Please also click here (text in blue typeface is hyperlinked to source documents) for more detailed key declassified nuclear testing and capability documents compilation (EM-1 related USA research reports plus UK nuclear weapon test reports on blast and radiation), from nukegate.org. A long introduction is provided above blog posts to debunk all of the populist pro-disarmament groupthink "strategic deterrence" mythology, originating from fake civilian effects data invented by falsely applying free-field effects to modern urban targets (and also from the non-inclusion of tactical nuclear weapons effects data or even the collateral damage avoidance civil defense chapter which appeared in 1957-64 editions, in the 1977 propaganda Carter era Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of nuclear weapons, due to the present world crisis). The key problem is that Russia now has relatively clean tactical neutron bombs, but we disarmed all of ours in 1992, creating a major deterrence gap against tactical nuclear warfare or similar major provocations; yes, in "theory" we could always escalate to strategic retaliation, but most people and Western leaders would certainly regard such escalation as more risky than tit-for-tat deterrence. As Kennedy put it, we need more options than humiliation or all-out counter city nuclear war. As with Russian use of Po-210 and Novichok in the UK in 2006-18, and sarin in Syria, "no first use" doctrines make no sense where the enemy refuses to admit to first use, or even to admit to illegally invading Ukraine and starting a war! Against liars, peace agreements are never worth the paper they are written on (we saw this in 1938 appeasement ego trips). Peace propaganda, where it attacks life-saving civil defense for credible war deterrence (in order to claim falsely "there is no alternative to disarmament but annihilation") is enemy supporting propaganda, and now desperately needs debunking. The sort of people indulging in this sort of lying to ensure deterrence is undermined are thugs who will not be reasoned with, but they have the ear of the Nobel Prize committee, the UN Security Council, and the mass media such as the BBC which refuses to objectively fact-check their lies on nuclear weapons, and backs their fake "news" based on outright lies. Relatively clean neutron bombs, of total yield 1 kiloton or less, can be used to avert collateral damage, either by air bursting at a height to eliminate significant blast and thermal damage, or they can be placed into earth-penetrator warheads to debunk tunnels and hard shelters: for example, 0.01 kiloton detonated at 15 metres in dry soil, which is possible by proven earth penetrator warhead delivery, is equivalent to a 15/(0.01.3) = 60 m depth when scaled up to 1 kiloton reference yield, so it AVOIDS ALL COLLATERAL DAMAGE, including thermal flash burns and fire effects entirely, all air blast damage, and trap the very small amount of radioactivity in fused silicate "glass" (like Trinitite) deep underground. This suppressed collateral damage energy is transformed into extra ground shock and cratering action, producing a crater radius of 15 metres and destruction of buried hard tunnels and bunkers to several crater radii, as explained in field manual FM 5-106. Such credible deterrents (tactical nuclear weapons) were proof tested in the first Cold War where they were USED (yes USED) to DETER enemy invasions. This is the most important USE of nuclear weapons, but is ignored in all propaganda! They are now being used by Russia to deter our decisive intervention in the Russian-Ukraine war, because we don't have W33, Mk54, W48, or W79 dedicated tactical deterrents of invasions any longer. We argue that the future of peaceful nuclear deterrence is not to ban tactical nuclear weapons of invasions that set off 100% of the world wars of history (Belgium 1914, Poland 1939), but to have these credible deterrents replace incredible "city busting" MAD policy, which failed in the 1930s despite media saturation of exaggerated effects of gas bomb knock-out blows, etc.

ABOVE: Lt.-Gen. James M. Gavin, who states in his book War and Peace in the Space Age, Hutchinson, London, 1959, pp. 102, 116-118:

"The Luftwaffe was the first to learn that there is more to air power than an all-out bombing offensive. The British had foreseen the value of the interceptor, and so the world's greatest manned aircraft battle, the Battle of Britain, was decided in their favor. ... As the war came to an end, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey was appointed to move in the wake of the advancing armies and assess the results of our bombing effort. The findings were reported in our 200 detailed reports. They were never, in my opinion, given the recognition that they deserved. One of the most interesting aspects of our bombing effort was that German production increased in the same ratio as our bombing effort until late in 1944 - until 'well after the ground armies were ashore to make good the job at which the aeroplanes had been unsuccessful'. ... I became increasingly interested in these problems. It was with great pleasure, therefore, that I received orders to the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group [WSEG] in March of 1949. The Director of WSEG, Dr Philip Morse, assigned me the project of studying the possible tactical employment of nuclear weapons. I devoted the entire summer of 1949 to reading everything on the subject ... and talking to our scientists. ... I had become convinced that nuclear weapons had a tremendous field for tactical application, in fact, in the long run, probably the most promising field of all. One of the recommendations in the study was that we should reconsider our then current policy of allocating all fissionable material to strategic use. This recommendation was very unpopular with my air force colleagues and, for the study to be accepted, had to be striken from it. It made little difference, since the study was stamped 'Top Secret' ... Dr Oppenheimer was present at one of the conferences and he expressed a view in which I found myself in complete agreement. That is, that more important than trying to devise new ways and means of destroying a bigger portion of the human race, we should try to find ways and means of living with the powers we had already created. ...

"If the urban bombing concept were to remain policy, and thermonuclear weapons were to be added to it, and if that concept were morally and militarily unsound in the beginning, it certainly would be more so with the H-bomb added. I believed that it was unsound and that Dr Oppenheimer's views were valid. ... an increasing number of people were talking about the possible tactical uses of nuclear weapons. An advance group in the JCS headed by Brigadier General Don Zimmerman, USAF, had done particularly good work in this area. ... I recall a figure used by General Zimmerman that when we exceeded 25 B-29 bombers delivering high-explosives instead of using one carrying an atomic bomb, we were making an uneconomical use of our resources. Thus, we approached the Korean crisis ... with our newest form of firepower, nuclear fire power, packaged for strategic use. ... General Nichols and I went to the office of General Ridgway and urged that he recommend to the Chief of Staff that he in turn recommend to the President that we use nuclear weapons against the North Korean forces. It would have been militarily inexcusable to allow the 8th Army to be destroyed without even using the most powerful weapons in our arsenal. Yet, we almost did so! We had already made two combat bombing strikes of about 175 B-29s without decisive results. The situation in the summer of 1950 offered us a number of well worth-while tactical nuclear targets, if we had had the moral courage to make the decision to use them."

Due to the failure to use tactical nuclear weapons to deter escalation in the Korean War, 2,500,000 people were killed (including 36,000 Americans and 1,100 British) by conventional fighting and the key cities in Korea were flattened by 635,000 tons of conventional bombs (635 kilotons, including 32,557 tons of napalm) and half the country has had to live in a totalitarian dictatorship ever since. It is analogous to the way Hitler bombed Guernica, killing a third of the population, on 26 April 1937 supposedly to support Franco in the Spanish civil war,  but in fact sending out a message of intimidation to Britain and France! Similarly, in Vietnam the Vietcong were supplied by the 1,000 miles Ho Chi Minh Trail which was no wider than 40 miles, and used cover of rainforests (passing through Laos and Cambodia, well away from centres of population to avoid civilian casualties!). A few 99.9% clean 10 megaton air bursts like the revolutionary Dominic-Houstonic Ripple II test of 30 October 1962 would have literally "blown their cover", and allowed the trail to be shut down to win the war, as proved by the 15 megaton Bravo test, where the Pisonia forest on Victor island at 11.8 miles got 2.4 psi peak overpressure, sustaining "Moderate damage" - that photo is in the 1957 Glasstone Effects of Nuclear Weapons, page 241 (shown below). But secret "Jason" anti-nuclear propaganda enforced by anti-nuclear bigot Steven Weinberg and comrades simply lied (see declassified Jason report S-266) that the Vietcong could cut a path through a blown down rainforest with chainsaws at night without any problems moving the debris, being heard, or seen! Also, he claimed the Vietcong could then use the chainsaw-cut route without being spotted or stopped by American helicopter gunships!  Weinberg reportedly refused to sign off that secret "Jason" report unless it recommended banning tactical nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam war peacefully, by making up ridiculous lies about the efficiency of chainsaws to somehow move thousands of tons of timber. Weinberg even claims on page 13: "The main weakness of tree blowdown as a method of interdiction is that a tree can only be blown down once." It only needs to be blown down once. You're creating a barrier 20 km wide at any point along a 1,000 mile trail, which you can then focus resources on to halt supplies getting through! You don't need to blow trees down more than once! If somehow they managed to cut a path through the 20 km of blown down debris to allow any significant movement of supplies, you've got the rest of the 1,000 mile long trail to repeat the trick on! The Vietcong would cheaply be defeated this way (contrary to the lying weasel words of the thugs supporting them in secret Jason reports). RESULT: over 7.6 megatons of conventional bombs were dropped in the Vietnam War by the USAF (including botched attempts to conventionally - or chemically with Agent Orange - shut down the Ho Chi Ming Trail in Laos and Cambodia), with the result that 3,300,000 were killed, but the war of attrition was lost due to the inflation of the American economy caused by the immense expense of conventional warfare ($139 billion was spent on that war by US DOD). (No wonder, with arrogant bigoted stupidity like this, that Weinberg's Standard Model contains elementary errors in electroweak symmetry as we have pointed out, and he also promoted quack superstring theory nonsense entirely disconnected with reality in his textbook, without understanding the key quantum gravity evidence. It may not a coincidence that a lot of aloof "quantum field theory" bigots are also smug lying self-serving world war enginnering "disarmers" who don't give a damn about reality.)

By focussing exclusively on civilian (not military!) targets, but using solely free-field desert or ocean "effects data" unsuited to cities, Glasstone's data is an exaggeration of casualties by a factor of well over 100, on Hiroshima evidence for people unshielded outdoors, compared to those in lower floors of concrete buildings or simple low-cost dual-use shelters! Glasstone and Dolan 1977 actually give this evidence but only in their usual in highly abstract form that is widely ignored in Table 12.17 on p546 - though you need to square their median lethality radii to get the relative casualty areas for the open and for concrete buildings in Hiroshima - and for simple cheap British WWII type large earth covered Anderson shelters and concrete arches in Table 5.160 (collapse at 45-60 psi overpressure for 20-25 ft span Anderson type shelters with 5ft earth cover at crown; 220-280 psi for collapse of buried 8" thick 16 ft span concrete arch with 4' earth cover at crown). They also show in Table 7.35 on p287 that white cotton (8 oz per square yard) requires 32, 48 and 85 cal/cm^2 thermal exposure to ignite in nuclear bursts of 35 kt, 1.4 megaton and 20 megatons, respectively, compared to their data for bare skin blistering at 4-7 cal/cm^2 in their Figure 12.65 on p565. In Figure 12.70 on p567 they show a survivor with only burns to bare skin in Hiroshima, with no burns under a cap and clothing, at 5.5-6 cal/cm^2 (which the 1979 US Office of Technology Assessment "Effects of Nuclear War" falsely claim is "lethal"). But by removing the crucial nuclear testing photographs and the civil defense chapter evidence from the 1957 edition, the 1977 edition became a gift to anti-civil defense, nuclear disarmament fanatics (scroll down to see the original reason for this in the US Strategic Bombing Command row with Oppenheimer regarding strategic bombing deterrence failure prior to WWII and during WWII, vs tactical deterrence of the invasions that actually set off world wars).

BELOW: the June 1957 edition of Glasstone's "Effects of Nuclear Weapons" debunked firestorms using examples from Operation Castle nuclear tests 110 kt Koon and 15 megaton Bravo: no firestorms occurred in natural pisonia forests at 1.76 miles from 110 kt surface burst and at 11.8 miles from 15 megatons surface burst, contrary to that book's claims about the ignition energies of fine forest kindling at such distances from such yields! The problem is, Glasstone totally failed to point this out in the 1957 edition where he gives the photos OUT OF CONTEXT, like everything else in the book (from secret weapon test report WT-921 and the secret film "Military Effects Studies on Operation Castle")! Glasstone then deleted these vital photos from all future editions of his book, along with the Nevada bomb test 100 psi peak overpressure proved shelter design in Figure 12.54 on page 522 of the 1957 edition, the photos of blast walls protecting transformers and machinery at Nagasaki (pages 514-5) and photos of shallow trenches protecting road graders and bullzozers at 30 psi peak overpressure at the Teapot-MET nuclear test (pages 516-7)! Further, the results for civil defence from the Upshot-Knothole Encore nuclear test on thermal ignition in dry Nevada desert conditions (pages 318-321, including photos) is deleted from the 1977 edition. The result is a total disconnection with reality, removing the key nuclear test data showing factual evidence for thermal ignition and how to avoid it! This turned "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1977" into a left-wing bogus effects propaganda book, omitting all military effects and all key nuclear test data! In particular, the 1977 removal of the final "Principles of protection" chapter took out the vitally important data in the earlier editions. The result is a confused and misleading book, completely ignoring all tactical nuclear weapons effects experience for credibly deterring the invasions that set off both world wars (for example, the third-party invasions of Belgium in 1914 and of Poland in 1939, which both triggered World Wars; invasions which could NOT be credibly deterred by a "strategic deterrent"!). The entire "arms control and disarmament" Russian front is paranoid in censoring all the truth from public debate.

Glasstone's 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons (like all subsequent editions) massively exaggerated the outdoor lethal fallout areas for megaton surface bursts: Glasstone (1957) claims that the 3000 R/hr at 1 hour elliptical area under 15 miles/hour wind extends 22 miles downwind, with 3.1 miles maximum width, giving an area of (Pi/4)(Length = 22)(Width = 3.1) = 54 square miles, contrasted to just 28 square miles in Figure 4-14B of the 1957 Confidential TM 23-200 (forerunner of EM-1) Capabilities of Atomic Weapons! Similarly, for 1000 R/hr Glasstone (1957) gives an area of (Pi/4)(40)(6.8) = 212 square miles, contrasted to just 100 square miles given in the Confidential TM 23-200 (1957) Fig. 4-14B. (George R. Stanbury OBE of the UK Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch spotted this exaggeration, and compared both sets of data to Tewa nuclear test fallout pattern to ascertain that Glasstone's data was in error; he also debunked the firestorm theory by showing that shadows cast by high rise concrete buildings in modern cities shield the thermal flash, preventing firestorms and related phenomena like soot generated "nuclear winter"; Stanbury's extensive data was kept secret by the UK government, as discussed below, just as it had kept secret evidence on gas mask effectiveness in the 1920a and 1930s, allowing mad "disarmer" Lord Noel-Baker to dismiss gas masks for long enough to enable appeasers to help Hitler massacre millions.) Glasstone (1957) Table 7.65 states that shredded newspaper is ignited by 4 cal/cm^2 for 10 megatons; Glasstone (1964) Table 7.44 states it needs 11 cal/cm^2 to ignite for the same yield! Similarly, for 10 megatons, 10 oz/yard^2 blue cotton denim is stated to ignite at just 13 cal/cm^2 in Table 7.61 of Glasstone (1957), contrasted to 44 cal/cm^2 in Table 7.40 of Glasstone (1964)! No explanation is given for the massive changes, and no references are provided. However, recently declassified documents prove that the equilibrium water content at different humidity levels produces massive changes in ignition energies because it takes 540 calories to evaporate just 1 gram of boiling water (plus still more energy to get the water to 100C). No mention of this highly relevant quantitative fact is given by Glasstone, although he was a Professor of physical chemistry! Glasstone does mention on page 303 of the 1957 edition, vaguely, in connection with clothing ignition - without any numbers or even stating what humidity level his data apply to: "The moisture content is also an important factor; the larger the amount of moisture in the fabric, the greater is the energy required to ignite it." Most modern cities, including London, New York, San Francisco, and Moscow, are built beside rivers, lakes or the ocean, so have relatively higher humidity levels than specimens left to dry out in the Nevada desert at nuclear tests.

ABOVE: Confidential classified nuclear weapon test report WT-775 proves that the large effect of humidity and thus fuel water content on thermal ignition energy was known prior to the 1957 Glasstone Effects of Nuclear Weapons but, like the secret classified US Strategic Bombing Survey 6 volumes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which proved the facts of the firestorm in direct contrast to lies circulated in Glasstone's book, the data was simply excluded from publication. The equilibrium moisture content of unpainted wood or fine kindling is about 20% of the relative humidity, so at 80% humidity "dry" wood exposed to that humid air will contain 0.2*80 = 16% water. Since all common fire fuel ignites at temperatures well above the boiling point of water, each gram of water in fire fuel takes away in excess of 540 calories of energy in boiling off, and it is this fact that makes ignition energy a function of moisture content. Crumpled newspaper, outdoors with a direct view of the fireball unobscured by city buildings, or inside on the top floors of buildings with such a view, facing the fireball, could be ignited "instantly" with "flashover" firespread after drying out at the 19% humidity of the Nevada test site for the Encore nuclear test, but the ignition energy is substantially greater for typical building contents at a more typical 50-80% city humidity level. Also note that even at 19% humidity in Nevada, it took between 5 and 20 minutes for the first 10% of fences to burn in Nevada: contrary to the instantaneous flashover burning for dry crumpled newspaper. Cars only ignited in these Nevada nuclear tests at 19% humidity where the upholstry had been deliberately ripped to expose inflammable seat stuffing, and even then they burned slowly! Glasstone omits all this key evidence from Effects of Nuclear Weapons, leaving instead confusion and ignorance that was exploited by Russian fronts for Western disarmament.

Note that the secret six volumes on the nuclear strike on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which state the opposite to the USSBS's unclassified report and Glasstone's books) referred to by General Gavin - US Strategic Bombing Survey reports #92 and #93 - prove modern concrete buildings remained intact near ground zero, the vast majority of Hiroshima fires were delayed and due to overturned charcoal breakfast cooking braziers in wood frame and bamboo homes not obsolete in city centres, and only black color blackout curtains showed sustained ignition at ground zero, etc. In other words, the strategic use of nuclear weapons have always been a COMPLETE lying scam based on deliberately-misleading Glasstone style unclassified 1930s air war type propaganda, enforced by secrecy! As in the 1930s, both "military" strategic bombing propagandarists and Hitler-backing "peaceniks" combined to assert knockout blow and "end of the world" bombing obfuscations that led to appeasement and world war, not to peaceful, credible deterrence of the invasions that set off world wars. The basic problem here is that strategic bombing advocates used secrecy on the truth about Hiroshima to fake The Effects of Nuclear Weapons to suit their agenda, just as such people did with tragic results for appeasement and World War II in the 1920s and 1930s. We have to get the truth out now, against the combined "arms control and disrmament" mass media supporting Russian propaganda fronts to, as Joseph Friedlander kindly put it in a recent email to me, "get them to not use their most effective weapons"! Sam Cohen after 1977 Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons openly published (in books) a letter he wrote to US DOD complaining that the neutron bomb wasn't in Glasstone's book Effects and the public was being allowed to remain supplied only with enemy propaganda from fake "peaceniks" like CND.  Why?  Dolan had the neutron bomb (including the calculation method for blast wave and thermal modification by high D+T neutron yield, ignored by all "peacenik" propaganda fronts) in his secret DNA-EM-1 Capabilities, published (for the reading pleasure of those with security clearance only) back in 1972!  No excuse for not having it in 1977 Glasstone and Dolan, therefore!  As "Dr Strangelove" would put it, the whole point of a deterrent is that the other side KNOWS ABOUT IT.  You don't keep a deterrent secret, unless you're playing some kind of three-card trick.  Why is there any nuclear weapons secrecy, anyway?  Plutonium isn't for sale.

Project Vista, the secret 1951 Korean War study of tactical nuclear weapons to halt or deter invasions by J. R. Oppenheimer and others (which ultimately led to Samuel Cohen's "neutron bomb" deterrent, the hard-won W79 disarmed by loons in the 1990s to encourage invasions and wars), led to the August 1953 book Atomic Weapons in Land Combat by Colonel G. C. Reinhardt and Lieutenant Colonel W. R. Kintner of the US Army. We will now quote the key findings in the second edition (August 1954) of this book. On page 22, they explain that US Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Gordon Dean stated in October 1951: "There is now a new kind of atomic warfare more promising as a means of halting aggressors without risk of destroying large parts of the world in the process." On page 107, they argue that base surge radiation from underwater bursts such as the "spectacular" 25 July 1946 Baker nuclear test under Bikini Lagoon "has produced an exaggerated fear. The truth is that no beaches suitable for amphibious operations are close enough to deep water for a nominal atomic bomb to cause a base surge." In plate 20 on page 151, they show that it took a peak overpressure of 24 psi to cause concrete building with 10" thick walls and 6" thick floors to collapse in Hiroshima, showing resistance of modern city buildings to collateral damage. On page 164 they point out that mines in a minefield with a firing pressure of 400 lbs and a solid pressure plate 5" in diameter require blast overpressures of over 20 psi to detonate: "Within that circle, tanks (yours or the enemy's) may range with comparative safety." On page 176 they point out that the Presidential "Authority to commit atomic weapons on the battlefield confers upon each general an almost magical influence over the conflict, equivalent to throwing in whole new divisions in a fraction of the time such a move would have previously entailed." (Although this can, of course, be vandalised if the President is surrounded by indecisive groupthink defeatists, who allow the enemy time to "dig in" and build hard improvised shelters, instead of stopping invasion columns quickly, when they are crossing borders and vulnerable to nuclear effects.) On page 204 they point out:

"Records of early engagements in 1914 describe the carnage in model 1870 formations on battlefields beginning to be dominated by machine gun fire [before trench warfare]. Armies were forced into trench warfare, to relearn after 50 years the lessons of the American Civil War [where 30 miles of trenches were constructed during the 292 days Siege of Petersburg, 1864-5, with machine gun emplacements, shelters and 70,000 casualties]. Almost four years of world conflict passed before World War I armies recovered the lost art of infiltration though it had been thoroughly registered in the history of Braddock's defeat and decades of Colonial-Indian fighting."

On page 213, Reinhardt and Kintner argue: "American emphasis on atomic weapons is a correct application of the principle of economy of force. ... The widespread campaign to stigmatize the use of atomic weapons as morally wrong cannot be ignored in a conflict where psychological and ideological overtones are proving almost as vital as military encounter. Ruthless aggression is inherently more reprehensible than the means to stop it. Nevertheless, emotional appeals to outlaw atomic weapons presents a problem to United States politico-military planners wich should not be underestimated." They argue on pages 219-20 that once Chinese forces had "dug in along the Korean front" they were virtually immune to conventional (or nuclear) attack: "We have not yet digested the unpalatable fact that those armies were able to operate against us for several years while our Air Force commanded the skies above the battlefield." They correctly conclude on pages 223-5 that deterrence must operate to prevent/stop against invasions while they are occurring, not after the invaders have "dug in" and are virtually immune to attack:

"Tactical atomic task forces can be hurled against local aggression anywhere in the world ... Striking before the invading armies have time to dig in and consolidate, they can quickly render them ineffective. But what, you ask, if the true sponsors of aggression then decide to come to the rescue of their trojan column? It is for this contingincy that our atomic retaliation capability should be poised. When a major power openly associates itself with aggression, America's atomic reprisal, swift and overwhelming [delivered by cruise missiles from ships or aircraft, or Trident MIRV tactical warheads from submarines, or even by ICBMs or drones], would be understood and approved throughout the world, whether it be confined to military targets or in reprisal for atomic attacks on the cities of the USA or our Allies [thus, as Herman Kahn and Samuel Cohen argued later, tactical nuclear deterrence needs to be backed up by strategic nuclear deterrence to keep escalation at bay, just as ABM and civil defense are needed against "accidental" enemy limited nuclear demonstration attacks on cities, to reduce escalation risks and casualties]. ... In a competition between atomic technologies the free world should suffer neither in numbers nor in scientific improvements. ... none save romanticists have ever discovered a battlefield lacking in horror, whether its weapons have been tomahawks or machine guns. ... If the forces of aggression dream of easy victory, won through ruthless acceptance of losses by its waves of troops, they would do well to re-evaluate their hopes in light of the development of atomic weapons and what those weapons represent in battlefield potential. Surely the free peoples, who developed them solely to protect their freedom, will - if forced to - use them with a skill and determination that cannot be overcome."

There's an excellent and very personal account of this controversy in section H, "Project Vista", of chapter 5 of Lt-General James M. Gavin's 1958 book War and Peace in the Space Age where Gavin describes in detail his involvement in the Korean War background to "Project Vista", the major 1951 study of tactical nuclear deterrence of world wars, which developed into a war between the US Air Force strategic bombing deterrence advocates like Norstad and LeMay and the former wartime Los Alamos director, J. R. Oppenheimer, who was a very hard line proponent of ending wars using tactical nuclear deterrence, which really got to people like Teller and also Generals Norstad and LeMay in the USAF, who were obsessed with strategic nuclear deterrence (bombing cities, not deterring invasions; thus the key reason why tactical nuclear effects aren't in the Glasstone book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons whose unclassified contents range in 1957 was dictated by the strategic deterrence supporter US Atomic Energy Commission Chair, Lewis Strauss):

"Unfortunately, the early enthusiasm of the Air Force began to wane when it was realised that increasing emphasis on tactical air support and tactical airlift would conflict with Air Force views on strategic air power. At the same time, the Air Force began to suspect the views of Dr Oppenheimer. Earlier he had opposed the development of the thermonuclear bomb and now he was recommending a diversion of our nuclear resources to the tactical battle. ... This ... ran contrary to the basic theory of the strategic air power enthusiasts; that an all-out air offensive was the only sound tactic, and any diversion to defense was a waste. Dr Oppenheimer's work with Vista came under close scrutiny. ... In November 1951, at a Vista conference at Caltech, Dr Dubridge presented a preliminary draft of its proposed report, including a chapter that Oppenheimer had written. It produced an explosion in the Air Force. Oppenheimer had transformed Vista into an exercise for rewriting US strategy - an exercise introduced by a veiled suggestion the Air Force doctrine was based upon the slaughter of civilians. ... Oppenheimer had proposed that a substantial part of the atomic stockpile should be diverted from SAC [LeMay's Strategic Air Command] to the direct support of the ground battle. ... The objective, as stated in Vista, was 'bringing the battle back to the battlefield.' In December of 1951, Oppenheimer, Dubridge and Lauritsen went to Paris and talked to Eisenhower. Norstad entered an uncompromising dissent to the Vista report. [Footnote reference: "The Hidden Struggle for the H-Bomb", Fortune, May 1953, p109.] About a year or so later, I mentioned the Vista report to General Norstad and he used strong langauge in his denunciation of it. ... Unfortunately, Dr Oppenheimer was in trouble, and his participation in Vista added to the aura of suspicion with which the Big Bomber advocates were now surrounding him. As The Reporter expressed it in an editorial some years later, [December 26, 1957]: [Oppenheimer's] urging that ways be found to bring war back to the battlefield was considered preposterous if not treasonable. ... There was something quite sinister in a scientist who concerned himself with defense as Oppenheimer did. ... The Vista report was submitted to the Secretaries of the several services in February of 1952. It has never been officially approved." (SOURCE: pages 133-4 of the 1959 UK edition of Gavin's War and Peace in the Space Age.)

To emphasise this point: certain well-meaning military elements (like Norstad and LeMay of SAC) and certain well-meaning scientists (like Teller) put the boot into Oppenheimer's secret plan to focus on tactical nuclear deterrence of the invasions that set off both world wars. Instead, they went along with the incredible deterrent, called by Dulles "massive retaliation," or by Herman Kahn "Type 1 Deterrence", which failed in 1914 and in 1939. What we need is a way of deterring or stopping invasions that spark wars. Merely deploying tactical W79 neutron bombs in the 1980s brought out mass protests by Russians and fellow travellers, which proved it was a credible deterrent. Russia stopped further invasions in this period, and the USSR collapsed (after a few more Western defensive kicks, including SDI/Star Wars advanced ABM defense propaganda). Massive retaliation, by contrast, was a failure in WWII according to the US Strategic Bombing Survey, and is riddled with incredible ambiguity (it's an incredible deterrent that can't credibly deter the provocations that led to both world wars). Lt General Gavin, in the US Army, along with General Maxwell D. Taylor, masterminded President Kennedy's "flexible response" deterrent policy. This was undermined by the unilateral disarmament of all dedicated tactical nuclear weapons in 1992, to appease "arms control and disarmament" lunacy, itself due to Glasstone's failure to include the neutron bomb in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. This has to change if we are to have peace.

Just in case you think that Lt General Gavin's account of tactical nuclear weapons politics above is "theoretical opinion" by a desk-bound bureaucrat, let's add a bit more context from his book, Chapter 5: Combat is a Crucible,. Gavin on 9 July 1943, as Commander of the 505th parachute Combat Team, spearheaded a 3,000 strong airborne invasion of Sicily, which aimed to secure the airfield and beaches 6 hours prior to the main amphibious landing. At the last moment, 35 miles/hour winds scattered the paratroops over rugged landscape, their carbines jammed in combat, and the usual "fog of war" quickly descended:

"Now, 24 hours later, I surveyed the results of the first day's fighting. As well as I could tell, it had been an absolute shambles. The regiment was scattered like chaff in the wind, and possibly destroyed. ... It had been a hard day ... First, there was the inadequacy of our weapons. It is nothing short of homocidal to send American young men into combat with weapons not up to the job that confronts them. We needed a more reliable, faster-firing hand weapon than the carbine. And above all, we needed a tank killer ... Next, training had to be more realistic, so tough and exacting that combat would be a welcome relief. ... George Patton's last words to us before we left Africa came home with meaning: 'No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country." ... The bazooka rockets were bouncing off the tanks and the tanks were then chewing the troopers to pieces. The next day we actually buried some troopers with pieces of bazooka ground into them by tank tracks. We captured one tank by grenading the crew when they came out ... The tank had four bazooka hits on it, none of which penetrated. ... In their post-war account of the Sicilian fighting, the Germans reported their first capture of a bazooka. They sent it back to Germany, tested it, found its defects and corrected them, and went into production on an improved model. When we landed in Normandy less than a year later, we were met with a large bazooka, about 3.5 inches in diameter. We were still equipped with the small 2.36-inch size. As a matter of fact, our infantry was still equipped with the 2.36-inch bazooka seven years later, in July of 1950, when it was attacked by Russian T-34 tanks manned by the North Koreans. ... once again ... the rockets were bouncing off the tanks. ... There are numerous examples of weapons ... being delayed because the individuals who have funding control do not, or simply will not, understand the need of the fighting man in the field." (Quote: pages 69-75 of the 1959 UK edition of Gavin's book. I don't need to say that the final sentence here might as well have come out of President Zelensky's mouth a minute ago, regarding the supply of weapons to Ukraine after Russia's invasion. Will they ever learn?)

Regarding war crimes, Lt General Gavin also participated in the paratroop invasion of mainland Europe including the liberation of a concentration aka extermination camp near Ludwigslust, Mecklenburg (War and Peace in the Space Age, UK edition, 1959, page 197): "It seemed incredible that man could be so inhuman to his fellow man, and to all of us who liberated that camp it will remain forever in our memories as a symbol of totalitarianism. If there ever had been doubt about what we were fighting for, at that moment it was removed forever from our minds. It was to rid the earth of man's inhumanity to man, to protect and foster the way of life of free men, and, if necessary, to fight for that way of life. It is too bad that so many must see in order to believe. ... The way to freedom was not easy. Nature and recurring war combined to test our physical mettle and spiritual dedication." Gavin sums up the problem with the following very hard-hitting and politically-inexpedient quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, contrasting American "freedom" to Russian "imperialism" agendas:

"The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization ... The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society ... The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."

BELOW: Secret "For Official Use" and individually numbered Russian nuclear defense manual (169 pages long, T. F. Myasnikova, technical editor) entitled "КРАТКИЙ СПРАВОЧНИК ПО БОЕВЫМ СВОЙСТВАН ЯДЕРНОГО ОРУЖИЯ" [= "A Brief Guide to the Combat Properties of Nuclear Weapons"] states: "Ядерное оружие обладает значительно большей разрушительной силой по сравнению с обычными видами оружия, но существуют простые и надежные методы защиты от него. ... В этом руководстве представлен краткий обзор ядерного оружия, средств и методов защиты от ядерной угрозы, а также инструкции о том, как действовать в случае применения ядерного оружия." [= "Nuclear weapons have significantly greater destructive power than conventional weapons, but there are simple and reliable methods of protecting against them. ... This guide provides a brief overview of nuclear weapons, the means and methods of defending against a nuclear threat, and instructions on what to do in the event of a nuclear weapon being used."] The manual contains data tables on damage to Russian military equipment based on Russian nuclear weapons tests, as shown BELOW (this manual is the 2nd edition, dated 1969, but since Russian atmospheric nuclear tests ended in 1962, the data is still valid today). The Russian peak overpressure unit is the kg/cm^2 which equal to 1 atmosphere or 14.7 psi in classic American units or 101 kPa in Western SI units (1 kg/cm^2 = 10 tons/m^2 = 1 atmosphere = 14.7 psi = 101 kPa). Page 104 states that for 1 kiloton-1 megaton yields, Russian "Basement shelters for the population (type III shelters)" require 2-4 kg/cm^2 or 30-60 psi for destruction (making them harder than the concrete buildings surviving near ground zero in Hiroshima), while hydroelectric dams and underground utility pipes for water, sewage and gas supply require 10-15 kg/cm^2 or 150-225 psi for destruction. The hardest targets listed (on page 100) are the concrete runways at airports, which require in excess of 20 kg/cm^2 or 300 psi for destruction by cracking and spalling (ground shock effects). Note particularly Table 41 at pages 92-93, where severe damage (destruction) radii are given for Russian tactical nuclear missiles, cruise missiles, jet fighters, jet bombers, nuclear artillery guns, anti-aircraft guns, mortars, light and heavy machine guns, light and heavy grenade launchers, for air and surface bursts and for 13 yield classes from 1 kiloton to 1 megaton (including the calculated damage pressures in kg/cm^2, separately shown for surface and air bursts). Also, note that it compiles Russian data on measured EMP from nuclear tests in Tables 23 and 24 on page 71, showing the induced voltages as a function of weapon yield, type of conductor (aerial or underground buried power cable), and distance from ground zero. This proves Russian capabilities to use EMP effects from nuclear weapons. For example, Table 23 shows that 10 kV was induced in a 10m aerial at 3.3 km from a 1 megaton low altitude detonation. Note also that Russia found (Table 38) that forest area fires (not isolated fires) cannot occur after surface bursts in coniferous forests even at megaton yields, because of the low angle of elevation of the fireball and because the blast wave following the heat flash blows out most fires, although fire areas can occur at certain distances from ground zero in deciduous and mixed forests for higher-yield surface bursts. This detailed analysis proves Russian preparation for tactical nuclear war is true.

According to the Levada Center, 39 percent of Russians believe that the use of nuclear weapons during Russia's war against Ukraine could be justified. pic.twitter.com/H4p8OI5YbV

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 2, 2024

Update, November 20, 2024: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-issues-warning-us-with-new-nuclear-doctrine-2024-11-19/: "Putin issues warning to United States with new nuclear doctrine, by Guy Faulconbridge and Anton Kolodyazhnyy, November 20, 2024 12:20 AM GMT MOSCOW, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, and Moscow said Ukraine had struck deep inside Russia with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles. Putin approved the change days after two U.S. officials and a source familiar with the decision said on Sunday that U.S. President Joe Biden's administration allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deep into Russia. Russia had been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire U.S., British and French missiles deep into Russia, Moscow would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine. The updated Russian nuclear doctrine, establishing a framework for conditions under which Putin could order a strike from the world's biggest nuclear arsenal, was approved by him on Tuesday, according to a published decree. ... The U.S. National Security Council said it had not seen any reason to adjust the U.S. nuclear posture. ... Putin is the primary decision-maker on the use of Russia's nuclear arsenal. ... The doctrine said any attack by a non-nuclear power supported by a nuclear power would be considered a joint attack, and that any attack by one member of a military bloc would be considered an attack by the entire alliance ... Lavrov said Russia would do everything to avoid nuclear war, and pointed out that it was the U.S. which used nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. ... Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said ... "Nuclear deterrence is aimed at ensuring that a potential adversary understands the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies"."

Jerusalem Post, AUGUST 26, 2024 14:55, https://www.jpost.com/international/internationalrussia-ukraine-war/article-816333: "... Russia planned overwhelming strikes across Western Europe, with nuclear weapons intended for use in combination with other destructive weapons and means. The files show that Russia retained the capability to carry nuclear weapons on surface ships, which increases the risks of escalation or even accidents. They also suggest that Russia views tactical nuclear weapons as potentially decisive in conflicts ... Russia's military strategy is described as aiming for "total war," with tactical nuclear weapons seen as crucial for achieving war-winning objectives. The files ... also reference a "demonstration strike," or the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a remote area, "in a period of immediate threat of aggression" before an actual conflict to scare Western countries. The file said that a strike like this would show "the intention to use nuclear weapons." Recent Russian exercises have involved rehearsing the use of tactical nuclear weapons, consistent with the strategies outlined in the leaked documents. This preparation includes loading anti-ship missiles with nuclear warheads and practicing the handling and deployment of nuclear warheads, suggesting that the threat of nuclear escalation remains a significant aspect of Russia's military planning."

Max Seddon and Chris Cook, "Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike", Financial Times newspaper (UK), 28 Feb 2024: "The exercises offer a rare insight into how Russia views its nuclear arsenal as a cornerstone of its defence policy — and how it trains forces to be able to carry out a nuclear first strike in some battlefield conditions. ... The slides summarise the threshold as a combination of factors where losses suffered by Russian forces “would irrevocably lead to their failure to stop major enemy aggression”, a “critical situation for the state security of Russia”. ... Russia’s military is also expected to be able to use tactical nuclear weapons for a broad array of goals, including “containing states from using aggression ... or escalating military conflicts”, “stopping aggression”, preventing Russian forces from losing battles or territory, and making Russia’s navy “more effective”. Putin said last June that he felt “negatively” about using tactical nuclear strikes, but then boasted that Russia had a larger non-strategic arsenal than NATO countries. “Screw them, you know, as people say,” Putin said. ... The documents reflect patterns seen in exercises the Russian military held regularly before and since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. ... While Russia’s president has the sole authority to launch a first nuclear strike, the low threshold for tactical nuclear use set out in the documents conforms with a doctrine some western observers refer to as “escalating to de-escalate”. Under this strategy a tactical weapon could be used to try to prevent Russia from becoming embroiled in a sprawling war, particularly one in which the US might intervene. Using what it calls “fear inducement”, Moscow would seek to end the conflict on its own terms by shocking the country’s adversary with the early use of a small nuclear weapon — or securing a settlement through the threat to do so."

Dr Mark B. Schneider, The Leaked Russian Nuclear Documents and Russian First Use of Nuclear Weapons, National Institute for Public Policy, Information Series Issue No. 579, March 18, 2024: "Typically, Western press reporting on Russian nuclear issues involves interviewing the normal coterie of left-wing “experts” who are more interested in reducing the U.S. nuclear deterrent than understanding Russian nuclear strategy and its implications. In contrast, the Financial Times presented an insightful analysis concerning the meaning of the Russian documents. Still, the analysts who historically have been most accurate in their assessment of Russian nuclear weapons policy were not among them (e.g., Dr. Stephen Blank, Dr. Keith Payne, and Mr. Dave Johnson). Russian nuclear weapons policy is very dangerous; it is closely tied to military aggression and repeated high-level nuclear threats.

"In 2015, in the time frame of the leaked Russian documents, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg observed, “Russia’s recent use of nuclear rhetoric, exercises and operations are deeply troubling ... Russia’s nuclear sabrerattling is unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous.” Since then, the situation has clearly gotten worse. The Biden Administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review also noted that: "The Russian Federation’s unprovoked and unlawful invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a stark reminder of nuclear risk in contemporary conflict. ... In brandishing Russia’s nuclear arsenal in an attempt to intimidate Ukraine [and NATO] ... Russia’s leaders have made clear that they view these weapons as a shield behind which to wage unjustified aggression against their neighbors. Irresponsible Russian statements and actions raise the risk of deliberate or unintended escalation". ... Medvedev even threatened “the further existence of the entire human civilization” if Russia ends up defeated in Ukraine by the West ... in 2014, Russian expatriate Nikolai Sokov reported “... all large-scale military exercises that Russia conducted beginning in 2000 featured simulations of limited nuclear strikes.” The January 2016 report of NATO’s Secretary General noted that Russia “... simulated nuclear attacks on NATO Allies (e.g., ZAPAD) and on partners (e.g., March 7, 2013 simulated attacks on Sweden) ...

"Russian nuclear exercises against non-nuclear Sweden are particularly important because Sweden, like Ukraine (against which Russian nuclear threats are frequent), is not supposed to be subject to nuclear attack under Russian negative assurances (i.e., Russia’s pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.) Yet, in March 2022, “Swedish TV4 Nyheterna has reported that Russian bombers ‘armed with nuclear warheads’ entered EU airspace before being intercepted by Swedish fighter jets." ... the United States cannot depend upon Russia’s observance of the so-called “nuclear taboo” to protect the West from Russian nuclear attack. ... Only credible nuclear deterrence can safeguard the West, yet nuclear deterrence is under attack by the disarmament groups globally. The context of this is a Russian nuclear modernization program which according to Putin has already achieved 95% and will continue even after 100% is achieved. ... Despite the clear and present danger of Russian aggression and even nuclear escalation, as Dr. Keith Payne has pointed out, the Biden Administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review “appears frozen in the naively-optimistic post-Cold War years; it suggests no urgency with regard to U.S. responses to mounting threats.”

KEY FAILURES OF TODAY'S "MINIMAL DETERRENCE" (KAHN'S "TYPE 1 DETERRENT" AKA THE DREADNOUGHTS THAT FAILED TO DETER THE INVASION OF BELGIUM IN 1914 THAT TRIGGERED WWI), PROVING THE NEED FOR THE SUCCESSFUL CREDIBLE DETERRENT OF TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO DETER INVASIONS THAT SET OFF WARS:

1. It doesn't deter world war situations, which both occurred because of invasions of 3rd parties (invasion of Belgium 1914, Poland 1939), akin to the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine by Russia. In other words, you need credible deterrence of major provocations.

2. It doesn't even deter a direct attack by fanatical opponents, such as the October 2023 Hamas surprise attack on Israel or the December 1941 Pearl Harbor surprise attack or the 9/11 attack by war-crazy thugs.

3. It assumes sanity on the enemy side, while mental pressures are brought to bear on the sanity of the opponent in response to major provocations, e.g. "sanctions" against the enemy hardens their resolve (aided by internal state propaganda of the enemy, blaming hardships on you), just as "pressure" such as napalming Vietnam failed to deter the Tet Offensive. If you ban your use of overwhelming force to credibly stop or deter an opponent, you don't end in a fairy tale land of mutual love and understanding, but with a battle-hardened opponent, with the fighting mentality of a wounded animal. In other words, you get the opposite result.

4. The only people who can be safely and credibly deterred with "minimal deterrence" are not terrorist states, but generally established democracies, who you don't have fights with anyway (see Dr Weart's "Never at War: Why Democracies will not Fight One Another"), so you've reduced deterrence down to a level where it's only credible in situations where NOT needed! Duh! Try explaining this with any hardened fanatical "pacifist" and you soon see they're fanatical ranting lunatics obsessed with moronic "taboos" or war-making eugenics "Russian communist" pseudoscience genocide schemes, and not the least interested in what they claimed they're concerned with, PEACE!

"By 2035, the same year DOD reported that the Chinese will reach rough numerical parity with U.S. deployed forces, 100% of U.S. nuclear weapons (the warheads and bombs) will have exceeded their design lives by an average of 30 years. ... The United States has agonized for years about how to sustain its nuclear weapons. During the Bush Administration, the plan was the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), which would have been a “new” weapon with a “new” design to replace the W-76 submarine-launched warhead. Its “newness” was its peril and it was cancelled before the end of the design phase of development to satisfy those who believed the U.S. shouldn’t build “new” nuclear weapons. ... Similarly, the United States is refurbishing the B-61 gravity bomb so that it may remain in service in the extended deterrence mission. ... The United States invented plutonium in 1941. Yet, it has not been able to build a plutonium pit for the nuclear weapons stockpile since 1989, when the Rocky Flats plant was shut down. ... Just consider: General Anthony Cotton, USAF, the current head of U.S. STRATCOM, informed Congress this Spring that “Russia continues to update its warhead production complex and is producing hundreds of warheads each year.” Further, he explained that Russia is exporting its Highly Enriched Uranium to the People’s Republic of China for its CFR-600 fast breeder reactors, which produce plutonium."

- Tim Morrison, There’s More than One Kind of Deterrence Failure, https://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/theres-more-one-kind-deterrence-failure-tim-morrison

John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State, 12 January 1954 Massive Retaliation Doctrine Speech, Council of Foreign Relations, New York (published in the US Department of State Bulletin v30 n761, 25 January 1954): "We want, for ourselves and other free nations, a maximum deterrent at a bearable cost. ... Local defences must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retalitory power. ... Otherwise, for example, a potential aggressor who is glutted with manpower might be tempted to attack in confidence that resistance would be confined to manpower."

The Economist, 2 February 1954: "In a situation where war is not declared and aggression can be waged by proxy [e.g. today's USA/UK/Ukaine-Russian war], the decision for or against using atomic weapons may be far less simple in fact than it appears ... More than ever before, those who think in terms of stopping or winning wars by atomic bombing have to reckon with reprisals in kind [assuming that you do not disarm the enemy in a successful first strike to prevent retaliation, or that you or the enemy doesn't have an efficient system of ABM and civil defense to make the "retaliation" a pathetic "token gesture"] ... Against what kind of aggression is 'massive retaliatory power' to be used? ... there seems to be the risk that the strict and literal application of the Dulles doctrine could turn minor and limited hostilities into major conflict." [Therefore, to deter escalation you need a broad spectrum of credible deterrents against the full range of enemy provocations.]

Field Marshall Montgomery, British Deputy to SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe), "A Look Through a Window at World War III", Royal United Services Institute Journal, November 1954: "I want to make it absolutely clear that we at SHAPE are basing all our operational planning on using atomic and thermonuclear weapons for our defence. With us it is no longer: 'They may possibly be used.' It is very definitely: 'They will be used, if we are attacked.' The reason for this action is that we cannot match the strength that could be brought against us unless we use nuclear weapons. ... In fact, we have reached the point of no return as regards the use of atomic and thermonuclear weapons in a hot war ... The problem will be, how to force the enemy to concentrate his armed forces sufficiently to offer a worth-while nuclear target, without exposing our own forces to destruction by the enemy's nuclear attack."

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1 March 1955, House of Commons: "There is a widespread belief through the free world that, but for American nuclear superiority, Europe would have already been reduced to satellite status and the Iron Curtain would have reached the Atlantic and the Channel ... We, too, must possess substantial deterrent power on our own." (Churchill's Minister of Defence, Harold Macmillan, then argued for tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East and the Far East, and stated that leaving nuclear deterrence to the USA "surrenders our power to influence American policy and then, strategically and tactically, it equally deprives us of any influence over the selection of targets and use of our vital striking forces." In the 1957 Labour Party Annual Conference at Brighton, the British Labour Party's shadow Foreign Secretary, Aneurin "Nye" Bevan, begged delegates to reject the Noel-Baker nuclear disarmament plan: "if you carry this resolution and follow out all of its implications and do not run away from it, you will send a British Foreign Secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the Conference Chamber". A more telling fact is statistical: despite all the one-sided mass-media anti-nuclear, anti-radiation and anti-civil defence propaganda, Christopher Driver's 22 March 1964 Observer newspaper article "The Rise and Fall of CND" reported that British public opinion polls showed that only 20% of people disapproved of the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945, and this percentage only increased to 33% when CND's propaganda influence peaked, in 1957-60, due to ICBM testing and and fallout news scares from tests. The problems of not having a credible deterrent were still remembered from the 1930s despite media saturation with Russian Sputnik/Comintern style "peace propaganda" lies. As Clausewitz stated in Book 6, Chapter 5 of On War: "A conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would like to make his entry into our state unopposed." Stalin also said as much when interviewed by the writer H. G. Wells in 1934: "Communists ... would be very pleased to drop violent methods if the class agreed to give way ..." Contrary to CND people there's never been the slightest problem with our nuclear weapons being too big or "nuclear overkill," since reducing nuclear yields by removing boost gas and secondary stages is the easiest thing in the world, similarly, while bleach exists to remove the colour from flags, there have never been an difficulty in having "peace conferences" and agreeing to compromise on "peace at any price" with dictators; all of the difficulties have been in the opposite direction, e.g. designing nuclear weapons as credible deterrents to stop the sorts of provocations that escalate into world wars where the democracy has to declare war first as in 1914 and 1939. It was Lenin who wrote: "As long as capitalism and socialism exist, we cannot live in peace: in the end one or the other will triumph.")

ABOVE: Time magazine of 10 November 1961, pages 19 and 25, reporting on arguments to test the "neutron bomb", also showing example of a shelter in Nagasaki and Russian civil defense. Although tested by Kennedy, the neutron bomb never made it into any edition of Glasstone's "Effects of Nuclear Weapons", any more than photos of surviving shelters in Nagasaki (which had been included the 1950 "Effects of Atomic Weapons" but were removed from "Effects of Nuclear Weapons" 1957-77, a sure proof of the use of secrecy to undermine credible nuclear deterrence: if you can't even combat enemy nuclear propaganda in peace, how can you combat the enemy on the battlefield in war?. This blog has been now updated (December 2024) to provide additional background testimonial evidence to show how secrecy was used to suppress Oppenheimer's plans for tactical nuclear deterrence, due to opposition by strategic bombing advocates who kept the Strategic Bombing Survey reports on Hiroshima and Nagasaki secret!

RAPID BLAST WAVE ATTENUATION BY WORK DONE IN CAUSING DAMAGE TO MODERN CITIES, DISPROVING STRATEGIC COUNTERVALUE DETERRENT PROPAGANDA BY GLASSTONE'S BOOK

ABOVE: weak blast waves oscillate buildings within the "elastic" deformation range, absorbing up ~1% of the intercepted blast wave energy, whereas blast waves strong enough to oscillate the building well into the "plastic" deformation range can demolish modern steel and concrete city buildings (which mostly remained standing after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki air bursts) can absorb typically 10 times more energy or ~10% of the intercepted blast wave energy. Successive interactions in a large city causes a vast amount of shielding, as compared to tests conducted over flat desert or ocean. Although blast waves last longer at higher yields, their cube-root scaled-up blast effects radii contain more buildings along any radial line than for the smaller distances of destruction at lower yields, thus offsetting the extra energy at any given scaled "free field" peak overpressure. This was demonstrated by a study comparing blast effects at Hiroshima and Nagasaki where most of the buildings were wooden to "free field" nuclear tests by Penney, but it was suppressed by Bethe and Glasstone in the American "Bible" Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1957-77, which uses energy conservation violating "free field" blast and radiation data from tests over ideal unobstructed terrain. We exposed this delusion in 1990 in Nuclear Weapons Effects Theory, which was then censored by CND liar-duped publishers. Part of our problem is that vital blast ductility data for determining blast energy absorption by city buildings (omitted from Glasstone and Dolan's book) is in Northrop's 1996 EM-1 book, which not "secret" but is still officially banned from open publication by law in the USA, because it gives some information relevant to military nuclear capabilities; similarly the unclassified but "Limited Distribution" DTRA published book by AFIT Professor Bridgman, Introduction to the Physics of Nuclear Weapons Effects which can be used to demonstrate the exaggerations in Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons when Glasstone's free-field (unobstructed terrain) nuclear effects predictions from desert and ocean nuclear tests are improperly applied to concrete cities. Bridgman, for instance, considers a building with an exposed area of 163 square metres, a mass of 455 tons and natural frequency of 5 oscillations per second, and finds that a peak overpressure of 10 psi (69 kPa) and peak dynamic pressure of 2.2 psi (15 kPa) at 4.36 km ground range from a 1 Mt air burst detonated at 2.29 km altitude, with overpressure and dynamic pressure positive durations of 2.6 and 3.6 seconds, respectively, produces a peak deflection of 19 cm in the building about 0.6 second after shock arrival. The peak deflection is computed from Bridgman's formula on p. 304. This 19 cm computed maximum deflection allows us to estimate how much energy is permanently and irreversibly absorbed from the blast wave by a building (if damaged, additional energy is absorbed and is transformed into slow-moving - relative to the shock front velocity - debris which falls to the ground and is quickly stopped after the blast has passed it) by: E = Fx, where F is force (i.e., product of total pressure and area) and x is distance moved in direction of force due to the applied force from the blast wave.

If the average pressure for the first 0.5 second is equal to 12 psi (83 kPa) then the average force on the building during this time is 13 million Newtons, and the energy absorbed is: E = Fx = 13,000,000*0.19 = 2.6 MJ, which is removed from the blast wave in the form of oscillations of the building. Successive absorption by building after building rapidly absorbs blast energy in this way.

Although you could say the blast wave from a 50% blast nuclear megaton warhead contains 2.1 x 10^15 Joules, the blast wave energy rapidly decreases as it dumps hot air behind it to form the fireball (Glasstone omits the fireball energy partition after blast breakaway, but the DELFIC mushroom cloud module shows that, to fit observed cloud parameters theoretically, fully 45% of the yield is hot air dumped behind the blast that powers the mushroom cloud rise and expansion, so 50-45 = 5% of total yield (or 1/10 of original blast yield) remains in the blast wave after the negative phase fully develops). In addition, the blast forms a 3-d hemisphere so that the percentage of the total blast energy in the Mach front intercepting buildings near the surface is small and gets smaller as the blast propagates! It is only that part which causes damage that gets attenuated; furthermore the yield scaling issue increases the building shielding effect for larger yields, because the radial distance being considered is increased. For example, in the example above, 10 psi peak overpressure (69 kPa in SI units) occurs at 4.36 km from a 1 megaton strategic bomb, but the 163 square metres of the building is only a small fraction, f, of the blast hemisphere at that range, namely f = 163/(2*Pi*4360^2) = 163/120,000,000 = 1.37*10^{-6}. So if the blast still contained 5% of the total weapon yield at this stage (1/10 of the original blast yield), the total blast energy striking the building's surface area would be just (2.1 x 10^14 )* 1.37*10^{-6} = 2.9*10^8 Joules, proving that the oscillations of the building removed 2.6MJ of 290MJ blast energy intercepted, nearly 1%, which is a similar fraction to Penney's finding in Hiroshima (below).

