to get the same nuclear security as the West to protect itself from war and thus maintain the peace by deterring aggressors.

Praemonitus praemunitus - forewarned is forearmed. Civil defence, to be taken seriously, requires the publication of solid facts about believable threats. Secrecy over the effects of nuclear weapons tests hinders civil defence planning against threats; it does not hinder plutonium and missile production by rogue states!

The same year as the publication of The Effects of Atomic Weapons, 1950, the Top Secret British Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch report SA/16 concluded:

‘The wide publicity given to the appalling destruction caused by the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has possibly tended to give an exaggerated impression of their effectiveness. Perhaps the best way to counteract this impression, and to help to get the atomic bomb to scale, is to consider the numbers of atomic bombs that would have to be dropped on this country and on Germany to have caused the same total amount of damage as was actually caused by attacks with high explosive and incendiary bombs.

‘During the last war a total of 1,300,000 tons [of bombs] were dropped on Germany by the Strategic Air Forces [of Britain and America]. If there were no increase in aiming accuracy, then to achieve the same amount of material damage (to houses, industrial and transportational targets, etc.) would have required the use of over 300 atomic bombs together with some 500,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs for targets too small to warrant the use of an atomic bomb ... the total of 300,000 civilian air raid deaths in Germany could have been caused by about 80 atomic bombs delivered with the accuracy of last war area attacks, or by about 20 atomic bombs accurately placed at the centres of large German cities ...’

This vital report, SA/16, was kept Top Secret for 8 years, and then Restricted for another 22 years. It was never published, for fear of undermining the value of the nuclear deterrent against Russian expansion.

CUMULATIVE BLAST WAVE PRESSURE REDUCTION BY DAMAGE CAUSED

*The average density of ground coverage by buildings in Hiroshima determined from aerial photographs of the target taken before detonation was 5,400 buildings per square kilometre (the values in most British cities vary from about 5,000 near the centre to 2,000 near the outer boundaries). It is recommended that the housing density for modern Western cities be taken as half that in Hiroshima. (Data from Penney, et al., 1970.)

Lord William Penney visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the American occupation forces, measured all of the damage and shipped it back to Britain for laboratory analysis. He determined the bending moments for steel poles by the blast wave, the overpressures required to reduce the volume of blueprint containers and petrol cans, and many other natural blast wave gauges. The value of these studies was proved in the 1946 ABLE nuclear test, where the bomb was dropped off target by accident and Penney had to determine the air pressures from the collapse of petrol cans. This is a precise measurement because by filling the petrol can with water before and after partial collapse by blast, the volume reduction is measured, which correlates with the blast wave peak overpressure. Therefore, several items of this type can be used to get a statistically good measurement, unlike the piezoelectric electronic blast sensors used at the TRINITY test in 1945 which were of course wrecked by EMP (as predicted by Enrico Fermi). Later, Penney used empty toothpaste tubes to measure the peak overpressure at early British nuclear tests, averting the risk of EMP damage to electronic sensors.

Penney used the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data to do a secret study of the reduction in peak overpressure caused by the irreversible energy loss from the blast wave as it flattened house after house in each radial line outward from ground zero. Penney found that at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the peak overpressure fell faster than in British nuclear tests at similar scaled burst heights over smooth unobstructed desert. The peak blast overpressure fell exponentially due to the cumulative irreversible energy loss done in blowing up successive buildings.

At a distance of 1.74 km from ground zero in Hiroshima, the peak overpressure was only 50% of what it would have been over an ideal smooth desert without houses. This figure applies only to the wooden houses in Hiroshima where there were 5,400 houses per square kilometre. In most modern Western cities the number of buildings per square kilometre is on average only half that figure, but the buildings are brick or concrete and this means that they can absorb more energy in the act of being blown up by the blast wave. In a modern British city, the peak overpressure could therefore fall by 50% every 340 metres that the shock wave progressed, causing a dramatic reduction in damage at great distances, compared to the effects predicted for unobstructed ideal desert terrain in Glasstone and Dolan’s 1977 book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. The reduction factor for peak blast overpressure at Hiroshima due to destruction caused was: (peak overpressure in built up area) / (peak overpressure over unobstructed ideal desert terrain in nuclear tests) = e^-0.41R where R is ground range in kilometres; for typical Western brick and concrete cities they estimated the reduction factor to be e^-2.0R.