You get additional, greater, energy loss due to damage done to buildings close to the fireball. For n such buildings in a radial line, the cumulative removal of blast energy fraction is: exp(-2.6n/290), which is greater for the larger blast damage distances in built up areas predicted for effects of higher yields! So increasing the yield increases the shielding for any given free-field pressure (the distance of which scales up with yield)!

Even with wooden 1-storey houses predominating in Hiroshima, Lord Penney who took away the overpressure debris (crushed petrol cans, etc) for analysis in England in 1945 found the blast energy at Hiroshima decreased exponentially due to blast attenuation caused by damage done, by comparing his results to the free-field Maralinga desert values for British nuclear tests without a precursor. This was all ignored by Uncle Sam (Glasstone)!

ABOVE: error by DTRA regarding energy absorption by buildings. U.S. Government's DTRA DISPATCH magazine article "Building Effects on Airblast from Nuclear Detonations in Urban Terrain" falsely conflates the abrupt shock front with the length of the entire blast wave, claiming that since buildings are 2000 denser than blast waves: "the air will move 2000 times father than the structure in the same time interval. Thus while the building is moving 1cm. the shock has moved more than 20m, and the energy is a small fraction of 1% the blast energy." The key error here is the statement that "the shock has moved 20 m". They meant the shock front, which isn't the same thing as the entire blast wave, the thickness of which is dependent on bomb yield, and is what moves drag-sensitive buildings with large window openings where the overpressure quickly equalises. So they are totally wrong. They are absurdly arguing that only 1/2000 of the dynamic pressure (kinetic energy per unit volume of air) of air presents a force upon buildings, or presumably upon ships sails (which are denser than air), or eardrums (again which are denser than air). The shoddy, imprecise form of their statement makes it hard to understand precisely what they are saying, but it seems to be that they are assuming falsely that the blast wave consists only of a shock front, which will move 20 m past the building (without moving it significantly) before the building has moved 1 cm, but the density of the building and the location of the shock front relative to the building is IRRELEVANT while the mass of air BEHIND the shock front is delivering energy to the building, as proved by the absence from the relevant equations of both building density and shock front location after it has passed, but winds are still blowing. It's not the shock front that causes the building to oscillate, but the wind pressure behind the shock front. The building density, and the distance the shock FRONT moves beyond the building, have no relevance to thickness the layer of air BEHIND the shock front, which is what is pushing the building, and this thickness increases with bomb yield! (However, most of the push to the building occurs due to the highest dynamic pressure, i.e. the air just behind the discontinuity or "shock front".) As a result, the actual energy absorption by a building is more than 100 times greater than DTRA's ratio of densities claims. Small-scale models of buildings, whether absolutely rigid or made from glass mirrors don't in any way, shape or form model the energy captured in oscillations by thousands of tons of reinforced concrete of real buildings.

The wind (dynamic) pressure induced motion effects which have nothing to do with the relative density of the shock front compared to the building. The amount of energy picked up from either the wind pressure of normal breezes or the blast wave of a nuclear explosion, by a building in oscillatory energy is the time-integrated form of Newtonian equation E = F.x, where force F = P.A, where P is dynamic pressure and A is area, and x is the amount of displacement induced. There's no density of the building in these equations, and no dependence on the shock front, but rather the integrated dynamic pressure over the entire duration of the blast at the location of interest (if the building delays the passage of the shock front instead of letting it pass freely through windows etc, then there's an additional term for the time-integrated overpressure contribution). As dynamic pressure is removed by the building - not by the shock front but by the air behind it, lasting seconds in higher yield detonations - the overpressure also falls as the blast restores itself to the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions (overpressure energy is transformed into dynamic pressure energy, thus weakening overpressure as well as dynamic pressure). If DTRA were correct that only the front part (shock front) of a blast wave is relevant to delivery of energy and delivers only 1/2000 of the energy of the blast, then by analogy our eardrums and ship sails would be similarly so inefficient at picking up energy from the dynamic pressure of sound and the wind, respectively, that they couldn't work! Notice that their computer codes in 2013 falsely EXCLUDED any absorption of energy by the blast in oscillating thousands of tons of reinforced concrete, causing damage (much larger, huge amounts of energy are required to actually destroy reinforced concrete by permanent deformation; the springy oscillations of a building in a gale or blast wave take up far less energy than actual destruction requires), contrary to what John von Neumann pointed out (that buildings are NOT rigid but absorb energy from the blast, decreasing the blast parameters like pressures and impulses as the blast propagates through a city, unlike desert or ocean in unobstructed terrain nuclar tests!) in the 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons (removed by Glasstone from future editions, just as he removed the civil defence chapter from the 1977 edition!).

ABOVE: Appendix A of Glasstone's 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons gives a specific calculated example that allows the absorption of blast energy by oscillating modern concrete buildings to be calculated: a reinforced concrete building of 952 metric tons, 75x75ft, 38 ft high (thus horizontal area of 265 square metres), resisting force 4 psi, is subjected to a peak overpressure and dynamic pressure loading of 32 psi (242,000 Pascals) decaying to zero in 0.32 second. Calculated peak deflection of middle of the building was 0.88 foot or 0.27 m (the top would be deflected twice this amount). Reinforced concrete is relatively ductile, but any cracking absorbs even more energy than the simple calculation of the kinetic energy of blast-induced oscillation. So the blast wave energy absorbed from the simple physics law E = Fx = PAx where P is pressure loading, A is exposed area of building being loaded, and x is the displacement(or more precisely from the integral form of this, where energy absorbed is force integrated over displacement, as shown above) is about E = Fx = (242,000)(265)(0.27) = 17,000,000 Joules. This energy is removed from the blast wave by being transferred from the blast into the kinetic energy of oscillating the building! Hard fact!

ABOVE: The resisting force of 4 psi used in the 1950 Glasstone book can be updated with the following static yield resistances for various modern city buildings using Table 15.6 on page 525 of the 1996 Northrop Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from EM-1: 3.0 psi and 0.3 second natural period of oscillation for 3-8 story reinforced concrete buildings (type 15.2.2), 1.25 psi and 0.3 second for brick houses (type 15.2.3), 0.5 psi and 0.25 second for wooden houses (type 15.2.5), or 2.0 psi and 0.6 second for 3-10 story steel-frame office buildings (type 15.2.10). The "nominal" ductility ratios (the ratios of displacement required for collapse/severe damage to the maximum elastic response before plastic response begins) for these four types of buildings are given by Northrop as 7.5, 4, 7.5 and 10, respectively. The maximum amount of energy absorbed in destroying the buildings is simply the area under the curve of loading versus displacement before collapse. Since this relative area is 0.5 unit for the triangle shaped slope up to a ductility ratio of 1, and is roughly a constant height rectangle for the plastic zone from a ductility ratio of 1 up to the failure limit (severe damage/collapse of building), the ratio of total energy absorbed by a building in its destruction, to the maximum energy that can be absorbed in purely elastic oscillations by a buildings (up to ductility ratio of 1 unit, where the dimensionless ductility ratio u = maximum extension under applied load / extension at elastic limit of Hooke's Law) is simply [0.5 + (7.5 - 1)]/0.5, [0.5 + (4 - 1)]/0.5, [0.5 + (7.5 - 1)]/0.5, and [0.5 + (10 - 1)]/0.5, or 14, 7, 14, and 19, respectively, for those four building types. It is to be noticed that the greatest amounts of plastic range energy absorption are for the most predominant two kinds of modern city centre buildings, namely reinforced concrete and steel frame multistory buildings. These buildings, with up to 8 and 10 stories, respectively, in these calculations, also have a cumulative effect in shielding free-field thermal and nuclear radiations.

The Effects of Atomic Weapons, 1950, on page 57 has a section written by John von Neumann and Fredrick Reines of Los Alamos (it is attributed to them in a footnote) stating clearly: "the structures ... have the additional complicating property of not being rigid. This means that they do not merely deflect the shock wave, but they also absorb energy from it at each reflection. The removal of energy from the blast in this manner decreases the shock pressure at any given distance from the point of detonation to a value somewhat below that which it would have been in the absence of dissipative objects, such as buildings." Glasstone removed this from future (1957-77) editions, not because it is wrong (it isn't), but apparently because it debunks official nuclear lies used for strategic deterrence in the same way that gas and incendiary bombing effects was exaggerated in the 1930s to try to deter war!

ABOVE: The two terms for blast wave energy. It's really very simple: the first term above is the kinetic energy contained in the dynamic (wind) pressure of the blast, while the second term represents the internal energy of the blast (manifested as heat and related static overpressure). So the theoretical basis for the calculation of blast energy absorption by a city is not rocket science, and it's not based on speculations or guesswork. And this is not "new" either, since Brode's 1954 equations for calculating blast wave's with a computer include energy balance, and you can with modern computers easily incorporate the irreversible energy losses due to the blast wave successively oscillating, one after another, the buildings with with it interacts as it travels outward in a modern city. William G. Penney gives the real basis for calculating the energy loss due to blast damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in his 1970 paper, which contains numerous detailed, precise calculations and measurements showing how the act of causing destruction to steel and concrete, in addition to the mere oscillations of buildings, reduced the energy content of the blast and thus the pressure fell more quickly with distance in those cities, than measured in unobstructed desert or ocean during his nuclear testing programme. (In 1985 John Malik of Los Alamos simply ignored in his report, LA-8819, all Penney's hard won facts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without going into details at all. Glasstone and Dolan reference Penney's 1970 paper, but simply ignore its findings on blast attenuation in Hiroshima and Nagasak. So much for scientific progress! Note also that Penney's 12 kt yield for Hiroshima is lower than the current estimate of 16 kt, implying even more blast absorption in Hiroshima than Penney found, because the unattenuated free field pressures from 16 kt will be greater than those from 12 kt!)

Now consider the energy absorption in the plastic region for reinforced concrete. The calculations of energy absorption in oscillating a building are for the small "elastic response" region of the pressure-displacement curve. But vast amounts of energy are absorbed beyond that elastic limit, and yet at pressures lower than required to make a reinforced concrete building collapse (always ignored by ignorant shelter critics, as Lord Baker explained, for shelter design in his 1978 book which we reviewed in detail a few posts back). There is a summary of the key building parameters America uses in calculating the effects of nuclear blast on buildings of various kinds in Table 15.6 on page 525 of Northrop's 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects, Calculational Tools Abstracted from EM-1: building 15.2.2 (3-8 story reinforced concrete, small window area) has a severe damage ductility ratio of 7.5, i.e. it fails and collapses (severe damage) when the displacement is 7.5 times the maximum elastic response. Put another way, the plastic limit for reinforced concrete is 7.5 times the elastic displacement limit. Northrop's figure 15.7 shows the extension versus applied pressure load. The energy absorbed in the elastic limit is a triangle terminating at a displacement of 1 ductility unit (units are extension/elastic limit extension), so it has an area of 0.5 units (energy absorption for oscillating the building, see diagram below). But the plastic response is not a triangle but a unit high rectangle which starts at one unit and extends to 7.5 units (severe damage/collapse), its area is thus 7.5 - 1 = 6.5 units, so it absorbs 6.5/0.5 = 13 times as much energy as that used to oscillate the building elastically! So reinforced concrete buildings can absorb 13 times more energy in being damaged, than they can absorb in oscillating elastically. The ratio of total energy absorbed to flatten the buildings, to the maximum energy that can be absorbed elastic oscillate it, is (6.5 + 0.5)/0.5 = 14. Thus, the total energy absorption by a building can be 14 times that involved in merely oscillating it!

ABOVE: model of a building having a blast, the simple engineering graph from EM-1 showing the ratio of energy needed to total a building to that which merely oscillates it. The axes depict loading force and displacement, respectively, so the areas under the curve beautifully correspond to energy absorbed, allowing us to calculate the total energy needed to flatten a city very easily (from a simple, standard physics formula, energy E = Fx), in terms of multiples of the energy needed to just oscillate the buildings elastically. Northrop's data for other types of buildings are as follows: type 15.2.5 wood frame house has the same 7.5 ductility ratio for collapse, so it can absorb in plastic deformation 13 times the elastic oscillatory energy; type 15.2.3 brick house has a ductility ratio of 4 for severe damage, and a type 15.2.10 3-10 story steel-frame office building has a ductility ratio of 10 for severe damage. This is precisely Lord Baker's principle of the Morrison table shelter (for details, please see Lord Baker's 1978 book about the problems with explaining this to the bureaucratic nutters who don't understand the physics behind engineering, the brilliantly titled Enterprise versus Bureaucracy) where the plastic deformation of steel is used to absorb many times more energy than it can absorb elastically. In other words, it's the damage done (plastic deformation of reinforced concrete) that really absorbs vast amounts of blast energy, not the smaller energy absorption from elastic oscillations of a building! Northrop's table 15.6 shows that the reinforced concrete building, type 15.2.2, has a natural period of oscillation of about 0.3 second, and a static yield resistance of about 3 psi. Northrop's Figure 15.10 shows it has 50% probability of severe damage at 2.85 km from a 1 megaton surface burst on an ideal, unobstructed desert surface with no blast energy absorption by buildings intervening between that target and ground zero! For comparison, a similar 1 megaton surface burst in unobstructed desert is shown in Northrop's Figure 15.11 to have 50% probability of destroying a typical British brick house at 4.42 km ground range (50% severe damage probability), whereas Figure 15.18 gives a range of only 2.74 km for collapse of 3-10 story steel-frame buildings from a 1 megaton surface burst on unobstructed, open terrain.

ABOVE: Glasstone and Dolan are also completely wrong in adding scattered radiation to direct radiation exposure, because radiation-absorbing objects by definition self-shield the contributions coming from different directions, so the energy/unit-area "exposures" don't add up in the real world (unlike the "theoretical example" of an imaginary mathematical point in space). For example, if the side of a person facing the fireball receives 10 cal/cm^2 an the other side receives another 10 cal/cm^2 from cloud-scatter or air-scatter, no surface receives 10+10 = 20 cal/cm^2, which is just a mathematical fiction! Instead, scattered radiation generally exposes a larger area to similar or lower exposure than the direct exposure. This is just one of many fictions that have become groupthink religion in anti-nuclear propaganda. We have already given in many posts extensive evidence proving that concrete buildings in Hiroshima and modern cities absorb thermal, nuclear and blast effects in a way totally ignored by Glasstone's unobstructed desert analysis. Strategic nuclear deterrence is thus bunk, if based on nuclear test effects data from unobstructed desert or open ocean. We need tactical nuclear deterrence to stop invasions and the use of force, not an incredible threat of bombs on cities, which is analogous to the gas and incendiary bombing exaggerations of the 1920s and 1930s which failed to deter WWII. The exaggerations were made by both lying disarmers (to scare people into disarmament) and by lying proponents of aerial bombing in war (to scare enemies into surrender). The resulting pseudo "consensus of expert opinion" from both groups had tragic consequences. Strategic bombing, megatons of ~100 kg high explosive on Germany, equivalent to a large nuclear attack however you scale the megatonnage (by the 2/3 power of blast yield for peak overpressure over unobstructed terrain, or by an even weaker function of yield for initial nuclear radiation), also failed to produce military results when civilians were bombed. The two low yield nuclear weapons dropped over mostly wooden houses in Japan did not produce the results publically claimed (for propaganda) for modern concrete cities. We've been blogging this for years, ignored by the loons who prefer anti-nuclear lies about strategic nuclear deterrence!

So to correct Glasstone for urban areas:

(1). Simply use Lord Penney's exponential attenuation formula from Hiroshima to reduce peak overpressures in cities: exp(-R/3.25) for R being radial distance through a city in kilometres. This reduces peak overpressure by 50% at 2.2 km. (Obviously precise effects depend on details, but this is a "baseline" for minimal blast attenuation, in cities with predominantly wood frame buildings.)

(2). Simply use George R. Stanbury's formula for predicting the thermal flash shadowing, by calculating the number of exposed upper floors that can geometrically "see" the fireball as a function of range, so that the number of computed flash burns correspond to the number of windows that can see the fireball (e.g. for 50 ft wide streets, 3 miles from a 1 megaton surface burst, only the highest floor can "see" the fireball since the angle from the top of the fireball to building top artificial skyline is 13.5 degrees; if the buildings are on average 10 floors high, the percentage burns and fire risk is therefore 1/10 for one side of a building with 4 sides, i.e. 1/40 which is smaller than the 1/10 assumed by some simplistic propaganda; but you then get into the issue of the size of the windows and whether the people inside are protected by shadows from walls or furnishings or internal office cubicle partitions or even other people in between the target and the fireball in the office, all of which reduce the simplistic "theoretical" estimates of the number of people burned, instead of assuming that no buildings or screening exists at all as in anti-nuclear propaganda for so-called "arms control" (war via appeasement/disarmament as in the 1930s). Stanbury points out there, and in his August 1962 Restricted UK Home Office Scientific Advisory branch Fission Fragments article on Fires from nuclear weapons, that to produce firestorms in Germany - the allies tried hard to achieve this in 1943 to end the war (and firestorms produce the associated soot clouds for climatic "nuclear winter" effects hype) you needed 50% of buildings to be initially ignited, which was only possible in the (now burned and gone) medieval wooden areas of Hamburg and Hiroshima (due to blast-overturned charcoal braziers in wooden houses in Japan, not the thermal flash which was obstructed by rooms and other buildings). Stanbury's studies of the thermal flash shielding in Liverpool and Birmingham showed that the thermal radiation is shielded to such an extent you simply can't get to within an order of magnitude of that 50% ignition incidence needed for a Hamburg style intense firestorm (or, therefore, nuclear winter due to Hamburg type firestorm soot clouds penetrating the stratosphere)!

ABOVE: Smokescreens of both white fog smoke and black soot smoke can be seen to the right of the fireball in the 15 kiloton Grable nuclear test, Nevada, 1953. (Smokescreens were again proof tested at Operation Teapot in 1955.) The technology to lay down smokescreens is well-established, and smoke screen generators are fitted to many tanks. The same can be fitted around building windows, preventing fires, firestorms, soot cloud "nuclear winters", simply triggered by early warning radar like air raid sirens before the flash and EMP of an explosion arrive! Glasstone's mention of smokescreens is typical of the many failures of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, failing to make the nuclear test data clear (you cannot even tell from Glasstone whether smokescreens have been analysed in theory or in nuclear tests, let alone the vital details needed for this to be used for civil defense). Part of the problem here is the deceptively non-quantitative treatment of scattered radiation by Glasstone, another exercise in obfuscation.

The effect of scattered thermal radiation diffusing into shadows was insignificant at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where burns from thermal radiation were only received in an unobstructed radial line from the fireball, so that any shielding provided virtually complete protection from thermal flash. The 110 Castle-3 shot at Bikini Atoll in 1954 was fired during a moderate rainstorm to obtain data on the reduction of blast and thermal effects by rainfall. There are no films that show the fireball because the water content of the air absorbed the thermal and visible transmission. Heavy rain or fog absorbs the thermal radiation locally around the fireball, rather than creating a large amount of dangerously wide-angle scattered radiation at great distances. Northrop's 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from EM-1, gives data for Pacific test conditions in Figure 6.39 on page 248, on the effect of scattered thermal radiation from a burst at 1 km altitude, at various distances and for different fields of view:

At 10 km ground range, 43% of the thermal radiation in unobstructed terrain is direct (from the fireball), and 57% is scattered, but the angular distribution of scattering is not extreme (most of the scattering comes from air relatively near the fireball): the total (direct plus scattered) is 80% for a 30 degrees field of view (only 20% of the thermal radiation comes from angles exceeding 30 degrees from the radial line to the burst). Only 4% of the total thermal radiation at 10 km comes from angles beyond 90 degrees (i.e. 96% comes from the hemisphere around a target facing the burst).

At 30 km ground range, 16% of the thermal radiation in unobstructed terrain is direct (from the fireball), and 84% is scattered, but the angular distribution of scattering is not extreme (most of the scattering comes from air relatively near the fireball): the total (direct plus scattered) is 70% for a 40 degrees field of view (only 30% of the thermal radiation comes from angles exceeding 40 degrees from the radial line to the burst). Only 6% of the total thermal radiation at 10 km comes from angles beyond 90 degrees (i.e. 94% comes from the hemisphere around a target facing the burst).

Northrop's 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from EM-1, gives graphs of the thermal radiation spectrum, showing differences with burst altitude and yield. Figure 6.19 shows that a 1 kt surface burst gives a thermal spectrum which peaks at 1.1 micron (Planck radiating temperature = 2000 K), compared to 0.4 micron (Planck radiating temperature = 5000 K) for 1 kt air bursts at 1-30 km altitude. Figure 6.21 shows there is much less difference between the spectra for surface and air bursts for 1 megaton yield: 0.70 micron peak in the thermal spectrum (Planck radiating temperature = 3800 K) for a megaton surface burst, compared with 0.52 microns (Planck radiating temperature = 4500 K) for a 30 km altitude megaton burst.

Northrop's 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from EM-1, in Figure 16.10 uses hydrodynamic calculations to prove that the maximum fire wind velocity in a firestorm is only a weak function of the fire intensity, for example a fire with a radius of 10 km will create a maximum fire wind velocity of 17 m/s for a fire intensity of 25 kW/m2, but this only increases to 36 m/s if the fire intensity is increased to 240 kW/m2.

Remember also that nuclear test evidence shows that the risk of clothing or other items burning is less for real levels of office humidity than for target materials left to dry out in the Nevada at the lower humidity of Nevada nuclear tests like Encore; clothing shields thermal radiation and increases burns energy requirements contrary to Glasstone.

Northrop's 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from EM-1, Table 14.5 on page 501 also points out that while people standing nude 2 metres behind glass windows watching the nuclear blast approach them will receive a 50% median dose of 3 glass fragment abdominal wall penetrations at a peak overpressure of 7 psi, it takes 15 psi if they are wearing clothing! If they duck and cover, they will can avoid the directional flying glass (and the thermal burns) completely. What Northrop doesn't tell you is that in a built up city, the dynamic pressure needed to energise those glass fragments to lethal velocities don't exist 2 metres behind glass windows in general; only behind those windows facing the fireball with an unobstructed view. Other windows on all all sides of the building will certainly break if the overpressure is high enough, but the blast wind (dynamic pressure) is directional and so the windows will not be blasted inwards with the same speed (at lower pressures they can even fail in the negative phase and be sucked outwards, with no hazard whatsoever to occupants!). Northop (1996) in chapter 14 on personnel casualties gives very high mortality rates based on unprotected head impacts, particularly for standing personnel, e.g. 5 psi for 50% mortality for people standing in buildings swept through by blast winds. Again, this assumes the blast winds are not obstructed and attenuated by the other surrounding buildings in a city, but it also suggests a simple civil defense precaution to accompany duck and cover in a crisis situation: bicycle helmets can be kept under emergency table "shelters" and can be put on quickly before the blast arrives, after a nuclear explosion, to minimise head trauma from flying debris or bodily translation and impact for high dynamic pressures and long blast durations. With duck and cover, you can avoid wind drag or injury from flying debris and you can keep away from a blast reflecting surface, then Northop shows in Figures 14.2 and 14.3 that you have 50% chance of surviving 37 psi peak overpressure from 1 megaton if you are lying down perpendicular to the direction of approach of the blast wave, or 62 psi if your are lying parallel to the direction of the blast (i.e., lying down facing away from the flash). In other words, blast is then very survivable!

(3). Simply allow nuclear radiation doses in modern cities to be attenuated severely by a factor of about 100 (from the 2011 Los Alamos report unobstructed desert "free field" initial nuclear radiation dose data study for the shadowing by intervening the buildings of in New York City) - before you include the actual shielding by a building people are in, which is much better for INR than Glasstone claims, because essentially ALL of the urban area outdoor 100-fold reduced radiation dose is SCATTERED, not direct, so it is energy-degraded and not the highest-energy direct gamma and neutrons (which are attenuated severely on the transit through all the buildings in the radial line from the bomb)! Putting in "/100" to the computer formulae is not rocket-science! Simple. Nothing in the universe is perfect, but this correction is easy, and gives a minimal baseline for realism for the urban effects of nuclear weapons, lacking in all anti-nuclear diatribes. For higher yield weapons, the increased ranges for given radiation doses will lead to increased attenuation, since at increased ranges there will be more concrete buildings intervening in the the radial line from fireball to target, and although scattered radiation builds up at greater distances, it has lower energy than unscattered radiation and therefore is less penetrating (easier to shield). The most penetrating and wide-angle scattered nuclear radiation dose is from neutrons, but for the full range of 13 different nuclear weapon designs in the 1984 EM-1, the effective mean free-path for the surface burst neutron dose over the distance 1-2 km only ranges from 189 to 221 metres (the latter being weapon type 13, the neutron bomb). (The neutron dose will essentially completely arrived - except for a small portion due to delayed neutrons from fission products like bromine-90 - before blast damage occurs to those buildings lcated near the crater.) Glasstone is widely ignored when pointing out in one table in the last chapter - contrary to many free-field charts and graphs - that 50% survival in modern concrete buildings in Hiroshima occurred at 0.12 mile for the 16 kt air burst at 600 m; this scales up by the cube-root scaling law to predict 50% survival at 1.2 miles from a 16 megaton air burst at 6 km altitude; initial radiation dose distances scale as a weaker function of yield than blast.

Additionally, the blast effects data (relating say overpressure to casualties) is way off in left-wing anti-nuclear propaganda. The actual Hiroshima and Nagasaki data proves much greater survival than bogus theoretical assessments: in reality, 100% people are not nude standing behind windows facing the blast while wearing roller-skates to ensure they are frictionlessly blown straight out of the 42nd floor by a 3psi blast, and killed by the impact from the gravitational fall to the pavement 420 feet below. Instead of the 1979 US Office of technology assessment claim that 50% of people are killed at 5psi, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than twice this was needed for the same effect, even without effective duck and cover or taking shelter (CLICK HERE FOR REPORT CONTAINING THE EVIDENCE FOR THIS). Although blast duration increases with yield, this has no effect if the pressure is below the threshold for damage, so Glasstone's curves are wrong for not reverting to cube-root scaling at high yields (impulse rules at low yields, peak pressures rule at high yields; Glasstone ignores this transition in his nonographs for building damage, which is corrected by by the secret EM-1; report Dirkwood Corp report DC-P-1060 found that the blast mortality effect was 50% at 32 psi peak overpressure in modern non-seismic concrete buildings in Hiroshima, or 17 psi for 1 megaton, without duck-and-cover to reduce exposure to flying glass, debris and blast wind drag; contrasted to 5 psi in anti-nuclear disarmament propaganda lies). By contrast, the low yield 10 kiloton "neutron bomb" effect was even apparent with fission weapons in secret British nuclear testing in 1953 (Totem-1 shot, photos below courtesy of Charles S. Grace):

ABOVE: "nuclear war" in populist fiction = end of the world. In fact, as shown by President Kennedy's letter to Life magazine readers above, not everybody agrees that "the survivors will envy the dead". As discussed in detail below, during the 1930s "arms control and disarmament" (aka Nazi appeasement and collaboration) lying by knights and lords with Nobel Peace Prizes hanging around their necks repeatedly brainwashed (with great success) the gullible mass media that mustard gas was 360,000,000 times more lethal than it was in 1918 when simple gas masks provided protection (far greater protection is available today with more modern defense equipment than was issued in 1918). The exaggeration factor was a game-changer. Now you get a whole class of mass media liars who say things like "we must lie about nuclear weapons effects to prevent a nuclear war". The problem is, as in the 1930s, lying ends up causing war by undermining credible deterrence! Tell the truth! Kennedy in a 1961 speech on civil defense argued further that civil defense was needed to prevent WWIII due to "escalation" in a nuclear weapon accident (or apparent "demonstration" strike). If you ban civil defense and ABM because youre faked nuclear effects model show they can be overcome by a massive attack, then you have no defense against nuclear weapons "accidents" (the "fog of war" propaganda tactic in a major crisis is to use diversionary explosions and ambiguity to reduce chances of retaliation, so first the enemy says "we did not launch attack", then eventually you may get "perhaps someone exceeded their authority or some bomb fired itself", etc., etc., so there is 0% clarity and 0% immediate justification to respond, other than waving a white flag and asking for "peace talks" to "resolve the problem without escalation"). So you need civil defense and ABM to mitigate the consequences of conventional or nuclear LIMITED aka "accidental" (note the quote marks!) demonstration strikes, to avoid escalating to all-out nuclear war.

This is 100% diametrically opposed to "arms control and disarmament" (Russian-front) Western anti-civil defense and anti-ABM propaganda spin (Russia itself has both, naturally), which claims that such defenses reduce rather than increase the all-out nuclear threshold! We give many examples below disproving this gormless trash. It's based on the concept that ambulances, hospitals, doctors, car seatbelts, fire stations, first aid training etc causes more accidents than otherwise, by causing a "false sense of security and thus reckless conduct". But statistical evidence disproves this kind of gullible confidence trick. For example, the lack of any civil defense or ABM defense in the UK against "Iraq's WMD's" in 2002 did not reduce reckless conduct by the UK, but on the contrary was used to justify preventative war by Tony Blair in a now-notorious government publication called "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction"! This is what always happens when your options are limited. In October 1962, Kennedy decided to evacuate American cities within Russian IRBM range from Cuba, then invade to remove the nuclear threat; he was unable because in 1961 his advisers had cut evacuation planning out of Herman Kahn's civil defense scheme (Kennedy had only implemented the fallout basement shelter identification and stocking part of Kahn's scheme). This was due to claims that evacuation, taking time, would be no use in a surprise Russian attack (Kahn's concept in his book was based on the 1 September 1939 Operation Pied Piper evacuation of vulnerable people - kids, the pregnant, etc. - from London 48 hours before declaring war to reduce risks of a surprise attack, not evacuating after an enemy surprise attack is detected). If you can't mitigate "accidental" strikes or "demonstration" strikes, you get sucked into war very easily because even a single enemy detonation can have cause 120 times as many casualties if people are in the open than inside concrete buildings or simple shelters: this is the paucity of alternatives dilemma. There is no CND "ignorance" here; it's DELIBERATE LYING for political ends (supporting the enemy), as explained by Herman Kahn and Bruce-Briggs in their 1972 book Things to Come, where they define groupthink anti-nuclear style "educated incapacity" as:

"an acquired or learned inability to understand or see a problem, much less a solution ... when a problem or the solution lies outside the accepted framework ..."

For the correct application of Hiroshima's lessons to modern higher yield nuclear war threats from Russia, see for instance the 1970s congressional testimony of T. K. Jones of Boeing Corporation in hearings linked HERE (February-March 1976 congressional Civil Defense Review), and HERE (November 1976 Nuclear War Survival hearings). Whenever the factual evidence surfaces, it is falsely labelled "controversial" or "wrong" by lying mainstream media charlatans, fraudsters, and bigoted snake oil salesmen, and ignored for political left-wing propaganda purposes, or the "arms controllers" simply tell lies claiming falsely that civil defense is a joke, just as they did in the 1930s (when civilian gas masks were discounted as a simple solution to deter Hitler from dropping his gas bombs on cities for a knockout blow!) and 1970s, debunked by T. K. Jones' famous 1979 letter to congress, extract below, which led to his being appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces on June 1, 1981 under the new Reagan Administration, which aimed to win the Cold War by science and technology, not lose freedom via Russian nuclear coercion. Note that while the ACDA - i.e. the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, whose faked nuclear weapons/war effects calculations lay behind the disastrous 1970s nuclear parity SALT farce which now results in dictators again intimidating democracies as was the case in the 1930s due to disarmament scams for "peace" which led to WWII - claimed 50% of people are killed at 5 psi peak overpressure from a megaton, while in fact U.S. classified Defense Nuclear Agency research showed that Russian public shelters were built to take 150 psi i.e. surviving within the 0.83 mile fireball radius of a 5 megaton surface burst, Russian apartment basement shelters were built to survive 60 psi, and good Russian improvised expedient shelters built outside cities survived 40 psi in American blast tests and gave upwards of 200 fallout protection factor (i.e., reducing the maximum hotspots of 20,000 rads to a survivable 100 rads and averting casualties).

ACDA disarmament bigots simply lied in the traditional "H. G. Wells" 1930s-sci-fi-style of disarmament fantasy, in testimony to congress, about the motivation and the detailed work of those people who disproved them, they ignored the classified data on blast and fallout shielding in their "effects" models, or their calculations assumed that people failed to use fallout shelters in order to deceptively "reduce" fallout protection factors by a factor of 7, by simply assuming people would go outside to be exposed to unshielded fallout (like most people, they also massively exaggerated the mean gamma ray energy of fallout during the sheltering period, as we have previously exposed, which is debunked by the measurements after the Redwing Zuni and Tewa tests) - they also lied that Jones didn't include fallout casualties when in fact he did include fallout correctly, finding that you don't get fallout casualties with the high degree of radiation shielding in shelters, an exact analogy to the situation where the 100,000 protection factor of activated charcoal gas mask filters gave no gas casualties in 1938 research, and disarmament bigots tried to claim that was some kind of ignorant dismissal of the horrors of true gas war so they would "arbitrarily" assume that only say 50% of people put on gas masks in order to then falsely claim that gas masks were somehow "calculated" to only work for 50% of people - i.e. only those assumed to be actually wearing them! - a travesty and abuse of scientific modelling (like lying that you have done detailed calculations proving that car seat belts make no difference in accidents, when in fact you have merely assumed that nobody wears the seat belts!), when in fact the true excellence of gas mask protection was proved to successfully deter Hitler from using gas on civilians with gas masks, saving millions contrary to the hate attacks on civil defence by disarmament propaganda deceivers (who recognised that civil defence made deterrence credible, and so was a threat to their bigoted plans for peace at any price):

ABOVE: extracts from the famous 1979 T. K. Jones Boeing Corporation letter, page 2, debunking "arms control" nuclear weapons effects liars in detail. This really exasperated my dad, John B. Cook, who was a Civil Defence Corps instructor in the 1950s, but was old enough to live through the 1930s appeasement era when Philip Noel-Baker repeated lied on the effects of gas bombs, claiming gas masks will never work, because babies and the elderly won't put them on properly, blah, blah, so we must ban evil civil defence and instead guarantee peace by appeasing the Nazis because of we don't, they will DEFINITELY gas us all with a massive gas bomb raid on day 1 of war. In fact, Philip Noel-Baker did this first in a BBC radio speech in 1927, 6 years before Hitler was elected. Family members who knew the truth from gas attacks in WWII - largely negated by simple gas masks and going into shelters for droplets of persistent liquids like mustard agent - had to put up with this lying BBC and other media propaganda for disarmament throughout the 1930s, to the joy of the Nazis who were secretly rearming and preparing for invasions (not necessarily war, since Hitler would have been quite happy to "peacefully" invade the world and then use efficient gas chambers to dispose of those whose race or views he found to be "offensive", like modern snowflakes today). What really irritated dad, however, was that Philip Noel-Baker, having lied about gas effects in his February 1927 BBC radio broadcast and throughout the 1930s to great applause from pacifists who effectively did Hitler's bidding, was made a Lord and a Nobel Peace prize winner for appeasement propaganda lies that led to world war, and then did the same thing all over again during the cold war, issuing nuclear weapons lies. In a 1980 House of Lords debate on Civil Defence, he lied that the air burst in Hiroshima produced lethal fallout: "It covers everything in Hiroshima not already rendered lethal, and so those who have escaped the flash, the blast, the fire, will die within a short time. The first atomic bomb weighed two kilograms. It was little larger than a cricket ball. ... In 1978, more than 2,000 died in Hiroshima from its long-term effects."

Every word here is totally untrue, and easily disproved, but nobody in the House of Lords explained the facts to him, so this he quotes on page 5 of his 1980 Ecology Party book "How to Survive the Nuclear Age", and on page 6 he adds an attack on civil defence: "I feel the same outrage in 1980 when the Home Office [UK Government civil defence] propose to circulate a a copy of a pamphlet entitled Protect and Survive to every citizen. ... To strengthen the walls and ceilings as the pamphlet suggests, he needed a garden, a spade, sandbags, and the strength to dig and transport a ton of earth." However, the infirm or elderly don't need to hire an army of helpers to make a fallout shelter, because - contrary to Philip Noel-Baker - you can simply use water from a hose to fill up water filled bags inside boxes which do the shielding, as explained in the Home Office scientific advisory branch Fission Fragments magazine article (reprinted in the Royal Observer Corps Journal, vol. 27, issue 2, February 1985, page 26, below). In any case, in actual implementation, you would have some organization for civil defence in time of crisis, with people in nighbourhoods helping one another (lending hose pipes, helping to assemble emergency shelters around tables in homes, etc). Noel-Baker ends his case by absurdly calling for disarmament as a "sure way to avoid the war", by again ignoring the lessons of his own 1930s disarmament war effects propaganda which led to appeasement and thus the encouragement of enemy aggression, triggering the Second World War: "This is not a utopian dream. It is the system by which David Lloyd George disarmed Germany in 1919..." This claim typifies Noel-Baker's absurd, self-contradictory nonsense, since DLG's 1919 "system" led to another, far worse, world war, not to peace.

In that 1980 Ecology Party book "How to Survive the nuclear age", there is after the deceptions from Labour Party Lord Noel-Baker, a summary of civil defence shelter advice, but then the book ends with the transcript of the final big speech from Lord Mountbatten to the arms control anti-nuclear propaganda institute SIPRI at Strasbourg on 11 May 1979 (the IRA tragically ended his appeasement campaign with a bomb on his boat off the coast of Sligo, Ireland, on 27 August 1979): "A military confrontation between the nuclear powers could entail the horrifying risk of nuclear warfare [hardly likely if we have overwhelming superiority for credible deterrence, as we should have had - but did not have - in the 1930s to deter Hitler]. ... A new world war can hardly fail to involve the all-out use of nuclear weapons [this is debunked by former NATO General Sir John Hackett's book "The Third World War" which shows how escalation risks will be controlled even in the event of a Russian first-strike on Britain, provided that we are prepared for nuclear war - this book will be discussed in detail later in this blog post, below]. ... Let us all resolve to take all possible practical steps to ensure that we do not, through our own folly, go over the edge."

ABOVE: the most advanced and latest American "counterforce" nuclear weapons, the oralloy (Oak Ridge Alloy, aka U235 loaded secondary stage) W88 nuclear warheads were designed to knock out the huge well shock-insulated Russian SS-18 missile silos when they had a physical vulnerability number of 52L7, corresponding to a peak overpressure of 7000 psi, which is well within the crater radius. This is highly relevant today, since ehe SS-18 (in Russian nomenclature: R-36M2) is still in service (like the American W88), and the Russians have 46 of them, each with 10 warheads of 800 kilotons each, i.e. a total of 10x46 = 460 nuclear warheads and 3680 megatons. These 211 ton SS-18s are due to be replaced with the latest 208 ton Sarmat (RS-28) missiles (which made its first test flight on 20 April 2022, during the Ukraine war), extending the range from 11,000 km for the SS-18 to 18,000 km for the Sarmat. Unfortunately, as this declassified report shows, as with the Russian civil defense shelters, the silo hardness was underrated and the physical vulnerability is not 52L7 as originally supposed. The SS-18 silos could take much higher peak overpressures than 7000 psi and related ground shock, cratering throwout, etc. (The current "best guess" - and this is not proof tested due to the ban on atmospheric nuclear testing - is that it takes a peak overpressure of 10,000 psi to blow the silo door off the SS-18 silo and wreck the missile, which occurs at a distance from the warhead similar to its inertial gyroscopic CEP targetting error if the accurate GPS satellite navigation system is taken out by high altitude bursts, so to get a high kill probability you need to target many warheads per silo, a hugely inefficient strategy when all the enemy has to do is launch the SS-18 out of the silo before your warheads arrive!) In addition to this underestimate of the hardness of vital military "counterforce" targets in Russia, the Americans also massively over-estimated the cratering and ground shock effects for high yields in ordinary soils (not easily broken coral reefs!). (For references, please see the earlier blog posts about cratering exaggerations linked here and here.) The points we want people to take away, or at least openly investigate and question are:

(1) countervalue (anti-city) effects of nuclear weapons are bunk because, aside from the mistakes and deliberate omissions Glasstone and Dolan made for propaganda purposes in their 1977 edition, if the chips really do go down, you or your opponent can simply evacuate cities - most of which self-evacuate at 5pm every weekday, anyhow - evacuation is not a miracle, despite what Scientific American or Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says - before issuing an ultimatum, just as the UK did with evacuating kids from London in Operation Pied Piper on 1 September 1939 before issuing an ultimatum and then declaring war 48 hours later,

(2) you or your opponent can not only safeguard the civilians in cities by evacuating them (or putting the people into shelters/basements etc if you have them, as the Russians do, and as thankfully the Ukrainians do which is a key reason they have been able to fight the Russian invasion, as a result of having previously been part of the civil defense obsessed USSR), but 100% of missiles in silos can also be safeguarded from destruction by simply firing them out of their silos, if seriously threatened by a counterforce (anti-silo) enemy attack. In other words, if you decide to credibly target enemy nuclear weapons (a very costly strategy in terms of the number of W88 warheads per silo for any significant chance of damaging a >7000psi peak overpressure-requiring SS-18 missile silo, which are about as well protected as the concrete and steel around most nuclear power reactor cores), your targetting policy will encourage the enemy to launch first, to save their missiles from being taken out! So using nuclear weapons to target other nuclear weapons in hardened silos (or hidden in the sea in submarines!), apart from being extremely inefficient and costly in terms of your stockpile, is also a policy that provokes the risk of enemy "launch on warning" crisis instability because you are, if "successful", removing the enemy's protected second strike retaliation capability, and once the second strike option is gone, they are pushed back into the old first-strike aka launch-on-warning policy, which is extremely dangerous if their radar operators mistake some third party's missile testing for a launch against them, etc., etc. So the obsessive "disarmament fantasy" of only using nuclear weapons to try to deter other nuclear weapons in silos by targeting them, is a dangerous illusion that provokes crisis instability and risks an accidental nuclear war, in addition to being an exceptionally ineffective deterrent! All you do with that delusion is to deter the enemy from a second-strike policy, and force the enemy into a dangerous first-strike/launch on warning policy! If you can knock out the enemy warheads in their silos, the enemy will simply ensure that there is a very high probability that their missiles have been launched out of their silos before your warheads arrive, so you will be uselessly destroying EMPTY missiles silos! (your warheads take 25 minutes to arrive for an ICBM between continents, and 10 minutes for a back door attack of an SLBM launched from a submarine; less time is required for a Russian sub to hit NY or LA because they are beside oceans, unlike Moscow and most Russian targets that are well inland!).

(3) In any case, how do you target enemy SLBMs in submarines hidden at sea? Similarly, the most numerous Russian ICBM in their stockpile is the mobile SS-27 Mod 2/RS-24, of which they have 135 missiles on 16-wheeled mobile launch vehicles which can move around, with 4 separate MIRV nuclear megaton warheads per missile and a range of 11,000 km. How do you target them as they move around during a crisis situation? They can easily move position enough to survive an nuclear warhead in the US stockpile during the 25 minutes while your missiles are on the way to hit them in a crisis situation, so you are literally trying to hit a moving target - do you really believe America will be able to reprogram the target locations for ICBM warheads in flight as they are moving? The whole idea would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic (there was an effort to create a warhead which could track its moving target and adjust its trajectory accordingly, the MARV - Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle - the only known Western MARV was the Pershing II warhead, which disarmed as part of the INF treaty to appease Russia/pro-disarmament politicians in the West). So the whole idea of using nuclear weapons to hit enemy nuclear weapons before they are launched is crazy and dangerous. It's no joke that all the disarmament propaganda claims falsely that nuclear weapons have only the purpose of targetting other nuclear weapons in silos. That policy is dangerous, because it just encourages the enemy to get the weapons out of their silos before your weapons can arrive, so you are not deterring the enemy to launch their weapons, but forcing them to launch on warning, a lunatic policy! Nuclear weapons are only effective in a counterforce operation against armies on the move, either as a deterrent or to physically stop invasions without collateral damage by air burst enhanced neutron weapons. The only real use of nuclear weapons should be, as Oppenheimer said, as a tactical threat to stop the military invasions and attacks that triggered two world wars.

Nuclear weapons are exceptionally good at deterring (or stopping) armies on the move! Not so if they are dispersed in defensive positions like hasty earth covered emergency civil defense shelters that resist 40 psi peak overpressure and give a protection factor of 200 or more against radiation; but the point is that they deter enemy military offensives and once the enemy has crossed your border you are within your rights to stop them; the credible threat will prevent invasions this way, ending world war. (Nuclear weapons are also effective at destroying enemy nuclear weapons in flight, e.g. the 2 kt W66 neutron warhead in the American Sprint ABM missile could melt down the fissile material in Russian nuclear warheads in flight in the atmosphere, and the 5 Mt W71 x-ray warhead of the Spartan ABM missile would ablate, deflect and destroy Russian warheads in space; they also knock down trees to create demilitarised zones in jungle warfare which enable easy identification of insurgents entering those zones for attacks.)

There is a compendium of classic 1960s and 1970s arguments for civil defense, and their political suppression by left-wingers and fools, in Nobel Laureate Dr Eugene P. Wigner's Collected Works, part B, volume VIII, edited by Jagdish Mehra (Springer, 1998, 258 pages). Wigner on 28 April 1976 testified before the U.S. Congressional Hearings of the Joint Committee on Defense Production (page 144 in their printed hearings, online version is LINKED HERE) that the new Russian evacuation plans - as shown in its 1969 Civil Defense Manual (translated as ORNL-TR-2306, Oak Ridge National Lab.) - are very effective (the Russian civil defense plan includes only essential workers commuting into cities for 12-hour shifts, and using shelters):

"Indeed an easy calculation shows that, if the USSR carries out its city evacuation plans, the total number of casualties that all the nuclear weapons in our missiles could cause would be a good deal less than 50% the losses they suffered in World War II. A reasonable estimate, based on the Oak Ridge [National Laboratory] test of a blast resistant 'expedient shelter', described in the USSR civil defense handbooks, gives for the loss which our missile carried nuclear weapons could cause, about 3% of the USSR population. What about our own situation? ... An evacuation plan [costs] $1.2 billion .... a blast resistant shelter system similar to that of China ... would cost around $35 billion."

In 1979, in a joint article with hydrogen bomb advocate Dr Edward Teller in the U.S. Senate Congressional Record (2 August 1979, page S-11490), Wigner points out that Kahn's Type I deterrence is inadequate to prevent war (Type I is also called "mutual assured destruction", if both sides have parity via "arms control" delusions): "... I believe that the so called Mutual Assured Destruction is nonsense, because suppose even if the attacked nation could retaliate, if the other nation pretends that it does not believe it and makes a demand, is there any point in resisting? What good does it do if it can destroy hundreds of thousands of the aggressors' lives ..."

In his 26 May 1964 address to Mercer County NJ Civil Defense organization (reprinted in his Collected Works, part B, Vol. 8, p35 et seq.), Wigner explains that "people who are against Civil Defense often have some element of frustration ... and they find more easily time for, and outlet in, their opposition," as explained by Robert Waelder's article Protest and Revolution Against Western Societies, in M.A. Kaplan (ed), The Revolution in World Politics (New York, 1962, p 18), i.e. it is the same as the mechanism for Marxist agitators, some of which are openly Marxist and others pretend to be libertarian while remaining faithful to the bigoted dictators. Wigner's address continues: "Much more literature - I think 80% - is against than for Civil Defense and much of it is completely irresponsible. A few weeks ago I read an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in which the author said that a complete fallout [cheaper than blast] shelter program would cost $50 billion. Now $50 billion is more than would be spent on the complete blast [and fallout] shelter program which I mentioned [$35 billion]. But ... who will contradict it?"

In Publication 82 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Civil Defense, 1966, edited by H. Eyring, Wigner remarks on page 121: "Dr Rapoport said, in a note to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that it is possible that surrender to Hitler would have led to fewer deaths ... My view is the opposite in this case: I believe that if the West had shown clear resolve and determination from the start, WWII could have been averted."

After Leon Goure wrote his May 1972 report, "Soviet Civil Defense - urban Evacuation and Dispersal" (Centre for Advanced International Studies, Miami University, DTIC report AD0745136), Wigner and J. S. Gailar wrote in their joint article "Russian Evacuation Plans - the Fears they Create" in the September-October 1974 issue of Survive (v7, n5, pp 4-5): "If the leadership of the USSR should change and become more aggressive, it would have, under the present circumstances, a terribly tempting option: to stage an evacuation and to provoke a confrontation when this is completed." Wigner later testified to the U.S. Congressional Hearings of the Joint Committee on Defense Production, Civil Preparedness and Limited Nuclear War (28 April 1976, pp 143-7) that the principal danger: "is the possibility of the USSR evacuating its cities, dispersing their population, and the making demands on us, under the threat of a nuclear attack, approximating those made by Hitler on Czechoslovakia which led to the Munich Pact."

The only reply Wigner received was a nonsense filled 11-page article attacking all these lessons from Russian Civil Defense, headed "Limited Nuclear War" by Sidney D. Drell and Frank von Hippel, and published in the November 1976 issue of Scientific American, the editor of which, Dennis Flanagan, refused to publish Wigner's rebuttal, entitled "We heartily disagree", just as Kahn's rebuttal to the nonsense review of his book on Civil Defense in 1961 had been refused by Scientific American, leading Kahn to expand it into his 1962 book "Thinking about the unthinkable". Wigner's and A. A. Broyles rebuttal to Scientific American was finally published instead as "We heartily disagree" in the Journal of Civil Defense, v10, pp. 4-8, July-August 1977 issue, pointing out that the Russian casualties with civil defense would be 4% on Wigner's unclassified estimate or 2% using T. K. Jones's classified data estimate (utilizing secret data on the survival of foxholes in nuclear tests, in the 1972 DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons), and that the Russian improvised lined, covered trench shelters survive a peak overpressure of 40 psi as well as heat flash and fallout radiation, and adds that contrary to the nonsense in Scientific American, the Russians did test their plans by evacuating the city of Sevastopol in a drill which led to improvements in their plans.

H-bomb proponent Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and A. A. Broyles in May 1973 had jointly authored the American Security Council report, "Without civil defense we are in a glass house", which basically argues that you can't have a deterrent for world war if you are not prepared to use that deterrent when your bluff is called. If you are in Chamberlain's position in 1938 or Baldwin's in 1935, you are scared of using the deterrent because it is like "throwing stones in glass houses", because - if you can't shelter people because you refuse to have shelters and you also won't have a plan to evacuate kids from London (Operation Pied Piper, 1939) before you declare war - then you can easily be scared and coerced by Hitler or other dictators, who can see clearly that your "deterrent" is a complete bluff and totally, pathetically useless, because a weapon you can't use is not a credible deterrent. Naturally, as we keep repeating on this blog, this is what the defeatists who love Putin and other dictators want since surrender has two vital steps: (1) get rid of the shield (civil defense) since that makes the sword credible as an alternative to disarmament, and (2) point out that a sword without a shield is an incredible deterrent that is useless, so we had better disarm (and surrender)! Arms control delusions like supposed "parity" (a balance of weapons on both sides, as if democracies need detering like dictatorships), when one side has credible civil defense and the other doesn't, is like a duel between two people, similarly armed, but with one wearing body armour and the other totally unprotected! Not on that, but the dictator is the one wearing the body armour!

ABOVE: long-haired scientist Thomas K. Jones, better known as T. K. Jones, (pictured testifying before the Joint Committee on Defense Production, in Science magazine, 10 December 1976 after his Congressional Testimony raised the wrath of crackpot Scientific American and Bulletin of Atomic Scientist fans) was the "fall guy" of Reagan's civil defense, doing the explosive tests for Boeing Corporation on Russian civil defense shelter designs and testifing on their consequences for strategic nuclear deterrence - basically debunking strategic nuclear deterrence and McNamara's/Glasstone's totally fake news on urban nuclear weapons effects entirely, since 98% of Russians would survive the US nuclear stockpile when dispersed in shelters - which inspired Cresson Kearny's Oak Ridge National Laboratory manual, Nuclear War Survival Skills. President Ronald Reagan, prior to his election as US President, was leaked secret CIA reports on Russian civil defense tests of shelters and evidence of their tests of city evacuation plans for instance by evacuating Sevastopol in Crimea and also, in 1975, Lytkarino (a suburb of Moscow containing 40,000 people). A clue to who helped him was shown by Reagan's decision to controversially appoint T. K. Jones as Under-Secretary for Defense for Research and Engineering! A book was then published called With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, ignoring the key scientific evidence entirely, and merely trying to ridicule Reagan's appoinment of T. K. Jones (who is quoted on the front cover), as a left wing Democratic supporting political instrument - like Duncan Campbell's similarly vacuous War Plan UK. This was left-politics versus hard science. It often appears to work because Mr Joe Public loves a tall-story fairy tale!

If proof of this is needed, Robert Scheer, a fellow in arms control at Stanford University and the author of With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, became "Truthdig" editor-in-chief, a propagandarist who claims that ending WWII with nuclear weapons made Truman guilty of "the most atrocious act of terrorism in world history", so he needs to check his facts on the numbers gassed in the Holocaust, or starved in Ukraine by Stalin, unless he denies those deliberate acts of terrorism like the other left wing Holocaust deniers who confuse racism and anti-racism, terrorism and anti-terrorism. When you actually check the facts: (1) Secretary Stimson (U.S. Secretary of War) knew he has a secret nuclear weapons program of investment of billions of dollars to justify to Congress after WWII ended and didn't want to hold back using the bomb for that reason, so he promoted Hiroshima as being a military target (it did have military bases, particularly at Hiroshima Castle just north of ground Zero, but it was also a highly populated civilian city), (2) Hiroshima's air raid shelters were unoccupied because Japanese Army officers were having breakfast when B29s were detected far away, says Yoshie Oka, the operator of the Hiroshima air raid sirens on 6 August 1945, (3) Colonel Tibbets, former bomber of Germany before becoming the Hiroshima pilot as commander of the 509th Composite Group, explains how his pilots and crew were ridiculed heavily for lack of accomplishments, while preparing for weeks on Tinian Island. According to Tibbet's own book The Tibbets Story a poem was published before Hiroshima called "Nobody knows" lampooning the 509th's results: "Nobody knows. Into the air the secret rose; Where they're going, nobody knows; Tomorrow they'll return again; But we'll never know where they've been. Don't ask us about results or such; Unless you want to get in Dutch. But take it from one who is sure of the score, the 509th is winning the war. When the other Groups are ready to go; We have a program of the whole damned show; And when Halsey's 5th shells Nippon's shore; Why, shucks, we hear about it the day before. And MacArthur and Doolittle give out in advance; But with this new bunch we haven't a chance; We should have been home a month or more; For the 509th is winning the war." Tibbets was therefore determined create maximum effects after his group had been ridiculed at Tinian Island for not attacking Japan during weeks of preparations on the island, rehearsing the secret nuclear attacks while other B29s were taking took flak trying to bomb Japan into surrender with conventional bombs. He writes in The Tibbets Story that regular morning flights of small groups of weather and phototographic survey planes that did not make significant attacks over possible nuclear target cities, helped to reduce civil defense readiness in the cities, as well as reducing the air defense risks, since Japan was rationing its use of its limited remaining air defense in 1945.

The November 1976 Scientific American anti-civil defense article claimed that civil defense was discredited since: "In the 1960s the US adopted a strategic policy giving top priority to the prevention of nuclear war through deterrence ...", to which Wigner and Broyles responded to this claim in "We heartily disagree" in the July-August 1977 Journal of Civil Defense: "How do you deter an attack unless you convince an enemy that you will fight the war that he is starting?"

Dictators often start wars which their people don't need: the Persian war against the Greeks, Hannibal's war against Rome, the Tartar's invasions of Europe, the Turks' invasion of Hungary, the invasions of Napoleon. You have to accept that aggression is not necessarily a completely rational activity! All that counts for deterrence is that it is credible. If you don't prepare to fight with strategic nuclear weapons, then they are just a pointless bluff, a paper tiger as the Chinese put it, not a credible deterrent. Which is precisely what the disarmers want, of course, since nuclear parity, with the shift away from credible nuclear deterrence to incredible foolery, is only one step away from admitting the uselessness of the strategic nuclear stockpile, disarming and surrendering!

ABOVE: the 11 October 1952 cover of Picture Post showed clearly the "separation of effects" in an air burst (31 kiloton air burst at 3,440 ft, the Charlie shot of 22 April 1952, Nevada test site), where the fireball cools and forms into toroidal shape (with the radioactivity in the ring) before the "stem" of popcorned dust from the desert is sucked through the middle, before cascading harmlessly around the periphery without mixing with the fission products in the toroidal ring. Despite the visual proof that intense radioactive fallout can be avoided by air bursts, anti-nuclear propaganda helped by Russian fronts continued to raise fallout fears to promote Western arms control and disarmament, leaving the field clear for undeterred Russian conventional invasions and wars.

Professor John J. Mearsheimer, "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 50-66 (FULL ARTICLE LINKED HERE):

"The conventional wisdom about Ukraine's nuclear weapons is wrong. In fact, as soon as it declared independence, Ukraine should have been quietly encouraged to fashion its own nuclear deterrent. Even now, pressing Ukraine to become a nonnuclear state is a mistake. A nuclear Ukraine makes sense for two reasons. First, it is imperative to maintain peace between Russia and Ukraine. That means ensuring that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it. ... Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. ... A conventional war between Russia and Ukraine would entail vast military casualties and the possible murder of many thousands of civilians. Russians and Ukrainians have a history of mutual enmity; this hostility, combined with the intermixing of their populations, raises the possibility that war between them could entail Bosnian style ethnic cleansing and mass murder. This war could produce millions of refugees clamoring at the borders of Western Europe. ... There is also the threat of escalation beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine. For example, the Russians might decide to reconquer other parts of the former Soviet Union in the midst of a war, or might try to take back some of Eastern Europe. Poland and Belarus might join forces with Russia against Ukraine or gang up with Ukraine to prevent a Russian resurgence. The Germans, Americans or Chinese could get pulled in by their fear of a Russian victory. (Doubters should remember that the United States had no intention of fighting in Europe when war broke out in 1914 and again in 1939.) ...

"Russia has dominated an unwilling and angry Ukraine for more than two centuries, and has attempted to crush Ukraine's sense of self-identity. Recent history witnessed the greatest horrors in this relationship: Stalins government murdered an astounding 12 million Ukrainians during the 1930s. ... A Ukrainian conventional deterrent is not a viable option because Ukraine cannot build an army powerful enough to stop a Russian attack. Ukraine's army might put up dogged resistance, but it would eventually be defeated. Russia is simply too powerful. ... Conventional military power is significantly more expensive than nuclear military power and requires a larger military; hence it requires far more popular mobilization. ... A security guarantee from the West is theoretically possible but not a practical strategy for maintaining Ukrainian sovereignty. Extending deterrence to Germany during the Cold War was a demanding and expensive job; extending deterrence further east to Ukraine would be even more difficult. ... Vilifying nuclear weapons is a fashionable sport in the West. ... This view of nuclear weapons is simplistic and flies in the face of the inherent logic of nuclear deterrence, as well as the history of the Cold War. In fact, nuclear weapons often diminish international violence, and Ukrainian nuclear weapons would be an effective deterrent against a Russian conventional attack or nuclear blackmail. In the pre-nuclear world of industrialized great powers, there were two world wars between 1900 and 1945 in which some 50 million Europeans died. In the nuclear age, the story is very different. Only some 15,000 Europeans were killed in minor wars between 1945 and 1990, and there was a stable peace between the superpowers that became increasingly robust over time. ... Moreover, there is always the possibility that nuclear weapons might be used inadvertently or accidentally in the course of a conventional war, which provides further incentives for caution."

Professor Cyril Joad, "Why War?", Penguin Special book, August 1939, page 71: "Mr. Churchill and Sir Norman Angell ... The most convincing comment that I have heard on the whole lunatic business was made at a meeting which I attended as an undergraduate at Oxford in the year before the war. The meeting was addressed by a Cabinet Minister. "There is," he said, "just one way in which you can make your country secure and have peace, and that is to be so much stronger than any prospective enemy that he dare not attack you, and this is, I submit to you, gentlemen, a self-evident proposition." A small man got up at the back of the hall and asked him whether the advice he had just given was the advice he would give to Germany. ... the questioner proceeded to drive home the moral which his question had implied. "Here," he pointed out, "are two nations or groups of nations likely to quarrel. How shall each be secure and keep the peace? Our Cabinet Minister tells us in the profundity of his wisdom, that both will be secure, both will keep the peace when each is stronger than the other. And this, he thinks, is a self-evident proposition." This time there was loud applause. It remains to add that the Cabinet Minister was Winston Churchill, his questioner Sir Norman Angell [author of the 1908 anti-deterrence book, The Great Illusion and winner of the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize]."

Notice the point that Angell fails to explain why mutual deterrence won't keep the peace! If any mass-media "nuclear overkill" lies were true and we only needed 0.02 kiloton W54 sized nuclear warheads, we'd have 0.02 kiloton nuclear weapons. The reason why we have higher yields is lying isn't a credible deterrent when the chips go down, and what we have is a bare minimum to carry out a minimal deterrent function. It's easy to reduce nuclear weapon yields by removing boost gas, secondary stages, etc. The actual problem is the exact opposite of what 100% of quack mass media liars rant: if actually we want to reduce the risk of war including escalation to nuclear war, we need a credible deterrent which we don't have (see facts below). As regards huge stockpiles, this bankrupts the dictatorship as seen in the 1980s. It's a small price to pay, compared to the cost of a world war. Angell simply sneers at mutual deterrence, without (1) saying what's wrong with it, (2) investigating how to make it stable, (3) explaining why there's something wrong with "Si vis Pacem, para Bellum". Herman Kahn in his 1960 On Thermonuclear War discovered these pseudo-pacifists were key to starting WWII by duping the public with the illusion of security through disarmament (using itallics to emphasise this point!). What's actually needed, Kahn showed is credible deterrence including civil defence in order to reduce collateral damage such as radiation exposure to civilians (this is discussed in detail below, with quotations from Kahn's various books). This quotation of Angell versus Churchill in a 1913 deterrence debate is important because Churchill's pre-WWI naval Dreadnought deterrence ("We need eight, and we won't wait!") proved an incredible deterrent against the invasion of Belgium in 1914 which triggered WWI! So deterrence must be credible against the spectrum of provocations that result in wars, not just against a subset of the spectrum of possible provocations!

But Churchill's so-called "brilliant oratory" during the 1930s again failed to sway public opinion early enough to credible deter the Nazis from invading Poland in 1939 and triggering WWII. He failed to defeat the anti-deterrence movement led by Norman Angell and Philip Noel-Baker. So there are important lessons to learn here. In the end, the "anti-war movement" - which had become by 1939 a Nazi Fifth Column in the UK - had to be forceably shut down (with oppressive press censorship) once war broke out, as enemy collaboration or defeatism. However, they re-started again in 1945 when wartime censorship was lifted, and were never debunked by scientists, historians or journalists who could see the dangers from attacking them, i.e. the fascist mentality of such self-righteous lying quacks and charlatans, which were identical to the pseudo-scientist mindsets of Nazi eugenics pseudoscience and Marxism pseudoscience. The anti-nuclear quacks immediately focussed on nuclear weapons radiation, just as they had focussed on gas fear-mongering in the 1920s and 1930s! The journalists, historians and scientists who should have called out the liars instead backed anti-nuclear liars, instead of repudiating them and using nuclear weapons to deter war! Historians like AJP Taylor were accused by Herman Kahn of fiddling their analysis of Hitler and war origins, simply in order to "justify" a delusional anti-nuclear agenda (e.g., AJP Taylor was a founder of unilateral nuclear disarmament organisation "CND"!). There is still a taboo on mentioning the fact that Glasstone's and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons states in Table 5.160 that a large cheap WWII Anderson shelter (light 10-gage corrugated steel hemispherical arch with 20-25 ft span and 5 ft earth cover at the crown) requires 45-60 psi peak overpressure for collapse, while an 8" thick reinforced hemispherical buried concrete arch with 16 ft span and 4 ft earth cover at the crown requires 220-280 psi peak overpressure for collapse, i.e. survival within half-a-mile from a one megaton surface burst, proving relatively cheap, credible, effective civil defence (Glasstone's book, however, generally is misleading "free field" effects data from nuclear tests in deserts, omitting the blast and radiation shielding caused by energy absorption by concrete building skylines in cities; the only parts of Glasstone quoted by the CND people are the falsehoods; the media let them get away with it!).

"Who in Europe does not know that one more war in the West and the civilisation of the ages will fall with as great a shock as that of Rome? ... all gas experts are agreed that it would be impossible to devise means to protect the civil population from this form of attack [gas attacks]."

- Professor Philip Noel-Baker, "Foreign Affairs and How They Affect Us", BBC Radio, February 1927 (false claim, repudiated in secret discussions by UK Government Chemical Warfare Research Department, but not in public, thus enabling this form of "pacifist" lying to be used by Nazis to engineer appeasement leading to World War II; see also p31 of T. H. O'Brien's appalling UK official WWII history "Civil Defence" which dumbly mentions this episode without following up the implications for fascist appeasement!).

"Any use of nuclear weapons will escalate into a general war. There is no defence against such weapons ... nuclear warfare will destroy civilsation, and perhaps exterminate mankind. To hope for salvation from Civil Defence is a dangerous self-deluding pipe dream."

- Lord Noel-Baker (yes, the same liar quoted above, whose BBC radio show propaganda in February 1927 helped the Nazis kill 40 million people, unopposed by UK government secrecy obsessed "expert" thugs who refused to say anything in response to tell the public the facts they had that debunked Noel-Baker!), The Times, 25 January 1980.

(Thus, the same anti-civil defence "pacifists" who laid the seeds for WWII in 1927 were at it in 1980, simply changing "gas" to "nuclear"! The thug was allowed to go on a Nobel Peace Prize winning anti-civil defence lying crusade because the "journalists", "historians", and "scientists" didn't want to upset the apple cart by telling the public the truth in time to credibly deter another war, exactly what also happened with lying war-mongering appeaser and BBC Brains Trust radio "expert" Professor Cyril Joad who recommended a peace deal with the Nazis in his August 1939 book "Why War?" which on p71 quoted Normal Angell before WWI allegedly "debunking" Winston Churchill as a war-monger responsible for WWI via the old pre-WWI naval arms race, viz "We want eight [Dreadnoughts] and we won't wait!" Joad was eventually kicked out of the BBC for being convicted of dodging his rail fare, not kicked out for helping Hitler's fascist "peace" propaganda - something that has also proved true for many other "untouchable stars" like Sir Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris, et al. Journalism, the legal profession, scientific principles, etc., having first made heroes of liars who "filter out the unpleasant facts the public don't want to be concerned with", then always get to cover-up ahem "set aside" 100% of "issues" in their support of big pseudo-pacifist "star" liars, until the problem is so out of control they finally have to publish it, when they "switch over" and start saying the exact opposite about the "star", usually when the star is dead and it's too late, making believe that they did their best to oppose the liars, when in fact the evidence proves the exact opposite: they make as much money out of the star as they can, appeasing the thug in the process. The problem is that quacks and charlatans have always filled the BBC and other mass media outlets and pumped out endless lying about weapons effects, without any competent opposition whatsoever. You have to appreciate that this is simply because "war news" sells better on TV, than "deterrence evidence"! So today you have endless TV "history" shows about Hitler starting WWII, but none about the cause in the gas knockout blow esaggerations and gas mask lying or Anderson shelter lying by pseudo-pacifists, or even the lying origins of Hitler's eugenics in British pseudo-scientists like Darwin's cousin, eugenicist Sir Francis Galton, or his fan club - including the French Nobel Medical Laureate Dr Alexis Carrell who proposed to Hitler the use of gas chambers for "peaceful" mass murder of "state enemies" in his eugenics pseudoscience Nazi bestseller, "Man the Unknown". It's nearly all pathetic propaganda to enforce the false AJP Taylor style orthodoxy that there are no lessons about civil defence and pseudoscience lying from "expert conssensus" to be learned to ensure peace!)

Prof. P. J. Noel Baker: "Foreign Affairs and How They Affect Us - How Nations Settle Their Quarrels" BBC radio 7pm Tue 15th Feb 1927, Radio Times program advert: "At any period in history between the fall of the old Roman Empire and the present century, there was only one answer to the question, 'How do nations settle their quarrels?' It was by war or the threat of war. Now, in the League of Nations, the world has a tribunal before which such quarrels can be judged from the point of view of right rather than might. It would be useless to pretend that the Council of the League is a purely judicial body untouched by political considerations, but at least it contains in every case enough disinterested opinion to ensure that the moral view gets representation, and the sanction behind its decisions is international opinion, and not merely the big battalions of any one Power or group of Powers. Professor Noel Baker was one of the British delegation in Paris when the League was established, and he worked for several years subsequently in the League Secretariat, so he is qualified to speak with knowledge of both the ideal and the actual character of the League."

Eventually - far too late to help deter a war - in 1938, when the war threat induced appeasement and coercion situation was way out of control, some scientists began popular books debunking gas knockout blow liars, but all in a very weak, very gentle way that has been widely ignored. For example, Professor Kendall FRS wrote Breathe Freely! The Truth about Poison Gas which contained key facts but was poorly organized, like Herman Kahn's 1960 On Thermonuclear War. Kendall pointed out on page 52 that with proper defences (gas masks and training) in 1918 it took 4,000 tons of German mustard gas to kill 540 British troops: "Gas defence had progressed to the point where it took nearly 8 tons of mustard gas to kill a single man [with modern NBC clothing and modern respirators etc, even fewer casualties would occur]," and on page 110 he points out that popular mass media gas-knockout-blow hysteria "loved to quote the fact that 1 ton of mustard gas is sufficient to kill 45,000,000 people". If you compare the truth, 1/8 killed per ton with simple 1918 gas masks to 45,000,000 per ton killed in propaganda (for no protection), the exaggeration factor by the mass media was 45,000,000/(1/8) = 360,000,000. This 360,000,000 protection factor is so large that it makes civil defense into a game changer. In other words, giving out gas masks totally eliminates the naive toxicity "overkill" exaggerations at the basis of anti-deterrence propaganda that leads to virtue-signalling disarmament propaganda spin, and thus war. Very large reductions occur with civil defence in nuclear warfare, when you properly take account of city skyline blast and radiation absorption and the actual protection afforded by low cost modern concrete buildings and dual-use underground car park basement shelters. The point is, the 1920s and 1930s lying opposition to WMD deterrence made credible by civil defence against "limited/accidental attacks" etc, by "internationalists" aka appeasers/defeatists, is central to the entire problem of foreign affairs and maintaining a peaceful world. By lying about gas/nuclear knockout blows, you get a Nobel Peace Prize for removing credible deterrence and allowing the invasions that set off major wars, which risks nuclear escalation against battle-hardened opponents once the economic and human costs of conventional war spiral out of control. This key lesson still goes unheeded due to fake news mass media scams! Russia has always recognised the truth about the power of nuclear weapons when the chips go down:

Ministry of Defense of the USSR, NUCLEAR WEAPONS - MANUAL FOR OFFICERS, "FOR PERSONAL USE" (i.e. CONFIDENTIAL) (individually numbered), CHAPTER ONE, NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THEIR MEANS OF USE, p3: "A nuclear explosion can inflict heavy losses on the enemy in manpower and military equipment, destroy lower structures over large areas, have a strong moral impact on the enemy's troops, and create favorable conditions for the side using nuclear weapons, to achieve success in battle."

Below: 13 July 2024 Russian State TV Channel 1 (Putin's Kremlin controlled Russian language propaganda channel for the Russian people): "Any confrontation with the NATO bloc is possible only with the use of nuclear weapons. There is simply no other option. If NATO's military organization surpasses us, it is absolutely futile for us to enter into such an armed confrontation with conventional means of destruction only."

NO: this is not "just a bluff". Putin has over 2000 tactical neutron bombs; we have damn all now. OK? We DID have dedicated tactical nuclear weapons until 1992, and they deterred Russian invasions, but since then we have cut back our deterrence to a bare minimum which excludes the deterrence of conventional wars which risk escalating (like the invasions of Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939) into a World War, despite Herman Kahn's warnings of the dangers from minimum deterrence in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War.

Russian propagandists:

"Any confrontation with the NATO bloc is possible only with the use of nuclear weapons. There is simply no other option. If NATO's military organization surpasses us, it is absolutely futile for us to enter into such an armed confrontation with… pic.twitter.com/LYIRrj17Ig

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 13, 2024

"If we are able to use these weapons, and the enemy does not have them, their military effect can only be matched by his use of larger-yield dirty weapons - with the political and propaganda penalties their use implies. Of course the converse will also be true." - Samuel T. Cohen, Low-yield fusion weapons for limited wars, RAND report R-347, 1 June 1959, Secret - Restricted Data classified, p.2 (note this report is based on Livermore laboratory's very clean low yield Dove and Starling devices, developed after the successful testing of 95% clean 4.5 megaton Navajo and 85% clean 3.53 megaton Zuni at Bikini Atoll in 1956 which had lead pushers; Cohen's declassified paper is now in Eisenhower's Presidential Library with annotation on the front cover proving President Eisenhower was briefed on it in 1959!).

"There is another way in which we can have too narrow a focus. We can refuse to entertain or consider seriously ideas which seem to be 'crackpot' or unrealistic, but which are really just unfamiliar. In more casual days one could dismiss a bizarre-sounding notion with a snort or comment about it being impractical or implausible. Things moved slowly, and no real harm was done if a new idea took several years to prove itself. Indeed, allowing a notion to stay around for several years before giving it serious intellectual attention meant that most of the 'half-baked' ones got scuttled and never had to be considered seriously at all." - H. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p125.

"At times, the costs and risks of trying to shift the balance of power are too great, forcing great powers to wait for more favorable circumstances. But the desire for more power does not go away, unless a state achieves the ultimate of hegemony. Since no state is likely to achieve global hegemony, however, the world is condemned to perpetual great-power competition. ... They will seize these opportunities if they have the necessary capability. Simply put, great powers are primed for offense. ... a great power will defend the balance of power when looming change favors another state ... states recognise that the more powerful they are relative to their rivals, the better their chances of survival. Indeed, the best guarantee of survival is to be a hegemon ... Great powers ... have little choice but to pursue power and to seek to dominate the other states in the system. This dilemma is captured in brutally frank comments that Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck made during the early 1860s, when it appeared that Poland, which was not an independent state at the time, might regain its sovereignty. 'Restoring the Kingdom of Poland in any shape or form is tantamount to creating an ally for any enemy that chooses to attack us,' he believed, and therefore he advocated that Prussia [today, North East Germany] should 'smash those Poles till, losing all hope, they lie down and die; I have every sympathy for their situation, but if we wish to survive we have no choice but to wipe them out'." - Professor John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001, chapter 1.

According to the 1984 Guinness Book of Records (published for sale at Christmas 1983), page 219: "Mass killings ....The greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign nation against the government of another is that of 26,300,000 Chinese during the regime of Mao Tse-tung between 1959 and May 1965. This accusation was made by an agency of the USSR Government in a radio broadcast on 7 Apr 1969. ... The Walker Report published by the US Senage Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed the parameters of the total death roll within China since 1949 between 32.25 and 61.7 million. An estimate of 63.7 million was published by Jean-Pierre Dujardin in Figaro magazine of 19-25 Nov 1979. USSR The total death roll in the Great Purge or Yezhovshchina, in the USSR, in 1936-8 ... was administered by the Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Del (NKVD), or People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the Soviet security service ... On 17 Aug 1942, Stalin indicated to Churchill in Moscow that 10 million kulaks had been liquidated for resisting the collectivization of their farms. ... Genocide ... It has been estimated that 35,000,000 Chinese were wiped out in the Mongolian invasion of 1210-19." This information about Chinese and Russian socialism mass killing of resistance in the 20th century is also given on pages 193-4 the 1975 Guinness Book of Records, 22nd edition issued in October 1975, which also points out on pages 187-8 that over a million were killed during the 1st Battle of the Somme in 1916 France, 1.3-1.5 million were killed during the 880 days siege of Leningrad in WWII. (These horrific war casualties are dwarfed by the natural disasters table on page 212, giving 75 million dead of plague in 1347-51, 21.64 million dead of flu pandemic in 1918, 9.5 million dead from famine in China in 1877-8, 3.7 million dead in a flood in China in 1931, and 1.5 million dead from famine and typhus in Ireland in 1846-51.) So much for propaganda that nuclear deterrence "risks" are particularly horrific statistics in history! Tens of millions were killed by socialist dictators in modern times, without nuclear bombs. Similarly huge numbers were killed by natural disease pandemics and extreme weather. The key difference is that we can now deter invasions.

"Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of utterly destroying the other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. ... Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. ... But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development bears little resemblance to all this. ...

"Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. ... A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints. ... When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. ... If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb. Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers’ memory.

"How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and are then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. ... In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives? ... A Fashion in Thinking. Without any [objective] censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block successful development. In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons—maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. ...

"The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. ... [George] Kennan’s advice to his own country—to begin unilateral disarmament—belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the officials in Moscow’s Old Square roar with laughter at your political wizards! ... But in fact, members of the US antiwar movement became accomplices in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in the genocide and the suffering today imposed on thirty million people there. Do these convinced pacifists now hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? ... To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, in this case, but concessions, attempts to gain time, and betrayal. ... Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism. The Communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism’s crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes."

- Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Commencement Address at Harvard University, A World Split Apart, June 8, 1978.

ABOVE: as Herman Kahn predicted in his 1960 On Thermonuclear War, the paranoid anti-arms race groupthink mob insanity of "disarmament and arms control" public coercion after the first World War was not a fluke, but instead was a standard human reaction to the end of a war. It sowed the seeds of another war! Similarly, after Cold War 1.0 ended in 1991, opposition to disarmament and arms control virtually disappeared, so enhanced neutron tactical nuclear weapons (which deterred the kind of invasions and conventional warfare that led to both World Wars, including nuclear weapons use twice in the second one), were removed unilaterally by the West, allowing Russian aggression to trigger Cold War 2.0. This is basically a repetition of the way fake "pacifist" disarmament propaganda lying by Lord Noel-Baker (who in a BBC radio broadcast in February 1927 first claimed that there was no defense against gas WMD except disarmament) and Sir Norman Angell (who had been at it since 1908 with his "Great Illusion" anti-deterrence book, see his pre-WWI argument with Churchill reported by Professor Cyril Joad in the latter's 1939 book "Why War?"), engineered disaster via populist weapons effects lying, "knockout blow" deceptions, and lying denials of civil defense effectiveness to negate threats (all the lessons of these lies have NOT been learned, and people like Lord Noel-Baker, who lied about gas knockout blows on BBC radio in February 1927, were still doing exactly the same thing with nuclear weapons fallout lies in 1980 in response to "Protect and Survive"!).

You won't find any objective analysis of this in any "history book", all of which follow left wing Marxism propaganda or the anti-nuclear biased CND bigot AJP Taylor, in denying the facts using a data-dump of horseshit propaganda to bury the truth. In reality, as the cartoon published in the 17 May 1919 Daily Herald by Will Dyson shows, people did predict another war by 1940 as a result of the 1919 "peace deal" by Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Baron Sonnino. But most people prefer to believe lies, a fact shown clearly by an unbiased view of history, or even by an unbiased view of "superstring theory" in physics. But don't dare to stand up for truth, because you'll be subject to lying ad hominem attacks and denied a right to reply and debunk the liars. Power corrupts absolutely because the cowardly crowd backs "fashion", not fact.

This was explained back in 1532 by Machiavelli in The Prince: “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”

It was also later explained by John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859: “A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind ...”

And don't forget Professor F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1960, p. 379: “The very magnitude of the power over men’s minds that a highly centralised and government-dominated system of education places in the hands of the authorities ought to make one hesitant before accepting it too readily.”

This attitude encourages the mainstream media or "liberals" to censor anything that debunks their agenda. To recap, anti-deterrence propaganda from bigoted liars is the orthodoxy, and infects nuclear weapons discussions, deterrence discussions, and the entire "arms control and disarmament" movement with crap. Mainstream media would shut down the internet to "protect" people from potential "error". It's all Stalinist censorship, made plain by Orwell's book 1984, but ignored as "taboo" by thug censors masquerading as "liberals".

Kahn made the following point about disarmament and arms control: reducing nuclear stockpiles and unilaterally eliminating Type II Deterrence (i.e. deterrence of the provocations that cause war, e.g., disarming in 1992 the West's W79 neutron bombs to deter the invasions that set off both World Wars) doesn't make you safer, because it increases the risk of war as proved by history. Reducing the risk of an "accidental" nuclear war is best done using ABM, civil defense, plus safeguards inside nuclear weapons, than by disarmanent which increases the risk of war by reducing credible deterrence of war. The idea that unilateral disarmament protects you is like saying that nuclear-unarmed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were safe from nuclear attack in August 1945 because they were so-called "Nuclear Free Zones"! Similarly, the fact the world was non-nuclear in 1939 didn't stop nuclear weapons being manufactured and used to end that war! All of the CND arguments are fake news, just as all the arguments by Angell in 1908 against deterrence were fake news. Fakes news sells - as proved by the sale of fairy tales and "fiction". Even if you don't like particular uses or yields of nuclear weapons, there is a choice of tailored nuclear warhead yields and designs, and types of employment to produce different effects, with widely variable cleanliness, neutron output, EMP output, and the separation of heat, blast and fallout effects in air and subsurface bursts, to deter invasions without the collateral damage that accompanies conventional warfare.

"It is entirely plausible that the Nobel Peace Prize [albeit on a more rational and honest planet] should have been awarded to the designers of the first SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missile) systems, for in being so well hidden under the seas, this kind of weapon has made war much less likely during these years and, further, let each side relax somewhat more in the knowledge that such war was unlikely." - George H. Quester, "Maritime Issues In Avoiding Nuclear War", Armed Forces and Society, v13, issue 2, Winter 1987, p. 199.

ABOVE: the Russians have recently released a PDF of their detailed technical nuclear effects analysis of the survival of their cheap civil defense dual-use style (basement car park etc in peacetime) nuclear war shelters: "Civil defense shelters. Designs and calculations" by VA Kotlyarevsky, VI Ganushkin, AA Kostin, et al.; edited by VA Kotlyarevsky. - M.: Stroyizdat, 1989 (607 pages long, 144 references, full of equations and graphs). (Russian: "Убежища гражданской обороны. Проекты и расчеты" / В.А. Котляревский, В.И. Ганушкин, А.А. Костин и др.; под редакцией В. А. Котляревского. - М.: Стройиздат, 1989. https://tehne.com/library/ubezhishcha-grazhdanskoy-oborony-konstrukcii-i-raschet-moskva-1989 ) This tells you that these are not "just for show", but are blast and radiation hardened double-blast door, very high overpressure surviving, very intense fallout surviving protection that fundamentally alters the strategic balance and undermines our nuclear deterrent. This should nukegate the "Scientific American" and other pro-Russian, Western deterrent undermining thugs.

ABOVE: Kahn pointed out in On Thermonuclear War 1960 that the way to prevent invasions and wars in the Middle East is nuclear proliferation of CREDIBLE deterrents (not just nuclear weapons, but also ABM and civil defense shelters to mitigate the civilian collateral damage) that really DETER/HALT INVASIONS (the key is to focus on the 1914 invasion of Belgium by mobilization and concentrated force, triggering WWI and the same for Poland in 1939, triggering WWII): if both sides have a credible, stable nuclear deterrent against INVASIONS (i.e., stable = safe from destruction in an enemy 1st strike, so that nuclear retaliation is guaranteed), you get mutual deterrence and thus peace, not war. And even if one side DOES try an attack, a neutron bomb air burst can discriminately halt the aggression, without any collateral damage (of the sort caused by conventional warfare such as the invasions by the Russians in Ukraine and by Hamas in Israel). Conventional weapons are not a substitute because their mobilization along frontiers causes "crisis instability" as occurred in 1914, leading to war. This is why compact, long-range nuclear weapons to prevent this kind of 1914 mobilization "crisis instability" trigger problem, are required. Nuclear escalation can be deterred, just as gas war escalation was deterred against terrorist states successfully in WWII, by a combination of credible civil defense plus retaliation threats capability. The "all out" use of nuclear weapons is simply a form of nuclear disarmament, that leaves the aggressor open to retaliation by the other side's protected 2nd strike (retaliation) force. We have to get this message out past the fake news and "taboo" superstitions of anti-deterrent warmongering paranoid disarmament quacks and charlatans masquerading as "peace advocates". If you want a "two-state solution" and one of those two states is intent on the racist extermination of the other, it shouldn't require Einstein to declare that pressurised "peace talks" are going to be "double-talk"; the slavery issue of 1861 in America wasn't resolved by a "two-state solution" with the southern Confederacy one state and the northern Union the other, nor was the protestant-catholic conflict in Northern Ireland resolved by a "two-state solution", but by a single-state solution with power sharing. You don't resolve a conflict by pressurised "peace talks" or "declarations" between leading opponents in bad faith, but only by genuine accommodation of differences at grass roots or street level. This is why conflicts and wars come before peace settlements. If you really want a "two-state solution" between bitter rivals, you need a credible deterrent to keep the peace. Machiavelli or Marx? Truth or lying? That's the choice.

Glasstone and Dolan stated in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1977), Table 12.17 on page 546, that the median distance in Hiroshima for survival after 20 days was 0.12 miles for people in concrete buildings and 1.3 miles for people standing outdoors. Therefore the median distances for survival in modern city buildings and in the open differed by a factor of 11 for Hiroshima; the difference in areas was thus a factor of 112 or about 120. Hence, taking cover in modern city buildings reduces the casualty rates and the risks of being killed by a factor of 120 for Hiroshima conditions, contrary to popular media presented political propaganda that civil defence is hopeless. This would reduce 500,000 casualties for people unprotected in the open (assumed generally throughout Glasstone's book and about 100% of anti-nuclear propaganda) to 4,000 casualties, if people are on the lower floors of concrete buildings.

(NOTE: back in 1990, I completed the unpublished book Nuclear Weapons Effects Theory, debunking Glasstone's "free fields" blast and radiation calculations for modern cities. Basically, the oscillation of, and at higher pressures the plastic zone damage of, modern reinforced concrete city buildings by blast waves is easy to calculate, and irreversibly absorbs free-field blast energy, quickly lowering the overpressure and dynamic pressure to values way lower than measured over unobstructed desert and ocean at nuclear weapons tests and reported by Glasstone. Penney measured this blast energy absorption effect at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the majority of buildings were single storey wood-frame, not concrete. Dr John von Neuman predicted this blast energy attenuation by causing destruction in Los Alamos blast wave secret reports LA-1020/LA-1021, from which it entered Glasstone's 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons, but Dr Bethe deleted this information from the unclassified summary version, LA-2000, and it was deleted from the later Glasstone Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1957-77, and replaced with a denial of this fact, despite the fact it is a consequence from the principle of conservation of energy, and the exclusion of the effect makes the blast treatment wrong. Similarly, throughout the 1950s the UK Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch calculated thermal effects allowing for skyline shadowing, disproving firestorms and related nuclear winter using this mechanism, but secrecy was used to prevent the information getting wide coverage. Glasstone also mis-calculates all other nuclear effects, for example fallout and cratering are both based on debunked simplifications, exaggerating the effects by large factors. Glasstone entirely ignores all political and military effects of nuclear weapons, as well as the influence of clean secondary stages on the effects of nuclear weapons, e.g. the separation of effects for the air burst neutron bomb. Glasstone's book is really: "The fake effects of nuclear weapons on civilian targets, ignoring the blast and radiation skyline shielding"! Some declassified exaggerations in nuclear threats from Russian tactical nuclear weapons, debunking populist CND/Nukemap nuclear weapons effects propaganda, are presented in NUCLEAR WEAPONS COLLATERAL DAMAGE EXAGGERATIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR CIVIL DEFENSE. This is treated as "heresy" by the deluded quacks and charlatans of war-making "disarmament" taboos.).

"The critical point is whether the Soviets and the Europeans believe that we can keep our casualties to a level we would find acceptable ... In such an eventuality, the Soviets would be deterred from such provocative acts as a ground attack on Europe ... But if they do not believe that we can keep casualties to a level we would find acceptable, the Soviets may feel safe in undertakng these extremely provocative adventures ... this in itself creates an extremely dangerous negotiating situation - one in which the possibility of extreme pressure and blackmail will always be in the background, if not the foreground. ... 'Will the survivors envy the dead?' Unless the President believes that the postwar world will be worth living in, he will in all likelihood be deterred from living up to our alliance obligations." - Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton Uni. Press, 1960, page 35. This is Kahn's key argument, explaining the Ukraine war today; a fact always ignored by 100% of "nuclear critics". On page 34, Kahn gives a "notorious" table relating casualties to calculated recovery times for GDP; the GDP recovers in one year if 1% are killed, 100 years if 90% are killed. This difference is similar to the observed 120-fold difference in risk of being killed in Hiroshima if people are outdoors and totally unshielded, to the risk when shielded by the lower floors of modern city concrete buildings. So efficient civil defense warnings make nuclear deterrence over 100 times more credible, reducing casualties and the time taken for economic recovery from 100 years to under 1 year!

Kahn on page 48 of On Thermonuclear War easily debunks J. B. S. Haldane's genetic defects naive propaganda lie for nuclear war, because spreading out damage in time allows survival, whereas having all the damage kill 100% immediately doesn't permit survival. Kahn considers two nuclear attacks (Table 8): an initial 1,500 megatons on 150 targets, and a later wargasm of 20,000 megatons on 400 targets. He then goes into radiation effects lying propaganda by left-wing anti-nuclear disarmament fanatics, before giving the fallout gamma radiation effects much later on, in Tables 23 and 24. For the 1,500 megaton attack, only 1% of the area of the USA gets 6000-10,000R in the first 48 hours outdoors, requiring shelter protection factors of 40-65; for the 20,000 megaton attack, 50% of the area gets this radiation so you need 50 times more good shelter. As a result of these calculations, Kahn argues on p111: "we recommend that about $150 million be spent on identifying, counting, labelling and improving the best radiation protection in every neighbourhood so that people will know where to go...", adding that radiation meters are needed to enable people to go outdoors after 48 hours briefly to decontaminate or evacuate heavy fallout areas before getting a lethal radiation dose in structures offering poor protection. All this was, Kahn points out, published in a 1958 RAND Corp report ignored by President Eisenhower to save a few bucks (it was mostly implemented by Kennedy in 1961). In Tables 12, 13 and 14 Kahn shows how to deal with strontium-90 fallout contaminated food: on page 65 he points out that the linear no-threshold radiation effects theory is fake news for civil defense since the radium dial painters required 20,000 - 30,000 strontium units equivalent to get bone cancer, whereas the official safety limit is just 67 units! So simply by kicking out bad "science" (political "theory" standards) and keeping to actual radiation effects data, you resolve a problem by feeding food with over 25,000 strontium units to animals, and reserving less contaminated food for human consumption. Commenting generally on this kind of fashionable nuclear exaggeration mentality, Kahn explains on p160:

"... we are likely to suffer from the same movement towards 'responsible' budgets, pacifism, and unilateral and universal disarmament that swept through England in the 1920s and 1930s. The effect then was that England prematurely disarmed herself to such an extent that she first lost her voice in world affairs, and later her independence in a war that was caused as much by English weakness as by anything else."

Kahn adds to this on page 568:

"It is difficult and even impossible for most Americans to believe that they have an enemy. This is particularly true of intellectuals and 'men of good will'. ... that all sane men are reasonable and it ought to be easy to clear up misunderstandings by a few meetings and agreements (that is, they believe in what the psychiatrist calls a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' in the sense that 'good will generates good will' ..." Kahn testified to congress that Newman hadn't read his book!

Russian propagandists threaten with tactical nuclear strikes on Ukraine. They think that after that, Europe will immediately stop "demonizing and isolating Russia" and will immediately "line up at our door to say hello." pic.twitter.com/6kgmkMc5p3

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) June 4, 2024

Senator John F. Kennedy forecast in a speech to the Senate on 14 August 1958: "... the deterrent ratio might well shift to the Soviets so heavily, during the years of the gap, as to open to them a shortcut to world domination ... Their missile power will be the shield from behind which they will slowly, but surely, advance - through Sputnik diplomacy, limited 'brush fire' wars, indirect non-overt aggression, intimidation and subversion, increased prestige or influence, and the vicious blackmail of our allies. The periphery of the free world will shift against us." (If the Russians have 2,000 to 10,000 tactical neutron bombs and we have none, our "strategic balance" of ICBMs etc will be incredible retaliation, so our tactical deterrent "gap" in defenses puts us into the situation that Kennedy forecast.)

Kennedy's 1961 decision to back Kahn's crash civil defense program was apparently due to his attending the June 1959 nuclear war hearings (at which Herman Kahn first found fame); yet even earlier Kennedy had observed first-hand the appeasement of the Nazis while working for his father, the US Ambassador, for 6 months in 1939, writing his 150-pages thesis on "Appeasement at Munich: The inevitable result of the slowness of the British democracy to change from a disarmament policy"! This thesis was edited into the 1940 UK bestselling book "Why England Slept" by the New York Times journalist Arthur Krock (with a foreword by Henry Luce), in which Kennedy pointed out that the refusal of pro-disarmament northern left-wing councils to instigate civil defence (then called air raid precautions) supported fascist appeasement! However, Kennedy's interest in arms race, disarmament, and war issues goes back even further, to the year 1932, when he was 15 and in hospital, according to the author Kay Halle: "Joseph Kennedy Sr asked me if I would stop with him while we were in the hospital to see his young son who was in there quite ill. ... We went into his bedroom, his room at the hospital, and you could hardly see him, he was so buried in the bed under masses of books. ... I was awfully interested because the book he was reading was World Crisis by Winston Churchill [the book recommended as the best study of war and deterrence and its failure, by Herman Kahn in On Thermonuclear War]."

(Kay Halle quote source: Robin Cross, "JFK: A Hidden Life", Bloomsbury, London, 1992. Robin Cross's JFK book also points out that Kennedy "had always been a supporter of a vigorous defense policy. In 1948-9 he had attacked the Truman administration over the economies it had made in the defense establishment, advocating an air force of 70 groups, rather than the 55 groups proposed ... in the 1950s, he had urged the re-arming of Europe, if necessary with US help ... In the Senate in the summer of 1954 he had opposed the Eisenhower administration's reduction in the size of the army ... In May 1955 ... he claimed that the administration had 'guessed short' on the military strength of the Soviet Union ... It was by this consistent route that in 1958 Jack Kennedy arrived at the momentous discovery of the 'missile gap', which was to provide one of the principal themes of his 1960 presidential campaign." Kennedy was on the same page as Kahn. In 1957, America had no proof-tested ICBM, just the 3,000 mile range Jupiter IRBM, while the Russians had successfully tested ICBMs the rockets of which successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik, on 4 October 1957. Although by putting Jupiter IRBMs into Turkey America could cancel out the small ICBM "missile gap", there was concern that just a few Russian ICBM nuclear blasts over American cities could wipe out Western Cold War resolve, as had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When elected, Kennedy reversed Eisenhower's civil defense policy, as well as increasing the Minuteman ICBM order by 75%, the Western Europe tactical nuclear weapon stockpile by 60%, and the total number of American nuclear weapons by 100%, in an early effort at bankrupting the Russians with an arms race; a policy abandoned for a time after the Vietnam disaster, but re-instigated in the 1980s by Reagan with the desired effects.)

Nicola Smith and Susie Coen in the Telegraph, 21 August 2024: "US prepares for threat of joint Chinese, Russian and North Korean nuclear strike. Joe Biden secretly approved change to America’s nuclear defence plan in March... The United States is making plans to counter the… pic.twitter.com/jXWnTBijZC

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 22, 2024

"Most people, not unreasonably, think of conventional weapons as being less escalatory and thus more usable than nuclear ones. But today’s low-yield nukes—20 kilotonnes of explosive power, roughly Hiroshima-size—can be delivered with extreme precision and less collateral damage. “The line between low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and precision-guided conventional weapons in terms of both their operational effects and perceived impact is blurring,” says CNAS." - If a China and America war went nuclear, who would win? After 45 days of conventional fighting nukes would be tempting, wargamers suggest, The Economist, Aug 22nd 2024, https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/08/22/if-a-china-and-america-war-went-nuclear-who-would-win

"People May Not Care Simply Because They Do Not care. ... The following (paraphrased) quotations are typical of the bureaucrat or decision maker who simply cannot imagine that his safe, snug world can really be dangerous. (The quotations are not exclusive. The determined do-nothing advocate will go through each in turn.)

1. The problem is hypothetical. You cannot prove that it exists. There is no need to get hysterical.

2. The problem is there, but there are many other problems. In your parochialism [limited views] and naivety, you have gotten hysterical. We have known about this problem for some time and we are not excited. Why are you?

3. The problem is there. It is insoluble. (Or, it is too late to do anything.) For God's sake don't rock the (political or public relations) boat. [This is based on Kahn's dealings with people like his boss at RAND Corporation, just prior to his leaving to found the Hudson Institute.]

The key words in the above are hypothetical, parochial, naive, and hysterical. That is, any specialist who raises a problem in his specialty is accused of being hypothetical and parochial, of not taking a practical over-all view. ... I can remember an occasion when I was discussing with one of these critics what seemed to me like a problem approaching potentially crisis proportions. He insisted that I was comparing hypothetical Soviet programs with hard American programs. I pointed out with some asperity that the Soviets up to that time had refused to allow our staff access to their records; naturally we would have some trouble proving that these programs existed and would actually meet the hypothetical dates. On the other hand, our staff did have access to U.S. data, so it was easy to show that our counter programs were not as firm as advertised. ... A typical hypothetical possibility is illustrated by the ominous possibilities for Hitler-type blackmail tactics created by the waning of our Type II and Type III Deterrence capability" - H. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, pp347-8.

"There is a great deal of worry today that the Russians may make impressive gains utilizing only 'ambiguous challenges', without presenting us with any direct challenges. ... Their success to date in using 'ambiguous challenges' should be nothing to what they could do if they could afford and desired to be unambiguous. ... I think we can expect much firmer, confident and imaginative behavor, if not audacious and reckless conduct, from Khrushchev and his successors that we had from Stalin [a prediction that was confirmed by the 1961 Berlin Wall, 50 megaton test and the 1962 Cuban missiles crisis, etc.]" - H. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 1960, p348

"As the picture of horror of a modern thermonuclear war grows, we tend to ... we emphasise the impact of our capabilities on the enemy's mind rather than on his body [italic emphasis is Kahn's own]. ... Type I Deterrence is the deterrence of a direct attack [Dulles' massive retaliation]. ... Type II Deterrence is defined as using strategic threats to deter an enemy from engaging in very provocative acts [e.g. invasion of Poland 1939, invasion of Belgium 1914, invasion of Ukraine 2022] ... Type III Deterrence might be called 'tit-for-tat' [e.g. Kennedy's decision to resume USA nuclear tests in 1962 in response to Russia's 50 megaton test in late 1961, etc.]." - Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 1960, p126. Regarding "knockout blow" propaganda scams in the media/politics, Kahn on p350 argues that the same delusional lie occurred before each major war, including WWI and WWII, both to sell the war to the public and to justify not planning for a long-duration war of attrition which seemed "defeatist". For example, mass media "pacifist" morons believed and hyped that, prior to WWI: "interdependence of nations was so great that the sheer interruption of normal commerce would cause a collapse after a few weeks or months in much the same way that people argue today that if the A country (big cities) is destroyed, the B country (small cities, rural areas) must also necessarily collapse [after a countervalue nuclear strike on cities]. Therefore, almost everybody expected the war of 1914 to be short ... the famous Schlieffen Plan ... called for them to destroy the French in about 6 weeks, then move their army to the Russian front and destroy the Russians in the next few weeks... [Hitler in 1939 simply aimed to repeat this, dismissing Schlieffen Plan's failure in WWI as sabotage from internal enemies of the state]." (Quote from Kahn, OTW, p350.)

"To understand this attitude ... in 1961 Herman Kahn’s 1960 radically innovative book on the nuclear deterrence of war in general (not merely “massive retaliation” to deter all-out “doomsday” attacks, as was the previous policy by Dulles) was “reviewed” by controversial lawyer James Roy Newman in Scientific American. Newman, a complete bastard to Britain - he drafted the notorious and paranoid McMahon 1946 US Atomic Energy Act, which illegally and unilaterally ended Britain’s wartime agreement to continue postwar collaboration on nuclear energy - hadn’t read Kahn’s book (any more than he had read the vital Churchill-Roosevelt Hyde Park agreement for post-war continuation of nuclear collaboration of September 19, 1944 or consulted the UK government on the topic, when drafting the quack Atomic Energy Act passed by Congress in 1946!), and just scanned the first part of Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War briefly and taken some quotes and tables out of context to criticise (despite the title, its purpose is the credible deterrence of major provocations, not just the fighting of WWIII if deterrence fails). Moreover, he denied the existence of the author, because the publisher hadn’t provided much biography! We don’t need that kind of abuse from such bigots, do we?" - https://nigecook.substack.com/p/coming-soon

Anti-civil defense fanatic Lawrence Freedman (the guy who got the Sunday Express by drop my feature on the exaggerated collateral damage from nuclear weapons in 1995) has a new article in the New York Times (3 October 2024): "Putin Keeps Threatening to Use Nuclear Weapons. Would…

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) October 4, 2024

The explanation of the neutron bomb's invasion deterrent history in the 1958 low yield relatively clean "peaceful" Livermore nuclear explosives Dove and Starling is given by Samuel Cohen in his 6 December 1984 interview, conducted by Robert Del Tredici in Beverley Hills, California (published on pages 157-9 of his 1987 book, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb,):

"I was in the Efficiency Group at Los Alamos. Our job was to figure out the yield of the bomb that was burst over Nagasaki. ... On the evening of Hiroshima, when Oppenheimer was describing in very crude terms the catastrophe that had taken place over that city, the scientists who were listening to him were a bunch of howling savages, embullient beyond imagination, as pleased as punch ... Oppenheimer is rightfully called the father of the atomic bomb, but equally rightfully he could be called the father of the tactical nuclear weapon because he did the first conceptual spadework for using nuclear weapons strictly in a battlefield way instead of just decimating cities in a holocaust [thus led to his legendary dispute with Teller who just wanted massive retaliation H-bombs as a deterrent and bargaining chip for peace with Russia] ... He professed to be sufficiently guilt-ridden and aghast and appalled over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that he never wanted that to happen again. So he recommended we design lower-yield weapons that wouldn't wipe out cities ... The basic concept is to be able to have a battlefield nuclear weapon that won't have all these nasty side effects ... If it's going to be used to get what we call the 'separation of effects', in other words, to get rid of the blast and heat [collateral damage to civilians], it not only has to be air burst, but it has to be burst high ... between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. ... it's a kind of micro-mini hydrogen bomb. ...

"I'd had the idea for the neutron bomb about 8 years before I figured out how to put it together. I put together the actual concept in the summer of 1958. It came about purely by accident when I visited the Livermore Laboratory in the spring of 1958. I asked if anyone had any new ideas going around, and they said they really didn't, though they had begun work on some peaceful nuclear explosives. And the head of the division said, 'Before you go home, you ought to take a look at these', and he showed me designs for some of the peaceful devices. And there they were: the neutron bomb characteristics. One of those designs was called Dove. Dove, by the way, for 'Dove of Peace'. ... Well, there were two, Dove and Starling; both derived the major share of their energy from fusing deuterium and tritium. ... The question I asked was, 'How many neutrons come out of this thing?' They made a few back-of-the-envelope calculations and the answer was: a hell of a lot. Then I took these calculations home and made my own calculations about the military effects of such a weapon, and, voila, the neutron bomb! Then I put together the military concept of how to use this bomb and went off on a big sales campaign. ...

"Ever since Day 1 we've patterned our nuclear war-fighting strategies after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ... So what we're basically proposing here [using conventional Teller or Dulles "massive retaliation" MAD mutual-assured-destruction H bombs-on-cities crap] to deter war is the threat of our own suicide. ... it's all based on the premise that if we cross that nuclear threshold one more time, we'll bring on the beginning of the end. So you get people like Jonathan Schell [author of "Fate of the Earth" which lies that the 15 megaton Bravo test blinded everyone at Rongelap and that radiation can't be stopped easily by simple earth covered shelters proved at nuclear tests] and Carl Sagan with the idea of nuclear winter and everything else. It's Armageddon. I don't find their ideas credible, and I'll tell you why: because in order to get these results from using nuclear weapons against cities, you have to have nations willing to use them that way. ... You know what the United States has to do if it wants to survive? It has to accept the fact that there will probably be a nuclear war, and it has to prepare to fight it and win it. ... It's been U.S. national policy for more than a quarter of a century that nuclear weapons are actually unusable weapons. That's horseshit, and you can quote me on that. ... Let the allies develop their own neutron bomb. As a matter of fact, let's sell it to them! They should have discriminate weapons for their own self-defense. The United States doesn't need to take on the burden of defending all the rest of the world. That [the UK policy of 1914 regarding Belgium's invasion and 1939 regarding Poland's invasion, not to mention 2022 regarding Ukraine's invasion] is in fact the best way of getting into a nuclear war ..."

The technical history of Livermore's development of enhanced-neutron tactical nuclear weapons goes back to a study of lightweight, thin H-bomb casings by Dr Herbert York, discussed in detail below with regard to recently declassified data on the designs of two American H-bombs of roughly similar physical size but different mass, composition and yield: the W47 and the B28. York showed that the pressure and duration of the x-ray energy coupling causing the fusion stage's compression force are both functions of the case thickness. So if you reduce the outer casing thickness to make the bomb lighter, you have less compression force and it lasts a shorter period of time. To ensure a successful fusion burn in this situation, you have to reduce the amount of dense material like uranium in the fusion stage and replace it with easier to compress fusion fuel. This occurred in progressive Livermore designs with smaller sizes and lighter casings during the 1950s, starting with a device called Linda, then Flute, then Piccolo. These had thin oralloy (highly enriched U235) pushers (3.8mm thick for Piccolo), but clean versions with lead pushers in place of U235 were designed, and the combination of the high percentage of fusion yield with the thin pusher and outer casing gave the enhanced neutron Dove design.