It is important to note that this irreversible cumulative energy loss from the blast wave is a straightforward consequence of the laws of physics and is not speculative: the work energy E needed to push in a brick wall the distance X against resistance force F is simply E = FX. This is a simple property of physics. The energy lost from the supersonic shock front is converted into relatively slow-moving debris and a heating of the rubble, there is no mechanism for it to get back into the blast wave. This process of irreversible energy loss has nothing to do with the mere scattering of blast waves by multiple reflections between the walls of buildings which is the basis of the obfuscating discussion in Glasstone and Dolan, 1977. Analysis of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data by Penney showed that after 75 wooden buildings had been damaged in a radial line from ground zero, the peak overpressure had fallen to only half that which would have occurred on an unobstructed ideal desert surface.

Penney kept this secret until 1970 when he gave some details in a published paper comparing the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blast waves to British nuclear test data for ideal terrain. Penney had earlier supported some experiments at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment by W. Worsfold, published in the 1957 secret report The Effects of Shielding a Building from Atomic Blast by Another of the Same Size and Shape, AWRE-E4/57 (declassified only in May 1985) and further experiments in the report AWRE-E8/57. Each individual building causes only a trivial net reduction in the peak overpressure (1-5 % as shown in the following table), but after some tens or hundreds of houses in any radial line from ground zero have been totalled, the blast wave is seriously depleted in energy. Hence, predictions of blast damage using desert nuclear test data with the cube-root scaling law are massive exaggerations.
*Data are computed for a peak overpressure of 50 kPa (7.2 psi) for the total energy loss in the blast wave, which is why there is a dependence on the weapon yield. The longer duration blast winds from a higher yield weapon loses more energy in accelerating blast debris than the shorter duration blast wave from a low yield weapon. However, the amount of reduction in the peak overpressure (at the front of the shock wave) by causing damage will be independent of the blast wave duration. It is therefore recommended that the data for 20 kilotons be used for estimating the percentage reduction in peak overpressure, regardless of the blast wave duration or weapon yield.

All buildings tend to absorb approximately the same fraction of the blast wave energy regardless of the peak overpressure when struck because the amount of kinetic energy imparted by the blast wave to the debris and damaged materials increases approximately in direct proportion to the energy in the blast wave. Therefore, regardless of the weapon yield, in a modern American city the blast reduction factor for blast overpressure due to energy loss in causing the damage done to structures will be roughly exp(-d/750) where d is distance in metres. This will obviously have a more dramatic effect on reducing damaged areas for high yield weapons (where the low levels of blast overpressure cover immense distances on unobstructed desert terrain) than low yield weapons (where the damage distances are small in any case).

But even in the case of a 1 kt terrorist surface burst in an American city, the data in Glasstone and Dolan 1977 are still gross exaggerations! The 600 R initial nuclear radiation radius will be reduced from 808 m in Nevada tests to 245 m by buildings due to the elimination of most direct (line of sight) unscattered relativistic radiation by structures long before such structures can be destroyed by the much slower-moving blast wave! The 5 cal/cm² thermal flash burn radius of 750 m in Nevada tests will be practically eliminated because the thermal pulse from such a small weapon will be over before the fireball becomes buoyant (this happens when its density falls below ambient air density, in the late stages) and rises into view above the structures which have yet to be destroyed by the blast wave. The 5 psi peak overpressure radius for severe damage to light residential structures will be reduced from 442 m in Nevada tests to 350 m, and the 2.5 psi peak overpressure radius for serious flying debris and glass injuries to persons standing behind windows will be reduced from 640 m in Nevada tests to 460 m. Because damaged areas are proportional to the square of the radius, the actual number of casualties and amount of damage reduction is far more impressive than these figures for radii suggest.