(The paragraph above about the link between speed of fusion burn and tamper thickness in low yield neutron bomb design is not speculative, and is confirmed not just by the recent book by Tom Ramos, but earlier by nuclear weapons effects expert Charles S. Grace of the Royal Military College of Science in his 1994 Nuclear Weapons Principles, Effects and Survivability on 23: "It is possible to produce comparatively low-yield weapons with only a small fission trigger to initiate a fusion stage. If it is designed so that the nuclear reactions proceed as fast as possible, the tamper need not be very thick, and a large proportion of the energetic fusion neutrons will escape." Grace around that time very kindly responded to a letter from me and provided photos of British military equipment exposed at the UK nuclear tests for my book, Nuclear Weapons Effects Theory, as well as telephoning me, which was helpful. He was a very powerful advocate of the neutron bomb to deter invasions, writing a letter to the New Scientist to debunk anti-nuclear bomb propaganda. He did a lot of research using Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston facilities on simple protection against nuclear attack, and his book also points out that Glasstone and Dolan are completely misleading regarding thermal effects, stating on page 41: "Adequate protection for the skin greatly reduces the risk of thermal casualties. ... wearing a well-designed NBC suit over combat clothing, and a respirator and gloves ... the thermal energy from [1 kiloton yield] tactical weapons needed to cause extensive second-degree burns is about 1.3 MJ/m^2 [i.e., 31 cal/cm^2 since 4.186 J = 1 Calorie, and 1 m^2 = 10^4 cm^2; for bare skin only 160 kJ/m^2 or 3.8 cal/cm^2 is needed; thus there is a huge difference between Glasstone and Dolan and the actual risk, and Grace points out that if clothing ignites, people can simply roll out the flames on the ground, without getting burned!]." Grace's book also gives the military effects of nuclear weapons - ignored entirely by Glasstone and Dolan - including photos of vehicles exposed at 370 m range to 10 kiloton Totem-1 nuclear test on a 100 ft high tower in Australia in 1953. A side-on tank was not overturned by 230 kPa peak overpressure, but was displaced 2.5 m with a peak acceleration of 30g. The mudguards and trailer were damaged, but: "After the burst the tank was able to be driven off, and its gun was fired after sand and debris had been removed from the barrel. The lighter scout car was beyond repair. Had crews been in the vehicles they would have received a radiation dose of around 100,000 cGy [R] ... they would have been incapacitated virtually instantaneously.")

BBC won't report Reuters any more than USA news will, sad yet what happens in corrupt despotic regimes claiming that lying is "free speech on nuclear weapons": Russian nuclear test chief says Moscow is ready to resume testing 'at any moment' https://t.co/SYlfwJXHan

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 18, 2024

This Russian State TV Channel 1 broadcast on a proposed nuclear test on a fake "plywood" based city to make the fake plywood burn for YouTube viewers, is a load of complete CND anti-nuclear propaganda crap. George R Stanbury of UK Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch civil… https://t.co/ustSLjl1SN

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 16, 2024

"Foreign politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which are peculiar to a democracy; they require, on the contrary, the perfect use of almost all those in which it is deficient. ... a democracy can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy [spying problem plus whole notion of democracy requiring voters to be informed] or await their consequences with patience. These are qualities which more especially belong to an individual or an aristocracy; and they are precisely the qualities by which a nation, like an individual, attains a dominant position. ... The mass of the people may be led astray by ignorance or passion ..." - Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America 1835 (Vintage NT 1954 ed, v1, pp243-5, as quoted by H. Kahn, OTW, p579; note that Kahn's full quotation backs the notion of elitism aristocracy as the solution, aka the clan dynasties in USA politics such as the Kennedy and Bush political families. On page 407 of OTW, Kahn also appears to back elitism in discussing how von Mannstein was able to bypass jobsworths in the General Staff and get a direct meeting with Hitler to modify the Schlieffen Plan's to outflank the new French Magoniot Line defenses by invading through the Ardennes Forest with the latest Panzer tanks; Hitler had many defects but at least he was prepared to listen seriously to "crackpot" sounding ideas from the lower ranks and implement them, unlike so many openly fascist "top dogs" today).

"There seems to be little point in discussing the view that finds a solution in a totally disarmed world. ... The violator would then have an incredible advantage if the agreement ever broke down ..." - Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton Uni. Press, 1960, page 5. Kahn adds added that the world of 1914 and 1939 was non-nuclear, there was an international ban on chemical weapons (the Hague Convention of 1899) prior to WWI in which chemical weapons were used without restraint, and that there was agreement amongst experts that WWII would start with a gas knockout blow against cities, when in fact no gas was ever dropped on cities during WWII (pesticide Zyklon B, crystals which emits non-persistent hydrogen cyanide gas on exposure to the air, was used in gas chambers but the Nazis never dropped any of their 12,000 tons of tabun nerve agent on cities thanks to retaliation risks and the universal issue of gas masks). So disarmament propaganda was just that, lying blathering by politicians to earn "peace prizes".

"It would be disastrous to have a conspicious gap in the spectrum of deterrents and capabilities [strategic and tactical to cover all kinds of dangerous provocations]. For example, when President Eisenhower remarked at a press conference that it was unthinkable that he would call out federal troops to enforce federal law ... some Southerners immediately did something to make it thinkable [Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army to Little Rock's Central High School to reinforce Arkansas' National Guard in allowing 9 black students to enroll at the school in 1957]." - Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p286. The point is, saying something is "unthinkable so we don't need to prepare for it" is not cost-effective when it encourages and invites the enemy to invade and provoke you. Lying blathering peacenik enemy collaboration always backfires by inviting aggression. (Even Trump had this problem, when some of his supporters misinterpreted his peaceful speech - questioning why the postal ballots showed higher support for Biden than the polling station in-person votes - and invaded the Capitol on 6 January 2021.) If you want to deter evil, you have to avoid ambiguity and to be open and also clear that nothing is "unthinkable" and state in advance precisely what you will do in any eventuality, so as to make deterrence unequivocally effective. You want the enemy to be clear what they will have coming to them if they provoke you: "with the record of the 1930s plainly before us, we should all be able to realise that it is possible for all these kinds of deterrence to be strained." - Kahn, OTW, p286.

No wonder the Leninist lawyer James Roy Newman of the "elitist communist" Scientific American hated Kahn in his "review"! I first read Kahn's On Thermonuclear War in 1990, and have just finished re-reading it in September 2024 due to the Ukraine war. My view of the book is now very different to the notes I made in 1990 when reading Kahn during the writing of my own unpublished August 1990 dated manuscript Nuclear Weapons Effects Theory. The basic problem is that Kahn has two theses in one volume. The first 310 pages of On Thermonuclear War debunks populist nuclear weapons and war myths, such as fallout gamma rays and strontium-90 in food killing everyone; the second part, pages 311-651 is an analysis of the history of war and extrapolations of that history to various kinds of deterrence and nuclear war. As his preface says (page x): "This book is dedicated to the goal of anticipating, avoiding, and alleviating crises." (Italic emphasis is Kahn's own.) The problem with Kahn's On Thermonuclear War is precisely the same as that with Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons: jumbled up presentation (if you are discussing one type of nuclear explosion, you need to discuss the effects that type produces, not separate effects into different chapters, so readers are misled and think heavy fallout occurs from air bursts, etc.,) and you need to show how deterrence of certain kinds of nuclear attack even within a nuclear war is necessary to retain "bargaining chips", "cities as hostages", etc. Otherwise 100% of readers do what journalists do with "Nukemap" and simply assume the entire enemy stickpile is used in a single knockout blow on cities, in which 100% of people unprotected, by even "duck and cover"! This increased casualties by a factor of 120 in Hiroshima, and is where you get the 120 fold exaggerations of nuclear war casualty predictions from. By the omission of key (secret classified) data on neutron bombs to deter invasions in the first place, or survival of people and vehicles in simple, cheap trench shelters at nuclear tests, for example, you depart 180 degrees from reality.

"But how many murders are they [lying journalists, politicians, fellow-travelling Western nuke designers who won't disclose the truth to the media] responsible for? Basically, nuclear deterrence using tactical nuclear weapons to deter the invasions that set off both World Wars, i.e. the invasion of Belgium in 1914 by concentrated force and of Poland in 1939 by concentrated force (from the East by Russia and from the West by Germany), could have prevented many millions of deaths since 1945, but evil folk prevented this, wanting war to continue. ... Hiroshima was entirely vaporized by a nuclear explosion on 6 August 1945, says CND. In that case, this US Air Force film of the slight scorching on otherwise undamaged materials, proving the effectiveness of “duck and cover” for shielding, is fake news. But it’s not. What’s fake news is everything every published on nuclear weapons effects by Bulletin of Atomic scientists, Scientific American, all newspapers, and all TV shows on the subject ... In fact, Hiroshima casualty data published [in the massively-effects-exaggerating] Glasstone book “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons” (1962-77 editions) proves that being indoors in the lower floors of a concrete building reduces the LD50 radius from 1.3 miles in the open to 0.12 miles for lower floors of concrete buildings. Since area is proportional to radius squared, this means a protection factor of 120 for Hiroshima burst conditions (16 kt, 600m altitude). This shielding factor would for a densely populated modern city reduce 500,000 (half a million) killed for people outdoors totally unshielded to “just” 4,000 killed indoors on the lower floors of modern city concrete buildings! Er, this result of 4,000 killed just happens to be precisely the number mentioned by the Independent newspaper article (quote above!) of pensioners murdered by cold and starvation due to financial destitution due to Sir Keir Starmer’s “tough decision” to end winter fuel allowances, in order to pay massive salary rises to public sector employees." - https://nigecook.substack.com/p/another-assassination-attempt-on

Kahn makes a further essential point about "secrecy" (there ain't any secrecy when the other side has spies like Fuchs) covering up alleged gross delusional failings in Western nuclear weapons design, effects and capabilities on page 384 of On Thermonuclear War, where he quotes extensively from chapter 6 "Torpedoes" of Rowland and Boyd's US Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II (published by the US Navy), proving how the secrecy of US torpedo design, development, testing and stockpiling led to tragic groupthink delusions of supremacy and of having the best torpedoes in the world, that were only debunked in actual combat during the 1941-3 period of WWII: "As each defect was exposed, the morale of the submariners who risked their lives to take the war to the enemy suffered, the enemy was given further respite ... the problem was compounded by the Bureau's reluctance to accept the fleet evaluation of its weapon. This reluctance was born ... from misplaced confidence in its own past work. ... Security, a necessary concern of the armed forces, became such a fetish that measures designed to protect a device from enemy eyes actually hid its defects from those who made the regulations. Ironically, some of those defects were already known to the foreign powers who later became our allies or enemies. ... even when the torpedo exploded properly, it lacked the punch submariners desired. ... each defect concealed another ... The Bureau was reluctant to believe that the secret weapon long regarded as one of our greatest assets should turn out to be a liability." (Kahn gives many other similar examples of bureaucratic secretive nonsense backfiring even in WWI, in Chapter 8 of OTW. American Colonel Billy Mitchell of the American Air Force was the first to suggest paratroopers to get over enemy lines, and predicted a Japanese attack on Pearl harbor (he was demoted and then court martialled on the direct orders of President Calvin Coolidge). Tanks and gas are both treated in detail by Kahn: both were kept so secret that the military didn't have a clue about them when first used on the battlefield so their initial "factor of surprise" was lost and the enemy was given the chance to negate them after bungled first-use:

"The first use of tanks in September 1916 completely ignored the tactical and strategic ideas of the innovators and was carried out as a sort of field trial. ... The German poison gas story has some interesting analogies with the British tank story. This too had an uphill fight with the authorities. Again, even after the weapon had been developed the command did not wish to take the risk of using the untried weapon on a large scale, though the inventors urged it, until the military had developed some experience on the capabilities and limitations of gas warfare. It was first tried on April 22, 1915 and proved a tremendous tactical success. In fact, a five-mile gap was opened in the Allied lines, but the Germans were not prepared to exploit the opportinity. They were not really making an attack, they were just trying an experiment. The British reaction ... was very fast. ... Sir William Ramsay had guessed from the description of the battle reports that chlorine had been used and came to the War Office with a protective measure, some sample mouth-pads made of flannel or wool soaked in hyposulphite of soda. British women were asked to furnish 1,000,000 at once. Thanks to their help and Red Cross efforts, the necessary quantity came in several days. Within a fortnight, every man in the British army at the front was supplied with a rudimentary respirator. ... History is full of examples of impractical notions, or, equally important, notions that proved to be just fine but which were tested prematurely. ... The most spectacular military event of World War I, the development of two parallel lines of trenches ... while predicted by Bloch, came as a complete surprise. ... given the examples of such warfare in the American Civil War and the Sino-Japanese War - it is hard to see how military experts could have overlooked the possibility that the widespread availability of machine guns and barbed wire might result in static trench warfare, but the military planners on both sides completely overlooked the possibility [as they did for submarines blocking logistics supplies, depth charges, and particularly SAS type infiltration tactics to overcome trench warfare: French Captain Laffargue wrote a proposal for this which the Allies laughed at, but when a copy of the proposal fell into German hands, Ludendorff at once (quote from Captain G. C. Wynne on p357 of Kahn's OTW): "translated into German and issued as an official German training manual, eventually becoming the basis of General Ludendorff's textbook ... [leading to German implementation of the enemy's plan so] the Germans so effectively broke through the British position in March 1918, and the Chemin des Dames position in May ...". SO, UNLESS WE ARE TO REPEAT SUCH MISTAKES, WE MUST NOT ALLOW PETTY HUBRIS OF "JOBSWORTH BUREAUCRATS" TO BLOCK INNOVATIONS NEEDED TO WIN WARS!

ABOVE: Kahn was treated with the "shoot the messenger" reaction against Machiavelli, merely for speaking truth to power in 1960: "If the above deterrents are to work reliably, there must always be in the background the knowledge that if they did not, other kinds of deterrents or corrections would come in. It could be disastrous to have a conspicuous gap in the spectrum of deterrents and capabilities. For example, when President Eisenhower remarked at a press conference that it was unthinkable that he would call out federal troops to enforce federal law in the Southern states, some Southerners immediately did something to make it thinkable. Something similar may happen if he convinces the Soviets that he means what he says when he says that "war is preposterous." I suspect that many in the West are guilty of the worst kind of wishful thinking when, in discussing deterrence, they identify the unpleasant with the impossible. It is particularly hard to understand why this is so when almost all who write on this subject were adults during the later part of the Hitler era and presumably were educated in some of the ways in which all these types of deterrence can be strained." - Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, page 286. Will the left ever learn facts from history?

ABOVE: Nazi supporting "peace" propaganda flooded the UK and USA in the 1930s, as it still does. Comintern's legacy is a repetition of the 1920s and 1930s anti-deterrent mindset, falsely portrayed by Russian "Fifth Column" propaganda fronts as "pacifism" or "peace" arguments. When communists were rejected as unpopular at the election polls, they adopted subversive methods, trying to undermine war readiness (deterrence) to help Russia get in a position to start WWIII, just as they had helped the Nazis in the 1930s do exactly the same thing (while being awarded "Nobel Peace Prizes" for their propaganda; look at the history of 1920s and 1930s gas war anninilation "Nobel peace Prize" liars Lord Noel-Baker, Sir Norman Angell et al.). The result wasn't an end to the arms race or militarism, but an escalation on the enemy side, and an erosion of technical competence and military preparedness on the side of the democracies. Banning the TV transmission of classic "Tom and Jerry" cartoons for "portraying violence as normal to kids" and banning "Action Man" style toy guns for "encouraging deterrence of dictators to kids" in the West, didn't stop Russia's Hitler Youth movement from preparing for war. All this just helped the enemy prepare for WWIII. The paranoid conspiracies aren't the supposed "war mongers" on the side of the democracies, but by the real war mongers on the side of the dictatorships and their fellow travelling "Sputniks", in infiltrating the Western political systems, mass media, and educational establishments with delusional fanatical anti-Western-nuclear bias. Numerous articles sent to "New Scientist" in the 1990s proving the errors in popular propaganda it published by anti-nuclear fanatics like "Rob Edwards" (co-author of the 1982 book "Fuelling the nuclear arms race: the links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons") were simply rejected because they contradicted populist lies "New Scientist" published weekly from such people! This made it appear that there was no opposition to such Russian Fifth Column propaganda lies! Result: no civil defence option and no tactical nuclear deterrent option against "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction" in 2002, and instead WAR. Which is precisely what these lying thugs want. Once the press, the teachers, and the corrupt pseudo-liberal MPs or Lords use enforced "speech filtering" to completely corrupt free debate (it's not that much different to a dictatorship, except that "no platforming censorship" is used in the West, while bullets and poison is used in the dictatorships), you have crackpots and quacks in charge of "democracy", which is a travesty of the term!

If you ban civil defense and nuclear deterrence of dictatorships, then you are left only with the option of WAR against every invasion or WMD threat which your delusional censorship encourages and promotes!

That's not pacifism. On the contrary, it's needless fascist based genocidal war that could be stopped!

As regards "child soldiers": we're constantly reminded of the plight of kids in wars, so why should they be denied the right to defend democracy in countries with ageing populations, when a failure of deterrence and dictatorial occupation will ruin the lives of kids?

All these fanatically anti-civil defense, anti-deterrent so-called "pacifists" - when pressed for their solution to terrorism - claim we can use "non-violent opposition" to enemy attacks; but we saw what happens to kids in this situation in the Holocaust and wars! If we're not going to have a nuclear deterrent, and we're not going to allow kids to learn how to protect themselves, the results are evil and immoral. These facts are conveniently declared to be "taboo"!

"... in letters to me dated April 10, 1979, and June 18, 1979, representatives of the DOE stated that my open research, and a national contest that I conducted, would lead to the generation and transmission of classified data - this in spite of the fact that all of the information that I was seeking would come from unclassified published sources. It has also become obvious that at least one of the three concepts discussed in the disputed Morland article is currently unclassified in the Soviet Union, and that when it was discussed openly here in 1976 by a Soviet scientist, the U.S. government, acting through the Energy Research and Development Agency, classified his speeches (Morland might have stood a better chance of publishing his article in the USSR).

"The concepts discussed in the Morland article deal with basic applied physics, and they are certainly no longer 'secret' - if they were, four other nations would not now have operating thermonuclear weapons. Even though the DOE now admits that this type of information is in the public domain, it is still trying to suppress the circulation of this data, in order to maintain a false illusion of secrecy, and to maintain a real monopoly over the dissemination of weapons-related information, and over the public discussion of American nuclear policies, policies which affect nuclear reactors as well as nuclear weapons. ... What happened next will be discussed in the description of the accompanying diagram, when the concept of isentropic compression is explained. ... As can be seen from the enclosed diagram, the basic bomb consists of two boosted fission triggers at opposite ends of a mass of lithium-6 deuteride fusion fuel, all contained in an outer casing of uranium-238. ... This arrangement requires that the outer weapon casing play an essential role (as medium to absorb x-rays and re-emit them into the fuel mass) ... there are two triggers in the bomb. The purpose of this is to allow a symmetrical compression of the fusion fuel between them, as well as allowing an x-ray source at each end of the bomb. These two fission triggers must fire simultaneously, or no fusion will occur. ... This sudden elevation in temperature of the fusion fuel, following the isentropic compression, begins the larger main fusion reaction in the weapon. ... " [Emphasis added.]

- Chuck Hansen, August 27, 1979 letter to Senator Charles Percy, published in full in the Sunday, September 16, 1979 special edition of the Madison Press Connection.

It must be emphasised (see the latest blog post here for the physical and mathematical details) that adiabatic "non-shock isentropic compression" of low density fusion fuel was first suggested during the April 1946 Los Alamos Super Conference, but was ignored by Teller and the American mainstream until investigated and tested by Nuckolls during totally clean secondary tests (including a 99.9% clean Ripple II 10 megaton test on 30 October 1962). Isentropic compression is compression without heat transfer between the fusion fuel and its surroundings, involving a gradually increasing compression - more like the pressure variations in a sound wave than the pressure discontinuity at a shock front. Shock waves involve "isothermal compression" at the shock front, which radiates wasted energy as heat in all directions, reducing the kinetic energy used to compress the fusion fuel. The key thing to focus on is the fact that you want to compress fusion fuel to cause fusion, and the fusion then releases heat which opposes compression, dispersing the remaining fusion fuel, and ending fusion. What you are trying to do is to compress fusion fuel so it releases nuclear energy (including heat) as a result of nuclear fusion, not waste energy radiating heat into the surroundings before you compress the fuel (such heat waste opposes compression of the fusion fuel). To the extent that you heat the fuel and cause it to radiate energy during compression, you defeat your purpose and get an inefficient compression (akin to pre-initiation in primary stage fission weapons if they are pre-heated by neutron induced fissions).

Teller ignored all this, and indeed until March 1951 he claimed to have a "no go theorem" against compression, and then he used ablative recoil exploding pushers to give relatively ineffective shock compression of fusion stages in his "Sausage" design, the standard 1950s thermonuclear system. Nuckolls and the Russians, however, used gentler isentropic compression (by using a low-density pusher like beryllium on a clean LiD fusion fuel capsule; with any dense U238 placed in the outer casing of the bomb, rather than used as the pusher in contact with the fusion fuel), which enabled more of the primary stage x-ray energy to be used to compress the fusion stage to high density, with less energy being wasted on heat transfer during compression. If you do any sort of work, e.g. hammering nails into wood, charging a battery, or running an engine, some energy will be used in achieving the objective, and some will be wasted as heat. If you want maximum work efficiency, you need to minimise waste heat (i.e. you want to reduce the rise in entropy S, so that the change in entropy dS ~ 0, which is the definition of the ideal of "isentropic compression"), which means losing the shock wave-producing dense ablative shell on the fusion fuel in the "Sausage" designs tested in the 1950s by the USA, which resists isentropic compression. With a dense pusher, you get shock compression which radiates heat before the shock even reaches the core and compresses it, so you only get core compression factor of 20-30, whereas if you use a low-density ablator like beryllium, aluminium or plastic on the fusion fuel, you can achieve nearly isentropic compression factors of 1,000 or more! I.e.. the core density is increased by a factor of 1,000, so that the fusion rate is much faster and more efficient (more fusion is accomplished before the bomb blows itself apart). The latter compression is even sufficient to ignite deuterium fusion, according to Russian claims about their 1960s-1970s cleaner isentropic bomb tests for "peaceful uses" (and tactical nuclear weapons), giving a far cheaper and longer-life warhead than the deuterium-tritium fuel used in the low yield American "Dove" and "Starling" designs of neutron bombs! ("Isotropic compression" just means equal from all directions, and has nothing to do with "isentropic compression".) Similarly, the first implosion bombs used dense U238 neutron reflectors around the core, requiring inefficient shock compression, whereas lower density beryllium reflectors allowed greater efficiency quasi-isentropic compression in fission designs.

A great deal of the popular media's confusion over thermonuclear weapons designs is down to misunderstanding the nature of the x-ray pulse from the fission primary stage. Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons usefully explains that most (over 80%) of the energy can be released x-rays generated by inelastic fission fragment collisions, on a time scale of the order 1 shake or 10 nanoseconds. However, that is only true for a bare fissile metal core, so in reality the considerable mass of chemical implosion debris (mainly carbon, oxygen and hydrogen ions) around that core diffuses the x-rays with a random-walk that slows the x-ray emission into typicaly a 100-times longer pulse than 10 nanoseconds, i.e. around 1 microsecond. It is for this reason that early thermonuclear weapons had heavy outer cases, to contain the diffusive x-ray emission pulse from the fission primary stage's ionized low-Z element fireball, enabling more of that energy to be coupled into fusion stage before the outer casing is destroyed and the coupling ends. Because of this, the fusion stage is not abruptly compressed over a 10 nanosecond time period as implied by Glasstone's unclassified statement that most of the fission energy is emitted in the last shake, but more gradually over a time of up to 1 microsecond. The design of the fission primary stage therefore determines the nature of the x-ray pulse waveform. This problem has been known since the beginning, which is why a gun-type fission weapon was selected in 1946 for the fusion "Super" primary stage, because it would eliminate the implosion debris fireball x-ray diffusion problem, and also why Gamow designed a cylindrical implosion "Greenhouse-George" primary, to enable x-rays from a bare side of a fissile core to initiate fusion without the complexity of x-ray shielding and transport through low-Z barriers, as occurs with spherical implosion primary stages.

Above: the Russian compact (e.g. MIRV or tactical neutron) nuclear bomb concept is simply to use two small fission devices to compress a relative low-density prolate-spheroid shaped secondary stage (e.g. LiD fusion fuel, rather than U235 pusher with fusion boosting, as used in the American W88 warhead), a concept illustrated in Russian military books by reprinting a full-page nuclear weapon design diagram on page 54 of the 5 December 1955 Life magazine! Using two primaries to compress a prolate spheroid charge of low-density fusion fuel (one at each end) means you don't have to disperse x-rays from a single primary uniformly (for isotropic compression) around the secondary stage using "reflective focussing" from the inside of a massive pear shaped casing (as for their 1.6 megaton 1955 RDS37 design) or a massive egg shaped casing (as for the 250 kt Los Alamos Redwing-Huron "Egg" design with a spherical secondary, tested at Bikini in 1956), or even to use a low-density "foam x-ray disperser" as used in British two-stage thermonuclear Grapple tests (and later Livermore compact spherical secondary stage designs for MIRV missiles). Also, by not having a dense pusher on the secondary stage (you can add U238 to the outer casing if you want to boost the fission yield, as shown above), it is easier to compress it, so you get greater compression than is the case for the inclusion of dense metal in the secondary, giving far more efficient ("nearly isentropic") compression for a very efficient fusion burn which can use cheap deuterium to initiate it, rather than requiring costly tritium-deuterium fusion (needed for the smaller compressions achieved in modern Western secondaries with dense metal pushers), thus not only miniaturizing the H bomb but also enabling nearly clean tactical neutron bombs to be produced very cheaply, without needing large amounts of costly tritium (which has a half life of only 12.3 years, so has to be regularly produced by the costly irradiation of lithium, placed in gas proof capsules inside the core of a nuclear reactor).

Ironically, Chuck Hansen, the author of US Nuclear Weapons, re-invented the Russian "Project 49" double-primary H-bomb independently in a 27 August 1979 letter to Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, only to have this double-primary design dismissed as "wrong" by American nuclear weaponeers, some of whom didn't even know that: (a) Teller and Ulam had stated that one or more primary stages could be used to ignite a H-bomb in their 1951 breakthrought paper, and (b) you can get both primary stages to detonate simultaneously by simply wiring up the electronic neutron guns for each primary into a parallel circuit, and doing the same for their electrical detonators and x-unit capacitors and krytron switches. Hardened groupthink dogma orthodoxy is is hard to debunk! (The Russian double primary idea was even earlier suggested by journalist John McPhee to nuclear weaponeer Dr Ted Taylor with this dismissive result, as reported in McPhee's 1974 book, The Curve of Binding Energy. Note that Howard Morland's design relied on Edward Teller's single-primary H-bomb illustration in his article "Hydrogen Bomb", in the Encyclopedia Americana, v14.)

GEORGE GAMOW'S ASYMMETRIC-IMPLOSION FISSION BOMB DESIGN FOR USE AS AN EFFICIENT DIRECTED X-RAY SOURCE FOR RUSSIAN PROJECT 49 DOUBLE PRIMARY NEUTRON BOMBS

ABOVE: declassified originally "TOP SECRET" 1946 nuclear weapons design study for Dr von Karman, General Considerations of Explosives and Explosions of fission and thermonuclear weapons by Los Alamos nuclear weaponeer Dr George Gamow (he designed the "Greenhouse-George" 1951 radiation imploded fusion capsule using a special cylinder implosion fission primary to allow x-rays to escape from the sides) throws light on the Russian fission primary stage designs used in their very compact neutron bombs. In the West, spherical or prolate spheroid shaped linear implosion primaries are used, but the Russian language Wikipedia and other Russian language military internet pages (which are completely separate from Western Wikipedia, not simply translations!) for years have contained diagrams of a special single-detonation point implosion lens system, which is now revealed to be due to George Gamow (full declassified report is LINKED HERE). The key benefits for this revolutionary Gamow design in tactical neutron bomb design are:

(a) the fissile mass is off-centre, so x-rays escape in a preferential direction with little shielding by chemical explosive debris, thus maximising the exposure of a fusion fuel capsule to x-rays from an implosion fission primary, and

(b) the fact

only one detonation point is required

(which can be shielded by a steel cover to protect that point from accidental impact etc), minimises the size of the x-unit capacitor, battery, etc, as compared to spherical implosions where a lot of points need simultaneous ignition for successful implosion (see French nuclear test flash x-ray photos below!). The West uses a "no-go theorem" to rule out this design called "one-point safety", whereby the implosion system must be safe from effective compression of the fissile core occurring from a detonation at any single point on the outside. However, for such very low yield (sub kiloton) fission weapons, safety concerns can be relaxed in a world war situation where mass production of nuclear shells is required, and the neutron gun must be fired at the optimum compression time to achieve a significant nuclear yield. The single point of detonation can be protected both (a) mechanically by a steel impact cap over it (so if dropped, any impact detonation will occur at the wrong point, and (b) electrically by a fuse in series with the detonator which will blow at a current rating below that required to fire the detonator. When the weapon's detonation is actually required, the fuse can be mechanically changed for a high-current conductor just before detonation.

A feature of this Gamow design is that although the off-centre fissile core is simultaneously compressed in time, the force is anisotropic (being naturally greater on the side with the most explosives), so the hollows in the fissile cores need to be displaced similarly to compensate (so that side of the fissile core with weaker implosion pressure is thinner). Although you would expect the ansiotropy of implosion to physically shift the core towards the fusion capsule and thus block the x-ray channel, this doesn't happen in reality because the time scale of the macroscopic acceleration of the core (taking many microseconds) is massive, compared to the relatively trivial timescale of the very fast nuclear reactions such as fission and x-ray ablation phenomena! It appears from Russian information that they use this kind of fission primary to massively reduce the mass and firing circuit complexity of their double-primary ignited neutron bombs. Dr Gamow illustrated technical reports himself, as he did for his wonderful kid's physics books on a big bang, etc.

ABOVE: note that a single Gamow asymmetric implosion fission stage can also be used to enhance the neutrons and prompt gamma rays in a preferential direction, for use in either ABM defensive neutron warheads (to take out incoming MIRV warheads), or to create a directed prompt gamma ray and prompt Compton current, for a non-lethal localized and directed EMP collateral-damage-averting nuclear weapon (as described using old tech, 3 decades ago in the November 1994 issue of Electronics World, by yours truly), and this Gamow off-centre implosion is depicted in an August 6, 2015-uploaded animated video and labelled "Swan" by Russian Wikipedia user "Guga50", which is currently displayed on the Russian Wikipedia article "Nuclear Weapons" (this Russian "Nuclear Weapons" Wikipedia article is not just a translation of the Western Wikipedia "Nuclear Weapons" article, which shows an entirely different "Swan"-labelled design; a symmetric prolate spheroid with 2-point detonation, not an asymmetric 1-point detonation implosive; my point here is just to point out a discrepancy rather than to say "one is right and one is wrong", since both types are certainly possible from the pure scientific standpoint and it is likely the American "Swan" design is the two-point implosion system, but the Russian Wikipedia design is backed by the design Western nuclear weaponeer Gamow explains in detail in his originally top secret 1946 report and the general Russian custom to take short cuts for cheapness that are "ruled out" by Western bureaucrats with bigger weapons budgets to blow at the taxpayers expense), which states: "... the 1st fission stage cannot provide a sufficient amount of X-ray radiation energy, which is necessary to ensure the explosion of "large" thermonuclear stages. In three-stage devices, the 1st fission stage (with an explosion power of up to tens of kilotons) is used for the radiation implosion of the 2nd ("small") thermonuclear stage (with an explosion power of several hundred kilotons), and the radiation of this 2nd thermonuclear stage (together with the radiation of the 1st stage) is used for the radiation implosion of the 3rd ("large") thermonuclear stage ... In "Tsar Bomba" (AN-602), the first two and the second two stages were placed symmetrically on 2 sides of the third ("large") thermonuclear stage, according to the so-called "bifilar" scheme." (Note: the Russian Wikipedia page on the neutron bomb points out that the casing is composed of "transparent" elements, i.e. those with small cross sections for 14.1 Mev neutron reactions, such as nickel, chromium and tungsten.)

Russian language Wikipedia https://ru.wikipedia.org "Nuclear Weapons" page, section on "Swan" (translated from Russian into English; 14 October 2024): "The described scheme of spherical implosion is archaic and has hardly been used since the mid-1950s. The principle of operation of the “Swan” type design (English: swan) is based on the use of a fissile assembly of a special shape, which, in the process of implosion initiated at one point by one fuse, is compressed in the longitudinal direction and turns into a supercritical sphere. The shell itself consists of several layers of explosive with different detonation rates, which is made on the basis of an alloy of octogen and plastic in the required proportion and filler - polystyrene foam, so that between it and the nuclear assembly located inside there remains a space filled with polystyrene foam. This space introduces the necessary delay due to the fact that the speed of detonation of the explosive exceeds the speed of the shock wave in the polystyrene foam. The shape of the charge strongly depends on the detonation speed of the shell layers and the speed of propagation of the shock wave in polystyrene, which is hypersonic under these conditions. The shock wave from the outer layer of explosive reaches the inner spherical layer simultaneously over the entire surface. A significantly lighter tamper is made not from 238U, but from beryllium, which reflects neutrons well. It can be assumed that the unusual name of this design - "Swan" (first tested by Inca in 1956) was suggested by the shape of the swan's neck. Thus, it was possible to abandon the spherical implosion and, thereby, solve the extremely difficult problem of sub-microsecond synchronization of fuses on a spherical assembly and thus simplify and reduce the diameter of the implosion nuclear weapon from 2 m in the “Fat Man” to 30 cm or less in modern nuclear weapons."

[Original Russian: "Описанная схема сферической имплозии архаична и с середины 1950-х годов почти не применяется. Принцип действия конструкции типа «Swan» ( англ. swan — лебедь), основан на использовании делящейся сборки особой формы, которая в процессе инициированной в одной точке одним взрывателем имплозии, сжимается в продольном направлении и превращается в надкритическую сферу. Сама оболочка состоит из нескольких слоёв взрывчатого вещества с разной скоростью детонации, которую изготавливают на основе сплава октогена и пластика в нужной пропорции и наполнителя — пенополистирола, так что между ним и находящейся внутри ядерной сборкой остаётся заполненное пенополистиролом пространство. Это пространство вносит нужную задержку за счёт того, что скорость детонации взрывчатки превышает скорость движения ударной волны в пенополистироле. Форма заряда сильно зависит от скоростей детонации слоёв оболочки и скоростью распространения ударной волны в полистироле, которая в данных условиях гиперзвуковая. Ударная волна от внешнего слоя взрывчатки достигает внутреннего сферического слоя одновременно по всей поверхности. Существенно более лёгкий тампер выполняется не из 238U, а из хорошо отражающего нейтроны бериллия. Можно предположить, что необычное название данной конструкции — «Лебедь» (первое испытание — Inca в 1956 г.) было подсказано формой шеи лебедя. Таким образом оказалось возможным отказаться от сферической имплозии и, тем самым, решить крайне сложную проблему субмикросекундной синхронизации взрывателей на сферической сборке и таким образом упростить и уменьшить диаметр имплозивного ядерного боеприпаса с 2 м у «Толстяка» до 30 см и менее в современных ядерных боеприпасах."]

Nuclear war threat discussion efforts in the Presidential Election Debate on TV in September 2024, Trump v. Harris, note only Trump was concerned with nuclear war (Harris was in the Democratic party, whose president on 6 and 9 August 1945 used two nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state, which explains this clearly):

Key part of US presidential debate, ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump on Putin nuclear threat being ignored by left wingers: pic.twitter.com/p13yNTRz9C

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Key part of US presidential debate, ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump on need for America to get tough not appease dictatorial terrorists like Harris did which started and sustained the Vietnam style massacres of Ukraine and Gaza wars instead of DETERRING WAR USING… pic.twitter.com/av9rfK2CPK

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Key part of US presidential debate, ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump on how Biden Admin destroyed American military credibility, thus WWIII risks now in Ukraine war plus Gaza war: pic.twitter.com/zUM62ADTdB

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Key part of US presidential debate, ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump debate biased by moderators trying to shut off Trump responses to liar: pic.twitter.com/JwKkFPub9h

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Key part of US presidential debate, ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump on Biden Admin deliberately left-wing pandering appeasement show-off crass method pulling out from Afghanistan and its effects on Putin: pic.twitter.com/cGpTU82bxn

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Key part of US presidential debate, ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump on how Democrats engineered the riots in Washington DC then tried to blame Trump: pic.twitter.com/g75NdMturH

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Key part of US presidential debate ignored by left wing BBC excerpts. Trump 10 September 2024 presidential election debate on HYPOCRISY OF LAW use by pseudo "Democrats": pic.twitter.com/QaCNxD5CW9

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) September 11, 2024

Herman Kahn is clear, in On Thermonuclear War, about the mobilization problem for bulky conventional weapons (unlike compact nukes out of sight in subs, ICBMs or airfield igloos) triggering off wars such as WWI, quoting on page 359 the assistant chief of the French General Staff, General Boisdeffre's explanation to Russian Tsar Nicholas: "The mobilization is the declaration of war. To mobilize is to oblige one's neighbor to do the same. ... Otherwise, to leave a million men on one's frontier, without doing the same simultaneously, is to deprive oneself of all possibility of moving later; it is placing oneself in a situation of an individual who, with a pistol in his pocket, should should let his neighbor put a weapon to his forehead without drawing his own." Kahn also emphasises the ironic pacifism of the Liberal Party Cabinet of the UK Government which set off WWI by declaring war on Germany (which had not declared war on Britain and did not want war with Britain):

"The [August 1914 WWI-declaring British Liberal Party government] Cabinet was overwhelmingly pacific. At least three-quarters of its members were determined not to be drawn into a European quarrel, unless Great Britain were herself attacked, which was not likely. ... They did not believe that if Germany attacked France, she would attack her through Belgium [triggering WWI via the 1839 Treaty of London, an analogy to our guarantee to defend Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum]..." - Churchill, The World Crisis, v1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923, p211 (quoted by Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p387). Winston Churchill, himself a Liberal government minister when war was declared in 1914 (he had to rejoin the Conservatives after the Liberal Party was run-over by its role in declaring WWI) was anti-militarism expenditure in general, like his father Lord Randolph Churchill (who in 1886 resigned as Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an effort to reduce arms expenditure). On 13 May 1901, Winston Churchill, Boer War hero and newly elected Conservative MP, took up his late father's anti-militarism position in his speech to the House of Commons: "I regard it as a grave mistake in Imperial policy to spend thirty millions a year on the Army. I hold that the continued increase in Army expenditure cannot be viewed by supporters of the Government without the greatest alarm and apprehension, and by Members who represent working class constituencies without extreme dislike. I desire to urge considerations of economy on His Majesty’s Government, and as a practical step that the number of soldiers which they propose to keep ready for expeditionary purposes should be substantially reduced. ... Once you are so unfortunate as to be drawn into a war, no price is too great to pay for an early and victorious peace. All economy of soldiers or supplies is the worst extravagance in war. I am concerned only with the Estimates for the ordinary service of the year, which are increasing at such a rate that it is impossible to view them without alarm. Does the House realise what British expenditure on armaments amounts to? See how our Army Estimates have grown - seventeen millions in 1894, eighteen in 1897, nineteen in 1899, twenty-four in 1900, and finally in the present year no less than twenty-nine millions eight hundred thousand." However, by 1908 Churchillhad reversed this, in the light of Germany militarism, which required British expenditure on an arms race to maintain credible deterrence. Churchill was a realistic, deterrence-supporting pacifist, not a warmonger. Conventional weapons only failed as a credible deterrent in 1914 because of the instability caused by the need to mobilize them along frontiers, something not needed with long-range nuclear weapons now!

Herman Kahn on p371 states of Churchill's The World Crisis, volume 1: "I know of no better textbook on the subject of war, prewar preparations, and peacetime risks. ... Let me now quote Churchill on the possibility of a surprise attack. He is discussing the tension during the 1911 Agadir crisis. Lloyd George had just made a speech with the idea of forcing the German government to back down. The Germans did not like it ... 'It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of ... No one would do such things. Civilisation has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong.' (W. S. Churchill, The World Crisis, v1, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1923, p45)." Kahn then explains the analogy of 1930s fears of gas annihilation to thermonuclear ignorance and propaganda:

"War, unrestricted war, seemed like an unbelievable nightmare and therefore somehow unreal. The very terror of war [annihilation by exaggerated gas or incendiary or high explosive bombing on cities] powerfully reinforced all those who wished to reject military solutions or palliatives in favor of much more attractive schemes for world government or universal disarmament or some major step in that direction.[Italics are Herman Kahn's own.] ... In fact it was not until April 1939, after the second invasion of Czechoslovakia, that the British went all out ... It was by that time far too late." - Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p377. When Kahn was writing, the USA had massive nuclear superiority in both tactical and strategic weapons. Today, however, the situation is reversed and Kahn's warning is pertinent again: Russia and its allies China, North Korea and Iran have superiority. (We also need to remember the 1939-40 phoney war; it was Churchill not Hitler who initiated city bombing in 1940, deliberately in order to divert enemy bombing from RAF airfields that were needed to retain air superiority and prevent an invasion succeeding. Churchill was only able to do this because Britain had civil defense to mitigate the effects of the retaliation when the RAF were unable to entirely stop enemy attacks. Without civil defense, either Churchill wouldn't have been able to do this, so the airfields might have been put out and an invasion done, or else casualty rates 60 times higher could have resulted in the Blitz (the ratio of WWI bombing casualties per ton of bombs on unprotected civilians, to WWII, when people had shelters).

On page 378 of On Thermonuclear War, Herman Kahn emphasises (italics are Kahn's own): "The whole history of the 1933-1939 period is a clear example of the failure of Type II [deterrence of major provocations like invasion of an ally] and Type III Deterrence [deterrence of minor provocations like rearmament, militarization, etc.]. These failures occurred because neither the British nor the French [don't forget the USA which passed its Neutrality Act in 1935!] had the resolve to use their superior military power or their superior resources to check German aggression until it was too late. ... The longer they put off using their superior power the less credible it became that it would ever be used. Finally their power itself became inferior so that even when its use was seriously threatened, the German government was no longer impressed." Kahn quotes Churchill: "We had been reduced in those five years [of anti-war disarmament and then anti-war appeasement propaganda about gas knockout blow escalations wiping out humanity, 1933-1938, cumulating in the worthless piece of paper signed by Adolf Hitler on 30 September 1938 promising peace for our time] from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word 'war' was considered one which would be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum." - Winston Churchill, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, G. P. Putnam's Sons, NY, 1941, p60 (quoted by Herman Kahn on page 379 of On Thermonuclear War, where Kahn comments: "Hitler and some of his staff were victims of overconfidence. By the time the war started, they felt that they had more than enough of a lead to win. ... the war would doubtless be short [precisely the delusion of Russia when invading Ukraine, in 2022] ..."

Herman Kahn on page 378 of On Thermonuclear War quotes Air Marshall Sir John Slessor's Central Blue Praeger, NY, 1957, which states the reality on page 161: by 1938 Britain was spending £300 million a year on arms, contrasted to well over £1000 million a year then being spent on arms by the Nazis. Thus, the Nazis were far outrunning Britain so that every day of peace that "Chamberlain bought with his peace agreements" actually gave the Nazis a bigger lead; Britain was not "buying time for rearmament to fight" contrary to financially illiterate historians, journalists and other Chamberlain "pacifism" fans to this day, rather, Chamberlain was helping the Nazis prepare better than the UK by delaying war! If the enemy is getting way bigger than you by the day, you don't do yourself any favours by delaying the fight. The fact that this is still "disputed" by left wing historians to back disarmament in the face of Russia today just demonstrates how Comintern's legacy of infiltration of the Western universities and mass media continues to this day.

One final thought from Kahn's On Thermonuclear War is his Figure 8 on page 469, showing the relationship between missile accuracy, warhead yield, and the 50% probable target peak overpressure at the intended ground zero (the intended ground zero never debunked with 100% probability in reality, due to inaccuracies in the missile guidance system, never mind the risk of warhead malfunction/ABM interception): in 1960 American 10 megaton warheads were placed on missiles with good accuracy gyroscopes, CEP = 1 mile, which gave 50% probability of delivering 100 psi peak overpressure to the intended ground zero, destroying typical 1960 era primitive (not shock protected) missile silos. So the USA could take out hard Russian ICBMs at that time. But the corresponding 10 megaton Russian warheads were (supposedly) on less accurate missiles, CEP = 5 miles, which would only deliver about average 4 psi peak overpressure at the intended "ground zero" (because they would on average miss targets by miles), so Russia couldn't in 1960 usefully target American ICBM's in their silos! If they did so, they would fail with high probability, because the hard targets would on average receive only 4 psi, not the 100 psi needed to wreck them. Thus, Russia had to target wood-frame American houses with ICBM's in 1960, the only yank assets that could be wrecked by 4 psi, not missile silos. In effect, missile accuracy forced America and Russia to have different nuclear war strategies: America could use "counterforce" targetting on hard Russian silos, but the less accurate Russian missiles of the same yield class would have to be targetted on "soft countervalue" targets, like residential areas. This asymmetry in USA and Russian targetting was often promoted by "arms control and disarmament" promoters like Hans Bethe as preventing a direct comparison; Bethe wrote articles in journals denying Russian superiority in megatonnage because they had less accurate missiles. But this is fake news, because Russia's a dictatorship, America isn't. Which is more dangerous, Russia wiping out American civilians or America wiping out Russian ICBMs? Duh. One strategy is evil, the other is just war.

Kahn also went into the problem with populist notions of "knockout blow" 1st strikes, versus 2nd strikes in nuclear war. In summary, Russia now has superiority in tactical neutron weapons, protected deep shelters and the secret Metro 2 underground railway to evacuate the dictators from the Kremlin to safe rural bunkers in the event of a nuclear strike on Moscow (as well as many dual-purpose cheap but hard underground car parks/shelters and tube stations/shelters and basement cafes/shelters, with double blast doors fitted for civilians), and it has placed a large number of ICBMs on mobile launchers which can move around (out of the 4 psi damage zone) while USA ICBMs are inflight. So, since America doesn't have such civil defense or mobile ICBM launchers or neutron bombs, it doesn't really have a credible deterrent against Russia, but Russia has a credible deterrent against American nuclear leverage. This was claimed to reduce nclear war risks by demonstrating to Russia that it has nothing to fear from America unless Russia launches a first strike on America, when what survived of American military assets (e.g. some Trident SLBMs) could disarm themselves by setting off a firework display over the Kremlin (while the Russians survive in hard double-blast doored shelters). This limited American "second strike capability" was supposed to be "safe deterrence". However, as we have seen, it hasn't stopped Russia invading Ukraine, using Novichok and Polonium-210 in the UK, etc. In other words, it's "minimal deterrence" that leaves open the key risk Kahn warned about, a repetition of the 1930s fiasco that was designed to minimise the risk of "accidental war" by peace treaties with dictators (who interpreted them as signs of virtual signalling weakness to be laughed at and ignored), but did the opposite, causing WWII. Mathematically, the error is that the Iwo Jima proved Lanchester Equations of war are being disregarded in preference to Morgenstern and von Neumann's "Minimax theorem" of game theory. The Lanchester Equations prove that the probability of victory in war (i.e. the rate of disarmament of the weaker side) is proportional to the square of the ratio of forces (surviving a 1st strike) and you need thus to risk using as much force as you can; the Minimax theorem by contrast says that to win a rule-abided game you should take minimal risks and not "escalate to win". The Minimax theorem is disproved by the US Strategic Bomb Survey WWII pre-nuclear attacks data, as well as the results in Vietnam and other wars of "gradual punishment" to try to coerce the enemy into defeat. The Lanchester equations model the history of victorious combats. All current Western nuclear policy is based on Minimax (the McNamara legacy), not Lanchester!

To recap for clarity in the reader's mind: Kahn's 1960 On Thermonuclear War was written while Eisenhower/Dulles "Massive retaliation" (aka "MAD" = Musual Assured Destruction, aka "Type 1 Deterrence") was in play, although General Maxwell D. Taylor (later Kennedy's limited nuclear war adviser), Henry Kissinger (in his 1957 "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy"), and people like Kahn's childhood friend and RAND Corporation colleague, physicist Samuel Cohen, were already advocating cleaner enhanced neutron weapons to credibly deter the invasions that triggered terrible conventional wars like WWI, WWII, the 1950-53 Korean War, etc. (note that contrary to "arms control and disarmament" liars, the "neutron bomb" is not limited to low kiloton yields, but can be used as a 10 megaton Ripple II 99.9% clean device for the case of wide area fronts of tanks crossing borders, provided a precursor burst of similar yield is detonated 5-25 seconds in advance, in order to reduce air density in the target area behind the shock front of the first burst, and so provide hydrodynamic enhancement of neutrons from the second explosion). Kahn considered a wide range of deterrent postures and kinds of wars in his book, and countermeasures in excruciating detail and cold-bloodedness, which put off many idealists from even bothering to read it carefully, let alone implement all of its recommendations! The key problem Kahn found for today's "minimal deterrence policy" was that arms control plus Russian tactical nuclear weapons and shelters superiority, kills off any hope deterring the kinds of "Type II deterrence" needed to prevent enemies from invading 3rd parties, i.e. the invasion of Ukraine 2022 couldn't be credibly deterred by saying "if you do that, Putin, I'll kill myself by disarming my country by firing all my weapons at you for an imaginary knockout blow" (most of which will be negated by Russian ABM, or negated by Russian shelters, or negated by Russian mobile ICBM's simply starting their engines and driving outside the 4psi blast overturning radius while the pre-programmed ICBM's are in flight from USA to their previous locations in Russia identified on satellite photos prior to pressing the button)!" This simply isn't a credible deterrent to kind of situations which have initiated 100% of the world wars in history! WTF has gone wrong with these people? Comintern propaganda has infected top dogs for decades with "Jaw, jaw, not war, war" appeasement crap (Winston Churchill was the only person in human history in the Cabinet of the country triggering BOTH World Wars, tried to deter BOTH, and FAILED both times, but is somehow remembered in propaganda history as a "great orator" despite failing to sway public opinion pre-WWI and pre-WWII to deter the wars; he may have been the most sensible person on both occasions but the result was still a World War each time!). Maybe it's partly down to luddite opposition to progress (the sin of nuclear technology stagnation caused by decades of bans of tests for improved, more credible nuclear deterrent warhead options), and partly down to nostalgic "last war" style military inertia, of the kind that sent Polish horse mounted (cavalry) divisions into battle with Panzer tanks in 1939. The key problem is that the current "protected second strike capability" ("we will never strike first!") is that the enemy leadership may develop the mentality of Hamas in October 2023. If so, that very limited "minimum deterrence" will fail, and there will be a nuclear war. Also, Russia has threatened to nuke non-nuclear Sweden and non-nuclear Ukraine, just as America nuked non-nuclear Japan in 1945 twice, so the CND fantasy of securing a "nuclear free zone" by unilateral disarmament is just a pipe dream. If we continue as we have done until now, Russia and other enemy states will become an ever more war-minded alliance intent on our nuclear annihilation.

"Russia has launched several air attacks on Ukraine this week, costing Moscow a reported £1.1bn. Last night, Kyiv came under drone attack for the third night in four days, with debris injuring people and damaging buildings." - https://t.co/oNs8lwTTmZ And when the Roubles run out,…

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 29, 2024

"The threat of Russian escalation is almost absent in the conversation. It is as if the limit of their conventional powers has been exposed by the humiliation of Kursk, along with the emptiness of their nuclear rhetoric. The latter cannot be entirely ignored, if the Kremlin feels…

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 29, 2024

Democrats in 2021 accelerated the pull out from Afghanistan to the extent that people flooded runways and later fell off undercarriages of the escaping aircraft (worse than the organized rooftop queue for the last Helicopters leaving Saigon, in 1975!), to pacify disarmers, peace protestors, liberals etc., like Putin and Hamas, then Putin and Hamas realise they can invade Ukraine (2022) and Israel (2023) with impunity. INNOCENT PEOPLE ARE KILLED WHEN YOU GIVE A GREEN LIGHT TO DICTATORS. We need credible deterrence. Like, NOW, to stop these invasions. Duh. The entire problem is down to the lying left wing Lenin lawyer "virtual signalling" political tactic lampooned years ago by Bob Monkhouse's advice to succeed by "faking sincerity" ("Nukemap" lying crap is an excellent example of how the old 1930s "guaranteed gas knockout blow annihilation within hours of war being declared" propaganda horsecrap is resurrected for mainstream media lying fake "pacicism" today). That deliberate abusive lying propaganda by the herd mentality "autistic groupthink" thugs of left wing bigots backfires, just as with right wing thugs, and costs lives.

Tip for deluded and lazy journalists who don't have time to check the full facts below: there's a very brief summary of deliberate fake news and nuclear weapons lying ("Nukemap liars etc") effects evidence debunking CND and other pro-Russian nuclear superiority (unilateral Western disarmament/arms control) "elitist virtual signalling" fascism linked here. It's about time for the fashion obsessed mass media to stop repeating 1930s lying propaganda (with "gas escalation annihilation" changed to "nuclear escalation annihilation" by paranoid lying pseudo-pacifists who engineer every invasion, every war, every massacre and ban civil defense shelters into the bargain, using lying to win so-called "Nobel peace prizes" from charlatans dressed up as celebrity elitists with pseudo Communist political cards on open display): "there is no way to prevent immediate gas annihilation of humanity due to aerial war escalation in a war, so we must disarm to prevent disaster and accommodate the Nazi terrorists as friends and collaborators in the name of God". Maybe it's about time, too, for those claiming to be "PhD historians" and "PhD physicists" to get out of their ivory towers of elitist fascist "communism" (i.e. the deliberate "pipe dream" of equality of money, not the achievable reality of equality of freedom of speech, the kind of humane decency no card-carrying/BBC supporting, elitist "Communist" will ever support in any way, shape or form, because they know their lies will instantly be exposed as such in free debate) and start to tell the truth, not one-sided pro-eugenics or other pseudoscience crap that panders to mass delusions like fairy tales.

The UK and France are eager to allow Ukraine to strike military targets deep within Russian territory, while the US and Germany are opposed - Financial Times

The reason for Germany and the US reluctance is that the Biden administration and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are…

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 28, 2024

It's impossible to tell precisely why this 1930s "gas war will escalate within hours and wipe out everybody" pro-Nazi appeasement escalation-doomsday lying and Vietnam era "don't escalate to win" anti-military lunacy is still prevailing in America and Germany, but nuclear heebie jeebies based on fake "Nukemap" style crap is certainly a big factor, plus the fact that both countries lost major wars with costly financial and psychosis implications (Germany lost WWI and WWII; America lost Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). Someday victory may become fashionable again, probably only after "virtue signalling faked pacifist sincerity" is debunked by Putin.

Looks like the commie Russian siding thug Joseph Rotblat, a Nobel Peace Laureate for giving the green card to Putin like fellow "pacifists" did to the Kaiser to begin WWI and to Hitler, starting WWII. But from his "diplomacy" he wants WWIII by provoking war, not Western… https://t.co/jfs2CEe2KV

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 29, 2024

The Russian multistaged 1000 megaton (1 Gt) bomb design goes back to Leo Szilard's anti-H bomb "doomsday machine" propaganda news conference of 1950. As Herman Kahn argued, it's not a credible deterrent, is hard to deliver (it would be the size of a large submarine), and the… https://t.co/zgErh5mnVN

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 22, 2024

Russian state TV channel 1 admits invasion causin pain, but then adds that Russia is a nuclear state. Get prepared for possible Putin resumption of nuclear weapons coercion, or other nuclear saber rattling such as an EMP test as occurred on 22 October 1962, during Cuban crisis! https://t.co/I0gtQpb8OI

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 15, 2024

“We are ready to use weapons, including any weapons — including the weapons you mentioned — if it is a question of the existence of the Russian state or damage to our sovereignty and independence,” Putin added in the interview ... - https://www.news18.com/world/putin-says-russian-nuclear-weapons-more-advanced-than-in-us-8814525.html

"For Russia, the strategic defeat means the end of its statehood and thousand-year history. Then the question arises - why should we be afraid? Isn't it better to go to the end?" - Putin

He says it's logical.
Following formal logic, that means the end of Putin. pic.twitter.com/XpJTzWQH9c

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) June 20, 2024

Are you a retired NATO F-16 pilot? Then you are needed to help defend liberty against the Ruskies. Ukraine doesn't have enough F-16 pilots available. https://t.co/Mdto9HhPMc

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 15, 2024

I arrived in Moscow for the BBC in 2000 on the day Russia admitted to the Kursk submarine disaster. Now, in Kursk, Putin’s struggling with new disaster - as his war vs Ukraine rebounds

I’ve witnessed Russia’s long slide to this point, close-up. It’s all in my book - out today 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/VREwcF6R4m

— Sarah Rainsford (@sarahrainsford) August 15, 2024

Offensive is usually the best form of defence - looks like AFU really understand combined arms manoeuvre warfare ⁦@HamishDBG⁩ ⁦@Barnes_Joe⁩ https://t.co/7yrqb3FN5Y

— Hamish DBG (@HamishDBG) August 27, 2024

"The incursion into Kursk region by the AFU is in favor of Russia," Russians are told by their TV channels, because an attack on Russian territory closes the possibility of negotiations with Ukraine.

And what else would be in Russia's favor? pic.twitter.com/q2a8FkD0nR

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 28, 2024

Answer: in case Putin at some point hits the vodka, sees red at the invasion of Russia, and presses a button. Hitler had 12,000 tons of tabun by 1945 - equivalent to Russia's nuclear stockpile in terms of killing potential - but never used a drop of it. But the RISK was… https://t.co/eHzQLYxY8x

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 15, 2024

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy on Putin's (aka Russian State TV Channel 1's) recent nuclear war threats: Zelenskyy thinks that Putin loves life too much to start a nuclear war. True, up to a point, but: (1) Putin could escalate nuclear threats without much risk of being wiped out… pic.twitter.com/9wTNFVKUaT

— nukegate.org (@Nukegate) August 27, 2024

ABOVE: The 1996 Northrop EM-1 (see extracts below showing protection by modern buildings and also simple shelters very close to nuclear tests; note that Northrop's entire set of damage ranges as a function of yield for underground shelters, tunnels, silos are based on two contained deep underground nuclear tests of different yield scaled to surface burst using the assumption of 5% yield ground coupling relative to the underground shots; this 5% equivalence figure appears to be an exaggeration for compact modern warheads, e.g. the paper “Comparison of Surface and Sub-Surface Nuclear Bursts,” from Steven Hatch, Sandia National Laboratories, to Jonathan Medalia, October 30, 2000, shows a 2% equivalence, e.g. Hatch shows that 1 megaton surface burst produces identical ranges to underground targets as a 20 kt burst at >20m depth of burst, whereas Northrop would require 50kt) has not been openly published, despite such protection being used in Russia! This proves heavy bias against credible tactical nuclear deterrence of the invasions that trigger major wars that could escalate into nuclear war (Russia has 2000+ dedicated neutron bombs; we don't!) and against simple nuclear proof tested civil defence which makes such deterrence credible and of course is also of validity against conventional wars, severe weather, peacetime disasters, etc.

The basic fact is that nuclear weapons can deter/stop invasions unlike the conventional weapons that cause mass destruction, and nuclear collateral damage is eliminated easily for nuclear weapons by using them on military targets, since for high yields at collateral damage distances all the effects are sufficiently delayed in arrival to allow duck and cover to avoid radiation and blast wind/flying debris injuries (unlike the case for the smaller areas affected by smaller yield conventional weapons, where there is little time on seeing the flash to duck and cover to avoid injury), and as the original 1951 SECRET American Government "Handbook on Capabilities of Atomic Weapons" (limited report AD511880L, forerunner to today's still secret EM-1) stated in Section 10.32:

"PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT ITEM TO BE REMEMBERED WHEN ESTIMATING EFFECTS ON PERSONNEL IS THE AMOUNT OF COVER ACTUALLY INVOLVED. ... IT IS OBVIOUS THAT ONLY A FEW SECONDS WARNING IS NECESSARY UNDER MOST CONDITIONS TO TAKE FAIRLY EFFECTIVE COVER. THE LARGE NUMBER OF CASUALTIES IN JAPAN RESULTED FOR THE MOST PART FROM THE LACK OF WARNING."

As for Hitler's stockpile of 12,000 tons of tabun nerve gas, whose strategic and also tactical use was deterred by proper defences (gas masks for all civilians and soldiers, as well as UK stockpiles of fully trial-tested deliverable biological agent anthrax and mustard gas retaliation capacity), it is possible to deter strategic nuclear escalation to city bombing, even within a world war with a crazy terrorist, if all the people are protected by both defence and deterrence.

We have uploaded an online-viewable version of the full text of the 1982 edition of the UK Goverment's Domestic Nuclear Shelters - Technical Guidance, including secret UK and USA nuclear test report references and extracts proving protection against collateral damage, for credible deterrence (linked here).

For a review of this site see: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/are-nuclear-weapons-100-times-less.html which states: "Cook is a master researcher who digs up incredible piles of research on all topics nuclear and the following is digest of various writings of his gathered for easy access centered on the remarkable thesis that the effects of nuclear weapons, while literally awesome, have been exaggerated or misunderstood to an even greater extent, with perhaps very considerable military consequences." Also see some key extracts from this blog published over at http://www.militarystory.org/nuclear-detonations-in-urban-and-suburban-areas/ and blog statistics (over 2.3 million views) linked here (populist pseudo-critics love to falsely claim that "nobody takes any notice of the truth, justifying their decision to ignore the facts by following the fake fashion herd groupthink agenda"). (Or, for Field Marshall Slim's "the more you use, fewer you lose" success formula for ending war by winning in Burma against Japan - where physicist Herman Kahn served while his friend Sam Cohen was calculating nuclear weapon efficiencies at the Los Alamos Manhattan Project, which again used "overkill" to convince the opponent to throw in the towel - please see my post on the practicalities of really DETERRING WWIII linked here; this is the opposite of the failure to escalate formula used to drag out war until bankrupcy aka the Vietnam effect.)

This blog's url is now "www.nukegate.org". When this nuclear effects blog began in 2006, "glasstone.blogspot.com" was used to signify the key issue of Glasstone's obfuscating Effects of Nuclear Weapons, specifically the final 1977 edition, which omitted not just the credible deterrent "use" of nuclear weapons but the key final "Principles of protection" chapter that had been present in all previous editions, and it also ignored the relatively clean neutron bombs which had been developed in the intervening years, as a credible deterrent to the concentrations of force needed for aggressive invasions, such as the 1914 invasion of Belgium and the 1939 invasion of Poland; both of which triggered world wars. Those editors themselves were not subversives, but both had nuclear weapons security clearances which constituted political groupthink censorship control, regarding which designs of nuclear weapons they could discuss and the level of technical data (they include basically zero information on their sources and the "bibliographies" are in most cases not to their classified nuclear testing sources but merely further reading); the 1977 edition had been initially drafted in 1974 solely by EM-1 editor Dolan at SRI International, and was then submitted to Glasstone who made further changes. The persistent and hypocritical Russian World Peace Council's and also hardline arms controllers propaganda tactic - supported by some arms industry loons who have a vested interest in conventional war - has been to try to promote lies on nuclear weapons effects to get rid of credible Western nuclear deterrence of provocations that start war. Naturally, the Russians have now stocked 2000+ tactical neutron weapons of the sort they get the West to disarm.

This means that they can invade territory with relative impunity, since the West won't deter such provocations by flexible response - the aim of Russia is to push the West into a policy of massive retaliation of direct attacks only, and then use smaller provocations instead - and Russia can then use its tactical nuclear weapons to "defend" its newly invaded territories by declaring them to now be part of Mother Russia and under Moscow's nuclear umbrella. Russia has repeatedly made it clear - for decades - that it expects a direct war with NATO to rapidly escalate into nuclear WWIII and it has prepared civil defense shelters and evacuation tactics to enable it. Herman Kahn's public warnings of this date back to his testimony to the June 1959 Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, but for decades were deliberately misrepresented by most media outlets. President Kennedy's book "Why England Slept" makes it crystal clear how exactly the same "pacifist" propaganda tactics in the 1930s (that time it was the "gas bomb knockout blow has no defense so disarm, disarm, disarm" lie) caused war, by using fear to slow credible rearmament in the face of state terrorism. By the time democracies finally decided to issue an ultimatum, Hitler had been converted - by pacifist appeasement - from a cautious tester of Western indecision, into an overconfident aggressor who simply ignored last-minute ultimatums.

Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons (US Government) is written in a highly ambiguous fashion (negating nearly every definite statement with a deliberately obfuscating contrary statement to leave a smokescreen legacy of needless confusion, obscurity and obfuscation), omits nearly all key nuclear test data and provides instead misleading generalizations of data from generally unspecified weapon designs tested over 60 years ago which apply to freefield measurements on unobstructed radial lines in deserts and oceans. It makes ZERO analysis of the overall shielding of radiation and blast by their energy attenuation in modern steel and concrete cities, and even falsely denies such factors in its discussion of blast in cities and in its naive chart for predicting the percentage of burns types as a function of freefield outdoor thermal radiation, totally ignoring skyline shielding geometry (similar effects apply to freefield nuclear radiation exposure, despite vague attempts to dismiss this by non-quantitative talk about some scattered radiation arriving from all angles). It omits the huge variations in effects due to weapon design e.g. cleaner warhead designs and the tactical neutron bomb. It omits quantitative data on EMP as a function of burst yield, height and weapon design.

It omits most of the detailed data collected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the casualty rates as a function of type of building or shelter and blast pressure. It fails to analyse overall standardized casualty rates for different kinds of burst (e.g. shallow underground earth penetrators convert radiation and blast energy into ground shock and cratering against hard targets like silos or enemy bunkers). It omits a detailed analysis of blast precursor effects. It omits a detailed analysis of fallout beta and gamma spectra, fractionation, specific activity (determining the visibility of the fallout as a function of radiation hazard, and the mass of material to be removed for effective decontamination), and data which does exist on the effect of crater soil size distribution upon the fused fallout particle size distribution (e.g. tests like Small Boy in 1962 on the very fine particles at Frenchman Flats gave mean fallout particle sizes far bigger than the pre-shot soil, proving that - as for Trinitite - melted small soil particles fuse together in the fireball to produce larger fallout particles, so the pre-shot soil size distribution is irrelevant for fallout analysis).

By generally (with few exceptions) lumping "effects" of all types of bursts together into chapters dedicated to specific effects, it falsely gives the impression that all types of nuclear explosions produce similar effects with merely "quantitative differences". This is untrue because air bursts eliminate fallout casualties entirely, while slight burial (e.g. earth penetrating warheads) eliminates thermal (including fires and dust "climatic nuclear winter" BS), the initial radiation and severe blast effects, while massively increasing ground shock, and the same applies to shallow underwater bursts. So a more objective treatment to credibly deter all aggression MUST emphasise the totally different collateral damage effects, by dedicating chapters to different kinds of burst (high altitude/space bursts, free air bursts, surface bursts, underground bursts, underwater bursts), and would include bomb design implications on these effects in detail. A great deal of previously secret and limited distributed nuclear effects data has been declassified since 1977, and new research has been done. Our objectives in this review are: (a) to ensure that an objective independent analysis of the relevant nuclear weapons effects facts is placed on the record in case the currently, increasingly vicious Cold War 2.0 escalates into some kind of limited "nuclear demonstration" by aggressors to try to end a conventional war by using coercive threats, (b) to ensure the lessons of tactical nuclear weapon design for deterring large scale provocations (like the invasions of Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939 which triggered world wars) are re-learned in contrast to Dulles "massive retaliation" (incredible deterrent) nonsense, and finally (c) to provide some push to Western governments to "get real" with our civil defense, to try to make credible our ageing "strategic nuclear deterrent". We have also provided a detailed analysis of recently declassified Russian nuclear warhead design data, shelter data, effects data, tactical nuclear weapons employment manuals, and some suggestions for improving Western thermonuclear warheads to improve deterrence.

‘The evidence from Hiroshima indicates that blast survivors, both injured and uninjured, in buildings later consumed by fire [caused by the blast overturning charcoal braziers used for breakfast in inflammable wooden houses filled with easily ignitable bamboo furnishings and paper screens] were generally able to move to safe areas following the explosion. Of 130 major buildings studied by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey ... 107 were ultimately burned out ... Of those suffering fire, about 20 percent were burning after the first half hour. The remainder were consumed by fire spread, some as late as 15 hours after the blast. This situation is not unlike the one our computer-based fire spread model described for Detroit.’

- Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, DCPA Attack Environment Manual, Chapter 3: What the Planner Needs to Know About Fire Ignition and Spread, report CPG 2-1A3, June 1973, Panel 27.

The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, US Strategic Bombing Survey, Pacific Theatre, report 92, volume 2 (May 1947, secret):

Volume one, page 14:

“... the city lacked buildings with fire-protective features such as automatic fire doors and automatic sprinkler systems”, and pages 26-28 state the heat flash in Hiroshima was only:

“... capable of starting primary fires in exposed, easily combustible materials such as dark cloth, thin paper, or dry rotted wood exposed to direct radiation at distances usually within 4,000 feet of the point of detonation (AZ).”

Volume two examines the firestorm and the ignition of clothing by the thermal radiation flash in Hiroshima:

Page 24:

“Scores of persons throughout all sections of the city were questioned concerning the ignition of clothing by the flash from the bomb. ... Ten school boys were located during the study who had been in school yards about 6,200 feet east and 7,000 feet west, respectively, from AZ [air zero]. These boys had flash burns on the portions of their faces which had been directly exposed to rays of the bomb. The boys’ stories were consistent to the effect that their clothing, apparently of cotton materials, ‘smoked,’ but did not burst into flame. ... a boy’s coat ... started to smoulder from heat rays at 3,800 feet from AZ.” [Contrast this to the obfuscation and vagueness in Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons!]

Page 88:

“Ignition of the City. ... Only directly exposed surfaces were flash burned. Measured from GZ, flash burns on wood poles were observed at 13,000 feet, granite was roughened or spalled by heat at 1,300 feet, and vitreous tiles on roofs were blistered at 4,000 feet. ... six persons who had been in reinforced-concrete buildings within 3,200 feet of air zero stated that black cotton blackout curtains were ignited by radiant heat ... dark clothing was scorched and, in some cases, reported to have burst into flame from flash heat [although as the 1946 unclassified USSBS report admits, most immediately beat the flames out with their hands without sustaining injury, because the clothing was not drenched in gasoline, unlike peacetime gasoline tanker road accident victims]

“... but a large proportion of over 1,000 persons questioned was in agreement that a great majority of the original fires was started by debris falling on kitchen charcoal fires, by industrial process fires, or by electric short circuits. Hundreds of fires were reported to have started in the centre of the city within 10 minutes after the explosion. Of the total number of buildings investigated [135 buildings are listed] 107 caught fire, and in 69 instances, the probable cause of initial ignition of the buildings or their contents was as follows: (1) 8 by direct radiated heat from the bomb (primary fire), (2) 8 by secondary sources, and (3) 53 by fire spread from exposed [wooden] buildings.”

There is now a relatively long introduction at the top of this blog, due to the present nuclear threat caused by disarmament and arms control propaganda, and the dire need to get the facts out past pro-Russian media influencers or loony mass media which has never cared about nuclear and radiation effects facts, so please scroll down to see blog posts. The text below in blue is hyperlinked (direct to reference source materials, rather than numbered and linked to reference at the end of the page) so you can right-click on it and open in a new tab to see the source. This page is not about opinions, it provides censored out facts that debunk propaganda, but for those who require background "authority" nonsense on censored physics facts, see stuff here or here. Regarding calling war-mongering, world war causing, terrorism-regime-supporting UK disarmers of the 20th century "thugs" instead of "kind language": I was put through the Christianity grinder as a kid so will quote Jesus (whom I'm instructed to follow), Matthew 23:33: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" The fake "pacifist" thugs will respond with some kindly suggestion that this is "paranoid" and that "Jesus was rightfully no-platformed for his inappropriate language"! Yeah, you guys would say that, wouldn't ya. Genuine pacifism requires credible deterrence! Decent people seem to be very confused about the facts of this. Jesus did not say "disarm to invite your annihilation by terrorists". You can't "forgive and forget" when the enemy is still on the warpath. They have to be stopped, either by deterrence, force, defense, or a combination of all these.

Above: Edward Leader-Williams on the basis for UK civil defence shelters in SECRET 1949 Royal Society's London Symposium on physical effects of atomic weapons, a study that was kept secret by the Attlee Government and subsequent UK governments, instead of being openly published to enhance public knowledge of civil defence effectiveness against nuclear attack. Leader-Williams also produced the vital civil defence report seven years later (published below for the first time on this blog), proving civil defence sheltering and city centre evacuation is effective against 20 megaton thermonuclear weapons. Also published in the same secret symposium, which was introduced by Penney, was Penney's own Hiroshima visit analysis of the percentage volume reduction in overpressure-crushed empty petrol cans, blueprint containers, etc., which gave a blast partition yield of 7 kilotons (or 15.6 kt total yield, if taking the nuclear blast as 45% of total yield, i.e. 7/0.45 = 15.6, as done in later AWRE nuclear weapons test blast data reports). Penney in a 1970 updated paper allowed for blast reduction due to the damage done in the city bursts.

ABOVE: The June 1957 edition of Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons was the first to include the effects of blast duration (which increases with the cube-root of weapon yield) on blast damage from nuclear weapons. This is very important for wind drag loading to drag-sensitive targets, but has less effect for diffraction-sensitive targets which respond to peak pressures, especially where the blast pressure rapidly equalizes around the structure (e.g. utility poles or buildings with large expanses of glass which shatters, allowing rapid pressure equalization). For example, Glasstone 1957, Fig. 6.41b (p253, using Fig. 3.94a on p109 to convert scaled distances to overpressures from a surface burst on open deserted terrain) shows that for yields of 1 kt, 20 kt (approximately the 16 kt Hiroshima and 21 kt Nagasaki yields), and 1 megaton, peak overpressures of 55, 23 and 15 psi, respectively, are required for collapse (severe damage) to modern multistory reinforced concrete buildings with light walls (Fig. 6.41a shows that about 5 psi will demolish a wood frame house - no longer in modern city centres - regardless of yield). Notice that this means that modern cities are extremely resistant to blast from ~1 kt neutron bombs, requiring more than twice the peak overpressure for collapse than was needed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also notice that very large amounts of energy are absorbed from the blast in causing severe damage to modern reinforced concrete city buildings, causing rapid attenuation of free-field pressure so that ocean and desert test validated cube-root damage scaling laws break down for high yield bursts in modern cities (see latest blog post here for examples of calculations of this energy absorption in both oscillating a building in the elastic deflection engineering graph zone, and the much larger energy absorption in causing plastic zone distortion to reinforced concrete - basically the former typically absorbs about 1% of blast energy, whereas the latter takes up something like 10 times more energy, or 10%, a factor entirely dismissed by Glasstone and Dolan but analyzed by Penney). Above a megaton or so, the increasing blast duration has less and less effect on the peak overpressure required for severe damage, because for destruction a threshold blast loading exists, regardless of the blast duration. (A 1 mile/hour wind will not blow a wall down, regardless of how long it lasts. In other words, large impulses cease to be damage criteria if the blast pressure drops below a threshold needed for damage.) Glasstone 1957 Fig 6.41c on p255 shows that automobiles suffer severe damage 36 psi peak overpressure for 1 kt, 18 psi for 20 kt, and 12 psi for 1 megaton. These pressures for destruction of automobiles are similar to the severe damage data given for multistorey steel frame office buildings with light walls. The key point here is that low-yield (around 1 kt) tactical nuclear weapons produce far less collateral damage to civilian infrastructure than high yield bursts, and even the effects of the latter are exaggerated severely for modern cities when using wooden house data in unobstructed terrain at ocean or desert terrain nuclear tests. Collateral damage is eliminated by exploiting the fact that higher pressures are needed for air blast damage at lower yields, and using earth penetrator warheads or air bursts to constrain air blast pressures to civilian infrastructure, ensuring that they are not collapsed (causing casualties in modern steel or concrete buildings).

Note that the later (1962/4 and 1977) editions of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons replace the correct (curved line conversion) blast duration nomographs in the 1957 edition with simplistic Wn yield scaling (where n = 0.4 for drag sensitive targets), which is a simplification which fails to correctly model the fact that blast duration effects on overpressures are eliminated at very high yields because a minimum threshold blast pressure is needed to cause damage.

J. R. Oppenheimer (opposing Teller), February 1951: "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 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." (Quotation: Samuel Cohen, Shame, 2nd ed., 2005, page 99.)

‘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.

Note that sometimes the "nuclear taboo" issue is raised against this analysis by Kissenger: if anti-nuclear lying propaganda on weapons effects makes it apparently taboo in the Western pro-Russian disarmament lobbies to escalate from conventional to tactical nuclear weapons to end war as on 6 and 9 August 1945, then this "nuclear taboo" can be relied upon to guarantee peace for our time. However, this was not only disproved by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but by the Russian tactical nuclear weapons reliance today, the Russian civil defense shelter system detailed on this blog which showed they believed a nuclear war survivable based on the results of their own nuclear tests, and the use of Russian nuclear weapons years after Kissinger's analysis was published and criticised, for example their 50 megaton test in 1961 and their supply of IRBM's capable of reaching East Coast mainland USA targets to the fanatical Cuban dictatorship in 1962. So much for the "nuclear taboo" as being any more reliable than Chamberlain's "peace for our time" document, co-signed by Hitler on 30 September 1938! We furthermore saw how Russia respected President Obama's "red line" for the "chemical weapons taboo": Russia didn't give a toss about Western disarmament thugs prattle about what they think is a "taboo", Russia used chlorine and sarin in Syria to keep Assad the dictator and they used Novichok to attack and kill in the UK in 2018, with only diplomatic expulsions in response. "Taboos" are no more valid to restrain madmen than peace treaties, disarmament agreements, Western CND books attacking civil defense or claiming that nuclear war is the new 1930s gas war bogyman, or "secret" stamps on scientific facts. In a word, they're crazy superstitions.)

(Quoted in 2006 on this blog here.

All of this data should have been published to inform public debate on the basis for credible nuclear deterrence of war and civil defense, PREVENTING MILLIONS OF DEATHS SINCE WWII, instead of DELIBERATELY allowing enemy anti-nuclear and anti-civil defence lying propaganda from Russian supporting evil fascists to fill the public data vacuum, killing millions by allowing civil defence and war deterrence to be dismissed by ignorant "politicians" in the West, so that wars triggered by invasions with mass civilian casualties continue today for no purpose other than to promote terrorist agendas of hate and evil arrogance and lying for war, falsely labelled "arms control and disarmament for peace":

"Controlling escalation is really an exercise in deterrence, which means providing effective disincentives to unwanted enemy actions. Contrary to widely endorsed opinion, the use or threat of nuclear weapons in tactical operations seems at least as likely to check [as Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as to promote the expansion of hostilities [providing we're not in a situation of Russian biased arms control and disarmament whereby we've no tactical weapons while the enemy has over 2000 neutron bombs thanks to "peace" propaganda from Russian thugs]." - Bernard Brodie, pvi of Escalation and the nuclear option, RAND Corp memo RM-5444-PR, June 1965.

ABOVE: Why didn't Britain declare war on Russia when it jointly invaded Poland with the Nazis, or even later when Russia invaded Finland single-handed? Answer: Comintern had stuffed the British mass media, British universities, and even the Labour Party with Russian stooges! Barrister Denis Pritt, Labour MP, simply blamed the British government for not cosying up to Communist dictatorial Russia (in the same way Chamberlain had cosied up to Adolf Hitler's Nazis)! Pritt in 1936 went to watch the "Trial of the Sixteen" in Moscow, a show trial purge of Stalin's criticis that made a mockery of the law, but be defended Stalinism in his tract, "The Zinoviev Trial". He was only finally kicked out of the Labour Party after he defended Russia's invasion of Finland in popular Penguin Book Specials. But he wasn't alone. The communists of the British media used the same tactics as the Nazis to undermine or destroy critics, so they managed to churn out one-sided propaganda nearly as bad as the media saturation with anti-nuclear, anti-CO2 crap today.

Russian project 49 dual-primary thermonuclear weaponeer Dr Yuri Trutnev has an officially "proatom.ru"-published technical history of the design of the Russian nuclear weapons (which differ from UK-USA designs fundamentally) here (extracted from Russian "Atomic Strategy" No. 18, August 2005): "the problem of ensuring spherically symmetric compression of the secondary module was radically solved, since the time of “symmetrization” of the energy around the secondary module was much less than the time of compression of this module. ... The first two-stage thermonuclear charge, designated RDS-37, was developed in 1955 and successfully tested on November 22, 1955. The energy release of the charge in the experiment was 1.6 Mt, and since for safety reasons at the Semipalatinsk test site the charge was tested at partial power, the predicted full-scale energy release of the charge was ~ 3 Mt. The energy release amplification factor in RDS-37 was about two orders of magnitude, the charge did not use tritium, the thermonuclear fuel was lithium deuteride, and the main fissile material was U-238. ... Particular attention should be paid to the works of 1958. This year, a new type of thermonuclear charge, “product 49,” was tested [the double-primary H-bomb], which was the next step in the formation of a standard for thermonuclear charges (its development was completed in 1957, but testing on the SIP did not take place). The ideologists of this project and the developers of the physical charge circuit were Yu. N. Babaev and I. The peculiarity of the new charge was that, using the basic principles of the RDS-37, it was possible to: • significantly reduce overall parameters due to a new bold solution to the problem of transfer of X-ray radiation, which determines implosion; • simplify the layered structure of the secondary module, which turned out to be an extremely important practical decision. According to the conditions of adaptation to specific carriers, “product 49” was developed in a smaller overall weight category compared to the RDS-37 charge, but its specific volumetric energy release turned out to be 2.4 times greater.

"The physical design of the charge turned out to be extremely successful; the charge was transferred to service and subsequently underwent modernization associated with the replacement of primary energy sources. In 1958, together with Yu. N. Babaev, we managed to develop 4 thermonuclear charges, which were tested on the field in 7 full-scale tests, and all of them were successful. This work was practically implemented within 8 months of 1958. All of these charges used a new circuit, first introduced in Product 49. Their energy release ranged from 0.3 to 2.8 Mt. In addition, in 1958, under my leadership M. V. Fedulov also developed the lightest thermonuclear charge at that time according to the “product 49” design, which was also successfully tested. Work on the miniaturization of thermonuclear weapons was new at that time, and it was met with a certain misunderstanding and resistance. ... One of the well-known pages in the history of work on thermonuclear weapons of the USSR is the creation of a superbomb - the most powerful thermonuclear charge. I will dwell on some points of this development. ... Among the features of this charge, it should be noted that the large volume of the charge (due to its high energy release) required significant amounts of X-ray energy to carry out implosion. The developed nuclear charges did not satisfy this condition, and therefore, a previously developed two-stage thermonuclear charge with a relatively low energy release was used as the primary source of the “super-powerful charge”. This charge was developed by me and Yu. N. Babaev. ... In the next project (a return to the untested 1958 system) that I supervised, every effort was made to ensure near-perfect implosion symmetry. This brilliant work led to success, and in 1962, the problem of implementing thermonuclear ignition was solved in a special device. In other full-scale tests that followed, this success was consolidated, and as a result, thermonuclear ignition provided the calculated combustion of the secondary module with an energy release of 1 Mt. My co-authors in this development were V.B. Adamsky, Yu.N. Babaev, V.G. Zagrafov and V.N. Mokhov. ... This principle has found a variety of applications in the creation of fundamentally new types of thermonuclear charges, from special devices for the use of nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes to significant military applications." (Note there is a 2017 filmed interview of Trutnev - in Russian - linked here.)

This is the basis for both the Russian isentropic-compressed pure fusion secondary (99.85% clean) neutron bomb and related progress with strategic warheads:

“In 1966, VNIIEF conducted a successful test of the second generation charge, in which an almost doubling of the power density was achieved by increasing the contribution of fission reactions in the thermonuclear module. These results were subsequently used to create new third-generation products.” - A. A. Greshilov, N. D. Egupov and A. M. Matushchenko, Nuclear shield (official Russian nuclear weapons history), 2008, p171 (linked here: https://elib.biblioatom.ru/text/greshilov_yaderny-schit_2008/p171/ ). Note that first double-primary Project 49 Russian test on 23 February 1958 was rapidly weaponised as the 1364 kg 8F12/8F12N warhead for the 8K63 missile in 1959, according to http://militaryrussia.ru/blog/index-0-5.html which also gives a table of yields and masses of other Russian warheads: the 2.3 megaton warhead 8K15 for the 8K65 missile had a mass of 1546 kg; the 5 megaton 8F116 warhead for the 8K64 and 8K65 missiles had a mass of 2175 kg; the 6 megaton 8F117 for the 8K64 and other missiles had a mass of 2200 kg, etc. The diagram below shows a cut-away through the shells in the isentropically-compressed megaton secondary stage of the first Russian weapon without a central fission neutron-producing sparkplug (1.1 megaton Russian test number 218 at Novaya Zemlya on 24 December 1962, an air drop detonating at 1320 m altitude). This diagram was declassified in the official Russian "History of the domestic nuclear project - Report by the scientific director of RFNC-VNIIEF, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences R.I. Ilkaeva at the General Meeting, Department of Physical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences December 17, 2012, RAS", after John H. Nuckolls' summary of the similar, 99.9% clean 10 megaton Ripple-2, tested 30 October 1962 as detailed in posts below (the detailed interior design analysis of the Russian megaton nuclear warhead for the R13 - which is on display in a Russian nuclear warhead design museum - is from the Russian sites here and here).

"... it is an important defect of 'arms control' agreements that the punishment or correction of even outright violation is not done automatically ... [in 1934 Ramsay] MacDonald and his supporters urged one of the least aggressive nations in Europe to disarm itself to a level equal with their potential attackers ... Probably as much as any other single group I think that these men of good will can be charged with causing World War II. [Italics are Kahn's own.] ... In March 1934, Stanley Baldwin, in answer to a statement by Winston Churchill to the effect that Germany was rearming and growing stronger than Great Britain, made his famous statement: 'If all our efforts at agreement fail [why 'all' and how do you define 'failure' until after the enemy secretly breaks the agreement and enemy starts a war, when it is too late?] ... in air strength and air power this country shall no longer be inferior to any country within striking distance of its shores'. In spite of this pledge, by 1935 the Germans had achieved parity or even air superiority and their rate of expansion was much larger than that of the British; thus the disparity grew with the years. ... On March 16, 1935, Hitler decreed conscription ... In April, the League [of Nations, the old version of the UN] ... unanimously voted that treaties should not be broken by unilateral action. ... At no time did Hitler threaten to initiate war against France and England. He simply threatened to 'retaliate' if they attacked him. ... The technique he used is such an obvious prototype for a future aggressor armed with H-bombs that it is of extreme value to all who are concerned with the problem of maintaining a peaceful and secure world to go over the story in some detail." - Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, pp. 390-392, 403. (Kahn then gives a long discussion of the "you have the choice"-way Hitler blackmailed President Hacha into signing over his country to the Nazis in March 1939, despite the worthless Munich agreement of 1938, using first-hand testimony from Hitler's translator at the 14 March 1939 Hitler-Hacha meeting, Paul Schmidt: "There were, said Hitler, 'two possibilities. The first was that the invasion of the German troops might develop into a battle. The resistance would then be broken down by force of arms with all available means. The other was that the entry of the German troops should take place in a peaceable manner ...'." Now the issue is this: Hitler used "peace" as an option to get what he wanted without violence. But populist propaganda claims Hitler was "violent". Nope: Hitler preferred to "peacefully" invade, "peacefully" gas opponents in gas chambers with musicians playing classical music at the deportation camp railway stations to prevent violence starting, etc. Reagan made the point in his March 1983 "evil empire" speech that the most evil thugs of all that instigate genocide hide behind the cloak of spurious pacifism!)

https://hbr.org/1995/05/why-the-news-is-not-the-truth/ (Peter Vanderwicken in the Harvard Business Review Magazine, May-June 1995): "The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively. That is the thesis advanced by Paul H. Weaver, a former political scientist (at Harvard University), journalist (at Fortune magazine), and corporate communications executive (at Ford Motor Company), in his provocative analysis entitled News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works ... The news media and the government have created a charade that serves their own interests but misleads the public. Officials oblige the media’s need for drama by fabricating crises and stage-managing their responses, thereby enhancing their own prestige and power. Journalists dutifully report those fabrications. Both parties know the articles are self-aggrandizing manipulations and fail to inform the public about the more complex but boring issues of government policy and activity. What has emerged, Weaver argues, is a culture of lying. ... The architect of the transformation was not a political leader or a constitutional convention but Joseph Pulitzer, who in 1883 bought the sleepy New York World and in 20 years made it the country’s largest newspaper. Pulitzer accomplished that by bringing drama to news—by turning news articles into stories ... His journalism took events out of their dry, institutional contexts and made them emotional rather than rational, immediate rather than considered, and sensational rather than informative. The press became a stage on which the actions of government were a series of dramas. ... The press swarmed on the story, which had all the necessary dramatic elements: a foot-dragging bureaucracy, a study finding that the country’s favorite fruit was poisoning its children, and movie stars opposing the pesticide. Sales of apples collapsed. Within months, Alar’s manufacturer withdrew it from the market, although both the EPA and the Food and Drug Administration stated that they believed Alar levels on apples were safe. The outcry simply overwhelmed scientific evidence. That happens all too often, Cynthia Crossen argues in her book Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America. ... Crossen writes, “more and more of the information we use to buy, elect, advise, acquit and heal has been created not to expand our knowledge but to sell a product or advance a cause.” “Most members of the media are ill-equipped to judge a technical study,” Crossen correctly points out. “Even if the science hasn’t been explained or published in a U.S. journal, the media may jump on a study if it promises entertainment for readers or viewers. And if the media jump, that is good enough for many Americans.” ... A press driven by drama and crises creates a government driven by response to crises. Such an “emergency government can’t govern,” Weaver concludes. “Not only does public support for emergency policies evaporate the minute they’re in place and the crisis passes, but officials acting in the emergency mode can’t make meaningful public policies. According to the classic textbook definition, government is the authoritative allocation of values, and emergency government doesn’t authoritatively allocate values.” (Note that Richard Rhodes' Pulitzer prize winning books such as The making of the atomic bomb which uncritically quote Hiroshima firestorm lies and survivors nonsense about people running around without feet, play to this kind of emotional fantasy mythology of nuclear deterrence obfuscation so loved by the mass media.)

“... Freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution ... It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea ....” – Ronald Reagan, Moscow State University, May 31, 1988 (quoted at our physics site, www.quantumfieldtheory.org). Text in blue on this blog is hyperlinked directly to reference material (so can be opened in another tab by right-clicking on it):

ABOVE: "missile gap" propaganda debunked by secret 1970s data; Kennedy relied on US nuclear superiority. Using a flawed analysis of nuclear weapons effects on Hiroshima - based on lying unclassified propaganda reports and ignorant dismissals of civil defense shelters in Russia (again based on Hiroshima propaganda by groves in 1945) - America allowed Russian nuclear superiority in the 1970s. Increasingly, the nuclear deterrent was used by Russia to stop the West from "interfering" with its aggressive invasions and wars, precisely Hitler's 1930s strategy with gas bombing knockout-blow threats used to engineer appeasement. BELOW: H-bomb effects and design secrecy led to tragic mass media delusions, such as the 18 February 1950 Picture Post claim that the H-bomb can devastate Australia (inspiring the Shute novel and movie "On the Beach" and also other radiation scams like "Dr Strangelove" to be used by Russia to stir up anti Western disarmament movement to help Russia win WWIII). Dad was a Civil Defense Corps Instructor in the UK when this was done (the civil defense effectiveness and weapon effects facts on shelters at UK and USA nuclear tests were kept secret and not used to debunk lying political appeasement propaganda tricks in the mass media by sensationalist "journalists" and Russian "sputniks"):

Message to mass-media journalists: please don't indulge in lying "no defence" propaganda as was done by most of the media in previous pre-war crises!

ABOVE: Russian State TV Channel 1 on the nuclear threat, 4 June 2024. This is not a matter of unthinkable escalation or a knockout blow that will disarm Russia entirely (by firing all its weapons at the West!). It is a matter of coercive threats, which may or may not be accompanied by "demonstration strikes". Putin knows that unlike former USSR territories (e.g. Ukraine) which have heavy duty shelters in cities, the West doesn't have such civil defense to make its nuclear deterrent credible, so there is an exploitable asymmetry for Putin. This Russian state TV Channel 1 "propaganda" is Russian language: it's not aimed at the West, but at Russians, to prepare the road for possible nuclear warfare with the West. This is not about the usual image of an escalatory WWIII, but about establishing Russian hegemony, by making the West back down! As in the 1930s, popular media "selective journalism" (mainstream fake/fashionable fairy tale news) ignores real threats, by using the trick of hyping up deception (knockout blows, escalation, etc.) to make reality appear "unthinkable". Don't be taken in again by this mass media scam, please!

Again, to recap: the biggest threat is nuclear coercion as occurred when Russia broke a ceasefire and resumed nuclear testing in 1961, and built the Berlin Wall, then in 1962 put nuclear weapons into Cuba's fanatical dictatorship. This is not the mainstream media portrayal of the "nuclear threat" (immediate knockout blow, total disarmament in a few seconds by exploding everything in the stockpile, which is loved by TV, newspapers, magazines, and films and which - like the gas bomb knockout blow hype of the 1930s - makes war appear "unthinkable" to support appeasement, disarmament and arms control delusions which are bits of paper that simply can't stop the real threats from dictatorships). At some point there may be a serious deliberate escalation to end the war, and we need to be prepared and ready to step up deterrence against this, or to respond rationally in some other way. The supply of F16s by NATO members to Ukraine to bomb targets in Russia will allow Putin the excuse he feels he needs to escalate nuclear threats further, so we must prepare. This is not "defeatism", but preparing for freedom to prevail, to win the war, to deter escalation, and to survive.

ABOVE: Example of a possible Russian 1985 1st Cold War SLBM first strike plan. The initial use of Russian SLBM launched nuclear missiles from off-coast against command and control centres (i.e. nuclear explosions to destroy warning satellite communications centres by radiation on satellites as well as EMP against ground targets, rather than missiles launched from Russia against cities, as assumed by 100% of the Cold War left-wing propaganda) is allegedly a Russian "fog of war" strategy. Such a "demonstration strike" is aimed essentially at causing confusion about what is going on, who is responsible - it is not quick or easy to finger-print high altitude bursts fired by SLBM's from submerged submarines to a particular country because you don't get fallout samples to identify isotopic plutonium composition. Russia could immediately deny the attack (implying, probably to the applause of the left-wingers that this was some kind of American training exercise or computer based nuclear weapons "accident", similar to those depicted in numerous anti-nuclear Cold War propaganda films). Thinly-veiled ultimatums and blackmail follow. America would not lose its population or even key cities in such a first strike (contrary to left-wing propaganda fiction), as with Pearl Harbor in 1941; it would lose its complacency and its sense of security through isolationism, and would either be forced into a humiliating defeat or a major war.

Before 1941, many warned of the risks but were dismissed on the basis that Japan was a smaller country with a smaller economy than the USA and war was therefore absurd (similar to the way Churchill's warnings about European dictators were dismissed by "arms-race opposing pacifists" not only in the 1930s, but even before WWI; for example Professor Cyril Joad documents in the 1939 book "Why War?" his first hand witnessing of Winston Churchill's pre-WWI warning and call for an arms-race to deter that war, as dismissed by the sneering Norman Angell who claimed an arms race would cause a war rather than avert one by bankrupting the terrorist state). It is vital to note that there is an immense pressure against warnings of Russian nuclear superiority even today, most of it contradictory. E.g. the left wing and Russian-biased "experts" whose voices are the only ones reported in the Western media (traditionally led by "Scientific American" and "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists"), simultaneously claim Russia imposes such a terrible SLBM and ICBM nuclear threat that we must desperately disarm now, while also claiming that Russian tactical nuclear weapons probably won't work so aren't a threat that needs to be credibly deterred! This only makes sense as Russian siding propaganda. In similar vein, Teller-critic Hans Bethe also used to falsely "dismiss" Russian nuclear superiority by claiming (with quotes from Brezhnev about the peaceful intentions of Russia) that Russian delivery systems are "less accurate" than Western missiles (as if accuracy has anything to do with high altitude EMP strikes, where the effects cover huge areas, or large city targets. Such claims would then by repeatedly endlessly in the Western media by Russian biased "journalists" or agents of influence, and any attempt to point out the propaganda (i.e. he real world asymmetry: Russia uses cheap countervalue targetting on folk that don't have civil defense, whereas we need costly, accurate counterforce targetting because Russia has civil defense shelters that we don't have) became a "Reds under beds" argument, implying that the truth is dangerous to "peaceful coexistence"!

“Free peoples ... will make war only when driven to it by tyrants. ... there have been no wars between well-established democracies. ... the probability ... that the absence of wars between well-established democracies is a mere accident [is] less than one chance in a thousand. ... there have been more than enough to provide robust statistics ... When toleration of dissent has persisted for three years, but not until then, we can call a new republic ‘well established.’ ... Time and again we observe authoritarian leaders ... using coercion rather than seeking mutual accommodation ... Republican behaviour ... in quite a few cases ... created an ‘appeasement trap.’ The republic tried to accommodate a tyrant as if he were a fellow republican; the tyrant concluded that he could safely make an aggressive response; eventually the republic replied furiously with war. The frequency of such errors on both sides is evidence that negotiating styles are not based strictly on sound reasoning.” - Spencer Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (Yale University Press)

The Top Secret American intelligency report NIE 11-3/8-74 "Soviet Forces for Intercontinental Conflict" warned on page 6: "the USSR has largely eliminated previous US quantitative advantages in strategic offensive forces." page 9 of the report estimated that the Russian's ICBM and SLBM launchers exceed the USAs 1,700 during 1970, while Russia's on-line missile throw weight had exceeded the USA's one thousand tons back in 1967! Because the USA had more long-range bombers which can carry high-yield bombs than Russia (bombers are more vulnerable to air defences so were not Russia's priority), it took a little longer for Russia to exceed the USA in equivalent megatons, but the 1976 Top Secret American report NIE 11-3/8-76 at page 17 shows that in 1974 Russia exceeded the 4,000 equivalent-megatons payload of USA missiles and aircraft (with less vulnerability for Russia, since most of Russia's nuclear weapons were on missiles not in SAM-vulnerable aircraft), amd by 1976 Russia could deliver 7,000 tons of payload by missiles compared to just 4,000 tons on the USA side. These reports were kept secret for decades to protect the intelligence sources, but they were based on hard evidence. For example, in August 1974 the Hughes Aircraft Company used a specially designed ship (Glomar Explorer, 618 feet long, developed under a secret CIA contract) to recover nuclear weapons and their secret manuals from a Russian submarine which sank in 16,000 feet of water, while in 1976 America was able to take apart the electronics systems in a state-of-the-art Russian MIG-25 fighter which was flown to Japan by defector Viktor Belenko, discovering that it used exclusively EMP-hard miniature vacuum tubes with no EMP-vulnerable solid state components.

There are four ways of dealing with aggressors: conquest (fight them), intimidation (deter them), fortification (shelter against their attacks; historically used as castles, walled cities and even walled countries in the case of China's 1,100 mile long Great Wall and Hadrian's Wall, while the USA has used the Pacific and Atlantic as successful moats against invasion, at least since Britain invaded Washington D.C. back in 1812), and friendship (which if you are too weak to fight, means appeasing them, as Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler for worthless peace promises). These are not mutually exclusive: you can use combinations. If you are very strong in offensive capability and also have walls to protect you while your back is turned, you can - as Teddy Roosevelt put it (quoting a West African proverb): "Speak softly and carry a big stick." But if you are weak, speaking softly makes you a target, vulnerable to coercion. This is why we don't send troops directly to Ukraine. When elected in 1960, Kennedy introduced "flexible response" to replace Dulles' "massive retaliation", by addressing the need to deter large provocations without being forced to decide between the unwelcome options of "surrender or all-out nuclear war" (Herman Kahn called this flexible response "Type 2 Deterrence"). This was eroded by both Russian civil defense and their emerging superiority in the 1970s: a real missiles and bombers gap emerged in 1972 when the USSR reached and then exceeded the 2,200 of the USA, while in 1974 the USSR achieve parity at 3,500 equivalent megatons (then exceeded the USA), and finally today Russia has over 2,000 dedicated clean enhanced neutron tactical nuclear weapons and we have none (except low-neutron output B61 multipurpose bombs). (Robert Jastrow's 1985 book How to make nuclear Weapons obsolete was the first to have graphs showing the downward trend in nuclear weapon yields created by the development of miniaturized MIRV warheads for missiles and tactical weapons: he shows that the average size of US warheads fell from 3 megatons in 1960 to 200 kilotons in 1980, and from a total of 12,000 megatons in 1960 to 3,000 megatons in 1980.)

The term "equivalent megatons" roughly takes account of the fact that the areas of cratering, blast and radiation damage scale not linearly with energy but as something like the 2/3 power of energy release; but note that close-in cratering scales as a significantly smaller power of energy than 2/3, while blast wind drag displacement of jeeps in open desert scales as a larger power of energy than 2/3. Comparisons of equivalent megatonnage shows, for example, that WWII's 2 megatons of TNT in the form of about 20,000,000 separate conventional 100 kg (0.1 ton) explosives is equivalent to 20,000,000 x (10-7)2/3 = 431 separate 1 megaton explosions! The point is, nuclear weapons are not of a different order of magnitude to conventional warfare, because: (1) devastated areas don't scale in proportion to energy release, (2) the number of nuclear weapons is very much smaller than the number of conventional bombs dropped in conventional war, (3) because of radiation effects like neutrons and intense EMP, it is possible to eliminate physical destruction by nuclear weapons by a combination of weapon design (e.g. very clean bombs like 99.9% fusion Dominic-Housatonic, or 95% fusion Redwing-Navajo) and burst altitude or depth for hard targets, and create a weapon that deters invasions credibly (without lying local fallout radiation hazards), something none of the biased "pacifist disarmament" lobbies (which attract Russian support) tell you, and (4) people at collateral damage distances have time to take cover from radiation and flying glass, blast winds, etc from nuclear explosions (which they don't in Ukraine and Gaza where similar blast pressures arrive more rapidly from smaller conventional explosions). There's a big problem with propaganda here.

(These calculations, showing that even if strategic bombing had worked in WWII - and the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded it failed, thus the early Cold War effort to develop and test tactical nuclear weapons and train for tactical nuclear war in Nevada field exercises - you need over 400 megaton weapons to give the equivalent of WWII city destruction in Europe and Japan, are often inverted by anti-nuclear bigots to try to obfuscate the truth. What we're driving at is that nuclear weapons give you the ability to DETER the invasions that set off such wars, regardless of whether they escalate from poison gas - as feared in the 20s and 30s thus appeasement and WWII - or nuclear. Escalation was debunked in WWII where the only use of poison gases were in "peaceful" gas chambers, not dropped on cities. Rather than justifying appeasement, the "peaceful" massacre of millions in gas chambers justified war. But evil could and should have been deterred. The "anti-war" propagandarists like Lord Noel-Baker and pals who guaranteed immediate gas knockout blows in the 30s if we didn't appease evil dictators were never held to account and properly debunked by historians after the war, so they converted from gas liars to nuclear liars in the Cold War and went on winning "peace" prices for their lies, which multiplied up over the years, to keep getting news media headlines and Nobel Peace Prizes for starting and sustaining unnecessary wars and massacres by dictators. There's also a military side to this, with Field Marshall's Lord Mountbatten, Lord Carver and War Office scientific adviser Lord Zuckerman in the Cold War arguing for UK nuclear disarmament and a re-introduction of conscription instead. These guys were not pacifist CND thugs who wanted Moscow to rule the world, but they were quoted by them attacking the deterrent, but not of course quoting them calling for conscription instead. The abolishment of UK conscription for national service announced in 1960 was due to the H-bomb, and was a political money-saving plot by Macmillan. If we disarmed our nuclear deterrent and spend the money on conscription plus underground shelters, we might well be able to resist Russia as Ukraine does, until we run out of ammunition etc. However, the cheapest and most credible deterrent is tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the concentration of aggressive force by terrorist states..)

Britain was initially in a better position with regards to civil defense than the USA, because in WWII Britain had built sufficient shelters (of various types, but all tested against blast intense enough to demolish brick houses, and later also tested them at various nuclear weapon trials in Monte Bello and Maralinga, Australia) and respirators for the entire civilian population. However, Britain also tried to keep the proof testing data secret from Russia (which tested their own shelters at their own nuclear tests anyway) and this meant it appeared that civil defense advice was unproved and would not work, an illusion exploited especially for communist propaganda in the UK via CND. To give just one example, CND and most of the UK media still rely on Duncan Campbell's pseudo-journalism book War Plan UK since it is based entirely on fake news about UK civil defense, nuclear weapons, Hiroshima, fallout, blast, etc. He takes for granted that - just because the UK Government kept the facts secret - the facts don't exist, and to him any use of nuclear weapons which spread any radioactivity whatsoever will make life totally impossible: "What matters 'freedom' or 'a way of life' in a radioactive wasteland?" (Quote from D. Campbell, War Plan UK, Paladin Books, May 1983, p387.) The problem here is the well known fallout decay rate; Trinity nuclear test ground zero was reported by Glasstone (Effects of Atomic Weapons, 1950) to be at 8,000 R/hr at 1 hour after burst, yet just 57 days later, on September 11, 1945, General Groves, Robert Oppenheimer, and a large group of journalists safely visited it and took their time inspecting the surviving tower legs, when the gamma dose rate was down to little more than 1 R/hr! So fission products decay fast: 1,000 R/hr at 1 hour decays to 100 at 7 hours, 10 at 2 days, and just 1 at 2 weeks. So the "radioactive wasteland" is just as much a myth as any other nuclear "doomsday" fictional headline in the media. Nuclear weapons effects have always been fake news in the mainstream media: editors have always regarded facts as "boring copy". Higher yield tests showed that even the ground zero crater "hot spots" were generally lower, due to dispersal by the larger mushroom cloud. If you're far downwind, you can simply walk cross-wind, or prepare an improvised shelter while the dust is blowing. But point any such errors out to fanatical bigots and they will just keep making up more nonsense.