Above: photo of Nagasaki before and after the bombing: the number of houses destroyed by the blast wave in any given radial line from ground zero can be added up easily on the upper photo (click for close-up view). Each house damaged turned about 1% of the blast wave energy into the kinetic energy of debris, irreversibly depleting energy from the blast wave itself. After 75 houses had been damaged along any radial line, the blast peak overpressure was halved by the loss of energy. This factor was never included by the Americans in blast predictions, which instead used false calculations based on blast waves measured over totally unobstructed deserts.


Above: the official U.S. nuclear weapons effects horror story; it is a gross exaggeration, showing how the U.S. government lied about the effects of nuclear weapons during the cold war. They predicted blast effects to buildings in cities assuming that the terrain was unobstructed and ignored the irreversible loss of energy in the blast as it flattens house after house in any radial line outward from ground zero, which quickly soaks up the energy in the ground level diverging blast wave and contains the damaged area (particularly in large explosions). They also exaggerated the fire situation by neglecting the fact that piles of concrete and bricks don't burn (as proved in Britain in World War II, and by the fact that firestorms only occurred in wooden medieval cities in Europe such as ancient wooden parts of Hamburg and Dresden, and wooden cities in Japan; and even then this was not due to thermal radiation but due to a mixture of high explosives to damage the houses by blast and incendiaries to get inside, or in Hiroshima and Nagasaki where detonations occurred at breakfast and lunch time respectively so that charcoal cooking braziers were overturned by the blast amidst bamboo and paper screens, starting the tindering fires inside wooden houses), and by ignoring the shielding of thermal radiation by shadowing effects:




Above: dangerous abdominal penetration 3 metres behind windows (when glass fragments have been accelerated to high speed by the blast winds) during OPERATION TEAPOT Nevada nuclear tests in 1955. Notice that at low overpressures, there is no danger from low-overpressure broken windows because the blast wind behind the shock front is far too weak to accelerate the large fragments to high momenta, while at very high overpressures the window gets broken into dust-sized fragments that are simply far too small to carry enough momentum to penetrate clothing or skin. Thus, like Goldilocks' porridge, the peak overpressure ideally needs to be just right (2-5 psi) to break windows into big fragments that carry enough momentum to penetrate the abdomen when accelerated by the blast winds behind the shock front. Ducking and covering under a table or desk would avert this danger, and even dropping flat on the floor would help because the most dangerous fragments are blasted horizontally from the window. Contrary to lying propaganda films of nuclear explosions, the blast wave NEVER ACCOMPANIES THE VISIBLE FLASH, BUT IS ALWAYS DELAYED LIKE THUNDER AFTER LIGHTNING, ALWAYS MAKING DUCK AND COVER POSSIBLE. The graph is taken from: I. G. Bowen, D. R. Richmond, M. B. Wetherbe and C. S. White, Biological effects of blast from bombs. Glass fragments as penetrating missiles and some of the biological implications of glass fragmented by atomic explosions, Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission progress report AECU-3350, June 1956, p. 46.


Above: a more recent report based on nuclear test research at OPERATION TEAPOT in 1955 and OPERATION PLUMBBOB in 1957 for house debris injury and also human displacement by blast is Dr Anatol Longinow's 161 pages long report Survivability in a Nuclear Weapon Environment, DCPA Contract DCPA01-77-0229, for Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Washington, D.C. 20301, report ADA076026, May 1979, which estimates the following casualties in framed buildings (steel and concrete), of up to four stories with weak exterior walls (weak curtain walls, large glass windows, etc.) when subject to 1 Mt weapon:

90 % survival at a peak overpressure of 5 psi
50 % survival at a peak overpressure of 7 psi
10 % survival at a peak overpressure of 11 psi