Duncan Campbell's War Plan UK relies on the contradiction of claiming that the deliberately exaggerated UK Government worst-case civil defense "exercises" for training purposes are "realistic scenarios" (e.g. 1975 Inside Right, 1978 Scrum Half, 1980 Square Leg, 1982 Hard Rock planning), while simultaneously claiming the very opposite about reliable UK Government nuclear effects and sheltering effectiveness data, and hoping nobody would spot his contradictory tactics. He quotes extensively from these lurid worst-case scenario UK civil defense exercises ,as if they are factually defensible rather than imaginary fiction to put planners under the maximum possible stress (standard UK military policy of “Train hard to fight easy”), while ignoring the far more likely limited nuclear uses scenario of Sir John Hackett's Third World War. His real worry is the 1977 UK Government Training Manual for Scientific Advisers which War Plan UK quotes on p14: "a potential threat to the security of the United Kingdom arising from acts of sabotage by enemy agents, possibly assisted by dissident groups. ... Their aim would be to weaken the national will and ability to fight. ... Their significance should not be underestimated." On the next page, War Plan UK quotes J. B. S. Haldane's 1938 book Air Raid Precautions (ARP) on the terrible destruction Haldane witnessed on unprotected people in the Spanish civil war, without even mentioning that Haldane's point is pro-civil defense, pro-shelters, and anti-appeasement of dictatorship, the exact opposite of War Plan UK which wants Russia to run the world. On page 124 War Plan UK the false assertion is made that USA nuclear casualty data is "widely accepted" and true (declassified Hiroshima casaulty data for people in modern concrete buildings proves it to be lies) while the correct UK nuclear casualty data is "inaccurate", and on page 126, Duncan Campbell simply lies that the UK Government's Domestic Nuclear Shelters- Technical Guidance "ended up offering the public a selection of shelters half of which were invented in the Blitz ... None of the designs was ever tested." In fact, Frank Pavry (who studied similar shelters surviving near ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 with the British Mission to Japan_ and George R. Stanbury tested 15 Anderson shelters at the first UK nuclear explosion, Operation Hurricane in 1952, together with concrete structures, and many other improvised trench and earth-covered shelters were nuclear tested by USA and UK at trials in 1955, 1956, 1957, and 1958, and later at simulated nuclear explosions by Cresson Kearny of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA, having also earlier been exposed to early Russian nuclear tests (scroll down to see the evidence of this). Improved versions of war tested and nuclear weapons tested shelters! So war Plan UK makes no effort whatsoever to dig up the facts, and instead falsely claims the exact opposite of the plain unvarnished truth! War Plan UK shows its hypocrisy on page 383 in enthusiastically praising Russian civil defense:

"Training in elementary civil defence is given to everyone, at school, in industry or collective farms. A basic handbook of precautionary measures, Everybody must know this!, is the Russian Protect and Survive. The national civil defence corps is extensive, and is organized along military lines. Over 200,000 civil defence troops would be mobilized for rescue work in war. There are said to be extensive, dispersed and 'untouchable' food stockpiles; industrial workers are issued with kits of personal protection apparatus, said to include nerve gas counteragents such as atropine. Fallout and blast shelters are provided in the cities and in industrial complexes, and new buildings have been required to have shelters since the 1950s. ... They suggest that less than 10% - even as little as 5% - of the Soviet population would die in a major attack. [Less than Russia's loss of 12% of its population in WWII.]"

'LLNL achieved fusion ignition for the first time on Dec. 5, 2022. The second time came on July 30, 2023, when in a controlled fusion experiment, the NIF laser delivered 2.05 MJ of energy to the target, resulting in 3.88 MJ of fusion energy output, the highest yield achieved to date. On Oct. 8, 2023, the NIF laser achieved fusion ignition for the third time with 1.9 MJ of laser energy resulting in 2.4 MJ of fusion energy yield. “We’re on a steep performance curve,” said Jean-Michel Di Nicola, co-program director for the NIF and Photon Science’s Laser Science and Systems Engineering organization. “Increasing laser energy can give us more margin against issues like imperfections in the fuel capsule or asymmetry in the fuel hot spot. Higher laser energy can help achieve a more stable implosion, resulting in higher yields.” ... “The laser itself is capable of higher energy without fundamental changes to the laser,” said NIF operations manager Bruno Van Wonterghem. “It’s all about the control of the damage. Too much energy without proper protection, and your optics blow to pieces.” ' - https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/llnls-nif-delivers-record-laser-energy

NOTE: the "problem" very large lasers "required" to deliver ~2MJ (roughly 0.5 kg of TNT energy) to cause larger fusion explosions of 2mm diameter capsules of frozen D+T inside a 1 cm diameter energy reflecting hohlraum, and the "problem" of damage to the equipment caused by the explosions, is immaterial to clean nuclear deterrent development based on this technology, because in a clean nuclear weapon, whatever laser or other power ignition system is used only has to be fired once, so it needs to be less robust than the NIF lasers which are used repeatedly. Similarly, damage done to the system by the explosion is also immaterial for a clean nuclear weapon, in which the weapon is detonated once only! This is exactly the same point which finally occurred during a critical review of the first gun-type assembly nuclear weapon, in which the fact it would only ever be fired once (unlike a field artillery gun) enabled huge reductions in the size of the device, into a practical weapon, as described by General Leslie M. Groves on p163 of his 1962 book Now it can be told: the story of the Manhattan Project:

"Out of the Review Committee's work came one important technical contribution when Rose pointed out ... that the durability of the gun was quite immaterial to success, since it would be destroyed in the explosion anyway. Self-evident as this seemed once it was mentioned, it had not previously occurred to us. Now we could make drastic reductions in ... weight and size."

This principle also applies to weaponizing NIF clean fusion explosion technology. General Groves' book was reprinted in 1982 with a useful Introduction by Edward Teller on the nature of nuclear weapons history: "History in some ways resembles the relativity principle in science. What is observed depends on the observer. Only when the perspective of the observer is known, can proper corrections be made. ... The general ... very often managed to ignore complexity and arrive at a result which, if not ideal, at least worked. ... For Groves, the Manhattan project seemed a minor assignment, less significant than the construction of the Pentagon. He was deeply disappointed at being given the job of supervising the development of an atomic weapon, since it deprived him of combat duty. ... We must find ways to encourage mutual understanding and significant collaboration between those who defend their nation with their lives and those who can contribute the ideas to make that defense successful. Only by such cooperation can we hope that freedom will survive, that peace will be preserved."

General Groves similarly comments in Chapter 31, "A Final Word" of Now it can be told:

"No man can say what would have been the result if we had not taken the steps ... Yet, one thing seems certain - atomic energy would have been developed somewhere in the world ... I do not believe the United States ever would have undertaken it in time of peace. Most probably, the first developer would have been a power-hungry nation, which would then have dominated the world completely ... it is fortunate indeed for humanity that the initiative in this field was gained and kept by the United States. That we were successful was due entirely to the hard work and dedication of the more than 600,000 Americans who comprised and directly supported the Manhattan Project. ... we had the full backing of our government, combined with the nearly infinite potential of American science, engineering and industry, and an almost unlimited supply of people endowed with ingenuity and determination."

Update: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, NIF, using ultraviolet wavelength laser beam pulses of 2MJ on to a 2mm diameter spherical beryllium shell of frozen D+T inside a 1 cm-long hollow gold cylinder "hohlraum" (which is heated to a temperature where it then re-radiates energy at much higher frequency, x-rays, on to the surface of the beryllium ablator of the central fusion capsule, which ablates causing it to recoil inward (as for the 1962 Ripple II nuclear weapon's secondary stage, the capsule is compressed efficiently, mimicking the isentropic compression mechanism of a miniature Ripple II clean nuclear weapon secondary stage), has now repeatedly achieved nuclear fusion explosions of over 3MJ, equivalent to nearly 1 kg of TNT explosive. According to a Time article (linked her) about fusion system designer Annie Kritcher, the recent breakthrough was in part due to using a ramping input energy waveform: "success that came thanks to tweaks including shifting more of the input energy to the later part of the laser shot", a feature that minimises the rise in entropy due to shock shock wave generation (which heats the capsule, causing it to expand and resist compression) and increases isentropic compression which was the principle used by LLNL's J. H. Nuckolls to achieve the 99.9% clean Ripple II 9.96 megaton nuclear test success in Dominic-Housatonic on 30 October 1962. Nuckolls in 1972 published the equation for the idealized input power waveform required for isentropic, optimized compression of fusion fuel (Nature, v239, p139): P ~ (1 - t)-1.875, where t is time in units of the transit time (the time taken for the shock to travel to the centre of the fusion capsule), and -1.875 a constant based on the specific heat of the ionized fuel (Nuckolls has provided the basic declassified principles, see extract linked here). To be clear, the energy reliably released by the 2mm diameter capsule of fusion fuel was roughly a 1 kg TNT explosion. 80% of this is in the form of 14.1 MeV neutrons (ideal for fissioning lithium-7 in LiD to yield more tritium), and 20% is the kinetic energy of fused nuclei (which is quickly converted into x-rays radiation energy by collisions). Nuckolls' 9.96 megaton Housatonic (10 kt Kinglet primary and 9.95 Mt Ripple II 100% clean isentropically compressed secondary) of 1962 proved that it is possible to use multiplicative staging whereby lower yield primary nuclear explosions trigger off a fusion stage 1,000 times more powerful than its initiator. Another key factor, as shown on our ggraph linked here, is that you can use cheap natural LiD as fuel once you have a successful D+T reaction, because naturally abundant, cheap Li-7 more readily fissions to yield tritium with the 14.1 MeV neutrons from D+T fusion, than expensively enriched Li-6, which is needed to make tritium in nuclear reactors where the fission neutron energy of around 1 MeV is too low to to fission Li-7. It should also be noted that despite an openly published paper about Nuckolls' Ripple II success being stymied in 2021 by Jon Grams, the subject is still being covered up/ignored by the anti-nuclear biased Western media! Grams article fails to contain the design details such as the isentropic power delivery curve etc from Nuckolls' declassified articles that we include in the latest blog post here. One problem regarding "data" causing continuing confusion about the Dominic-Housatonic 30 October 1962 Ripple II test at Christmas Island, is made clear in the DASA-1211 report's declassified summary of the sizes, weights and yields of those tests: Housatonic was Nuckolls' fourth and final isentropic test, with the nuclear system inserted into a heavy steel Mk36 drop case, making the overall size 57.2 inches in diameter, 147.9 long and 7,139.55 lb mass, i.e. 1.4 kt/lb or 3.0 kt/kg yield-to-mass ratio for 9.96 Mt yield, which is not impressive for that yield range until you consider (a) that it was 99.9% fusion and (b) the isentropic design required a heavy holhraum around the large Ripple II fusion secondary stage to confine x-rays for relatively long time during which a slowly rising pulse of x-rays were delivered from the primary to secondary via a very large areas of foam elsewhere in the weapon, to produce isentropic compression.

Additionally, the test was made in a hurry before an atmospheric teat ban treaty, and this rushed use of a standard air drop steel casing made the tested weapon much heavier than a properly weaponized Ripple II. The key point is that a 10 kt fission device set off a ~10 Mt fusion explosion, a very clean deterrent. Applying this Ripple II 1,000-factor multiplicative staging figure directly to this technology for clean nuclear warheads, a 0.5 kg TNT D+T fusion capsule would set off a 0.5 ton TNT 2nd stage of LiD, which would then set off a 0.5 kt 3rd stage "neutron bomb", which could then be used to set off a 500 kt 4th stage or "strategic nuclear weapon". In practice, this multiplication factor of 1,000 given by Ripple II in 1962 from 10 kt to 10 Mt may not be immediately achievable to get from ~1 kg TNT yield to 1 ton TNT, so a few more tiny stages may be needed for the lower yield. But there is every reason to forecast that with enough research, improvements will be possible and the device will become a reality. It is therefore now possible not just in "theory" or in principle, but with evidence obtained from practical experimentation, using suitable already-proved technical staging systems used in 1960s nuclear weapon tests successfully, to design 100% clean fusion nuclear warheads! Yes, the details have been worked out, yes the technology has been tested in piecemeal fashion. All that is now needed is a new, but quicker and cheaper, Star Wars program or Manhattan Project style effort to pull the components together. This will constitute a major leap forward in the credibility of the deterrence of aggressors.

ABOVE: as predicted, the higher the input laser pulse for the D+T initiator of a clean multiplicatively-staged nuclear deterrent, the lower the effect of plasma instabilities and asymmetries and the greater the fusion burn. To get ignition (where the x-ray energy injected into the fusion hohlraum by the laser is less than the energy released in the D+T fusion burn) they have had to use about 2 MJ delivered in 10 ns or so, equivalent to 0.5 kg of TNT equivalent. But for deterrent use, why use such expensive, delicate lasers? Why not just use one-shot miniaturised x-ray tubes with megavolt electron acceleration, powered a suitably ramped pulse from a chemical explosion for magnetic flux compression current generation? At 10% efficiency, you need 0.5 x 10 = 5 kg of TNT! Even at 1% efficiency, 50 kg of TNT will do. Once the D+T gas capsule's hohlraum is well over 1 cm in size, to minimise the risk of imperfections that cause asymmetries, you don't any longer need focussed laser beams to enter tiny apertures. You might even be able to integrate many miniature flash x-ray tubes (each designed to burn out when firing one pulse of a MJ or so) into a special hohlraum. Humanity urgently needs a technological arms race akin to Reagan's Star Wars project, to deter the dictators from invasions and WWIII. In the conference video above, a question was asked about the real efficiency of the enormous repeat-pulse capable laser system's efficiency (not required for a nuclear weapon whose components only require the capability to be used once, unlike lab equipment): the answer is that 300 MJ was required by the lab lasers to fire a 2 MJ pulse into the D+T capsule's x-ray hohlraum, i.e. their lasers are only 0.7% efficient! So why bother? We know - from the practical use of incoherent fission primary stage x-rays to compress and ignite fusion capsules in nuclear weapons - that you simply don't need coherent photons from a laser for this purpose. The sole reason they are approaching the problem with lasers is that they began their lab experiments decades ago with microscopic sized fusion capsules and for those you need a tightly focussed beam to insert energy through a tiny hohlraum aperture. But now they are finally achieving success with much larger fusion capsules (to minimise instabilities that caused the early failures), it may be time to change direction. A whole array of false "no-go theorems" can and will be raised by ignorant charlatan "authorities" against any innovation; this is the nature of the political world. There is some interesting discussion of why clean bombs aren't in existence today, basically the idealized theory (which works fine for big H-bombs but ignores small-scale asymmetry problems which are important only at low ignition energy) understimated the input energy required for fusion ignition by a factor of 2000:

The early calculations on ICF (inertial-confinement fusion) by John Nuckolls in 1972 had estimated that ICF might be achieved with a driver energy as low as 1 kJ. ... In order to provide reliable experimental data on the minimum energy required for ignition, a series of secret experiments—known as Halite at Livermore and Centurion at Los Alamos—was carried out at the nuclear weapons test site in Nevada between 1978 and 1988. The experiments used small underground nuclear explosions to provide X-rays of sufficiently high intensity to implode ICF capsules, simulating the manner in which they would be compressed in a hohlraum. ... the Halite/Centurion results predicted values for the required laser energy in the range 20 to 100MJ—higher than the predictions ..." - Garry McCracken and Peter Stott, Fusion, Elsevier, 2nd ed., p149.

In the final diagram above, we illustrate an example of what could very well occur in the near future, just to really poke a stick into the wheels of "orthodoxy" in nuclear weapons design: is it possible to just use a lot of (perhaps hardened for higher currents, perhaps no) pulsed current driven microwave tubes from kitchen microwave ovens, channelling their energy using waveguides (simply metal tubes, i.e. electrical Faraday cages, which reflect and thus contain microwaves) into the hohlraum, and make the pusher of dipole molecules (like common salt, NaCl) which is a good absorber of microwaves (as everybody knows from cooking in microwave ovens)? It would be extremely dangerous, not to mention embarrassing, if this worked, but nobody had done any detailed research into the possibility due to groupthink orthodoxy and conventional boxed in thinking! Remember, the D+T capsule just needs extreme compression and this can be done by any means that works. Microwave technology is now very well-established. It's no good trying to keep anything of this sort "secret" (either officially or unofficially) since as history shows, dictatorships are the places where "crackpot"-sounding ideas (such as douple-primary Project "49" Russian thermonuclear weapon designs, Russian Sputnik satellites, Russian Novichok nerve agent, Nazi V1 cruise missiles, Nazi V2 IRBM's, etc.) can be given priority by loony dictators. We have to avoid, as Edward Teller put it (in his secret commentary debunking Bethe's false history of the H-bomb, written AFTER the Teller-Ulam breakthrough), "too-narrow" thinking (which Teller said was still in force on H-bomb design even then). Fashionable hardened orthodoxy is the soft underbelly of "democracy" (a dictatorship by the majority, which is always too focussed on fashionable ideas and dismissive of alternative approaches in science and technology). Dictatorships (minorities against majorities) have repeatedly demonstrated a lack of concern for the fake "no-go theorems" used by Western anti-nuclear "authorities" to ban anything but fashionable groupthink science.

ABOVE: 1944-dated film of the Head of the British Mission to Los Alamos, neutron discoverer James Chadwick, explaining in detail to American how hard it was for him to discover the neutron, taking 10 years on a shoe-string budget, mostly due to having insufficiently strong sources of alpha particles to bombard nuclei in a cloud chamber! The idea of the neutron came from his colleague Rutherford. Chadwick reads his explanation while rapidly rotating a pencil in his right hand, perhaps indicating the stress he was under in 1944. In 1946, when British participation at Los Alamos ended, Chadwick wrote the first detailed secret British report on the design of a three-stage hydrogen bomb, another project that took over a decade. In the diagram below, it appears that the American Mk17 only had a single secondary stage like the similar yield 1952 Mike design. The point here is that popular misunderstanding of the simple mechanism of x-ray energy transfer for higher yield weapons may be creating a dogmatic attitude even in secret nuclear weaponeer design labs, where orthodoxy is followed too rigorously. The Russians (see quotes on the latest blog post here) state they used two entire two-stage thermonuclear weapons with a combined yield of 1 megaton to set off their 50 megaton test in 1961. If true, you can indeed use two-stage hydrogen bombs as an "effective primary" to set off another secondary stage, of much higher yield. Can this be reversed in the sense of scaling it down so you have several bombs-within-bombs, all triggered by a really tiny first stage? In other words, can it be applied to neutron bomb design?

ABOVE: 16 kt at 600m altitude nuclear explosion on a city, Hiroshima ground zero (in foreground) showing modern concrete buildings surviving nearby (unlike the wooden ones that mostly burned at the peak of the firestorm 2-3 hours after survivors had evacuated), in which people were shielded from most of the radiation and blast winds, as they were in simple shelters.

The 1946 Report of the British Mission to Japan, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, compiled by a team of 16 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during November 1945, which included 10 UK Home Office civil defence experts (W. N. Thomas, J. Bronowski, D. C. Burn, J. B. Hawker, H. Elder, P. A. Badland, R. W. Bevan, F. H. Pavry, F. Walley, O. C. Young, S. Parthasarathy, A. D. Evans, O. M. Solandt, A. E. Dark, R. G. Whitehead and F. G. S. Mitchell) found: "Para. 26. Reinforced concrete buildings of very heavy construction in Hiroshima, even when within 200 yards of the centre of damage, remained structurally undamaged. ... Para 28. These observations make it plain that reinforced concrete framed buildings can resist a bomb of the same power detonated at these heights, without employing fantastic thicknesses of concrete. ... Para 40. The provision of air raid shelters throughout Japan was much below European standards. ... in Hiroshima ... they were semi-sunk, about 20 feet long, had wooden frames, and 1.5-2 feet of earth cover. ... Exploding so high above them, the bomb damaged none of these shelters. ... Para 42. These observations show that the standard British shelters would have performed well against a bomb of the same power exploded at such a height. Anderson shelters, properly erected and covered, would have given protection. Brick or concrete surfac shelters with adequate reinforcement would have remained safe from collapse. The Morrison shelter is designed only to protect its occupants from the refuge load of a house, and this it would have done. Deep shelters such as the refuge provided by the London Underground would have given complete protection. ... Para 60. Buildings and walls gave complete protection from flashburn."

Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons in Table 12.21 on p547 flunks making this point by giving data without citing its source to make it credible to readers: it correlated 14% mortality (106 killed out of 775 people in Hiroshima's Telegraph Office) to "moderate damage" at 500m in Hiroshima (the uncited "secret" source was NP-3041, Table 12, applying to unwarned people inside modern concrete buildings).

"A weapon whose basic design would seem to provide the essence of what Western morality has long sought for waging classical battlefield warfare - to keep the war to a struggle between the warriors and exclude the non-combatants and their physical assets - has been violently denounced, precisely because it achieves this objective." - Samuel T. Cohen (quoted in Chapman Pincher, The secret offensive, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1985, Chapter 15: The Neutron Bomb Offensive, p210).

The reality is, dedicated enhanced neutron tactical nuclear weapons were used to credibly deter the concentrations of force required for triggering of WWIII during the 1st Cold War, and the thugs who support Russian propaganda for Western disarmament got rid of them on our side, but not on the Russian side. Air burst neutron bombs or even as subsurface earth penetrators of relatively low fission yield (where the soil converts energy that would otherwise escape as blast and radiation into ground shock for destroying buried tunnels - new research on cratering shows that a 20 kt subsurface burst creates similar effects on buried hard targets as a 1 Mt surface burst), they cause none of the vast collateral damage to civilians that we see now in Ukraine and Gaza, or that we saw in WWII and the wars in Korea and Vietnam. This is 100% contrary to CND propaganda which is a mixture of lying on nuclear explosion collateral damage, escalation/knockout blow propaganda (of the type used to start WWII by appeasers) and lying on the designs of nuclear weapons in order to ensure the Western side (but not the thugs) gets only incredible "strategic deterrence" that can't deter the invasions that start world wars (e.g. Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939.) "Our country entered into an agreement in Budapest, Hungary when the Soviet Union was breaking up that we would guarantee the independence of Ukraine." - Tom Ramos. There really is phoney nuclear groupthink left agenda politics at work here: credible relatively clean tactical nuclear weapons are banned in the West but stocked by Russia, which has civil defense shelters to make its threats far more credible than ours! We need low-collateral damage enhanced-neutron and earth-penetrator options for the new Western W93 warhead, or we remain vulnerable to aggressive coercion by thugs, and invite invasions. Ambiguity, the current policy ("justifying" secrecy on just what we would do in any scenario) actually encourages experimental provocations by enemies to test what we are prepared to do (if anything), just as it did in 1914 and the 1930s.

ABOVE: 0.2 kt (tactical yield range) Ruth nuclear test debris, with lower 200 feet of the 300 ft steel tower surviving in Nevada, 1953. Note that the yield of the tactical invasion-deterrent Mk54 Davy Crockett was only 0.02 kt, 10 times less than than 0.2 kt Ruth.

It should be noted that cheap and naive "alternatives" to credible deterrence of war were tried in the 1930s and during the Cold War and afterwards, with disastrous consequences. Heavy "peaceful" oil sanctions and other embargoes against Japan for its invasion of China between 1931-7 resulted in the plan for the Pearl Harbor surprise attack of 7 December 1941, with subsequent escalation to incendiary city bombing followed nuclear warfare against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Attlee's pressure on Truman to guarantee no use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Korean War (leaked straight to Stalin by the Cambridge Spy Ring), led to an escalation of that war causing the total devastation of the cities of that country by conventional bombing (a sight witnessed by Sam Cohen, that motivated his neutron bomb deterrent of invasions), until Eisenhower was elected and reversed Truman's decision, leading not to the "escalatory Armageddon" assertions of Attlee, but to instead to a peaceful armistice! Similarly, as Tom Ramos argues in From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War, Kennedy's advisers who convinced him to go ahead with the moonlit 17 April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba without any USAF air support, which led to precisely what they claimed they would avoid: an escalation of aggression from Russia in Berlin, with the Berlin Wall going up on 17 August 1961 because any showing weakness to an enemy, as in the bungled invasion of Cuba, is always a green light to dictators to go ahead with revolutions, invasions and provocations everywhere else. Rather than the widely hyped autistic claims from disarmers and appeasers about "weakness bringing peace by demonstrating to the enemy that they have nothing to fear from you", the opposite result always occurs. The paranoid dictator seizes the opportunity to strike first. Similarly, withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021 was a clear green light to Russia to go ahead with a full scale invasion of Ukraine, reigniting the Cold War. von Neumann and Morgenstein's Minimax theorem for winning games - minimise the maximum possible loss - fails with offensive action in war because it sends a signal of weakness to the enemy, which does not treat war as a game with rules to be obeyed. Minimax is only valid for defense, such as civil defense shelters used by Russia to make their threats more credible than ours. The sad truth is that cheap fixes don't work, no matter how much propaganda is behind them. You either need to militarily defeat the enemy or at least economically defeat them using proven Cold War arms race techniques (not merely ineffective sanctions, which they can bypass by making alliances with Iran, North Korea, and China). Otherwise, you are negotiating peace from a position of weakness, which is called appeasement, or collaboration with terrorism.

"Following the war, the Navy Department was intent to see the effects of an atomic blast on naval warships ... the press was invited to witness this one [Crossroads-Able, 23.5 kt at 520 feet altitude, 1 July 1946, Bikini Atoll]. ... The buildup had been too extravagant. Goats that had been tethered on warship decks were still munching their feed, and the atoll's palm trees remained standing, unscathed. The Bikini test changed public attitudes. Before July 1, the world stood in awe of a weapon that had devastated two cities and forced the Japanese Empire to surrender. After that date, the bomb was still a terrible weapon, but a limited one." - Tom Ramos (LLNL nuclear weaponeer and nuclear pumped X-ray laser developer), From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Prevent Nuclear War, Naval Institute Press, 2022, pp43-4.

ABOVE: 16 February 1950 Daily Express editorial on H Bomb problem due to the fact that the UN is another virtue signalling but really war mongering League of Nations (which oversaw Nazi appeasement and the outbreak of WWII); however Fuchs had attended the April 1946 Super Conference during which the Russian version of the H-bomb involving isentropic radiation implosion of a separate low-density fusion stage (unlike Teller's later dense metal ablation rocket implosion secondary TX14 Alarm Clock and Sausage designs) were discussed and then given to Russia. The media was made aware only that Fuchs hade given the fission bomb to Russia. The FBI later visited Fuchs in British jail, showed him a film of Harry Gold (whom Fuchs identified as his contact while at Los Alamos) and also gave Fuchs a long list of secret reports to mark off individually so that they knew precisely what Stalin had been given. Truman didn't order H-bomb research and development because Fuchs gave Stalin the A-bomb, but because he gave them the H-bomb. The details of the Russian H-bomb are still being covered up by those who want a repetition of 1930s appeasement, or indeed the deliberate ambiguity of the UK Cabinet in 1914 which made it unclear what the UK would do if Germany invaded Belgium, allowing the enemy to exploit that ambiguity, starting a world war. The key fact usually covered up (Richard Rhodes, Chuck Hansen, and the whole American "expert nuclear arms community" all misleadingly claim that Teller's Sausage H-bomb design with a single primary and a dense ablator around a cylindrical secondary stage - uranium, lead or tungsten - is the "hydrogen bomb design") here is that two attendees of the April 1946 Super Conference, the report author Egon Bretscher and the radiation implosion discoverer Klaus Fuchs - were British, and both contributed key H-bomb design principles to the Russian and British weapons (discarded for years by America). Egon Bretscher for example wrote up the Super Conference report, during which attendees suggested various ways to try to achieve isentropic compression of low-density fusion fuel (a concept discarded by Teller's 1951 Sausage design, but used by Russia and re-developed in America on Nuckolls 1962 Ripple tests), and after Teller left Los Alamos, Bretscher took over work on Teller's Alarm Clock layered fission-fusion spherical hybrid device before Bretscher himself left Los Alamos and became head of nuclear physics at Harwell, UK,, submitting UK report together with Fuchs (head of theoretical physics at Harwell) which led to Sir James Chadwick's UK paper on a three-stage thermonuclear Super bomb which formed the basis of Penney's work at the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. While Bretscher had worked on Teller's hybrid Alarm Clock (which originated two months after Fuchs left Los Alamos), Fuchs co-authored a hydrogen bomb patent with John von Neumann, in which radiation implosion and ionization implosion was used. Between them, Bretscher and Fuchs had all the key ingredients. Fuchs leaked them to Russia and the problem persists today in international relations.

ILLUSTRATION: the threat of WWII and the need to deter it was massively derided by popular pacifism which tended to make "jokes" of the Nazi threat until too late (example of 1938 UK fiction on this above; Charlie Chaplin's film "The Great Dictator" is another example), so three years after the Nuremberg Laws and five years after illegal rearmament was begun by the Nazis, in the UK crowds of "pacifists" in Downing Street, London, support friendship with the top racist, dictatorial Nazis in the name of "world peace". The Prime Minister used underhand techniques to try to undermine appeasement critics like Churchill and also later to get W. E. Johns fired from both editorships of Flying (weekly) and Popular Flying (monthly) to make it appear everybody "in the know" agreed with his actions, hence the contrived "popular support" for collaborating with terrorists depicted in these photos. The same thing persists today; the 1920s and 1930s "pacifist" was also driven by "escalation" and "annihilation" claims explosions, fire and WMD poison gas will kill everybody in a "knockout blow", immediately any war breaks out.

Update (4 January 2024): on the important world crisis, https://vixra.org/abs/2312.0155 gives a detailed review of "Britain and the H-bomb" (linked here), and why the "nuclear deterrence issue" isn't about "whether we should deter evil", but precisely what design of nuclear warhead we should have in order to do that cheaply, credibly, safely, and efficiently without guaranteeing either escalation or the failure of deterrence. When we disarmed our chemical and biological weapons, it was claimed that the West could easily deter those weapons using strategic nuclear weapons to bomb Moscow (which has shelters, unlike us). That failed when Putin used sarin and chlorine to prop up Assad in Syria, and Novichok in the UK to kill Dawn Sturgess in 2018. So it's just not a credible deterrent to say you will bomb Moscow if Putin invades Europe or uses his 2000 tactical nuclear weapons. An even more advanced deterrent, the 100% clean very low yield (or any yield) multiplicative staged design without any fissile material whatsoever, just around the corner. Clean secondary stages have been proof-tested successfully for example in the 100% clean Los Alamos Redwing Navajo secondary, and the 100% clean Ripple II secondary tested 30 October 1962, and the laser ignition of very tiny fusion capsules to yield more energy than supplied has been done on 5 December 2022 when a NIF test delivered 2.05 MJ (the energy of about 0.5 kg of TNT) to a fusion capsule which yielded 3.15 MJ, so all that is needed is to combine both ideas in a system whereby suitably sized second stages - ignited in the first place by a capacitative charged circuit sending a pulse of energy to a suitable laser system (the schematic shown is just a sketch of principle - more than one laser would possibly be required for reliability of fusion ignition) acting on tiny fusion capsule as shown - are encased to two-stage "effective primaries" which each become effective primaries of bigger systems, thus a geometric series of multiplicative staging until the desired yield is reached. Note that the actual tiny first T+D capsule can be compressed by one-shot lasers - compact lasers used way beyond their traditional upper power limit and burned out in a firing a single pulse - in the same way the gun assembly of the Hiroshima bomb was based on a one-shot gun. In other words, forget all about textbook gun design. The Hiroshima bomb gun assembly system only had to be fired once, unlike a field artillery piece which has to be ready to be fired many thousands of times (before metal fatigue/cracks set in). Thus, by analogy, the lasers - which can be powered by ramping current pulses from magnetic flux compressor systems - for use in a clean bomb will be much smaller and lighter than current lab gear which is designed to be used thousands of times in repeated experiments. The diagram below shows cylindrical Li6D stages throughout for a compact bomb shape, but spherical stages can be used, and once a few stages get fired, the flux of 14 MeV neutrons is sufficient to go to cheap natural LiD. To fit it into a MIRV warhead, the low density of LiD constrains such a clean warhead will have a low nuclear yield, which means a tactical neutron deterrent of the invasions that cause big wars; a conversion of incredible strategic deterrence into a more credible combined strategic-tactical deterrent of major provocations, not just direct attacks. It should also be noted that in 1944 von Neumann suggested that T + D inside the core of the fission weapon would be compressed by "ionization compression" during fission (where a higher density ionized plasma compresses a lower density ionized plasma, i.e. the D + T plasma), an idea that was - years later - named the Internal Booster principle by Teller; see Frank Close, "Trinity", Allen Lane, London, 2019, pp158-159 where Close argues that during the April 1946 Superbomb Conference, Fuchs extended von Neumann's 1944 internal fusion boosting idea to an external D + T filled BeO walled capsule:

"Fuchs reasoned that [the very low energy, 1-10 kev, approximately 10-100 lower energy than medical] x-rays from the [physically separated] uranium explosion would reach the tamper of beryllium oxide, heat it, ionize the constituents and cause them to implode - the 'ionization implosion' concept of von Neumann but now applied to deuterium and tritium contained within beryllium oxide. To keep the radiation inside the tamper, Fuchs proposed to enclose the device inside a casing impervious to radiation. The implosion induced by the radiation would amplify the compression ... and increase the chance of the fusion bomb igniting. The key here is 'separation of the atomic charge and thermonuclear fuel, and compression of the latter by radiation travelling from the former', which constitutes 'radiation implosion'." (This distinction between von Neumann's "ionization implosion" INSIDE the tamper, of denser tamper expanding and thus compressing lower density fusion fuel inside, and Fuchs' OUTSIDE capsule "radiation implosion", is key even today for isentropic H-bomb design; it seems Teller's key breakthroughs were not separate stages or implosion but rather radiation mirrors and ablative recoil shock compression, where radiation is used to ablate a dense pusher of Sausage designs like Mike in 1952 etc., a distinction not to be confused for the 1944 von Neumann and 1946 Fuchs implosion mechanisms!

It appears Russian H-bombs used von Neumann's "ionization implosion" and Fuchs's "radiation implosion" for RDS-37 on 22 November 1955 and also in their double-primary 23 February 1958 test and subsequently, where their fusion capsules reportedly contained a BeO or other low-density outer coating, which would lead to quasi-isentropic compression, more effective for low density secondary stages than purely ablative recoil shock compression. This accounts for the continuing classification of the April 1946 Superbomb Conference (the extract of 32 pages linked here is so severely redacted that it is less helpful than the brief but very lucid summary of its technical content, in the declassified FBI compilation of reports concerning data Klaus Fuchs sent to Stalin, linked here!). Teller had all the knowledge he needed in 1946, but didn't go ahead because he made the stupid error of killing progress off by his own "no-go theorem" against compression of fusion fuel. Teller did a "theoretical" calculation in which he claimed that compression has no effect on the amount of fusion burn because the compressed system is simply scaled down in size so that the same efficiency of fusion burn occurs, albeit faster, and then stops as the fuel thermally expands. This was wrong. Teller discusses the reason for his great error in technical detail during his tape-recorded interview by Chuck Hansen at Los Alamos on 7 June 1993 (C. Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, 2nd ed., pp. II-176-7):

"Now every one of these [fusion] processes varied with the square of density. If you compress the thing, then in one unit's volume, each of the 3 important processes increased by the same factor ... Therefore, compression (seemed to be) useless. Now when ... it seemed clear that we were in trouble, then I wanted very badly to find a way out. And it occurred to be than an unprecedentedly strong compression will just not allow much energy to go into radiation. Therefore, something had to be wrong with my argument and then, you know, within minutes, I knew what must be wrong ... [energy] emission occurs when an electron and a nucleus collide. Absorption does not occur when a light quantum and a nucleus ... or ... electron collide; it occurs when a light quantum finds an electron and a nucleus together ... it does not go with the square of the density, it goes with the cube of the density." (This very costly theoretical error, wasting five years 1946-51, could have been resolved by experimental nuclear testing. There is always a risk of this in theoretical physics, which is why experiments are done to check calculations before prizes are handed out. The ban on nuclear testing is a luddite opposition to technological progress in improving deterrence.)

(This 1946-51 theoretical "no-go theorem" anti-compression error of Teller's, which was contrary to the suggestion of compression at the April 1946 superbomb conference as Teller himself refers to on 14 August 1952, and which was corrected only by comparison of the facts about compression validity in pure fission cores in Feb '51 after Ulam's argument that month for fission core compression by lens focussed primary stage shock waves, did not merely lead to Teller's dismissal of vital compression ideas. It also led to his false equations - exaggerating the cooling effect of radiation emission - causing underestimates of fusion efficiency in all theoretical calculations done of fusion until 1951! For this reason, Teller later repudiated the calculations that allegedly showed his Superbomb would fizzle; he argued that if it had been tested in 1946, the detailed data obtained - regardless of whatever happened - would have at least tested the theory which would have led to rapid progress, because the theory was wrong. The entire basis of the cooling of fusion fuel by radiation leaking out was massively exaggerated until Lawrence Livermore weaponeer John Nuckolls showed that there is a very simple solution: use baffle re-radiated, softened x-rays for isentropic compression of low-density fusion fuel, e.g. very cold 0.3 kev x-rays rather than the usual 1-10 kev cold-warm x-rays emitted directly from the fission primary. Since the radiation losses are proportional to the fourth-power of the x-ray energy or temperature, losses are virtually eliminated, allowing very efficient staging as for Nuckolls' 99.9% 10 Mt clean Ripple II, detonated on 30 October 1962 at Christmas Island. Teller's classical Superbomb was actually analyzed by John C. Solem in a 15 December 1978 report, A modern analysis of Classical Super, LA-07615, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by mainstream historian Alex Wellerstein, FOIA 17-00131-H, 12 June 2017; according to a list of FOIA requests at https://www.governmentattic.org/46docs/NNSAfoiaLogs_2016-2020.pdf. However, a google search for the documents Dr Wellerstein requested shows only a few at the US Gov DOE Opennet OSTI database or otherwise online yet e.g. LA-643 by Teller, On the development of Thermonuclear Bombs dated 16 Feb. 1950. The page linked here stating that report was "never classified" is mistaken! One oddity about Teller's anti-compression "no-go theorem" is that the even if fusion rates were independent of density, you would still want compression of fissile material in a secondary stage such as a radiation imploded Alarm Clock, because the whole basis of implosion fission bombs is the benefit of compression; another issue is that even if fusion rates are unaffected by density, inward compression would still help to delay the expansion of the fusion system which leads to cooling and quenching of the fusion burn.)

ABOVE: the FBI file on Klaus Fuchs contains a brief summary of the secret April 1946 Super Conference at Los Alamos which Fuchs attended, noting that compression of fusion fuel was discussed by Lansdorf during the morning session on 19 April, attended by Fuchs, and that: "Suggestions were made by various people in attendance as to the manner of minimizing the rise in entropy during compression." This fact is vitally interesting, since it proves that an effort was being made then to secure isentropic compression of low-density fusion fuel in April 1946, sixteen years before John H. Nuckolls tested the isentropically compressed Ripple II device on 30 October 1962, giving a 99.9% clean 10 megaton real H-bomb! So the Russians were given a massive head start on this isentropic compression of low-density fusion fuel for hydrogen bombs, used (according to Trutnev) in both the single primary tests like RDS-37 in November 1955 and also in the double-primary designs which were 2.5 times more efficient on a yield-to-mass basis, tested first on 23 February 1958! According to the FBI report, the key documents Fuchs gave to Russia were LA-551, Prima facie proof of the feasibility of the Super, 15 Apr 1946 and the LA-575 Report of conference on the Super, 12 June 1946. Fuchs also handed over to Russia his own secret Los Alamos reports, such as LA-325, Initiator Theory, III. Jet Formation by the Collision of Two Surfaces, 11 July 1945, Jet Formation in Cylindrical lmplosion with 16 Detonation Points, Secret, 6 February 1945, and Theory of Initiators II, Melon Seed, Secret, 6 January 1945. Note the reference to Bretscher attending the Super Conference with Fuchs; Teller in a classified 50th anniversary conference at Los Alamos on the H-bomb claimed that after he (Teller) left Los Alamos for Chicago Uni in 1946, Bretscher continued work on Teller's 31 August 1946 "Alarm Clock" nuclear weapon (precursor of the Mike sausage concept etc) at Los Alamos; it was this layered uranium and fusion fuel "Alarm Clock" concept which led to the departure of Russian H-bomb design from American H-bomb design, simply because Fuchs left Los Alamos in June 1946, well before Teller invented the Alarm Clock concept on 31 August 1946 (Teller remembered the date precisely simply because he invented the Alarm Clock on the day his daughter was born, 31 August 1946! Teller and Richtmyer also developed a variant called "Swiss Cheese", with small pockets or bubbles of expensive fusion fuels, dispersed throughout cheaper fuel, in order to kinder a more cost-effective thermonuclear reaction; this later inspired the fission and fusion boosted "spark plug" ideas in later Sausage designs; e.g. security cleared Los Alamos historian Anne Fitzpatrick stated during her 4 March 1997 interview with Robert Richtmyer, who co-invented the Alarm Clock with Teller, that the Alarm Clock evolved into the spherical secondary stage of the 6.9 megaton Castle-Union TX-14 nuclear weapon!).

In fact (see Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear warhead designer Nuckolls' explanation in report UCRL-74345): "The rates of burn, energy deposition by charged reaction products, and electron-ion heating are proportional to the density, and the inertial confinement time is proportional to the radius. ... The burn efficiency is proportional to the product of the burn rate and the inertial confinement time ...", i.e. the fusion burn rate is directly proportional to the fuel density, which in turn is of course inversely proportional to the cube of its radius. But the inertial confinement time for fusion to occur is proportional to the radius, so the fusion stage efficiency in a nuclear weapon is the product of the burn rate (i.e., 1/radius^3) and time (i.e., radius), so efficiency ~ radius/(radius^3) ~ 1/radius^2. Therefore, for a given fuel temperature, the total fusion burn, or the efficiency of the fusion stage, is inversely proportional to the square of the compressed radius of the fuel! (Those condemning Teller's theoretical errors or "arrogance" should be aware that he pushed hard all the time for experimental nuclear tests of his ideas, to check if they were correct, exactly the right thing to do scientifically and others who read his papers had the opportunity to point out any theoretical errors, but was rebuffed by those in power, who used a series of contrived arguments to deny progress, based upon what Harry would call "subconscious bias", if not arrogant, damning, overt bigotry against the kind of credible, overwhelming deterrence which had proved lacking a decade earlier, leading to WWII. This callousness towards human suffering in war and under dictatorship existed in some UK physicists too: Joseph Rotblat's hatred of anything to deter Russia be it civil defense or tactical neutron bombs of the West - he had no problem smiling and patting Russia's neutron bomb when visiting their labs during cosy groupthink deluded Pugwash campaigns for Russian-style "peaceful collaboration" - came from deep family communist convictions, since his brother was serving in the Red Army in 1944 when he alleged he heard General Groves declare that the bomb must deter Russia! Rotblat stated he left Los Alamos as a result. The actions of these groups are analogous to the "Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group" in the 1930s. After Truman ordered a H-bomb, Bradbury at Los Alamos had to start a "Family Committee" because Teller had a whole "family" of H-bomb designs, ranging from the biggest, "Daddy", through various "Alarm Clocks", all the way down to small internally-boosted fission tactical weapons. From Teller's perspective, he wasn't putting all eggs in one basket.)

Above: declassified illustration from a January 1949 secret report by the popular physics author and Los Alamos nuclear weapons design consultant George Gamow, showing his suggestion of using x-rays from both sides of a cylindrically imploded fission device to expose two fusion capsules to x-rays to test whether compression (fusion in BeO box on right side) helps, or is unnecessary (capsule on left side). Neutron counters detect 14.1 Mev T+D neutrons using time-of-flight method (higher energy neutrons traver faster than ~1 Mev fission stage neutrons, arriving at detectors first, allowing discrimination of the neutron energy spectrum by time of arrival). It took over two years to actually fire this 225 kt shot (8 May 1951)! No wonder Teller was outraged. A few interesting reports by Teller and also Oppenheimer's secret 1949 report opposing the H bomb project as it then stood on the grounds of low damage per dollar - precisely the exact opposite of the "interpretation" the media and gormless fools will assert until the cows come home - are linked here. The most interesting is Teller's 14 August 1952 Top Secret paper debunking Hans Bethe's propaganda, by explaining that contrary to Bethe's claims, Stalin's spy Klaus Fuch had the key "radiation implosion"- see second para on p2 - secret of the H-bomb because he attended the April 1946 Superbomb Conference which was not even attended by Bethe!  It was this very fact in April 1946, noted by two British attendees of the 1946 Superbomb Conference before collaboration was ended later in the year by the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, statement that led to Sir James Cladwick's secret use of "radiation implosion" for stages 2 and 3 of his triple staged H-bomb report the next month, "The Superbomb", a still secret document that inspired Penney's original Tom/Dick/Harry staged and radiation imploded H-bomb thinking, which is summarized by security cleared official historian Arnold's Britain and the H-Bomb.  Teller's 24 March 1951 letter to Los Alamos director Bradbury was written just 15 days after his historic Teller-Ulam 9 March 1951 report on radiation coupling and "radiation mirrors" (i.e. plastic casing lining to re-radiate soft x-rays on to the thermonuclear stage to ablate and thus compress it), and states: "Among the tests which seem to be of importance at the present time are those concerned with boosted weapons. Another is connected vith the possibility of a heterocatalytic explosion, that is, implosion of a bomb using the energy from another, auxiliary bomb. A third concerns itself with tests on mixing during atomic explosions, which question is of particular importance in connection with the Alarm Clock."

There is more to Fuchs' influence on the UK H-bomb than I go into that paper; Chapman Pincher alleged that Fuchs was treated with special leniency at his trial and later he was given early release in 1959 because of his contributions and help with the UK H-bomb as author of the key Fuchs-von Neumann x-ray compression mechanism patent. For example, Penney visited Fuchs in June 1952 in Stafford Prison; see pp309-310 of Frank Close's 2019 book "Trinity". Close argues that Fuchs gave Penney a vital tutorial on the H-bomb mechanism during that prison visit. That wasn't the last help, either, since the UK Controller for Atomic Energy Sir Freddie Morgan wrote Penney on 9 February 1953 that Fuchs was continuing to help. Another gem: Close gives, on p396, the story of how the FBI became suspicious of Edward Teller, after finding a man of his name teaching at the NY Communist Workers School in 1941 - the wrong Edward Teller, of course - yet Teller's wife was indeed a member of the Communist-front "League of women shoppers" in Washington, DC.

Chapman Pincher, who attended the Fuchs trial, writes about Fuchs hydrogen bomb lectures to prisoners in chapter 19 of his 2014 autobiography, Dangerous to know (Biteback, London, pp217-8): "... Donald Hume ... in prison had become a close friend of Fuchs ... Hume had repaid Fuchs' friendship by organising the smuggling in of new scientific books ... Hume had a mass of notes ... I secured Fuchs's copious notes for a course of 17 lectures ... including how the H-bomb works, which he had given to his fellow prisoners ... My editor agreed to buy Hume's story so long as we could keep the papers as proof of its authenticity ... Fuchs was soon due for release ..."

Chapman Pincher wrote about this as the front page exclusive of the 11 June 1952 Daily Express, "Fuchs: New Sensation", the very month Penney visited Fuchs in prison to receive his H-bomb tutorial! UK media insisted this was evidence that UK security still wasn't really serious about deterring further nuclear spies, and the revelations finally culminated in the allegations that the MI5 chief 1956-65 Roger Hollis was a Russian fellow-traveller (Hollis was descended from Peter the Great, according to his elder brother Chris Hollis' 1958 book Along the Road to Frome) and GRU agent of influence, codenamed "Elli". Pincher's 2014 book, written aged 100, explains that former MI5 agent Peter Wright suspected Hollis was Elli after evidence collected by MI6 agent Stephen de Mowbray was reported to the Cabinet Secretary. Hollis is alleged to have deliberately fiddled his report of interviewing GRU defector Igor Gouzenko on 21 November 1945 in Canada. Gouzenko had exposed the spy and Groucho Marx lookalike Dr Alan Nunn May (photo below), and also a GRU spy in MI5 codenamed Elli, who used only duboks (dead letter boxes), but Gouzenko told Pincher that when Hollis interviewed him in 1945 he wrote up a lengthy false report claiming to discredit many statements by Gouzenko: "I could not understand how Hollis had written so much when he had asked me so little. The report was full of nonsense and lies. As [MI5 agent Patrick] Stewart read the report to me [during the 1972 investigation of Hollis], it became clear that it had been faked to destroy my credibility so that my information about the spy in MI5 called Elli could be ignored. I suspect that Hollis was Elli." (Source: Pincher, 2014, p320.) Christopher Andrew claimed Hollis couldn't have been GRU spy Elli because KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky suggested it was the KGB spy Leo Long (sub-agent of KGB spy Anthony Blunt). However, Gouzenko was GRU, not KGB like Long and Gordievsky! Gordievsky's claim that "Elli" was on the cover of Long's KGB file was debunked by KGB officer Oleg Tsarev, who found that Long's codename was actually Ralph! Another declassified Russian document, from General V. Merkulov to Stalin dated 24 Nov 1945, confirmed Elli was a GRU agent inside british intelligence, whose existence was betrayed by Gouzenko. In Chapter 30 of Dangerous to Know, Pincher related how he was given a Russian suitcase sized microfilm enlarger by 1959 Hollis spying eyewitness Michael J. Butt, doorman for secret communist meetings in London. According to Butt, Hollis delivered documents to Brigitte Kuczynski, younger sister of Klaus Fuchs' original handler, the notorious Sonia aka Ursula. Hollis allegedly provided Minox films to Brigitte discretely when walking through Hyde Park at 8pm after work. Brigitte gave her Russian made Minox film enlarger to Butt to dispose of, but he kept it in his loft as evidence. (Pincher later donated it to King's College.) Other more circumstantial evidence is that Hollis recruited the spy Philby, Hollis secured spy Blunt immunity from prosecution, Hollis cleared Fuchs in 1943, and MI5 allegedly destroyed Hollis' 1945 interrogation report on Gouzenko, to prevent the airing of the scandal that it was fake after checking it with Gouzenko in 1972.

It should be noted that the very small number of Russian GRU illegal agents in the UK and the very small communist party membership had a relatively large influence on nuclear policy via infiltration of unions which had block votes in the Labour Party, as well the indirect CND and "peace movement" lobbies saturating the popular press with anti-civil defence propaganda to make the nuclear deterrent totally incredible for any provocation short of a direct all-out countervalue attack. Under such pressure, UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson's government abolished the UK Civil Defence Corps, making the UK nuclear deterrent totally incredible against major provocations, in March 1968. While there was some opposition to Wilson, it was focussed on his profligate nationalisation policies which were undermining the economy and thus destabilizing military expenditure for national security. Peter Wright’s 1987 book Spycatcher and various other sources, including Daily Mirror editor Hugh Cudlipp's book Walking on Water, documented that on 8 May 1968, the Bank of England's director Cecil King, who was also Chairman of Daily Mirror newspapers, Mirror editor Cudlipp and the UK Ministry of Defence's anti-nuclear Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Solly Zuckerman, met at Lord Mountbatten's house in Kinnerton Street, London, to discuss a coup e'tat to overthrow Wilson and make Mountbatten the UK President, a new position. King's position, according to Cudlipp - quite correctly as revealed by the UK economic crises of the 1970s when the UK was effectively bankrupt - was that Wilson was setting the UK on the road to financial ruin and thus military decay. Zuckerman and Mountbatten refused to take part in a revolution, however Wilson's government was attacked by the Daily Mirror in a front page editorial by Cecil King two days later, on 10 May 1968, headlined "Enough is enough ... Mr Wilson and his Government have lost all credibility, all authority." According to Wilson's secretary Lady Falkender, Wilson was only told of the coup discussions in March 1976.

CND and the UK communist party alternatively tried to claim, in a contradictory way, that they were (a) too small in numbers to have any influence on politics, and (b) they were leading the country towards utopia via unilateral nuclear disarmament saturation propaganda about nuclear weapons annihilation (totally ignoring essential data on different nuclear weapon designs, yields, heights of burst, the "use" of a weapon as a deterrent to PREVENT an invasion of concentrated force, etc.) via the infiltrated BBC and most other media. Critics pointed out that Nazi Party membership in Germany was only 5% when Hitler became dictator in 1933, while in Russia there were only 200,000 Bolsheviks in September 1917, out of 125 million, i.e. 0.16%. Therefore, the whole threat of such dictatorships is a minority seizing power beyond it justifiable numbers, and controlling a majority which has different views. Traditional democracy itself is a dictatorship of the majority (via the ballot box, a popularity contest); minority-dictatorship by contrast is a dictatorship by the fanatically motivated minority by force and fear (coercion) to control the majority. The coercion tactics used by foreign dictators to control the press in free countries are well documented, but never publicised widely. Hitler put pressure on Nazi-critics in the UK "free press" via UK Government appeasers Halifax, Chamberlain and particularly the loathsome UK ambassador to Nazi Germany, Sir Neville Henderson, for example trying to censor or ridicule appeasement critics David Low, to fire Captain W. E. Johns (editor of both Flying and Popular Flying, which had huge circulations and attacked appeasement as a threat to national security in order to reduce rearmament expenditure), and to try to get Winston Churchill deselected. These were all sneaky "back door" pressure-on-publishers tactics, dressed up as efforts to "ease international tensions"! The same occurred during the Cold War, with personal attacks in Scientific American and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and by fellow travellers on Herman Kahn, Eugene Wigner, and others who warned we need civil defence to make a deterrent of large provocations credible in the eyes of an aggressor.

Chapman Pincher summarises the vast hypocritical Russian expenditure on anti-Western propaganda against the neutron bomb in Chapter 15, "The Neutron Bomb Offensive" of his 1985 book The Secret Offensive: "Such a device ... carries three major advantages over Hiroshima-type weapons, particularly for civilians caught up in a battle ... against the massed tanks which the Soviet Union would undoubtedly use ... by exploding these warheads some 100 feet or so above the massed tanks, the blast and fire ... would be greatly reduced ... the neutron weapon produces little radioactive fall-out so the long-term danger to civilians would be very much lower ... the weapon was of no value for attacking cities and the avoidance of damage to property can hardly be rated as of interest only to 'capitalists' ... As so often happens, the constant repetition of the lie had its effects on the gullible ... In August 1977, the [Russian] World Peace Council ... declared an international 'Week of action' against the neutron bomb. ... Under this propaganda Carter delayed his decision, in September ... a Sunday service being attended by Carter and his family on 16 October 1977 was disrupted by American demonstrators shouting slogans against the neutron bomb [see the 17 October 1977 Washington Post] ... Lawrence Eagleburger, when US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, remarked, 'We consider it probably that the Soviet campaign against the 'neutron bomb cost some $100 million'. ... Even the Politburo must have been surprised at the size of what it could regard as a Fifth Column in almost every country." [Unfortunately, Pincher himself had contributed to the anti-nuclear nonsense in his 1965 novel "Not with a bang" in which small amounts of radioactivity from nuclear fallout combine with medicine to exterminate humanity! The allure of anti-nuclear propaganda extends to all who which to sell "doomsday fiction", not just Russian dictators but mainstream media story tellers in the West. By contrast, Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons doesn't even mention the neutron bomb, so there was no scientific and technical effort whatsoever by the West to make it a credible deterrent even in the minds of the public it had to protect from WWIII!]

"The Lance warhead is the first in a new generation of tactical mini-nukes that have been sought by Army field leading advocates: the series of American generals who have commanded the North Atlantic Treaty organization theater. They have argued that the 7,000 unclear warheads now in Europe are old, have too large a nuclear yield and thus would not be used in a war. With lower yields and therefore less possible collateral damage to civilian populated areas, these commanders have argued, the new mini-nukes are more credible as deterrents because they just might be used on the battlefield without leading to automatic nuclear escalation. Under the nuclear warhead production system, a President must personally give the production order. President Ford, according to informed sources, signed the order for the enhanced-radiation Lance warhead. The Lance already has regular nuclear warheads and it deployed with NATO forces in Europe. In addition to the Lance warhead, other new production starts include: An 8-inch artillery-fired nuclear warhead to replace those now in Europe. This shell had been blocked for almost eight years by Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.), who had argued that it was not needed. Symington retired last year. The Pentagon and ERDA say the new nuclear 8-inch warhead would be safer from stealing by terrorists. Starbird testified. It will be "a command disable system" to melt its inner workings if necessary. ... In longer-term research, the bill contains money to finance an enhanced-radiational bomb to the dropped from aircraft." - Washington post, 5 June 1977.

This debunks fake news that Teller's and Ulam's 9 March 1951 report LAMS-1225 itself gave Los Alamos the Mike H-bomb design, ready for testing! Teller was proposing a series of nuclear tests of the basic principles, not 10Mt Ivy-Mike which was based on a report the next month by Teller alone, LA-1230, "The Sausage: a New Thermonuclear System". When you figure that, what did Ulam actually contribute to the hydrogen bomb? Nothing about implosion, compression or separate stages - all already done by von Neumann and Fuchs five years earlier - and just a lot of drivel about trying to channel material shock waves from a primary to compress another fissile core, a real dead end. What Ulam did was to kick Teller out of his self-imposed mental objection to compression devices. Everything else was Teller's; the radiation mirrors, the Sausage with its outer ablation pusher and its inner spark plug. Note also that contrary to official historian Arnold's book (which claims due to a misleading statement by Dr Corner that all the original 1946 UK copies of Superbomb Conference documentation were destroyed after being sent from AWRE Aldermaston to London between 1955-63), all the documents did exist in the AWRE TPN (theoretical physics notes, 100% of which have been perserved) and are at the UK National Archives, e.g. AWRE-TPN 5/54 is listed in National Archives discovery catalogue ref ES 10/5: "Miscellaneous super bomb notes by Klaus Fuchs", see also the 1954 report AWRE-TPN 6/54, "Implosion super bomb: substitution of U235 for plutonium" ES 10/6, the 1954 report AWRE-TPN 39/54 is "Development of the American thermonuclear bomb: implosion super bomb" ES 10/39, see also ES 10/21 "Collected notes on Fermi's super bomb lectures", ES 10/51 "Revised reconstruction of the development of the American thermonuclear bombs", ES 1/548 and ES 1/461 "Superbomb Papers", etc. Many reports are secret and retained, despite containing "obsolete" designs (although UK report titles are generally unredacted, such as: "Storage of 6kg Delta (Phase) -Plutonium Red Beard (tactical bomb) cores in ships")! It should also be noted that the Livermore Laboatory's 1958 TUBA spherical secondary with an oralloy (enriched U235) outer pusher was just a reversion from Teller's 1951 core spark plug idea in the middle of the fusion fuel, back to the 1944 von Neumann scheme of having fission material surrounding the fusion fuel. In other words, the TUBA was just a radiation and ionization imploded, internally fusion-boosted, second fission stage which could have been accomplished a decade earlier if the will existed, when all of the relevant ideas were already known. The declassified UK spherical secondary-stage alternatives linked here (tested as Grapple X, Y and Z with varying yields but similar size, since all used the 5 ft diameter Blue Danube drop casing) clearly show that a far more efficient fusion burn occurs by minimising the mass of hard-to-compress U235 (oralloy) sparkplug/pusher, but maximising the amount of lithium-7, not lithium-6. Such a secondary with minimal fissionable material also automatically has minimal neutron ABM vulnerability (i.e., "Radiation Immunity", RI). This is the current cheap Russian neutron weapon design, but not the current Western design of warheads like the W78, W88 and bomb B61.

So why on earth doesn't the West take the cheap efficient option of cutting expensive oralloy and maximising cheap natural (mostly lithium-7) LiD in the secondary? Even Glasstone's 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons on p17 (para 1.55) states that "Weight for weight ... fusion of deuterium nuclei would produce nearly 3 times as much energy as the fission of uranium or plutonium"! The sad answer is "density"! Natural LiD (containing 7.42% Li6 abundance) is a low density white/grey crystalline solid like salt that actually floats on water (lithium deuteroxide would be formed on exposure to water), since its density is just 820 kg/m^3. Since the ratio of mass of Li6D to Li7D is 8/9, it would be expected that the density of highly enriched 95% Li6D is 739 kg/m^3, while for 36% enriched Li6D it is 793 kg/m^3. Uranium metal has a density of 19,000 kg/m^3, i.e. 25.7 times greater than 95% enriched li6D or 24 times greater than 36% enriched Li6D. Compactness, i.e. volume is more important in a Western MIRV warhead than mass/weight! In the West, it's best to have a tiny-volume, very heavy, very expensive warhead. In Russia, cheapness outweights volume considerations. The Russians in some cases simply allowed their more bulky warheads to protrude from the missile bus (see photo below), or compensated for lower yields at the same volume using clean LiD by using the savings in costs to build more warheads. (The West doubles the fission yield/mass ratio of some warheads by using U235/oralloy pushers in place of U238, which suffers from the problem that about half the neutrons it interacts with result in non-fission capture, as explained below. Note that the 720 kiloton UK nuclear test Orange Herald device contained a hollow shell of 117 kg of U235 surrounded by a what Lorna Arnold's book quotes John Corner referring to a "very thin" layer of high explosive, and was compact, unboosted - the boosted failed to work - and gave 6.2 kt/kg of U235, whereas the first version of the 2-stage W47 Polaris warhead contained 60 kg of U235 which produced most of the secondary stage yield of about 400 kt, i.e. 6.7 kt/kg of U235. Little difference - but because perhaps 50% of the total yield of the W47 was fusion, its efficiency of use of U235 must have actually been less than the Orange Herald device, around 3 kt/kg of U235 which indicates design efficiency limits to "hydrogen bombs"! Yet anti-nuclear charlatans claimed that the Orange Herald bomb was a con!)

ABOVE: USA nuclear weapons data declassified by UK Government in 2010 (the information was originally acquired due to the 1958 UK-USA Act for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes, in exchange for UK nuclear weapons data) as published at http://nuclear-weapons.info/images/tna-ab16-4675p63.jpg. This single table summarizes all key tactical and strategic nuclear weapons secret results from 1950s testing! (In order to analyze the warhead pusher thicknesses and very basic schematics from this table it is necessary to supplement it with the 1950s warhead design data declassified in other documents, particularly some of the data from Tom Ramos and Chuck Hansen, as quoted in some detail below.) The data on the mass of special nuclear materials in each of the different weapons argues strongly that the entire load of Pu239 and U235 in the 1.1 megaton B28 was in the primary stage, so that weapon could not have had a fissile spark plug in the centre let alone a fissile ablator (unlike Teller's Sausage design of 1951), and so the B28 it appears had no need whatsoever of a beryllium neutron radiation shield to prevent pre-initiation of the secondary stage prior to its compression (on the contrary, such neutron exposure of the lithium deuteride in the secondary stage would be VITAL to produce some tritium in it prior to compression, to spark fusion when it was compressed). Arnold's book indeed explains that UK AWE physicists found the B28 to be an excellent, highly optimised, cheap design, unlike the later W47 which was extremely costly. The masses of U235 and Li6 in the W47 shows the difficulties of trying to maintain efficiency while scaling down the mass of a two-stage warhead for SLBM delivery: much larger quantities of Li6 and U235 must be used to achieve a LOWER yield! To achieve thermonuclear warheads of low mass at sub-megaton yields, both the outer bomb casing and the pusher around the the fusion fuel must be reduced:

"York ... studied the Los Alamos tests in Castle and noted most of the weight in thermonuclear devices was in their massive cases. Get rid of the case .... On June 12, 1953, York had presented a novel concept ... It radically altered the way radiative transport was used to ignite a secondary - and his concept did not require a weighty case ... they had taken the Teller-Ulam concept and turned it on its head ... the collapse time for the new device - that is, the amount of time it took for an atomic blast to compress the secondary - was favorable compared to older ones tested in Castle. Brown ... gave a female name to the new device, calling it the Linda." - Dr Tom Ramos (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear weapon designer), From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War, Naval Institute press, 2022, pp137-8. (So if you reduce the outer casing thickness to reduce warhead weight, you must complete the pusher ablation/compression faster, before the thinner outer casing is blown off, and stops reflecting/channelling x-rays on the secondary stage. Making the radiation channel smaller and ablative pusher thinner helps to speed up the process. Because the ablative pusher is thinner, there is relatively less blown-off debris to block the narrower radiation channel before the burn ends.)

"Brown's third warhead, the Flute, brought the Linda concept down to a smaller size. The Linda had done away with a lot of material in a standard thermonuclear warhead. Now the Flute tested how well designers could take the Linda's conceptual design to substantially reduce not only the weight but also the size of a thermonuclear warhead. ... The Flute's small size - it was the smallest thermonuclear device yet tested - became an incentive to improve codes. Characteristics marginally important in a larger device were now crucially important. For instance, the reduced size of the Flute's radiation channel could cause it to close early [with ablation blow-off debris], which would prematurely shut off the radiation flow. The code had to accurately predict if such a disaster would occur before the device was even tested ... the calculations showed changes had to be made from the Linda's design for the Flute to perform correctly." - Dr Tom Ramos (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear weapon designer), From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War, Naval Institute press, 2022, pp153-4. Note that the piccolo (the W47 secondary) is a half-sized flute, so it appears that the W47's secondary stage design miniaturization history was: Linda -> Flute -> Piccolo:

"A Division's third challenge was a small thermonuclear warhead for Polaris [the nuclear SLBM submarine that preceeded today's Trident system]. The starting point was the Flute, that revolutionary secondary that had performed so well the previous year. Its successor was called the Piccolo. For Plumbbob [Nevada, 1957], the design team tested three variations of the Piccolo as a parameter test. One of the variants outperformed the others ... which set the stage for the Hardtack [Nevada and Pacific, 1958] tests. Three additional variations for the Piccolo ... were tested then, and again an optimum candidate was selected. ... Human intuition as well as computer calculations played crucial roles ... Finally, a revolutionary device was completed and tested ... the Navy now had a viable warhead for its Polaris missile. From the time Brown gave Haussmann the assignment to develop this secondary until the time they tested the device in the Pacific, only 90 days had passed. As a parallel to the Robin atomic device, this secondary for Polaris laid the foundation for modern thermonuclear weapons in the United States." - Dr Tom Ramos (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear weapon designer), From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War, Naval Institute press, 2022, pp177-8. (Ramos is very useful in explaining that many of the 1950s weapons with complex non-spherical, non-cylindrical shaped primaries and secondaries were simply far too complex to fully simulate on the really pathetic computers they had - Livermore got a 4,000 vacuum tubes-based IBM 701 with 2 kB memory in 1956, AWRE Aldermaston in the Uk had to wait another year for theirs - so they instead did huge numbers of experimental explosive tests. For instance, on p173, Ramos discloses that the Swan primary which developed into the 155mm tactical shell, "went through over 100 hydrotests", non-nuclear tests in which fissile material is replaced with U238 or other substitutes, and the implosion is filmed with flash x-ray camera systems.)

"An integral feature of the W47, from the very start of the program, was the use of an enriched uranium-235 pusher around the cylindrical secondary." - Chuck Hansen, Swords 2.0, p. VI-375 (Hansen's source is his own notes taken during a 19-21 February 1992 nuclear weapons history conference he attended; if you remember the context, "Nuclear Glasnost" became fashionable after the Cold War ended, enabling Hansen to acquire almost unredacted historical materials for a few years until nuclear proliferation became a concern in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea). The key test of the original (Robin primary and Piccolo secondary) Livermore W47 was 412 kt Hardtack-Redwood on 28 June 1958. Since Li6D utilized at 100% efficiency would yield 66 kt/kg, the W47 fusion efficiency was only about 6%; since 100% fission of u235 yields 17 kt/kg, the W47's Piccolo fission (the u235 pusher) efficiency was about 20%; the comparable figures for secondary stage fission and fusion fuel burn efficiencies in the heavy B28 are about 7% and 15%, respectively:

ABOVE: the heavy B28 gave a very "big bang for the buck": it was cheap in terms of expensive Pu, U235 and Li6, and this was the sort of deterrent which was wanted by General LeMay for the USAF, which wanted as many weapons as possible, within the context of Eisenhower's budgetary concerns. But its weight (not its physical size) made it unsuitable for SLBM Polaris warheads. The first SLBM warhead, the W47, was almost the same size as the B28 weapon package, but much lighter due to having a much thinner "pusher" on the secondary, and casing. But this came at a large financial cost in terms of the quantities of special nuclear materials required to get such a lightweight design to work, and also a large loss of total yield. The fusion fuel burn efficiency ranges from 6% for the 400 kt W47 to 15% for the 1.1 megaton B28 (note that for very heavy cased 11-15 megaton yield tests at Castle, up to 40% fusion fuel burn efficiency was achieved), whereas the secondary stage ablative pusher fission efficiency ranged from 7% for a 1.1 inch thick natural uranium (99.3% U238) ablator to 20% for a 0.15 inch thick highly enriched oralloy (U235) ablator. From the brief description of the design evolution given by Dr Tom Ramos (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), it appears that when the x-ray channelling outer case thickness of the weapon is reduced to save weight, the duration of the x-ray coupling is reduced, so the dense metal pusher thickness must be reduced if the same compression factor (approximately 20) for the secondary stage is to be accomplished (lithium deuteride, being of low density, is far more compressable by a given pressure, than dense metal). In both examples, the secondary stage is physically a boosted fission stage. (If you are wondering why the hell the designers don't simply use a hollow core U235 bomb like Orange Herald instead of bothering with such inefficient x-ray coupled two-stage designs as these, the answer is straightforward: the risk of large fissile core meltdown by neutrons Moscow ABM defensive nuclear warheads, neutron bombs.)

The overall weight of the W47 was minimized by replacing the usual thick layer of U238 pusher with a very thin layer of fissile U235 (supposedly Teller's suggestion), which is more efficient for fission, but is limited by critical mass issues. The W47 used a 95% enriched Li6D cylinder with a 3.8mm thick U235 pusher; the B28 secondary was 36% enriched Li6D, with a very heavy 3cm thick U238 pusher. As shown below, it appears the B28 was related to the Los Alamos clean design of the TX21C tested as 95% clean 4.5 megatons Redwing-Navajo in 1956 and did not have a central fissile spark plug. From the declassified fallout composition, it is known the Los Alamos designers replaced the outer U238 pusher of Castle secondaries with lead in Navajo. Livermore did the same for their 85% clean 3.53 megatons Redwing-Zuni test, but Livermore left the central fission spark plug, which contributed 10% of its 15% fission yield, instead of removing the neutron shield, using foam channel filler for slowing down the x-ray compression, and thereby using primary stage neutrons to split lithium-6 giving tritium prior to compression. Our point is that Los Alamos got it wrong in sticking too conservatively to ideology: for clean weapons they should have got rid of the dense lead pusher and gone for John H. Nuckolls idea (also used by Fuchs in 1946 and the Russians in 1955 and 1958) of a low-density pusher for isentropic compression of low-density fusion fuel. This error is the reason why those early cleaner weapons were extremely heavy due to unnecessary 2" thick lead or tungsten pushers around the fusion fuel, which massively reduced their yield-to-weight ratios, so that LeMay rejected them!

Compare these data for the 20 inch diameter, 49 inch, 1600 lb, 1.1 megaton bomb B28 to the 18 inch diameter, 47 inch, 700 lb, 400 kt Mk47/W47 Polaris SLBM warhead (this is the correct yield for the first version of the W47 confirmed by UK data in Lorna Arnold Britain and the H-bomb 2001 and AB 16/3240; Wikipedia wrongly gives the 600 kt figure in Hansen, which was a speculation or a later upgrade). The key difference is that the W47 is much lighter, and thus suitable for the Polaris SLBM unlike the heavier, higher yield B28. Both B28 and W47 used cylindrical sausages, but they are very different in composition; the B28 used a huge mass of U238 in its ablative sausage outer shell or pusher, while the W47 used oralloy/U235 in the pusher. The table shows the total amounts of Pu, Oralloy (U235), Lithium-6 (excluding cheaper lithium-7, which is also present in varying amounts in different thermonuclear weapons), and tritium (which is used for boosting inside fissile material, essentially to reduce the amount of Pu and therefore the vulnerability of the weapon to Russian enhanced neutron ABM warhead meltdown). The B28 also has an external dense natural U (99.3% U238) "ablative pusher shell" whose mass is not listed in this table. The table shows that the 400 kt W47 Polaris SLBM warhead contains 60 kg of U235 (nearly as much as the 500 kt pure fission Mk18), which is in an ablative pusher shell around the lithium deuteride, so that the cylinder of neutron-absorbing lithium-6 deuteride within it keeps that mass of U235 subcritical, until compressed. So the 400 kt W47 contains far more Pu, U235, Li6 and T than the higher yield 1.1 megaton B28: this is the big $ price you pay for reducing the mass of the warhead; the total mass of the W47 is reduced to 44% of the mass of the B28, since the huge mass of cheap U238 pusher in the B28 is replaced by a smaller mass of U235, which is more efficient because (as Dr Carl F. Miller reveals in USNRDL-466, Table 6), about half of the neutrons hitting U238 don't cause fission but instead non-fission capture reactions which produce U239, plus the n,2n reaction that produces U237, emitting a lot of very low energy gamma rays in the fallout. For example, in the 1954 Romeo nuclear test (which, for simplicity, we quote since it used entirely natural LiD, with no expensive enrichment of the Li6 isotope whatsoever), the U238 jacket fission efficiency was reduced by capture as follows: 0.66 atom/fission of U239, 0.10 atom/fission of U237 and 0.23 atom/fission of U240 produced by fission, a total of 0.66 + 0.10 + 0.23 ~ 1 atom/fission, i.e. 50% fission in the U238 pusher, versus 50% non-fission neutron captures. So by using U235 in place of U238, you virtually eliminate the non-fission capture (see UK Atomic Weapons Establishment graph of fission and capture cross-sections for U235, shown below), which roughly halves the mass of the warhead, for a given fission yield. This same principle of using an outer U235/oralloy pusher instead of U238 to reduce mass - albeit with the secondary cylindrical "Sausage" shape now changed to a sphere - applies to today's miniaturised, high yield, low mass "MIRV" warheads. Just as the lower-yield W47 counter-intuitively used more expensive ingredients than the bulkier higher-yield B28, modern compact, high-yield oralloy-loaded warheads literally cost a bomb, just to keep the mass down! There is evidence Russia uses alternative ideas.

This is justified by the data given for a total U238 capture-to-fission ratio of 1 in the 11 megaton Romeo test and also the cross-sections for U235 capture and fission on the AWE graph for relevant neutron energy range of about 1-14 Mev. If half the neutrons are captured in U238 without fission, then the maximum fission yield you can possibly get from "x" kg of U238 pusher is HALF the energy obtained from 100% fission of "x" kg of U238. Since with U238 only about half the atoms can undergo fission by thermonuclear neutrons (because the other half undergo non-fission capture), the energy density (i.e., the Joules/kg produced by the fission explosion of the pusher) reached by an exploding U238 pusher is only half that reached by U235 (in which there is less non-fission capture of neutrons, which doubles the pusher mass without doubling the fission energy release). So a U235 pusher will reach twice the temperature of a U238 pusher, doubling its material heating of fusion fuel within, prolonging the fusion burn and thus increasing fusion burn efficiency. 10 MeV neutron energy is important since it allows for likely average scattering of 14.1 MeV D+T fusion neutrons and it is also the energy at which the most important capture reaction, the (n,2n) cross-section peaks for both U235 (peak of 0.88 barn at 10 Mev) and U238 (peak of 1.4 barns at 10 Mev). For 10 Mev neutrons, U235 and U238 have fission cross-sections of 1.8 and 1 barn, respectively. For 14 Mev neutrons, U238 has a (n,2n) cross section of 0.97 barn for U237 production. So ignoring non-fission captures, you need 1.8/1 = 1.8 times greater thickness of pusher for U238 than for U235, to achieve the same amount of fission. But this simple consideration ignores the x-ray ablation requirement of the explosing pusher, so there are several factors requiring detailed computer calculations, and/or nuclear testing.

Note: there is an extensive collection of declassified documents released after Chuck Hansen's final edition, Swords 2.0, which are now available at https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/foiareadingroom/*, being an internet-archive back-up of a now-removed US Government Freedom of Information Act Reading Room. Unfortunately they were only identified by number sequence, not by report title or content, in that reeding room, and so failed to achieve wide attention when originally released! (This includes extensive "Family Committee" H-bomb documentation and many long-delayed FOIA requests submitted originally by Hansen, but not released in time for inclusion in Swords 2.0.) As the extract below - from declassified document RR00132 - shows, some declassified documents contained very detailed information or typewriter spaces that could only be filled by a single specific secret word (in this example, details of the W48 linear implosion tactical nuclear warhead, including the fact that it used PBX9404 plastic bonded explosive glued to the brittle beryllium neutron reflector around the plutonium core using Adiprene L100 adhesive!).

ABOVE: Declassified data on the radiation flow analysis for the 10 megaton Mike sausage: http://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/foiareadingroom/RR00198.pdf Note that the simplistic "no-go theorem" given in this extract, against any effect from varying the temperature to help the radiation channelling, was later proved false by John H. Nuckolls (like Teller's anti-compression "no-go theorem" was later proved false), since lowered temperature delivers energy where it is needed while massively reducing radiation losses (which go as the fourth power of temperature/x-ray energy in kev).

ABOVE: Hans A. Bethe's disastrous back-of-the-envelope nonsense "non-go theorem" against lithium-7 fission into tritium by 14.1 Mev D+T neutrons in Bravo (which contained 40% lithium-6 and 60% lithium-7; unnecessarily enriched - at great expense and effort - from the natural 7.42% lithum-6 abundance). It was Bethe's nonsense "physics" speculation, unbacked by serious calculation, who caused Bravo to go off at 2.5 times the expected 6 megatons and therefore for the Japanese Lucky Dragon tuna trawler crew in the maximum fallout hotspot area 80 miles downwind to be contaminated by fallout, and also for Rongelap's people to be contaminated ("accidents" that inevitably kickstarted the originally limited early 1950s USSR funded Communist Party anti-nuclear deterrence movements in the West into mainstream media and thus politics). There was simply no solid basis for assuming that the highly penetrating 14.1 Mev neutrons would be significantly slowed by scattering in the fuel before hitting lithium-7 nuclei. Even teller's 1950 report LA-643 at page 17 estimated that in a fission-fusion Alarm Clock, the ratio of 14 Mev to 2.5 Mev neutrons was 0.7/0.2 = 3.5. Bethe's complacently bad guesswork-based physics also led to the EMP fiasco for high altitude bursts, after he failed to predict the geomagnetic field deflection of Compton electrons at high altitude in his secret report “Electromagnetic Signal Expected from High-Altitude Test”, Los Alamos report LA-2173, October 1957, Secret. He repeatedly caused nuclear weapons effects study disasters. For the true utility of lithium-7, which is actually BETTER than lithum-6 at tritium production when struck by 14.1 Mev D+T fusion neutrons, and its consequences for cheap isentropically compressed fusion capsules in Russian neutron bombs, please see my paper here which gives a graph of lithium isotopic cross section versus neutron energy, plus the results when Britain used cheap lithium-7 in Grapple Y to yield 3 megatons (having got lower yields with costly lithium-6 in previous tests!).

Update (15 Dec 2023): PDF uploaded of UK DAMAGE BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS (linked here on Internet Archive) - secret 1000 pages UK and USA nuclear weapon test effects analysis, and protective measures determined at those tests (not guesswork) relevant to escalation threats by Russia for EU invasion (linked here at wordpress) in response to Ukraine potentially joining the EU (this is now fully declassified without deletions, and in the UK National Archives at Kew):

Hiroshima and Nagasaki terrorist liars debunked by secret American government evidence that simple shelters worked, REPORT LINKED HERE (this was restricted from public view and never published by the American government, and Glasstone's lying Effects of Nuclear Weapons book reversed its evidence for propaganda purposes, a fact still covered by all the lying cold war pseudo "historians" today), Operation Hurricane 1952 declassified nuclear weapon test data (here), declassified UK nuclear tested shelter research reports (here), declassified EMP nuclear test research data (here), declassified clandestine nuclear bombs in ships attack on Liverpool study (here), declassified fallout decontamination study for UK recovery from nuclear attack (here), declassified Operation Buffalo surface burst and near surface burst fallout patterns, water decontamination, initial radiation shielding at Antler nuclear tests, and resuspension of deposited fallout dust into the air (inhalation hazard) at different British nuclear tests, plus Operation Totem nuclear tests crater region radiation surveys (here), declassified Operation Antler nuclear blast precursor waveforms (here), declassified Operation Buffalo nuclear blast precursor waveforms (here), declassified UK Atomic Weapons Establishment nuclear weapons effects symposium (here), and declassified UK Atomic Weapons Establishment paper on the gamma radiation versus time at Crossroads tests Able and Baker (here, paper by inventor of lenses in implosion weapons, James L. Tuck of the British Mission to Los Alamos and Operation Crossroads, clearly showing how initial gamma shielding in an air burst can be achieved with a few seconds warning and giving the much greater escape times available for residual radiation dose accumulations in an underwater burst; key anti-nuclear hysteria data kept covered up by Glasstone and the USA book Effects of Nuclear Weapons), and Penney and Hicks paper on the base surge contamination mechanism (here), and Russian nuclear warhead design evidence covered-up by both America and the so-called arms control and disarmament "experts" who always lie and distort the facts to suit their own agenda to try to start a nuclear war (linked here). If they wanted "peace" they'd support the proved facts, available on this blog nukegate.org since 2006, and seek international agreement to replace the incredible, NON-war deterring strategic nuclear weapons with safe tactical neutron warheads which collateral damage averting and invasion-deterring (thus war deterring in all its forms, not only nuclear), plus civil defence against all forms of collateral damage from war, which reduces escalation risks during terrorist actions, as proved in wars which don't escalate because of effective civil defence and credible deterrence (see below). Instead, they support policies designed to maximise civilian casualties and to deliberately escalate war, to profit "politically" from the disasters caused which they blame falsely on nuclear weapons, as if deterrence causes war! (Another lie believed by mad/evil/gullible mainstream media/political loons in "authority".) A good summary of the fake news basis of "escalation" blather against credible tactical nuclear deterrence of the invasions that set off wars is inadvertently provided by Lord David Owen's 2009 "Nuclear Papers" (Liverpool Uni Press), compiling his declassified nuclear disarmament propaganda reports written while he was UK Foreign Secretary 1977-9. It's all Carter era appeasement nonsense. For example, on pp158-8 he reprints his Top Secret 19 Dec 1978 "Future of the British Deterrent" report to the Prime Minister which states that "I am not convinced by the contention ... that the ability to destroy at least 10 major cities, or inflict damage on 30 major targets ... is the minimum criterion for a British deterrent." (He actually thinks this is too strong a deterrent, despite the fact it is incredible for the realpolitik tactics of dictators who make indirect provocations like invading their neighbours!) The reality Owens ignores is that Russia had and still has civil defence shelters and evacuation plans, so threatening some damage in retaliation is not a credible deterrent against the invasions that set off both world wars. On page 196, he gives a Secret 18 April 1978 paper stating that NATO then had 1000 nuclear artillery pieces (8" and 155mm), 200 Lance and Honest John tactical nuclear missile systems, 135 Pershing; all now long ago disarmed and destroyed while Russian now has over 2000 dedicated tactical nuclear weapons of high neutron output (unlike EM1's data for the low yield option of the multipurpose NATO B61). Owen proudly self-congratulates on his Brezhnev supporting anti-neutron bomb ranting 1978 book, "Human Rights", pp. 136-7. If Owen really wants "Human Rights", he needs to back the neutron bomb now to deter the dictatorships which destroy human rights! His 2009 "Nuclear Papers" at p287 gives the usual completely distorted analysis of the Cuban missiles crisis, claiming that despite the overwhelming American tactical and strategic nuclear superiority for credible deterrence in 1962, the world came "close" to a nuclear war. It's closer now, mate, when thanks to your propaganda we no longer have a credible deterrent, civil defence, tactical neutron warheads. Pathetic.

ABOVE secret reports on Australian-British nuclear test operations at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957, Buffalo and Antler, proved that even at 10 psi peak overpressure for the 15 kt Buffalo-1 shot, the dummy lying prone facing the blast was hardly moved due to the low cross-sectional area exposed to the blast winds, relative to standing dummies which were severely displaced and damaged. The value of trenches in protecting personnel against blast winds and radiation was also proved in tests (gamma radiation shielding of trenches had been proved at an earlier nuclear test in Australia, Operation Hurricane in 1952). (Antler report linked here; Buffalo report linked here.) This debunks the US Department of Defense models claiming that people will automatically be blown out of the upper floors of modern city buildings at very low pressures, and killed by the gravitational impact with the pavement below! In reality, tall buildings mutually shield one another from the blast winds, not to mention the radiation (proven in the latest post on this blog), and on seeing the flash most people will have time to lie down on typical surfaces like carpet which give a frictional resistance to displacement, ignored in fiddled models which assume surfaces have less friction than a skating rink; all of this was omitted from the American 1977 Glasstone and Dolan book "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons". As Tuck's paper below on the gamma radiation dose rate measurements on ships at Operation Crossroads, July 1946 nuclear tests proved, contrary to Glasstone and Dolan, scattered radiation contributions are small, so buildings or ships gun turrets provided excellent radiation "shadows" to protect personnel. This effect was then calculated by UK civil defence weapons effects expert Edward Leader-Williams in his paper presented at the UK's secret London Royal Society Symposium on the Physical Effects of Atomic Weapons, but the nuclear test data as always was excluded from the American Glasstone book published the next year, The Effects of Atomic Weapons in deference to lies about the effects in Hiroshima, including an "average" casualty curve which deliberately obfuscated huge differences in survival rates in different types of buildings and shelters, or simply in shadows!

Note: the DELFIC, SIMFIC and other computer predicted fallout area comparisons for the 110 kt Bikini Atoll Castle-Koon land surface burst nuclear test are false since the distance scale of Bikini Atoll is massively exaggerated on many maps, e.g. in the Secret January 1955 AFSWP "Fall-out Symposium", the Castle fallout report WT-915, and the fallout patterns compendium DASA-1251! The Western side of the Bikini Atoll reef is at 165.2 degrees East, while the most eastern island in the Bikini Atoll, Enyu, is at 165.567 degrees East: since there are 60 nautical miles per degree by definition, the width of Bikini Atoll is therefore (165.567-165.2)(60) = 22 nautical miles, approximately half the distance shown in the Castle-Koon fallout patterns. Since area is proportional to the square of the distance scale, this constitutes a serious exaggeration in fallout casualty calculations, before you get into the issue of the low energy (0.1-0.2 MeV) gamma rays from neutron induced Np239 and U237 in the fallout enhancing the protection factor of shelters (usually calculated assuming hard 1.17 and 1.33 MeV gamma rads from Co60), during the sheltering period of approximately 1-14 days after detonation.

"Since the nuclear stalemate became apparent, the Governments of East and West have adopted the policy which Mr Dulles calls 'brinkmanship'. This is a policy adopted from a sport ... called 'Chicken!' ... If one side is unwilling to risk global war, while the other side is willing to risk it, the side which is willing to run the risk will be victorious in all negotiations and will ultimately reduce the other side to complete impotence. 'Perhaps' - so the practical politician will argue - 'it might be ideally wise for the sane party to yield to the insane party in view of the dreadful nature of the alternative, but, whether wise or not, no proud nation will long acquiesce in such an ignominious role. We are, therefore, faced, quite inevitably, with the choice between brinkmanship and surrender." - Bertrand Russell, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1959, pp30-31.

Emphasis added. Note that Russell accepts lying about nuclear weapons just as gas weapons had been lied about in the 1920s-30s by "arms controllers" to start WWII, then he simply falls into the 1930s Cambridge Scientists Antiwar Group delusional propaganda fraud of assuming that any attempt to credibly deter fascism is immoral because it will automatically result in escalatory retaliation with Herman Goering's Luftwaffe drenching London with "overkill" by poison gas WMDs etc. In particular, he forgets that general disarmament pursued in the West until 1935 - when Baldwin suddenly announced that the Nazis had secretly produced a massive, unstoppable warmachine in two years - encouraged aggressors to first secretly rearm, then coerce and invade their neighbours while signing peace promises purely to buy more time for rearmament, until a world war resulted. Not exactly a great result for disarmament propaganda. So after obliterating what Reagan used to call (to the horror of commie "historians") the "true facts of history" from his mind, he advocates some compromise with the aggressors of the 30 September 1938 Munich Agreement peace-in-our-time sort, the historically proved sure fire way to really escalate a crisis into a major war by showing the green lamp to a loon to popular media acclaim and applause for a fairy tale utopian fantasy; just as the "principled" weak, rushed, imbecile withdrawl from Afghanistan in 2021 encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022, and also the green lamp for Hamas to invade Israel in 2023.

"... deterrence ... consists of threatening the enemy with thermonuclear retaliation should he act provocatively. ... If war is 'impossible', how can one threaten a possible aggressor with war? ... The danger, evoked by numerous critics, that such research will result in a sort of resigned expectation of the holocaust, seems a weak argument ... The classic theory of Clausewitz defines absolute victory in terms of disarmament of the enemy ... Today ... it will suffice to take away his means of retaliation to hold him at your mercy." - Raymond Aron, Introduction to Herman Kahn's 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, pp. 9-12. (This is the commie support for arms control and disarmament has achieved, precisely the weakening of the West to take away credible deterrence.)

"75 years ago, white slavery was rampant in England. ... it could not be talked about openly in Victorian England, moral standards as to the subjects of discussion made it difficult to arouse the community to necessary action. ... Victorian standards, besides perpetuating the white slave trade, intensified the damage ... Social inhibitions which reinforce natural tendencies to avoid thinking about unpleasant subjects are hardly uncommon. ... But when our reluctance to consider danger brings danger nearer, repression has gone too far. In 1960, I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war ... people are willing to argue that it is immoral to think and even more immoral to write in detail about having to fight ... like those ancient kings who punished messengers who brought them bad news. That did not change the news; it simply slowed up its delivery. On occasion it meant that the kings were ill informed and, lacking truth, made serious errors in judgement and strategy. ... We cannot wish them away. Nor should we overestimate and assume the worst is inevitable. This leads only to defeatism, inadequate preparations (because they seem useless), and pressures toward either preventative war or undue accommodation." - Herman Kahn's 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, pp. 17-19. (In the footnote on page 35, Kahn notes that original nuclear bullshitter, the 1950 creator of fake cobalt-60 doomsday bomb propaganda, Leo Szilard, was in the usual physics groupthink nutters club: "Szilard is probably being too respectful of his scientific colleagues who also seem to indulge in ad hominem arguments - especially when they are out of their technical specialty.")

"Ever since the catastropic and disillusioning experience of 1914-18, war has been unthinkable to most people in the West ... In December 1938, only 3 months after Munich, Lloyd's of London gave odds of 32 to 1 that there would be no war in 1939. On August 7, 1939, the London Daily Express reported the result of a poll of its European reporters. 10 out of 12 said, 'No war this year'. Hitler invaded Poland 3 weeks later." - Herman Kahn's 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, p. 39. (But as the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 proved, even the label "war" is now "controversial": the aggressor now simply declares they are on a special operation of unifying people under one flag to ensure peace! So the reason why there is war in Ukraine is that Ukraine is resisting. If it waved a white flag, as the entire arms control and disarmament lobby insists is the only sane response to a nuclear-armed aggressor, there would be "peace," albeit on Russia's terms: that's why they disarmed Ukraine in 1994. "Peace propaganda" of "disarmers"! Free decent people prefer to fight tyranny. But as Kahn states on pp. 7-9:

"Some, most notably [CND's pseudo-historian of arms race lying] A. J. P. Taylor, have even said that Hitler was not like Hitler, that further appeasement [not an all-out arms race as was needed but repeatedly rejected by Baldwin and Chamberlain until far too late; see discussion of this fact which is still deliberately ignored or onfuscated by "historians" of the A. J. P. Taylor biased anti-deterrence left wing type, in Slessor's The Central Blue, quoted on this blog] would have prevented World War II ... If someone says to you, 'One of us has to be reasonable and it is not going to be me, so it has to be you', he has a very effective bargaining advantage, particularly if he is armed with thermonuclear bombs [and you have damn all civil defense, ABM, or credible tactical deterrent]. If he can convince you he is stark, staring mad and if he has enough destructive power ... deterrence alone will not work. You must then give in or accept the possibility of being annihilated ... in the first instance if we fight and lose; in the second if we capitulate without fighting. ... We could still resist by other means ranging from passive resistance of the Gandhi type to the use of underground fighting and sabotage. All of these alternatives might be of doubtful effectiveness against [the Gulag system, KGB/FSB torture camps or Siberian salt mines of] a ruthless dictatorship."

Sometimes people complain that Hitler and the most destructive and costly war and only nuclear war of history, WWII, is given undue attention. But WWII is a good analogy to the danger precisely because of the lying WMD gas war propaganda-based disarmament of the West which allowed the war, because of the attacks by Hitler's fans on civil defense in the West to make even the token rearmament after 1935 ineffective as a credible deterrent, and because Hitler has mirrors in Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane, Napoleon and Stalin. Kahn explains on p. 173: "Because history has a way of being more imaginative and complex than even the most imaginative and intelligent analysts, historical examples often provide better scenarios than artificial ones, even though they may be no more directly applicable to current equipment, postures, and political situations than the fictional plot of the scenario. Recent history can be especially useful.")

"One type of war resulting at least partly from deliberate calculation could occur in the process of escalation. For example, suppose the Soviets attacked Europe, relying upon our fear of their reprisal to deter a strategic attack by us; we might be deterred enough to pause, but we might evacuate our cities during this pause in the hope we could thereby convince the Soviets we meant business. If the Soviets did not back down, but continued their attack upon Europe, we might decide that we would be less badly off if we proceeded ... The damage we would receive in return would then be considerably reduced, compared with what we would have suffered had we not evacuated. We might well decide at such a time that we would be better off to attack the Soviets and accept a retalitory blow at our dispersed population, rather than let Europe be occupied, and so be forced to accept the penalty of living in the hostile and dangerous world that would follow." - Herman Kahn's 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, pp. 51-2.

"We must recognise that the stability we want in a system is more than just stability against accidental war or even against an attack by the enemy. We also want stability against extreme provocation [e.g. invasion of allies, which then escalates as per invasion of Belgium 1914, or Poland 1939]." - Herman Kahn's 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, p. 53(footnote).

Note: this 1962 book should not be confused with Kahn's 1984 "updated" Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s, which omits the best material in the 1962 edition (in the same way that the 1977 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons omits the entire civil defense chapter which was the one decent thing in the 1957 and 1962/4 editions!) and thus shows a reversion to the less readable and less helpful style of his 1960 On Thermonuclear War, which severely fragmented and jumbled up all the key arguments making it easy for critics to misquote or quote out of context. For example, Kahn's 1984 "updated" book starts on the first page of the first chapter with the correct assertion that Johnathan Schell's Fate of the Earth is nonsense, but doesn't say why it's nonsense, and you have to read through to the final chapter - pages 207-8 of chapter 10 - to find Kahn writing in the most vague way possible, without a single specific example, that Schell is wrong because of "substantive inadequacies and inaccuracies", without listing a single example such as Schell's lying that the 1954 Bravo nuclear test blinded everyone well beyond the range of Rongelap, and that it was impossible to easily shield the radiation from the fallout or evacuate the area until it decays, which Schell falsely attributed to Glasstone and Dolan's nonsense in the 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons! Kahn eventually in the footnote on page 208 refers readers to an out-of-print article for facts: "These criticisms are elaborated in my review of The Fate of the Earth, see 'Refusing to Think About the Unthinkable', Fortune, June 28, 1982, pp. 113-6. Kahn does the same for civil defense in the 1984 book, referring in such general, imprecise and vague terms to Russian civil defence, with no specific data, that it is a waste of time, apart possibly one half-baked sentence on page 177: "Variations in the total megatonnage, somewhat surprisingly, do not seem to affect the toll nearly as much as variations in the targetting or the type of weapon bursts." Kahn on page 71 quotes an exchange between himself and Senator Proxmire during the US Congressional Hearings of the Joint Committee on Defense Production, Civil preparedness and limited nuclear war where on page 55 of the hearings, Senator Proxmire alleges America would escalate a limited conflict to an all-out war because: "The strategic value and military value of destroying cities in the Soviet Union would be very great." Kahn responded: "No American President is likely to do that, no matter what the provocation." Nuclear war will be limited, according to Herman Kahn's analysis, despite the bullshit fron nutters to the contrary.

Kahn on page 101 of Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s correctly and accurately condemns President Carter's 1979 State of the Union Address, which claimed falsely that just a single American nuclear submarine is required by America and has an "overwhelming" deterrent against "every large and medium-sized city in the Soviet Union". Carter ignored Russian retaliation on cities if you bomb theirs: America has avoided the intense Russian protection efforts that make the Russian nuclear threat credible, namely civil defense shelters and evacuation plans, and also the realpolitik of deterrence of world wars, which so far have only been triggered due to invasions of third parties (Belgium '14, Poland '39). Did America strategically nuke every city in Russia when it invaded Ukraine in 2022? No, debunking Proxmire and the entire Western pro-Russian "automatic escalation" propaganda lobby, and it didn't even have tactical neutron bombs to help deter the Russians like Reagan in the 1980s, because in the 1990s America had ignored Kahn's argument, and went in for MINIMAL deterrence of the least credible sort (abolishing the invasion-deterring dedicated neutron tactical nuclear stockpile entirely; the following quotation is from p101 of Kahn's Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s):

"Minimum deterrence, or any predicated on an escessive emphasis on the inevitably of mutual homocide, is both misleading and dangerous. ... MAD principles can promote provocation - e.g. Munich-type blackmail on an ally. Hitler, for example, did not threaten to attack France or England - only Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. It was the French and the British who finally had to threaten all-out war [they could only do this after rearmament and building shelters and gas masks to reduce the risk of reprisals in city bombing, which gave more time for Germany to prepare since it was rearming faster than France and Britain which still desperately counted on appeasement and peace treaties and feared provoking a war by an arms-race due to endless lying propaganda from Lord Grey that his failure to deter war in 1914 had been due to an arms-race rather than the incompetence of the procrastination of his anti-war Liberal Party colleagues in the Cabinet] - a move they would not and could not have made if the notion of a balance of terror between themselves and Germany had been completely accepted. As it was, the British and French were most reluctant to go to war; from 1933 to 1939 Hitler exploited that reluctance. Both nations [France and Britain] were terrified by the so-called 'knockout blow', a German maneuver that would blanket their capitals with poison gas ... The paralyzing effect of this fear prevented them from going to war ... and gave the Germans the freedom to march into the Ruhr, to form the Anschluss with Austria, to force the humiliating Munich appeasement (with the justification of 'peace in our time'), and to take other aggressive actions [e.g. against the Jews in the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, etc.] ... If the USSR were sufficiently prepared in the event a war did occur, only the capitalists would be destroyed. The Soviets would survive ... that would more than justify whatever sacrifice and destruction had taken place.

"This view seems to prevail in the Soviet military and the Politburo even to the present day. It is almost certain, despite several public denials, that Soviet military preparations are based on war-fighting, rather than on deterrence-only concepts and doctrines..." - Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s, 1984, pages 101-102.

Kahn adds, in his footnote on p111, that "Richard Betts has documented numerous historical cases in which attackers weakened their opponents defenses through the employment of unanticipated tactics. These include: rapid changes in tactics per se, false alarms and fluctuating preparations for war ... doctrinal innovations to gain surprise. ... This is exactly the kind of thing which is likely to surprise those who subscribe to MAD theories. Those who see a need for war-fighting capabilities expect the other side to try to be creative and use tactical innovations such as coercion and blackmail, technological surprises, or clever tactics on 'leverage' targets, such as command and control installations. If he is to adhere to a total reliance on MAD, the MADvocate has to ignore these possibilities." See Richard Betts, "Surprise Despite Warning: Why Sudden Attacks Succeed", Political Science Quarterly, Winter 1980-81, pp. 551-572.)

Compare two situations: (1) Putin explodes a 50 megaton nuclear "test" of the warhead for his new nuclear reactor powered torpedo, Poseidon, a revamped 1961 Tsar Bomba, or detonates a high-altitude nuclear EMP "test" over neutral waters but within the thousands of miles range of USA or UK territory; (2) Putin invades Poland using purely conventional weapons. Our point here is that both nuclear AND conventional weapons trigger nuclear threats and the risk of nuclear escalation, as indeed they have done (for Putin's nuclear threats scroll down to videos with translations below). So the fashionable CND style concept that only nuclear weapons can trigger nuclear escalation is bullshit, and is designed to help Russia start and win WWIII to produce a world government, by getting us to undertake further unilateral (not multilateral) disarmament, just as evolved in the 1930s, setting the scene for WWII. Japan for example did not have nuclear weapons in August 1945, yet triggered not just tactical nuclear war (both cities had some military bases and munitions factories, as well as enormous numbers of civilians), and the decision to attack cities rather than just "test" weapons obove Tokyo bay as Teller demanded but Oppenheimer rejected (for maximum impact with a very small supply of nuclear weapons) showed some strategic nuclear war thinking. Truman was escalating to try to shock Japan into rapid surrender emotionally (many cities in Japan had already been burned out in conventional incendiary air raids, and the two nuclear attacks while horrible for civilians in those cities contributed only a fraction of the millions killed in WWII, despite anti-nuclear propaganda lies to the contrary). Truman's approach escalating to win is the opposite of the "Minimax game theory" (von Neumann's maths and Thomas Schelling's propaganda) gradual escalation approach that's currently the basis of nuclear deterrence planning despite its failure wherever it has been tried (Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc). Gradual escalation is supposed to minimise the maximum possible risk (hence "minimax" name), but it guarantees failure in the real world (unlike rule abided games) by maximising the build up of resentment. E.g. Schelling/Minimax say that if you gradually napalm civilians day after day (because they are the unprotected human shields used by terrorists/insurgents; the Vietcong are hiding in underground tunnels, exactly like Hamas today, and the Putin regime's metro 2 shelter tunnels under Russia) you somehow "punish the enemy" (although they don't give a toss about the lives of kids which is why you're fighting them!) and force them to negotiate for peace in good faith, then you can pose for photos with them sharing a glass of champagne and there is "world peace". That's a popular fairy tale, like Marxist mythology.

Once you grasp this fact, that nuclear weapons have been and will again be "used" explosively without automatic escalation, for example provocative testing as per the 1961 Russian 50 megaton bomb test, or the 1962 high altitude EMP bursts, you should be able to grasp the fact that the "escalation" deception used to dismiss civil defense and tactical nuclear deterrence against limited nuclear war, is fake news from Russian fellow-travellers like Corbyn. Once you assign a non-unity probability to "escalation", you're into conventional war territory: if you fight a conventional war, it can "escalate" to nuclear war as on 6 August 1945. Japan did not avoid nuclear attack by not having nuclear weapons on 6 August 1945. If it had nuclear weapons ready to be delivered, a very persuasive argument could be made that unless Truman wanted to invite retaliation, World War II would have remained strategically non-nuclear: no net strategic advantage would have been achieved by nuclear city bombing so only war-ending tactical nuclear threats could have prevailed in practice. But try explaining this to the groupthink pseudosocialist bigoted mass murderers who permeate fake physics with crap; it's no easier to explain to them the origins of particle masses or even dark energy/gravitation; in both cases groupthink lying hogwash persists because statements of proved facts are hated and rejected if them debunk religious style fairy tales the mass media loves. There were plenty of people warning that mass media gas war fear mongering was disguised Nazi supporting propaganda in the 1930s, but the public listened to that crap then just as it accepted the "eugenics" (anti-diversity evolution crap of Sir Galton, cousin of Darwin) basis for Hitler's Mein Kampf without question, just as they accepted the lying propaganda from the UK "Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group" which like CND and all other arms control and disarmament lobbies supporting terrorist states today, did more than even Hitler to deliberately lay the foundations for the Holocaust and World War II, while never being criticised in the UK media! Thus, it's surely time for people to oppose evil lying on civil defence to save lives in all disasters from storms to conventional war, to collateral damage risks in nuclear terrorism by mad enemies. At some point, the majority has to decide to either defend itself honestly and decently against barbarism, or be consumed by it as a price for believing bullshit. It's time for decent people to oppose lying evil regarding the necessity to have credible tactical (not incredible strategic) nuclear weapons, as Oppenheimer called for in his 1951 speech, to deter invasions.

Democracy can't function when secrecy is used to deliberately cover-up vital data from viewing by Joe Public. Secrecy doesn't protect you from enemies who independently develop weapons in secret, or who spy from inside your laboratories:

"The United States and Great Britain resumed testing in 1962, and we spared no effort trying to find out what they were up to. I attended several meetings on that subject. An episode related to those meetings comes to mind ... Once we were shown photographs of some documents ... the photographer had been rushed. Mixed in with the photocopies was a single, terribly crumpled original. I innocently asked why, and was told that it had been concealed in panties. Another time ... questions were asked along the following lines: What data about American weapons would be most useful for your work and for planning military technology in general?"

- Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, Hutchinson, London, 1990, pp225-6.

ABOVE: The British government has now declassified detailed summary reports giving secret original nuclear test data on the EMP (electromagnetic pulse) damage due to numerous nuclear weapons, data which is still being kept under wraps in America since it hasn't been superseded because Western atmospheric nuclear tests were stopped late in 1962 and never resumed - even though the Russians have even more extensive data - completely debunking Glasstone and Dolan's disarmament propaganda nonsense in the 1962, 1964 and 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons which ignores EMP piped far away from low altitude nuclear tests by power and communications cables and falsely claims instead that such detonations don't produce EMP damage outside the 2psi blast radius! For a discussion of the new data and also a link to the full 200+ pages version (in addition to useful data, inevitably like all official reports it also contains a lot of "fluff" padding), please see the other (physics) site: https://nige.wordpress.com/2023/09/12/secret-emp-effects-of-american-nuclear-tests-finally-declassified-by-the-uk-and-at-uk-national-archives/ (by contrast, this "blogspot" uses old non-smartphone proof coding, no longer properly indexed any long longer by "google's smartphone bot"). As long ago as 1984, Herman Kahn argued on page 112 of his book Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s: "The effects of an EMP attack are simply not well understood [in the West, where long powerlines were never exposed on high altitude nuclear tests, unlike the Russian's 1962 Operation K, so MHD-EMP or E3 damage wasn't even mentioned in the 1977 Glasstone and Dolan Effects of Nuclear Weapons], but the Soviets seem to know - or think they know - more than we do."

BELOW: declassified British nuclear war planning blast survival data showing that even without special Morrison table shelters, the American assumption that nobody can survive in a demolished house is false, based on detailed WWII British data (the majority of people in houses flattened within 77 ft from V1 Nazi cruise missiles survived!), and secret American reports (contradicting their unclassified propaganda) proved that blast survival occurred at 16 psi overpressure in Hiroshima's houses, e.g. see limited distribution Dirkwood corp DC-P-1060 for Hiroshima, also the secret 1972 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons DNA-EM-1 table 10-1, and WWII report RC-450 table 8.2, p145 (for determining survival of people sheltered in brick houses, the WWII A, B, C, and D damage versus casualty data from V1 blast was correlated to similar damage from nuclear blast as given Glasstone's 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons page 249, Fig. 6.41a, and page 109 Fig. 3.94a, which show that A, B, C, and D damage to brick houses from nuclear weapons occur at peak overpressures of 9, 6, 3 and 0.5 psi, respectively; the longer blast from higher yields blows the debris over a wider area, reducing the load per unit area falling on to people sheltered under tables etc), and the declassified UK government assessment of nuclear terrorist attack on a port or harbour, as well as the confidential classified UK Government analysis of the economic and social effects from WWII bombing (e.g. the recovery times for areas as a function of percentage of houses destroyed):

Unofficial Russian video on the secret Russian nuclear shelters from Russian Urban Exploration, titled "Проникли на секретный Спецобъект Метро!" = "We infiltrated a secret special facility of the Metro!":

ABOVE: Moscow Metro and Metro-2 (secret nuclear subway) horizonially swinging blast doors take only 70 seconds to shut, whereas their vertically rising blast doors take 160 seconds to shut; both times are however far shorter than the arrival time of Western ICBMs or even SLBMs which take 15-30 minutes by which time the Russian shelters are sealed from blast and radiation! In times of nuclear crisis, Russia planned to evacuate from cities those who could not be sheltered, and for the remainder to be based in shelters (similarly to the WWII British situation, when people slept in shelters of one kind or another when there was a large risk of being bombed without notice, particularly in supersonic V2 missile attacks where little warning time was available).