Above: because it didn't contain charcoal cooking stoves surrounded by paper screens and bamboo furnishings, this American two-story wood frame house survived unburned 25 cal/cm² thermal radiation with just white-washed paint (which was quickly charred off) before the house was blown up by 5 psi (35 kPa) peak overpressure at 3,500 feet from 16 kt UPSHOT KNOTHOLE-ANNIE on 17 March 1953, Nevada Test Site; anti-civil defense propaganda in 2004 Cornell-published book by Lynn Eden Whole World on Fire while quoting in detail Dr Glasstone's 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons statement that the house had whitewash on it (just like most wooden houses) completely ignores the fact that Dr Glasstone states in paragraph 7.30 on page 292 of the 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons: 'a material which blackens (or chars) readily in the early stages of exposure to thermal radiation behaves essentially as black, i.e., as a strong absorber irrespective of its original color. [Emphasis added.] On the other hand, if smoke is formed [by dark coloured wood] it will partially shield the underlying material from the subsequent radiation.' Lynn Eden also ignores the facts that:

(1) the ordinary white-washed (quite normal) house did not ignite or burn despite being charred by the thermal flash and covered in black smoke due to thermal radiation. Lynn falsely claims that the whitewash was a 'heroic' precaution to avoid ignition. But it was burned off. Even unpainted poles in Hiroshima didn't catch fire, they just charred. Window blinds were blown in by the blast. So these things which Lynn biasedly sees as bad didn't prevent fire, because as other tests like ENCORE (which we will discuss below in detail) proved it takes more than a brief pulse of heat to set thick wood on fire. Anyway, the safeguards aren't 'bad' but are actually good benefits which would help survival by minimising glass fragments and flash burns. Contrary to the totally false and civil defence demeaning impression given by Lynn Eden's prejudiced, partial quotations from Dr Glasstone's 1957 edition, rooms don't need metal window blinds: in an attack warning you can instantly protect rooms containing beds or upholstered furniture and a window which would potentially let in thermal radiation by simply drawing curtain, or by simply taping sheets of white paper over the inside of the window glass - which will protect against thermal radiation for the crucial interval of time until the delayed arrival of the blast wave!

(2) the basement survived, and

(3) the house was not knocked over by the blast overpressure; the front was cracked by the reflected overpressure and the roof was peeled off by the blast winds, but then the house exploded due to the low pressure (suction) phase of the blast occurring while there was still overpressure trapped inside the house (which had entered through the windows but could not escape as fast as the external pressure dropped). This is vital because it shows that most of the debris (with the exception of window glass) was blown outwards from the exploding house, not inwards against the occupants. Although debris landed on the family car and dented the roof, it could still be driven away after the explosion, illustrating that the debris load from the collapse of a house is not always the end of the universe as portrayed by evil propaganda:

‘We have often been accused of underestimating the fire situation ... we are unrepentant in spite of the television utterances of renowned academic scientists ... Air cannot get into a pile of rubble 80% of which is incombustible anyway. This ... is the result of a very complete study of some 1,600 flying bomb incidents ... Secondly, there is a considerable degree of shielding of one building by another ... Thirdly, even when the windows of a building can "see" the fireball, and something inside is ignited ... even with the incendiary bomb the chance of a continuing fire developing in a small room is only 1 in 5 ...’

– George R. Stanbury, ‘The Fire Hazard from Nuclear Weapons’, Fission Fragments, Scientific Civil Defence Magazine, No. 3, August 1962, pp. 22-6, British Home Office, Scientific Adviser’s Branch, originally classified 'Restricted'.

‘Dense smoke, and even jets of flame, may be emitted, but the material does not sustain ignition... smoke formed in the early stages will partially shield the underlying material from subsequent radiation. This behaviour is illustrated in the photographs taken of one of the wood-frame houses exposed in the 1953 Nevada tests... the house front became covered with a thick black smoke... within less than 2 seconds from the explosion, the smoke ceased... Ignition of the wood did not occur... The thermal energy incident upon the material was apparently dissipated in the kinetic energy of the "exploding" surface molecules before the radiation could penetrate into the depth of the material.’

– Dr Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, editors, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defence, 1977, pp. 285-6.

‘The measured total radiation at [9.1-km] from the centre was 0.29 calories/cm² ... Examination of the specimen exposed at [975 m] shows ... the charred layer does not appear to be thicker than 1/10 millimetre.... scorching of the fir lumber used to support signal wires extended out to about [1.9 km] ... the risk of fire due to the radiation ... is likely to be much less than the risk of fire from causes existing in the buildings at the time of explosion.’ – W. G. Marley and F. Reines, July 16th Nuclear Explosion: Incendiary Effects of Radiation, Los Alamos report LA-364, October 1945, originally Secret, pp. 5-6.

‘Persons exposed to nuclear explosions of low or intermediate yield may sustain very severe burns on their faces and hands or other exposed areas of the body as a result of the short pulse of directly absorbed thermal radiation. These burns may cause severe superficial damage similar to a third-degree burn, but the deeper layers of the skin may be uninjured. Such burns would heal rapidly [emphasis added; this is true unless the person also receives a concurrent massive nuclear radiation dose], like mild second-degree burns.’

– Dr Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, editors, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defence, 1977, p. 561.

The 1950 edition of the U.S. Department of Defense Effects of Atomic Weapons, edited by Dr Glasstone, on pages 392-9 justifies each protective action:

'If a person is in the open when the sudden illumination is apparent, then the best plan is instantaneously to drop to the ground, while curling up so as to shade the bare arms and hands, neck and face with the clothed body. ... A person who is inside a building or home when a sudden atomic bomb attack occurs should drop to the floor, with the back to the window, or crawl behind or beneath a table, desk, counter, etc.; this will also provide a shield against splintered glass due to the blast wave. The latter may reach the building some time after the danger from radiation has passed, and so windows should be avoided for about a minute, since the shock wave continues for some time after the explosion. ... planning will be necessary to avoid panic, for mass hysteria could convert a minor incident into a major disaster.'



Above: although American wood-frame houses offer less blast protection indoors than brick houses, they mostly have basements which are ideal for improvised shelters such as strong tables, because nuclear test data from OPERATION UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE at Nevada in 1953 and OPERATION TEAPOT at Nevada in 1955 showed that the blast winds carry most of the debris past the house, so that the debris load on the basement is minimal and survival is easy there (below).



'This report contains information on protective capabilities of a variety of different personnel shelters against prompt effects of nuclear weapons. This information was collected from previous studies performed for DCPA in this subject area. Protective capabilities are expressed in terms of 'people survivability functions' which relate the probability of survival (or percent survivors) to the free field overpressure at the shelter site. Respective shelters are described in terms of their geometry and material properties. The following shelter categories are included. (1) Existing Engineered Buildings (Upper Stories and Basements), (2) Designed Basements, (3) Single-Purpose Shelters, (4) Dual-Purpose Shelters, (5) Expedient and Special Purpose Shelters and (6) Expediently Upgraded Shelters.'

'Casualty mechanisms included blast translation terminating in impact with hard surfaces and interaction with debris from the breakup of the building walls, partitions, furniture, etc.'


Above: proof of duck and cover effectiveness for reducing the blast wind drag from standing and lying anthropometric dummy human beings at an ideal peak overpressure of 5.3 psi / 37 kPa (with 0.964 second positive phase duration) at 1,622 metres from PLUMBBOB-PRISCILLA (37 kt, 700 ft balloon, 24 June 1957, Nevada) where the standing dummy was blasted 13 feet in the air before hitting the ground and tumbling for 9 feet, coming to rest 22 feet from the starting point, but the lying dummy was not even moved. In the PLUMBBOB-SMOKY test (44 kt, 700 ft tower, 21 August 1957, Nevada), dummies were exposed to a non-ideal precursor-type blast wave such as occurs over dark coloured desert sand (which is popcorned into a hot dust cloud which increases the density of the air and increases the dynamic pressure and duration of the blast wave while reducing the peak overpressure) and were displaced considerably larger distances by the increased dynamic pressure impulse of the precursor (like a dust storm). However, for cities which are not covered in dark desert sand, a precursor will not occur, as demonstrated by nuclear tests over water and light colour surfaces. (Source: Donald R. Richmond and Clayton S. White, Biological Effects of Blast and Shock, Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, report AD638342, DASA1777, 1966. ‘We were fortunate enough at a 5 psi station in one of the 1957 shots in Nevada to photograph the time-displacement history of a 160-pound [standing] dummy, and we were able from analysis of the movies to determine the maximal velocity reached ... about 21 feet per second. This velocity developed in 0.5 second. The total displacement of the dummy was near 22 feet ... It was this piece of empirical information that helped greatly in getting an analytical “handle” on the “treatment” of man as missile.’ – Dr Clayton S. White, who worked on nuclear weapon blast effects at Nevada test series’ Upshot-Knothole (1953), Teapot (1955) and Plumbbob (1957), Testimony to the U.S. Congressional Hearings, 22-26 June 1959, Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959, pp. 364-5.)

‘... it must be recognised that the amount of protection that will be available to individuals is, in a large degree, directly related to the extent of public knowledge concerning nuclear weapons effects and associated protective measures ... By falling prone and covering exposed portions of the body or getting behind opaque objects, much of the thermal radiation may be avoided, especially in the case of large-yield detonations ... Staying behind thick walls or lying in a deep ditch may help to avoid initial nuclear radiation ... the above actions will also help to decrease the possible danger from the blast wave.’ - Samuel Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, 1962, pp. 660-1.

Further evidence on blast displacement is available from British nuclear test studies of human displacement. In 1948, R. H. A. Liston of the Atomic Research Establishment, UK, did a theoretical study of the displacement of man by a blast wave (The kinematic effect of blast on a man in the open, ARE Report 1/48), in which he assumed a drag coefficient for a standing man of 0.8, and predicted that a standing 76 kg man would be displaced 20 feet by a blast of 7 psi peak overpressure from a 20 kt bomb. For a peak overpressure of 3 psi, he predicted a displacement of 4 ft. On 27 September 1956 Liston's theory was checked out and found to make perfect predictions for a nearly ideal blast wave and soft ground at the 15 kt BUFFALO-1 nuclear test at Maralinga, Australia, by W. J. H. Butterfield et al., The Effects of Blast on Dummy Men Exposed in the Open, Atomic Weapons Reearch Establishment report AWRE-T2/59 (1959). For a peak overpressure of 6.4 psi, standing dummies facing BUFFALO-1 were displaced 16 feet, while those standing sideways were displaced only 10 feet. At a peak overpressure of 4.3 psi, standing dummies facing the burst were displaced 4 feet, while those standing sideways to the burst were only displaced 3 feet:

Psi_____________Facing burst_____Sideways to burst
10______________10.5 m_____________6 m
8.5_____________9 m________________5 m
6.4_____________5 m________________3 m
4.3_____________1.25 m_____________1 m
2.4_____________0.67 m_____________0 m

Information on the effects of human impacts and displacements are plentiful: car accidents and impact fall statistics are available. A person free-falling 1 m gains a velocity, v = (2gH)^1/2 = 4.4 m/s. If the person lands prepared, feet-first with the knees slightly bent (to avoid transmitting the shock to the spine), this fall is usually safe; but head first this impact speed can result in being knocked unconscious and possibly suffering a cracked skull. If a person falls from a great altitude (such as suicide attempts from a high cliff, bridge or aircraft) without a parachute, then air drag becomes important and causes an average terminal velocity of v = [2g/(acceleration coefficient * air density)]^1/2 = 51 m/s, which almost always proves to be lethal. However, there are cases of survival due to luck or to landing on soft surfaces, even from great heights. For example, see Christopher K. Kepler, et al., ‘Orthopaedic Injuries Associated With Fall From Floor Forty-Seven’, Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, vol. 23, No. 2, Feb. 2009, pp. 154-158: ‘This case report provides background reviewing mortality rates associated with falls from height before detailing the clinical history of a patient who survived a fall from a height of 43 stories.’

For a curve of survival incidence versus number of stories fallen, see: Sylvia M. Ramos and Harry M. Delany, ‘Free Falls From Heights: A Persistent Urban Problem’, Journal of the National Medical Association, vol. 78, no. 2, February 1986, pp. 111–115. U.K. data for road accidents indicates that 50% lethal trauma occurs for a person hit by a car moving at only 13.4 m/s (such casualties suffer additional injuries from tumbling after the initial impact). There is also good survival data from patients jumping out of windows in burning hospitals: W. S. Lewis, et al., ‘Jumpers syndrome: The trauma of high free fall as seen at Harlem Hospital’ Journal of Trauma, vol. 5, no. 6, Nov. 1965, pp. 812-8. Suicide attempts from bridges and cliffs as well as parachute failure data also help to determine the exact effects from decelerative impact to different parts of the body, which we will discuss in detail in a later post.

‘Collapse of a brick house is expected to result in approximately 25% mortality, 20% serious injury and 10% light injury to the occupants. Reinforced concrete structures, though much more resistant to blast forces, will produce almost 100% mortality on collapse ... based on data from British World War II experience ... for cases where the population expects bombing and most personnel have selected the safest places in the buildings.’ – Philip J. Dolan, editor, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defence, DNA-EM-1, 1978, c. 10, p. 5, Secret – Restricted Data. This data comes in part from the effects of the 12,000 German V1 subsonic cruise missiles and V2 supersonic rockets, each armed with a similar-sized 0.001 kt warhead. Because the V1 cruise missile was subsonic and made a well-known pulsating engine sound, people had more time to take cover and therefore each V1 only killed an average of 2.8 people, compared to 5 people per V2 supersonic rocket because there was no warning. The first sound from the V2 was the explosion shock.

The collapse of buildings creates voids since the weight of debris depends just on the mass of the building, not upon the blast pressure, so survival under a strong table or staircase in a brick house proved possible during World War II. In wood frame houses at Hiroshima, about 50% of people trapped were able to free themselves and escape before the firestorm (5% were rescued by others), while in brick houses in Britain only 25% could escape of their own accord, because the brick debris was much heavier. Bricks cannot burn, so there is a lower fire risk in brick houses. The major problem is explained clearly in Robert Jungk's book, Children of the Ashes, Heinemann, London, 1961, which cites a report in Hiroshima by American psychologist Woodbury Sparks called Panic Among A-Bomb Casualties at Hiroshima which showed that due to their surprise at the effects of the nuclear explosion, only 26 percent (153 out of a random sample of 589 bomb survivors in Hiroshima) gave any assistance at all to anybody else after the explosion. Seeing that the majority of the people in each city survived and that a major cause of death was the burning of blast damaged wooden houses containing persons trapped by blast debris, a lot more could have been done if people had been prepared. This is one of the civil defence lessons from Hiroshima: the emotional shock prevented proper action. Effective civil defence training in the solid, unvarnished facts about nuclear effects phenomenology can avert this shock, enabling help to be given more efficiently where and when practical to save lives and minimise injury.

Regarding vehicle displacement, four heavy British Army Daimler Scout Cars were exposed to the 6-kt ANTLER-2 test at Maralinga, 25 September 1957 (report AWRE-T6/59). The car exposed side-on to a peak overpressure of 76-kPa at 527 m was just turned on its side without significant displacement, and cars exposed at 48-kPa or less (671 m or more) were unmoved, although the flash scorched the paint and ‘slightly charred’ tyres facing detonation.


Above: effects of blast wind drag on a standing anthropometric dummy human being at a peak overpressure of 6 psi (41 kPa) during the 0.5 kt SAILOR HAT-CHARLIE shot at Kahoolawe Island in Hawaii on 16 April 1965. The dummy briefly behaves like superman, taking off and flying, then summersaulting gymnastically through the air before hitting the camera. A basketball beside the dummy shows the motion of a less aerodynamic object to this blast wave. You can see the 0.5 kt explosion fireball in the background. Contrary to anti-civil defense propaganda, duck and cover would have saved a human being in this situation: 'it requires about 8 times the blast wind force to move a person who is lying down compared to a standing person. People crouched or lying down also offer a much poorer target to glass shards and debris missiles. [Not to mention thermal radiation shadowing.]' (Panel 11 of DCPA Attack Environment Manual: Chapter 2, What the Planner Needs to Know about Blast and Shock, U.S. Department of Defense, report CPG 2-1A2, June 1973.)


Above: the gas holder paint (actually bitumen) deception by the Americans: the photo on the left was taken by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and published as Figure 7.50b the 1962 book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons as being ‘Paint on gas holder scorched by the thermal radiation, except where protected by the valve (1.33 miles from ground zero at Hiroshima)’, while that on the right is the British Government’s Photo No. 23 of the Report of the British Mission to Japan, 1946, showing that there was no scorched paint at that distance, but just melted bitumen, stating: ‘Shadow cast by valve-wheel on side of gasholder 1.25 miles from the centre of damage. The bituminous coating on the steel plates was affected by heat radiation except where shielded by the wheel and spindle.’ Since bitumen melts more easily than paint scorches, the American book gives a wildly deceptive exaggeration of the true thermal effect. The shadow effect in fact proves that direct, not scattered, thermal radiation predominates even at large distance where scattering is significant, which makes simple line-of-sight shielding effective. Notice that the valve that cast the shadow has not been vaporised! Anti-civil defense propaganda shows similar shadows cast by people with the false and pathetic claim that (since the person walked away) they ‘must’ certainly have been vaporised. Many political American and British anti-civil defence propaganda organisations, formerly funded by the Soviet Union, published a photo of a human shadow, claiming that the person was vaporised, ‘ceased to exist’. The objective was to discourage any duck-and-cover civil defence as being ‘useless’. In fact, the shadow is not the ash of a vaporised person but the shadow of a person with very painful skin flash burns! The vast amount of energy necessary to vaporise a human being (mainly water), compared to the thermal energy delivered, disproves the vaporisation claim (a myth invented to devalue civil defence by those either ignorant or sinisterly inhumane for political purposes): those exposed directly who did not ‘duck and cover’ received very painful burns, window glass fragments, and unshielded nuclear radiation.







Above: Hiroshima wasn't vaporised. A firestorm developed half an hour later (by which time the radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown several miles downwind) from thousands of blast-overturned charcoal cooking braziers (being used at breakfast time when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped; the Nagasaki bomb was dropped at lunch time) inside wood frame houses filled with bamboo furnishings and paper screens. There had been no rain for many weeks. The mechanisms used to achieve the appalling effects were deliberately exaggerated for military propaganda purposes during the war, because the aim was to end the war, saving a million American and Japanese lives in the invasion of Japan, rather than to inform people how to survive and mitigate the effects for civil defence! This worked, because the two bombs convinced Russia - which Japan had hoped would help it negotiate a surrender - to suddenly declare war on Japan so as to be included as a victor when Japan surrendered. As a result of Russia's declaration of war on Japan (caused directly by the two nuclear attacks), Japan surrendered. America accepted their surrender. The use of two nuclear bombs over just three days was a propaganda tool to make it look as if America had a large number of bombs available, which it didn't due to the very slow production of oralloy (enriched U-235) and Pu-239. The effects of those weapons would have been rather different if used against Western brick and concrete buildings which are not surrounded by tens of thousands of easily inflammable wooden houses. This is the whole reason why the hydrogen bomb was developed, and why much higher yields than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki weapons would be needed today to achieve the same effects.

It's curious how attitudes have changed since World War II. The American Institute of Public Opinion in the United States for the Fall 1945 found that 85 percent of Americans supported the use of atomic bombs against Japan in the war, while a poll taken by Dr Arthur Holly Compton and others of 150 Manhattan Project nuclear weapons researchers at the same time gave exactly the same result! In 1950, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported a Gallup Poll which found that 61 percent of Americans said yes in reply to the question, 'Should the U.S. use the atom bomb if it gets into another world war?'

From Dr Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1962/64 ed., page 631):

'At distances between 0.3 and 0.4 mile from ground zero in Hiroshima the average survival rate, for at least 20 days after t