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ABOVE: originally SECRET diagrams showing the immense casualty reductions for simple shelters and local (not long distance as in 1939) evacuation, from a UK Home Office Scientific Advisers’ Branch report CD/SA 72 (UK National Archives document reference HO 225/72), “Casualty estimates for ground burst 10 megaton bombs”, which exposed the truth behind UK Cold War civil defence (contrary to Russian propaganda against UK defence, which still falsely claims there was no scientific basis for anything, playing on the fact the data was classified SECRET). Evacuation plus shelter eliminates huge casualties for limited attacks; notice that for the 10 megaton bombs (more than 20 times the typical yield of today’s MIRV compact warheads!), you need 20 weapons, i.e. a total of 10 x 20 = 200 megatons, for 1 million killed, if civil defence is in place for 45% of people to evacuate a city and the rest to take shelter. Under civil defence, therefore, you get 1 million killed per 200 megatons. This proves that civil defence work to make deterrence more credible in Russian eyes. For a discussion of the anti-civil defence propaganda scam in the West led by Russian agents for Russian advantage in the new cold war, just read posts on this blog started in 2006 when Putin's influence became clear. You can read the full PDF by clicking the link here. Or see the files here.

ABOVE: the originally CONFIDENTIAL classified document chapters of Dr D.G. Christopherson’s “Structural Defence 1945, RC450”, giving low cost UK WWII shelter effectiveness data, which should also have been published to prove the validity of civil defence countermeasures in making deterrence of future war more credible by allowing survival of “demonstration” strikes and “nuclear accidents / limited wars” (it’s no use having weapons and no civil defence, so you can’t deter aggressors, the disaster of Munich appeasement giving Hitler a green light on 30 September 1938, when Anderson shelters were only issued the next year, 1939!). For the original WWII UK Government low cost sheltering instruction books issued to the public (for a small charge!) please click here (we have uploaded them to internet archive), and please click here for further evidence for the effectiveness of indoor shelters during WWII from Morrison shelter inventor Baker's analysis, please click here (he titled his book about WWII shelters "Enterprise versus Bureaucracy" which tells you all you need to know about the problems his successful innovations in shelter design experienced; his revolutionary concept was that the shelter should be damaged to protect the people inside because of the vast energy absorption soaked up in the plastic deformation of steel - something which naive fools can never appreciate - by analogy, if your car bumper is perfectly intact after impact you're unlikely to be because it has not absorbed the impact energy which has been passed on to you!). We have also placed useful declassified UK government nuclear war survival information on internet archive here and here. There is also a demonstration of how proof-tested WWII shelters were tested in 1950s nuclear weapon trials and adapted for use in Cold War nuclear civil defence, here, thus permanently debunking the somewhat pro-dictatorship/anti-deterrence Jeremy Corbyn/Matthew Grant/Duncan Campbell anti-civil defence propaganda rants which pretend to to based on reality, but obviously just ignore the hard, yet secret, nuclear testing facts upon which UK government civil defence was based as my father (a Civil Defence Corps instructor) explained here back in 2006. The reality is that the media follows herd fashion to sell paper/airtime; it doesn't lead it. This is why it backed Nazi appeasement (cheering Chamberlain's 1938 handshakes with Hitler for instance) and only switched tune when it was too late to deter Nazi aggression in 1939; it made the most money that way. We have to face the facts!

NUKEGATE - Western tactical neutron bombs were disarmed after Russian propaganda lie. Russia now has over 2000... "Disarmament and arms control" charlatans, quacks, cranks, liars, mass murdering Russian affiliates, and evil genocidal Marxist media exposed for what it is, what it was in the 1930s when it enabled Hitler to murder tens of millions in war. Glasstone's and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons deceptions totally disproved. Professor Brian Martin, TRUTH TACTICS, 2021 (pp45-50): "In trying to learn from scientific publications, trust remains crucial. The role of trust is epitomised by Glasstone’s book The Effects of Atomic Weapons. Glasstone was not the author; he was the editor. The book is a compilation of information based on the work of numerous contributors. For me, the question was, should I trust this information? Was there some reason why the editors or authors would present fraudulent information, be subject to conflicts of interest or otherwise be biased? ... if anything, the authors would presumably want to overestimate rather than underestimate the dangers ... Of special interest would be anyone who disagreed with the data, calculations or findings in Glasstone. But I couldn’t find any criticisms. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons was treated as the definitive source, and other treatments were compatible with it. ... One potent influence is called confirmation bias, which is the tendency to look for information that supports current beliefs and dismiss or counter contrary information. The implication is that changing one’s views can be difficult due to mental commitments. To this can be added various forms of bias, interpersonal influences such as wanting to maintain relationships, overconfidence in one’s knowledge, desires to appear smart, not wanting to admit being mistaken, and career impacts of having particular beliefs. It is difficult to assess the role of these influences on yourself. "

Honest Effects of Nuclear Weapons! The Effects of Nuclear Weapons www.nukegate.org

Archives

ABOVE (VIDEO CLIP): Russian State TV Channel 1 war inurer and enabler, NOT MERELY MAKING "INCREDIBLE BLUFF THREATS THAT WE MUST ALL LAUGH AT AND IGNORE LIKE DR GOEBBELS THREATS TO GAS JEWS AND START A WORLD WAR" AS ALMOST ALL THE BBC SCHOOL OF "JOURNALISM" (to which we don't exactly belong!) LIARS CLAIM, but instead preparing Russians mentally for nuclear war (they already have nuclear shelters and a new Putin-era tactical nuclear war civil defense manual from 2014, linked and discussed in blog posts on the archive above), arguing for use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine war in 2023: "We should not be afraid of what it is unnecessary to be afraid of. We need to win. That is all. We have to achieve this with the means we have, with the weapons we have. I would like to remind you that a nuclear weapon is not just a bomb; it is the heritage of the whole Russian people, suffered through the hardest times. It is our heritage. And we have the right to use it to defend our homeland [does he mean the liberated components of the USSR that gained freedom in 1992?]. Changing the [nuclear use] doctrine is just a piece of paper, but it is worth making a decision."

NOTE: THIS IS NOT ENGLISH LANGUAGE "PROPAGANDA" SOLELY ADDRESSED AS A "BLUFF" TO UK AND USA GOV BIGOTED CHARLATANS (those who have framed photos of hitler, stalin, chamberlain, baldwin, lloyd george, eisenhower, et al., on their office walls), BUT ADDRESSED AT MAKING RUSSIAN FOLK PARTY TO THE NEED FOR PUTIN TO START A THIRD WORLD WAR! Duh!!!!! SURE, PUTIN COULD PRESS THE BUTTON NOW, BUT THAT IS NOT THE RUSSIAN WAY, ANY MORE THAN HITLER SET OFF WWII BY DIRECTLY BOMBING LONDON! HE DIDN'T. THESE PEOPLE WANT TO CONTROL HISTORY, TO GO DOWN THE NEXT "PUTIN THE GREAT". THEY WANT TO GET THEIR PEOPLE, AND CHINA, NORTH KOREA, IRAN, ET Al. AS ALLIES, BY APPEARING TO BE DEFENDING RATIONALITY AND LIBERTY AGAINST WAR MONGERING WESTERN IMPERIALISM. For the KGB mindset here, please read Chapman Pincher's book "The Secret offensive" and Paul Mercer's "Peace of the Dead - The Truth Behind the Nuclear Disarmers". Please note that the link to the analysis of the secret USSBS report 92, The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (which google fails to appreciate is a report with the OPPOSITE conclusions to the lying unclassified reports and Glasstone's book on fire, is on internet archive in the PDF documents list at the page "The effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan" (the secret report 92 of the USSBS, not the lying unclassified version or the Glasstone book series). If you don't like the plain layout of this blog, you can change it into a "fashionable" one with smaller photos you can't read by adding ?m=1 to the end of the URL, e.g. https://glasstone.blogspot.com/2022/02/analogy-of-1938-munich-crisis-and.html?m=1

PLEASE BEAR WITH US - THIS SITE WAS DEVELOPED IN 2006 BEFORE GOOGLE SMARTPHONE BOT CACHING (GOOGLE BOTS CAN'T INDEX THIS FORMAT ANYMORE AS IT IS SIMPLY UNSUITABLE TO SMARTPHONES WHICH DIDN'T EXIST BACK IN 2006 - WILL MOVE TO A NEW DOMAIN SOON TO OVERCOME THIS. (HOPEFULLY THE TEXT WILL ALSO BE EDITED AND RE-WRITTEN TO TAKE OUT TYPING ERRORS AND DEAD LINKS DATING BACK TO 2006 WHEN THE BLOG BEGAN - A LOT HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN!)

Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons exaggerations completely undermine credible deterrence of war: Glasstone exaggerates urban "strategic" nuclear weapons effects by using effects data taken from unobstructed terrain (without the concrete jungle shielding of blast winds and radiation by cities!), and omits the most vital uses and most vital effects of nuclear weapons: to DETER world war credibly by negating the concentrations of force used to invade Belgium, 1914 (thus WWI) and Poland (WWII). The facts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the shielding of blast and radiation effects by modern concrete buildings in the credible nuclear deterrence of invasions (click here for data) which - unlike the countervalue drivel that failed to prevent WW2 costing millions of human lives - worked in the Cold War despite the Western media's obsession with treating as Gospel truth the lying anti-nuclear propaganda from Russia's World Peace Council and its allies (intended to make the West disarm to allow Russian invasions without opposition, as worked in Ukraine recently)! If we have credible W54's and W79's tactical nukes to deter invasions as used to Cold War, pro Russian World Peace Council inspired propaganda says: "if you use those, we'll bomb your cities", but they can bomb our cities with nuclear if we use conventional weapons, or even if we fart, if they want - we don't actually control what thugs in dictatorships - it is like saying Hitler had 12,000 tons of tabun nerve agent by 1945, so lying we had to surrender for fear of it. Actually, he had to blow his brains out because he had an incredible deterrent, as retaliation risk plus defence (masks) negated it!

Credible deterrence necessitates simple, effective protection against concentrated and dispersed invasions and bombing. The facts can debunk massively inaccurate, deliberately misleading CND "disarm or be annihilated" pro-dictatorship ("communism" scam) political anti-nuclear deterrence dogma. Hiroshima and Nagasaki anti-nuclear propaganda effects lies on blast and radiation for modern concrete cities is debunked by solid factual evidence kept from public sight for political reasons by the Marx-media which is not opposed by the remainder of the media, and the completely fake "nuclear effects data" sneaks into "established pseudo-wisdom" by the back-door. Another trick is hate attacks on anyone telling the truth: this is a repeat of lies from Nobel Peace Prize winner Angell and pals before WWI (when long-"outlawed" gas was used by all sides, contrary to claims that paper agreements had "banned" it somehow) and WWII (when gas bombing lies prior to the war by Angell, Noel-Baker, Joad and others were used as an excuse to "make peace deals" with the Nazis, again, not worth the paper they were printed on). Mathematically, the subset of all States which keep agreements (disarmament and arms control, for instance) is identical to the subset of all States which are stable Democracies (i.e., tolerating dissent for the past several years), but this subset is - as Dr Spencer Weart's statistical evidence of war proves in his book Never at War: Why Democracies Won't Fight One Another - not the bloody war problem! Because none of the disarmaments grasp set theory, or bother to read Dr Weart's book, they can never understand that disarmament of Democracies doesn't cause peace but causes millions of deaths.

PLEASE CLICK HERE for the truth from Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the shielding of blast and radiation effects by modern concrete buildings in the credible nuclear deterrence of invasions which - unlike the countervalue drivel that failed to prevent WW2 costing millions of human lives - worked in the Cold War despite the Western media's obsession with treating as Gospel truth the lying anti-nuclear propaganda from Russia's World Peace Council and its allies (intended to make the West disarm to allow Russian invasions without opposition, as worked in Ukraine recently)! Realistic effects and credible nuclear weapon capabilities are needed for deterring or stopping aggressive invasions and attacks which could escalate into major conventional or nuclear wars. Credible deterrence is through simple, effective protection against concentrated and dispersed invasions and aerial attacks, debunking inaccurate, misleading CND "disarm or be annihilated" left political anti-nuclear deterrence dogma. Hiroshima and Nagasaki anti-nuclear propaganda effects lies on blast and radiation for modern concrete cities is debunked by solid factual evidence kept from public sight for political reasons by the Marx-media.

Glasstone's and Nukemap's fake Effects of Nuclear Weapons effects data for unobstructed deserts, rather than realistic blast and radiation shielding concrete jungles which mitigate countervalue damage as proved in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Penney and Stanbury, undermine credible world war deterrence just as Philip Noel-Baker's 1927 BBC radio propaganda on gas war knock-out blow lies were used by Nazi propaganda distributing "pacifist disarmers" to undermine deterrence of Hitler's war, murdering tens of millions deliberately through lies (e.g. effective gas masks don't exist) that were easy to disprove, but supported by the mainstream fascist leaning press in the UK. There is not just one country, Russia, which could trigger WW3, because we know from history that the world forms alliances once a major war breaks out, apart from a few traditional neutral countries like Ireland and Switzerland, so a major US-China war over Taiwan could draw in support from Russia and North Korea, just as the present Russian invasion and war against Ukraine has drawn in Iranian munitions support for Russia. So it is almost certain that a future East-vs-West world war will involve an alliance of Russia-China-North Korea-Iran fighting on multiple fronts, with nuclear weapons being used carefully for military purposes (not in the imaginary 1930s massive "knockout blow" gas/incendiary/high explosive raids against cities that was used by the UK media to scare the public into appeasing Hitler and thus enabling him to trigger world war; Chamberlain had read Mein Kampf and crazily approved Hitler's plans to exterminate Jews and invade Russia starting a major war, a fact censored out of biased propaganda hailing Chamberlain as a peacemaker).

Realistic effects and credible nuclear weapons capabilities are VITAL for deterring or stopping aggressive invasions and attacks which could escalate into major conventional or nuclear wars debunk Marx media propagandarists who obfuscate because they don't want you to know the truth, so activism is needed to get the message out against lying frauds and open fascists in the Russian supporting Marx mass media, which sadly includes government officialdom (still infiltrated by reds under beds, sorry to Joe MaCarthy haters, but admit it as a hard fact that nuclear bomb labs in the West openly support Russian fascist mass murders; I PRAY THIS WILL SOON CHANGE!).

ABOVE: Tom Ramos at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (quoted at length on the development details of compact MIRV nuclear warhead designs in the latest post on this blog) explains how the brilliant small size primary stage, the Robin, was developed and properly proof-tested in time to act as the primary stage for a compact thermonuclear warhead to deter Russia in the 1st Cold War, something now made impossible due to Russia's World Peace Council propaganda campaigns. (Note that Ramos has a new book published, called From Berkeley to Berlin: How the Rad Lab Helped Avert Nuclear War which describes in detail in chapter 13, "First the Flute and Then the Robin", how caring, dedicated nuclear weapons physicists in the 1950s and 1960s actually remembered the lesson of disarmament disaster in the 1930s, and so WORKED HARD to develop the "Flute" secondary and the "Robin" primary to enable a compact, light thermonuclear warhead to help deter WWIII! What a difference to today, when all we hear from such "weaponeers" now is evil lying about nuclear weapons effects on cities and against Western civil defence and against credible deterrence on behalf of the enemy.)

ABOVE: Star Wars filmmaker Peter Kuran has at last released his lengthy (90 minutes) documentary on The neutron bomb. Unfortunately, it is not yet being widely screened in cinemas or on DVD Blu Ray disc, so you have to stream it (if you have fast broadband internet hooked up to a decent telly). At least Peter managed to interview Samuel Cohen, who developed the neutron bomb out of the cleaner Livermore devices Dove and Starling in 1958 (Ramos says Livermore's director, who invented a wetsuit, is now trying to say Cohen stole the neutron bomb idea from him! Not so, as RAND colleague and 1993 Effects Manual EM-1 editor Dr Harold L. Brode explains in his recent brilliant book on the history of nuclear weapons in the 1st Cold War (reviewed in a post on this blog in detail) that Cohen was after the neutron bomb for many years before Livermore was even built as a rival to Los Alamos. Cohen had been into neutrons when working in the Los Alamos Efficiency Group of the Manhattan project on the very first nuclear weapons, used with neutron effects on people by Truman, back in 1945 to end a bloody war while the Livermore director was in short pants.)

For the true effects in modern city concrete buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, disproving the popular lies for nudes in open deserts used as the basis for blast and radiation calculations by Glasstone and Nukemap, please click here The deceptive bigots protraying themselves as Federation of American Scientists genuine communist disarmers in the Marx media including TV scammers have been suppressing the truth to sell fake news since 1945 and in a repetition of the 1920s and 1930s gas war media lying for disarmament and horror news scams that caused disarmament and thus encouraged Hitler to initiate the invasions that set off WWII!

Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons exaggerations completely undermine credible deterrence of war: Glasstone exaggerates urban "strategic" nuclear weapons effects by using effects data taken from unobstructed terrain (without the concrete jungle shielding of blast winds and radiation by cities!), and omits the most vital uses and most vital effects of nuclear weapons: to DETER world war credibly by negating the concentrations of force used to invade Belgium, 1914 (thus WWI) and Poland (WWII). Disarmament and arms control funded propaganda lying says any deterrent which is not actually exploded in anger is a waste of money since it isn't being "used", a fraud apparently due to the title and content of Glasstone's book which omits the key use and effect of nuclear weapons, to prevent world wars: this is because Glasstone and Dolan don't even bother to mention the neutron bomb or 10-fold reduced fallout in the the Los Alamos 95% clean Redwing-Navajo test of 1956, despite the neutron bomb effects being analysed for its enhanced radiation and reduced thermal and blast yield in detail in the 1972 edition of Dolan's edited secret U.S. Department of Defense Effects Manual EM-1, "Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons", data now declassified yet still being covered-up by "arms control and disarmament" liars today to try to destroy credible deterrence of war in order to bolster their obviously pro-Russian political anti-peace agenda. "Disarmament and arms control" charlatans, quacks, cranks, liars, mass murdering Russian affiliates, and evil genocidal Marxist media exposed for what it is, what it was in the 1930s when it enabled Hitler to murder tens of millions in war .

ABOVE: 11 May 2023 Russian state TV channel 1 loon openly threatens nuclear tests and bombing UK. Seeing how the Russian media is under control of Putin, this is like Dr Goebbels rantings, 80 years past. But this doesn't disprove the world war threat any more than it did with Dr Goebbels. These people, like the BBC here, don't just communicate "news" but attempt to do so selectively and with interpretations and opinions that set the stage for a pretty obviously hate based political agenda with their millions of viewers, a trick that worked in the 1st Cold War despite Orwell's attempts to lampoon it in books about big brother like "1984" and "Animal Farm". When in October 1962 the Russians put nuclear weapons into Cuba in secret without any open "threats", and with a MASSIVELY inferior overall nuclear stockpile to the USA (the USA had MORE nuclear weapons, more ICBMs, etc.), the media made a big fuss, even when Kennedy went on TV on 22 October and ensured no nuclear "accidents" in Cuba by telling Russia that any single accidentally launched missile from Cuba against any Western city would result in a FULL RETALITORY STRIKE ON RUSSIA. There was no risk of nuclear war then except by accident, and Kennedy had in his 25 May 1961 speech on "Urgent National Needs" a year and a half before instigated NUCLEAR SHELTERS in public basement buildings to help people in cities survive (modern concrete buildings survive near ground zero Hiroshima, as proved by declassified USSBS reports kept covered up by Uncle Sam). NOE THAT THERE IS A CREDIBLE THREAT OF NUCLEAR TESTS AND HIROSHIMA TYPE INTIMIDATION STRIKES, THE BBC FINALLY DECIDES TO SUPPRESS NUCLEAR NEWS SUPPOSEDLY TO HELP "ANTI-NUCLEAR" RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA TRYING TO PREVENT US FROM GETTING CREDIBLE DETERRENCE OF INVASIONS, AS WE HAD WITH THE W79 UNTIL DISARMERS REMOVED IT IN THE 90s! This stinks of prejudice, the usual sort of hypocrisy from the 1930s "disarmament heroes" who lied their way to Nobel peace prizes by starting a world war!

The facts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the shielding of blast and radiation effects by modern concrete buildings in the credible nuclear deterrence of invasions (click here for data) which - unlike the countervalue drivel that failed to prevent WW2 costing millions of human lives - worked in the Cold War despite the Western media's obsession with treating as Gospel truth the lying anti-nuclear propaganda from Russia's World Peace Council and its allies (intended to make the West disarm to allow Russian invasions without overwhelming, effective deterrence or opposition, as worked in Ukraine recently)!

Realistic effects and credible nuclear weapon capabilities are required now for deterring or stopping aggressive invasions and attacks which could escalate into major conventional or nuclear wars. Credible deterrence necessitates simple, effective protection against concentrated and dispersed invasions and bombing. The facts can debunk massively inaccurate, deliberately misleading CND "disarm or be annihilated" pro-dictatorship ("communism" scam) political anti-nuclear deterrence dogma. Hiroshima and Nagasaki anti-nuclear propaganda effects lies on blast and radiation for modern concrete cities is debunked by solid factual evidence kept from public sight for political reasons by the Marx-media, which is not opposed by the fashion-obsessed remainder of the media, and so myths sneak into "established pseudo-wisdom" by the back-door.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Civil defense efficiency data from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Texas City Disaster nuclear and conventional explosions on the public in buildings etc






“A soldier on picket duty at Nagasaki was vaporised by the explosion even though he was 3.5 km from the centre of the blast.”

- Myth promoted by physics Professors Tony Hey and Patrick Walters, The Quantum Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 69 (photo above).


The soldier was only subject to skin reddening because of the brief pulse, which even a leaf or a sheet of paper stopped. The wooden panel behind the person was only slightly scorched around the unburned shadow of the person. Hey and Walters’ are unaware that it takes more energy to evaporate water (people are 70% water) than to burn dry wood! If the flash had been sufficient to “vaporise” anyone, the wooden panel would have burned first, being less than 70% water! However, some physics professors are proud to promote pseudo-science like non-relativistic (first-quantization) quantum mechanics in preference to relativistic second quantization, just like the myth that a bomb can vaporize 70% water people and merely leave scorch marks on a wooden fence!

ABOVE: U. S. Army photo showing how a mere leaf of Fatsia japonica attenuated the heat flash enough to prevent scorching to the bitumen on an electric pole near the Meiji Bridge, 1.3 km range, Hiroshima. It didn't even vaporize the leaf before the pulse ended, let alone did it somehow ignite the wooden pole (most photos claiming to show thermal flash radiation effects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki purely show effects from the fires set off by the blast wave overturning cooking stoves, which developed 30 minutes to 2 hours later):

“Even blades of grass cast permanent shadows on otherwise badly scorched wood. The [Hiroshima nuclear bomb heat] flash lasted less time than it took the grass to shrivel.” - Chapman Pincher, Into the Atomic Age, Hutchinson and Co., London, 1950, p. 50.


Above: Yorozuyo Bridge, 880 metres south-southwest of ground zero in Hiroshima. Notice that the railings and their support pillars weren't vaporized when casting shadows in the otherwise flash-scorched road. Unlike some wooden bridges in Hiroshima which burned, this modern bridge was neither “vaporised” nor blasted into the river. Just 240 metres from ground zero, the modern T-shaped Aioi Bridge also survived (this bridge was the distinctive aiming point for Enola Gay bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee, but the crosswind carried the bomb 240 metres south, so that it detonated directly over the Shima Surgical Clinic):







The ability of Hiroshima survivors to beat or roll out the flames from dark coloured ignited clothing, thereby preventing any flame burns at the higher thermal exposures is discussed in the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 19 June 1946:

Page 3: “The [Hiroshima] attack came 45 minutes after the ‘all clear’ had been sounded from a previous alert [the weather survey aircraft, flying ahead of the nuclear bomber]. Because of the lack of warning and the populace’s indifference to small groups of planes, the explosion came as an almost complete surprise, and the people had not taken shelter. Many were caught in the open, and most of the rest in flimsily constructed homes or commercial establishments.”

Page 17: “Uninfected burns healed promptly without any unusual clinical features [nuclear radiation synergism with thermal burns only occurred where there was infection of the burns wounds; high doses of nuclear radiation prevented the infections from healing normally from about 1-8 weeks after exposure, when the white blood cell count was suppressed due to bone marrow damage] ... Because of the brief duration of the flash wave and the shielding effects of almost any objects – leaves and clothing as well as buildings – there were many interesting cases of protection. ... The most striking instance was that of a man writing before a window. His hands were seriously burned but his exposed face and neck suffered only slight burns due to the angle of entry of the radiant heat through the window.”

Page 18: “Flash burns were largely confined to exposed areas of the body ... the thicker the clothing the more likely it was to give complete protection against flash burns. ... skin was burned beneath tightly fitting clothing but was unburned beneath loosely fitting portions. ... dark-colored clothing were most likely to be burned.”

Page 19: “A few burns resulted from clothing set afire by the flash wave, but in most cases people were able to beat out such fires without serious injury to the skin.”

Page 21: “Treatment of victims by the Japanese was limited by the lack of medical supplies and facilities. ... Allied doctors used penicillin and plasma with beneficial effects. ... A large percentage of the cases died from secondary disease, such as septic bronchopneumonia or tuberculosis, as a result of lowered resistance. Deaths from radiation began about a week after exposure and reached a peak in three to four weeks. They had practically ceased to occur after seven to eight weeks.”

Page 32: “Clothing ignited, though it could be quickly beaten out, telephone poles charred, thatched roofs of houses caught fire. In Hiroshima, the explosion started hundreds of fires almost simultaneously, the most distant of which was found 13,700 feet from ground zero; this, however, probably started when a building with a thatched roof collapsed on to a hot charcoal fire. Fires were started directly by flash heat in such easily ignitable substances as dark cloth, paper, or dry-rotted wood, within about 3,500 feet of ground zero; white-painted, concrete-faced or cement-stuccoed structures reflected the heat and did not ignite. ... Clothing as well as buildings afforded considerable protection against the flash. Even a clump of grass or tree leaf was on occasion adequate.”

Page 41: “In our planning for the future, if we are realistic, we will prepare to minimize the destructiveness of such attacks, and so organize the economic and administrative life of the nation that no single or small group of successful attacks can paralyze the national organism.”




Above: protection against severe thermal radiation burns by cloth cap and summer uniform of soldier at 1.23 mile from ground zero in Hiroshima, as photographed by the Japanese on 2 October 1945. This pair of photos were published on page 16 of the 30 June 1946 (typeset version) of the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey unclassified report, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were 40,000 soldiers in Hiroshima preparing to resist the American invasion when the bomb dropped. The thermal exposure calculated for this soldier by Glasstone and Dolan (The Effects of Nuclear Weapons 3rd ed., 1977, Fig. 12.70 on page 567) is 5.5-6 cal/cm2 assuming 12.5 kt yield, which implies 7.0-7.7 cal/cm2 for the 2002 DS02 dosimetry yield revision of 16 kt. Glasstone and Dolan designate 7.1 cal/cm2 as the thermal flash energy needed for third degree burns (charring) to medium colour skin, 16 kt yield, so this is skin charring on that criterion. By the medical "rule of nines" he received only 4.5% body area (face) burns and was able to survive, despite the serious nature of the burns. The widely-cited U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War falsely asserts that outdoors 6.7 cal/cm2 is lethal to all exposed, even for nuclear explosion yields higher than at Hiroshima (the thermal energy needed to cause a given burn increases with bomb yield).

The flash of light arriving ahead of the blast wave from a nuclear explosion advertises a bright visible advance warning to get down, to take cover against the strong blast winds and accompanying flying debris, contrary to lies in popular media films of explosions where the bang soundtrack is falsely synchronized with the flash. It is true that at large distances where the flash was not painfully bright upon the eyes (i.e. many times the brightness of the noon sun), some people will actually turn to look towards the fireball. However, the maximum size of a retinal burn is limited by the solid angle of the fireball in the observers field of view. Glasstone and Dolan report the following eye injury facts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki on page 572 of the 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons. There was only one known case of permanent retinal injury, and only 5% of people within 6,600 feet of ground zero suffered temporary keratitis (cornea inflammation) because the cornea is transparent and doesn't heat up! Nobody in a sample of 1,400 cases received permanent opacity of the cornea, despite 25% of cases having facial burns! Nobody had their eyes burned out.

Even in the case when rabbits were exposed in aircraft flying above the clouds and directly facing the 3.8 megaton Teak high altitude test in 1958, the size of the retinal burns was limited to a very small fraction of the retina area, so even where retinal injury does occur, it doesn't imply permanent total blindness. The rabbits forced to face the fireball had small eye injuries but were not blinded. For lower altitude detonations, the duration of the flash is longer and the pain caused by the intense glare of many noon-suns close to a nuclear detonation instinctively causes the person to close their eyes and face away by reflex, just as people react to a painfully bright flash of light at night from a camera. As we shall see, these actions automatically reduce the hazard from both eye injury and burns in high-yield nuclear weapons that expose massive areas to dangerous thermal and blast effects. Thermal burns data for bare skin and no evasive action is inappropriate to humans who wear clothes and reflexively take evasive action upon seeing a very bright flash. (Few people are likely to be looking upwards from ground zero in a high altitude detonation with a short duration flash.)



Above: thermal burns to bare skin at normal incidence (facing the fireball) for low altitude nuclear detonations of various yields, from Glasstone and Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977, assuming no evasive action, no shadowing of the fireball by the skyline, fences, houses, vehicles, trees, other people, clothing, etc. The data also implicitly assumes a low (relaxed) heart pulse because the burn volunteers were seated and relatively relaxed during the exposure. Larger amounts of thermal radiation are needed to cause burns when the duration of the pulse increases in large weapon yields, because there is then time for heat to be carried from surface tissue to deeper layers by the circulation of blood, reducing the temperature rise. A pulse rate higher than 72 beats per minute has the same cooling effect on the skin, by carrying away surface heat faster and limiting the temperature of the tissue. E.g., a fighting soldier or a person running for cover with a high pulse rate during a nuclear attack warning will require considerably more thermal radiation for a particular burn than is indicated.


Above: U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey photo of the Hiroshima firestorm area: modern city buildings survived near ground zero in Hiroshima, saving lives by shielding radiation. Several hours after being evacuated, some were burned out in the firestorm started 30 minutes after the detonation in the overcrowded and obsolete wooden housing predominant in the old city centre. Remember the mechanism for the firestorm was not thermal radiation causing instant building flashover, so the burned down wooden buildings gave nearly complete thermal flash protection to the people in them (except near some windows which had a clear view of the fireball), who mostly evacuated the firespread area before their houses burned:

“Six persons who had been in reinforced-concrete buildings within 3,200 feet [975 m] of air zero stated that black cotton black-out curtains were ignited by flash heat ... A large proportion of over 1,000 persons questioned was, however, in agreement that a great majority of the original fires were started by debris falling on kitchen charcoal fires ...”

- Secret-classified May 1947 Strategic Bombing Survey report on Hiroshima, vol. 1, pages 4-6 (excluded from the unclassified booklet they published in 1946, before the full six-volume secret report had been finished).



Above: 1945 Hiroshima overcrowded wood-frame city area (this area was just outside the firestorm perimeter, so it survived intact apart from broken windows) was judged to be a serious fire hazard even in peacetime without a nuclear explosion, according to the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 19 June 1946 (emphasis added to key sentences in bold below):

Page 5: “In Hiroshima (and in Nagasaki also) the dwellings were of wood construction; about one-half were one story and the remainder either one and one-half or two stories. ... The type of construction, coupled with antiquated fire-fighting equipment [stored in wooden sheds] and inadequately trained personnel, afforded even in peacetime a high possibility of conflagration. Many wood framed industrial buildings were of poor construction by American standards. The principal points of weakness were the extremely small tenons, the inadequate tension joints, and the inadequate or poorly designed lateral bracings.”

Page 18: “The collapse of the buildings was sudden, so that thousands of people were pinned beneath the debris. Many were able to extricate themselves or received aid in escaping, but large numbers succumbed either to their injuries or to the fire before they could be extricated.”

Page 32: “Clothing ignited, though it could be quickly beaten out, telephone poles charred, thatched roofs of houses caught fire. In Hiroshima, the explosion started hundreds of fires almost simultaneously, the most distant of which was found 13,700 feet from ground zero; this, however, probably started when a building with a thatched roof collapsed on to a hot charcoal fire. Fires were started directly by flash heat in such easily ignitable substances as dark cloth, paper, or dry-rotted wood, within about 3,500 feet of ground zero; white-painted, concrete-faced or cement-stuccoed structures reflected the heat and did not ignite. ... The majority of the initial fires in buildings, however, were started by secondary sources (kitchen charcoal fires, electric short circuits, industrial process fires, etc.). ... Clothing as well as buildings afforded considerable protection against the flash. Even a clump of grass or tree leaf was on occasion adequate.”


Above: The Hiroshima Fire Department had only one modern ladder truck which was burned when the wooden West Side main fire station was burned down, 1.2 km from ground zero. (U.S. National Archives)


Above: the modern city Hiroshima today, no longer the fire hazard of predominantly inflammable overcrowded wood-frame buildings that existed on 6 August 1945. As shown later in this post, the few modern city buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki withstood the effects very well, and in buildings which were not evacuated during the firestorm 2-3 hours afterwards, they were able to put out the fires. Because of the high humidity in the two Japanese coastal cities (and most modern Western cities near the coast or a river) relative to the dry Nevada desert, and the geometric shadowing by the city skyline of windows (and people) from the fireball, modern style buildings did not ignite from thermal radiation, unlike some Nevada nuclear test structures, but instead from burning firebrands from the firestorm raging in wood-frame housing around them (a threat which does not exist in modern cities). This example tells us the facts about low thermal ignition threat for any modern, humid, non-desert Western city (cities built beside a river or ocean are relatively humid compared to the Nevada desert), unlike Lynn Eden's overhyped case of a room flashover in an inflammable trash-filled wooden house exposed with a window having an unobstructed line of sight facing the 1953 Encore nuclear test, on the dry, low-humidity desert plains of the Nevada. (Two almost identical houses were exposed at Encore and only the one filled with obsolete inflammable junk burst into flames; the one with modern furnishings which were manufactured to modern safety standards regarding normal fire-resistant - but not fire-proof - outer fabric coverings did not undergo flashover and the few smouldering items were easily extinguished by the recovery party after the test. Eden and brainwashed supporters live in an imaginary world where city centres are still filled with 1945 non-whitewashed inflammable wooden houses, piled high with illegally inflammable furnishings, somehow kept as dry as the test houses in low-humidity Nevada desert, with windows arranged so they have an unobstructed view of a nuclear fireball.)

Nuclear winter and related lies debunked by actual firestorm data

Of thousands of nuclear test explosions, the one “nuclear winter” from the Hiroshima fire storm blocked out the sun for 25 minutes (from burst time at 8:15 am until 8:40) in Hiroshima as shown by the meteorological sunshine records printed in Figure 6 (3H) of Drs. Ashley W. Oughterson, Henry L. Barnett, George V. LeRoy, Jack D. Rosenbaum, Averill A. Liebow, B. Aubrey Schneider, and E. Cuyler Hammond, Medical Effects of Atomic Bombs: The Report of the Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan, Volume 1, Office of the Air Surgeon, report NP-3036, April 19, 1951, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Nobody is recorded as being a casualty from the 25 minutes of sunlight deprivation!

The reason? The soot is hydroscopic. It absorbs water and falls out in black rain. The firestorm took 30 minutes to start and was at peak intensity 2-3 hours later, so radioactive mushroom cloud been blown many miles downwind before the black rain occurred over Hiroshima, contrary to ignorant lies about “fallout radiation”. The soot doesn’t freeze the planet. The soot was instead rapidly precipitated in a self-induced rainout as was pointed out back in 1983 by J. B. Knox in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report UCRL-89907, which nuclear propaganda ignored. No other nuclear explosion ever created a firestorm. Even those near naturally forested Pacific islands failed to ignite the vegetation by thermal radiation.

Targeting oil wells instead of cities reduces the moisture effect, but the soot doesn't rise high enough from burning oil wells, as proved when Saddam set fire to all of Kuwait’s oil fields. This has all been intensively researched and documented. Regarding the non-soot dust injected into the stratosphere, unlike soot it’s not a strong absorber of sunlight and weather records were intensively studied for signs of both nuclear winter and ozone depletion during hundreds of megatons of atmospheric 1945-62 nuclear tests, with failure.

The initial gamma radiation from a nuclear explosion produces more ozone than it destroys. Gamma radiation produces large amounts of ozone from atmospheric oxygen regardless of the burst altitude, but ozone-destroying nitrogen oxides are only produced by the high-density air blast of low-altitude nuclear explosions. Those nitrogen oxides then combine with water vapour in the turbulent toroidal circulation of the mushroom cloud to form nitric acid, which does not destroy ozone but simply gets deposited, very diluted, in rain. This was proved in the 1970s when aircraft were flown through mushroom clouds from Chinese nuclear tests. In high altitude nuclear explosions, there is no compressed blast wave that forms nitrogen oxides, so you actually get a boost to the ozone layer since the explosion produces vast amounts of ozone due to the gamma radiation.

Even the “nuclear winter” from mass fires, dust, and other effects from the well-established 100 million megatons K-T explosion 65 million years ago failed to wipe out plants and mammals. Instead, it made extinct the dangerous cold-blooded reptiles that were preventing freedom for peaceful mammal evolution. The idea that there is no protection and no possibility of surviving against a big explosion is false. Claiming that nuclear wars cannot be won if you lie and exaggerate the effects of nuclear weapons and the effects of nuclear war while downplaying countermeasures, is exactly what encouraged the terrorists to exploit the most feared weapons in the 1930s while peace-loving nations disarmed and thus effectively signed the death warrant for six million Jews on “peace treaties” with liars.

One of the Scientific American’s Cold War publishers, Gerard Piel, had a long history of lying and publishing lies about fires from nuclear weapons to attack civil defense readiness, just as his predecessors did in Britain during the 1930s (which made the Prime Minister appease Hitler, encouraging him to start WWII). Typical example of lie:

“A heading in one recent report concerned with effects of nuclear detonations reads, ‘Megatons Mean Fire Storms,’ and the report predicts that a 20-megaton nuclear burst is sure to produce a 300-square mile fire storm. [Reference: Gerard Piel (then the anti-civil defense publisher of the Scientific American), ‘The Illusion of Civil Defense,’ published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1962, pp. 2-8.] The report further states that blastproof bomb shelters afforded no protection in World War II fire storms, and the reader is left to conclude that vast fire storm areas in which there will be no survivors are an assured consequence of future nuclear attacks. ... the 40,000-50,000 persons killed by the fire storm at Hamburg constituted only 14 to 18 percent of the people in the fire storm area and 3 to 4 percent of Hamburg’s total population at the time of the attack. ... Two of three buildings in a 4.5 square mile area were burning 20 minutes after the incendiary attack began at Hamburg, and similar figures were reported for other German fire storm cities.”

- Robert M. Rodden, Floyd I. John, and Richard Laurino, Exploratory Analysis of Fire Storms, Stanford Research Institute, AD616638, 1965, pages 1, 5.

Media lying about the thermal ignitions (leading to lies about firestorms and nuclear winter caused by the soot of such fires blocking sunlight) can be traced back to the secret classification of the full three-volume 1947 report on Hiroshima by the Strategic Bombing Survey, which was edited out of the brief single volume “summary” that the openly published a year earlier, 1946. Here is the key revelation (originally ‘secret’ May 1947 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey report on Hiroshima, pp. 4-6):

‘Six persons who had been in reinforced-concrete buildings within 3,200 feet [975 m] of air zero stated that black cotton black-out curtains were ignited by flash heat… A large proportion of over 1,000 persons questioned was, however, in agreement that a great majority of the original fires were started by debris falling on kitchen charcoal fires ... There had been practically no rain in the city for about 3 weeks. The velocity of the wind ... was not more than 5 miles [8 km] per hour.... Hundreds of fires were reported to have started in the centre of the city within 10 minutes after the explosion... almost no effort was made to fight this conflagration ... There were no automatic sprinkler systems in building...’ [Emphasis added.]

No modern city today is built out of 1945 Hiroshima style wood frame houses with charcoal stoves amid bamboo furnishings and paper screens. Even Hiroshima is no longer built like that, it’s a modern steel, concrete, and brick city and would not suffer a firestorm if a bomb dropped on it again.

Even where city firestorms have actually occurred in obsolete wooden city areas of Japan and Europe, there was not a nuclear winter. What about the theoretical predictions that a nuclear attack on oil supplies will cause a nuclear winter, made by the founder of nuclear winter hype, Paul Crutzen? Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army invaded Kuwait and set all of its oil wells on fire as it was driven back into Iraq by America in 1991.

Peter Aldhous, ‘Oil-well climate catastrophe?’, Nature, vol. 349 (1991), p. 96:

“The fears expressed last week centred around the cloud of soot that would result if Kuwait’s oil wells were set alight by Iraqi forces ... with effects similar to those of the ‘nuclear winter’ ... Paul Crutzen, from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, has produced some rough calculations which predict a cloud of soot covering half of the Northern Hemisphere within 100 days. Crutzen ... estimates that temperatures beneath such a cloud could be reduced by 5-10 degrees C ...”

Dr Richard D. Small of Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation, California, responded in Nature, vol. 350 (1991), pp. 11-12, that 16,000 metric tons of actual soot is produced from 220,000 metric tons of oil burned every day, and anyway:

“My estimates of the smoke produced by destruction of Kuwait’s oil wells and refineries and the smoke stabilization altitude do not support any of the purported impacts. The smoke is not injected high enough to spread over large areas of the Northern Hemisphere, nor is enough produced to cause a measurable temperature change or failure of the monsoons.”

It turned out that the nuclear winter hype was false, because even if you do somehow manage to start a firestorm in the modern world (the overcrowded fire-hazard wooden medieval areas of Hamburg, Dresden, and Hiroshima weren’t rebuilt with wood after they burned in firestorms), it simply doesn’t produce a stable layer of soot in the stratosphere like the computer simulation. At Hiroshima the soot returned to the ground promptly because it is hydroscopic: it forms water droplets, rain. (It wasn’t fallout: the firestorm took over 20 minutes to get doing, by which time the radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown miles downwind.)



Above: body area exposed to blast winds, flying glass and other debris, and thermal flash burns, under different curcumstances, from Fragment Hazard Criteria by D. I. Feinstein, report AD-A265238. Lying prone under a table or desk dramatically reduces injury compared to a standing person for many different reasons. It reduces the body area exposed to horizontally flying debris and blast winds by a factor of four. It reduces the bathing of the body by direct and scattered thermal and initial nuclear radiations, since getting down low increases the angular terrain/city skyline shielding factor for direct radiations (maximising the protection by shadowing), and it also reduces the scattered radiation exposure since one side of the body is in contact with the ground and thus is protected against scattered radiation by the ground. (Although some nuclear radiation may pass through the body and then be scattered back upwards by ground scatter, this is attenuated by its downward passage through the body before the ground scatter. In the case of thermal radiation, there is even more protection.) As the blast winds pass over a lying person, they press the person down, increasing the friction with the ground and minimising the risk of drag. Any gutter or low-lying terrain irregularities provide shelter from the horizontal blast winds. Most or all of these protective factors, as we shall see, have been neglected in the notoriously wrong Cold War era civil defense computer calculations of casualty rates, as proved by specific tests against Hiroshima and Nagasaki survival data.



Above: classic photos of the test of a fake "brick" house (brick-veneered cinder block), with the outer walls all demolished by 5 psi peak overpressure from the 29 kt Teapot-Apple 2 nuclear test, Nevada, May 1955 (Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1957). The great deception here is compounded by the fact that all editions of Glasstone's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1957, 1962/64 and 1977) omit the secret and later limited-distribution blast damage data that the U. S. Department of Defense possessed for full scale real brick houses, which had been held at an earlier highly secret nuclear weapon test in 1951, and which showed far less destruction, with the front and rear walls surviving almost intact after a peak overpressure of nearly 9 psi from a 47 kt bomb! At 4,245 feet (8.6 psi peak overpressure) and 7,020 feet (3.6 psi peak overpressure) from the 47 kt Greenhouse-Easy Eniwetok Atoll test on 21 April 1951, America had already exposed a pair of real two-story houses with 12-inch brick thick walls to a nuclear explosion, as explained in the 1986 U. K. Home Office Scientific Research and Development Branch report 34/86 by Dr S. Hadjipavlou and Dr G. Carr-Hill, A review of the blast casualty rules applicable to U.K. houses: “In the house at 8.6 psi, one side wall was toppled outwards as a unit and 75% of the other side wall was blown outwards in two sections. The roofing and roof rafters were blown off. There were cracks in the front wall and one of its upper corners collapsed outwards. The house at 3.6 psi suffered no visible damage to the load bearing exterior walls, apart from cracking of a gable. The doors and windows were all blown in, the roof virtually collapsed.”



Both brick houses afforded protection from radiation, the blast winds, and flying debris as long as people were not standing directly behind the windows that faced the burst (the blast winds and associated dynamic pressures that accelerate glass fragments, blow only radially outwards from the explosion, so it can't accelerate glass fragments from windows broken by overpressure on the sides or rear of a building). As the movie of the 5 psi Apple-2 blast hitting the brick-veneer cinder block house showed, the walls resisted and did not fall inwards during the overpressure phase; were blown outwards during the negative phase. This reduces the flying debris problem inside the house. Notice that the staircase survived. Increasing the blast pressure or the weapon yield does not increase the weight of debris; it actually reduces the weight of debris because the blast winds blow more of the roof off the house (instead of allowing it to collapse vertically downwards, adding to the debris load on the lower floors). This is why over 90% of people survived the collapse of their houses in Hiroshima. The burned out remains from the firestorm two hours later does not reflect the blast results or survival prospects! Page 162 of the 1966 Dirkwood Corporation report on Hiroshima and Nagasaki casualties shows that most people had time to evacuate the firestorm area (the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey reports from extensive interviews with survivors that the fires in the overcrowded wooden residential areas only began to merge 30 minutes after the explosion, and the peak intensity of the firestorm was only achieved 2-3 hours later): “From the more than 24,000 case histories available from Hiroshima, a total of 755 were for persons who remained in the area during the firestorm.”


Above the Hiroshima branch of the Bank of Japan at just 400 m from ground zero. The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, of U.S. Department of Defense, DCPA Attack Environment Manual, Chapter 3: What the Planner Needs to Know About Fire Ignition and Spread, report CPG 2-1A3, June 1973, Panel 26, disclosed (from the originally secret-classified six volumes of the full 1947 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reports on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) how simple improvised firefighting by ordinary bank personnel saved this building and its human survivors within the Hiroshima firestorm.

There were no initial ignitions at all by either blast or thermal radiation. At 1.5 hours afterwards a firebrand started a fire in a room on the second floor, which was simply extinguished with buckets of water! Later another firebrand ignited the third floor, and the survivors this time ran out of water so just shut the doors and allowed it to burn out. Because hot air rises, fire did not spread to the lower floors. Nuclear bombs do not inject burning aviation gasoline that runs downstairs like the 9/11 aircraft that attacked the World Trade Centre! The manual adds that the Geibi Bank Company in the firestorm area of Hiroshima also survived the bomb with no thermal or blast ignitions:

“However, at about 10:30 A.M., over 2 hours after the detonation, firebrands from the south exposure ignited a few pieces of furniture and curtains on the first and third stories. The fires were extinguished with water buckets by the building occupants. Negligible fire damage resulted.”



A PDF version of Dirkwood summary table above and vital declassified Hiroshima and Nagasaki facts is linked here.

Originally Secret-Restricted Data lessons from Hiroshima casualty treatment (unknown in 1945):

“With regard to troop safety, ionizing radiation is the major hazard below 1 kt, while thermal radiation predominates for larger yields. If the troops can be shielded adequately from the thermal pulse, ionizing radiation is the major hazard for yields up to 100 kt, above which blast effects are the most far-reaching hazard. ... Certain modifications in accepted medical and surgical practices must be considered since radiation exposure, depending upon dose, is known to increase susceptibility to infection, to decrease the efficiency of wound and fracture healing, to increase the likelihood of hemorrhage, to decrease tolerance to anesthetic agents, and to decrease the immune response. It is imperative that primary closure of wounds be accomplished at the earliest possible time and that patients be treated with a broad spectrum antibiotic throughout the period of maximum bone marrow depression. Secondary closure of small soft-tissue wounds should be accomplished by the second or third day. Reparative surgery of an extensive nature should not be performed later than four to five days after injury since skin and soft-tissue healing should have occurred before the effects of ionizing radiation occur. If reparative surgery is not performed within this limited period of time, it must be postponed until the bone marrow has recovered (one to two months post-exposure). Wounds of injuries that require longer than three weeks for healing, such as severe burns and most fractures, should not be definitively treated until radiation recovery is evident. Although reconstructive surgery in the absence of radiation exposure might be performed within the second month or earlier after conventional trauma, it must be postponed for at least three months in instances where radiation exposure is a significant contributory factor. In all instances, extra precaution must be taken to avoid infection and blood loss.”


- Philip J. Dolan, editor, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, Chapter 10: Personnel Casualties, originally Secret - Restricted Data, p. 10-35.

“The evidence from Hiroshima indicates that blast survivors, both injured and uninjured, in buildings later consumed by fire [caused by the blast overturning charcoal braziers used for breakfast in inflammable wooden houses filled with easily ignitable bamboo furnishings and paper screens] were generally able to move to safe areas following the explosion. Of 130 major buildings studied by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey ... 107 were ultimately burned out ... Of those suffering fire, about 20 percent were burning after the first half hour. The remainder were consumed by fire spread, some as late as 15 hours after the blast. This situation is not unlike the one our computer-based fire spread model described for Detroit.”

- Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, DCPA Attack Environment Manual, Chapter 3: What the Planner Needs to Know About Fire Ignition and Spread, report CPG 2-1A3, June 1973, Panel 27.



Above: modern type apartment building 790 m (0.5 mile) west of ground zero in Hiroshima (source: Figure 75 in the Manhattan Engineer District 1945 report). The very large window area reduced the blast loading by allowing a very rapid equalization of pressure, which prevents structural damage as shown below:


Above: rapid equalization of shock pressure by openings in a modern-style city building with a wide expanse of window area: the windows easily break, allowing the pressure to equalize so the building survives. People have protection from the path of direct radiation and horizontally-blown glass fragments by getting under a table or desk when seeing the bright flash (light travels faster than shock waves).



Above: the only modern multistory steel-frame building exposed to nuclear explosions survived at 0.85 mile from ground zero in Nagasaki. (Photo from Glasstone and Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977. There are problems in getting hold of the quality prints from the extensive photo collection of the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey. This is now the predominant type of building in modern cities. What is needed for civil defense credibility is a compilation of all of the photos of the different buildings and views of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and publish them with data alongside each photo giving the full case history statistics and other pertinent data for how the people survived in different locations within each building. This data is available in part from the RERF dosimetry database - which focusses on survivors - and in part from the Joint Committee/Dirkwood database. Such a compendium would be useful for civil defense both in debunking lying myths such as "nothing is really known, so everyone and everything instantly vaporised", and for checks on computer models assessing the benefits of various kinds of civil defense advice, e.g. the value of lying prone to maximize ground resistance against blast wind drag, versus the value of being under a desk or table to avoid thermal flash).

“Don't stand behind windows in an attack. First you will get burned and then you will have fine glass splinters driven into you very deeply within distances like 7 miles from a 1-megaton burst. ... Glass in any disaster like the Texas City disaster is one of the primary materials found in the normal home which can result in blinding and all other types of effects due to the flying small splinters of glass.”

- Dr Frank H. Shelton, Technical Director of U.S. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, testimony to U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, 22-26 June 1959, page 41.

Although windows are just broken by the peak overpressure out to 25 miles from a 1 Mt surface burst, the hazard from the blast wind pressure accelerating the glass fragments into a missile threat only extends to 7 miles. E.g., many windows were broken in Las Vegas after Nevada tests due to the refraction of blast waves, but the glass fell vertically to the ground without hurting anybody. Note in particular that the blast winds which accelerate the glass from windows blow radially outwards from the bomb, so only windows facing the explosion become a source of fast flying glass fragments. Windows side-on to the blast and on the back of houses can be smashed by the overpressure, but those glass fragments are not accelerated into horizontally flying high-speed missiles. Windows side on and on the rear of houses are also less likely to break because they are subjected to less than the reflected peak overpressure that the front face of a building receives. For example, rear windows on the houses exposed to the Nevada Apple-2 nuclear test survived where the incident peak overpressure was 1.7 psi, which was enough to break all windows facing the explosion.

Facts about blast effects on human beings that are covered-up

“For personnel inside structures, the probability of being hit by glass fragments decreases rapidly as a person moves laterally from behind a window. At 25 degrees from the edge of a window pane, the density of glass fragments is approximately one-tenth the density of fragments measured directly behind the window. ... This was extremely evidently in injuries of British civilians during World War II. As the people learned to quit looking out of their windows during bomb raids, the number of glass casualties decreased dramatically.”

- M. K. Drake, et al., Collateral Damage, Science Applications, Inc., Defense Nuclear Agency report DNA 4734Z, ADA071371, 1978, page 5-86.

The quotation from Drake above is supported by the data in Dr E. Royce Fletcher, et al., Glass Fragment Hazard from Windows Broken by Air Blast, Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 5593T, ADA105824 (1980), Figure 10 on page 21. Notice that Figure 9 of that report shows that the number of glass fragments from a broken window increases almost exponentially with increasing the peak overpressure, so that the average mass per glass fragment falls almost exponentially with increasing overpressure, and thus the glass window at high overpressures is transformed into very tiny fragments which, despite high velocities, individually have too little mass to penetrate very deeply.

Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977, gives detailed data showing the human injuries implications for this effect in Tables 12.43 and 12.46. Table 12.43 (which includes the 1955 Teapot-Apple II Nevada nuclear test window fragment data for 1.9, 3.8 and 5.0 psi) shows that peak overpressures of 1.9 and 5.0 psi produce glass fragments with a median velocity of 108 and 170 ft/s, respectively, measured at about 10 feet behind the windows (i.e., the average velocity of the glass fragments is only proportional to rouughly the square root of the peak overpressure).

But the median mass of the glass fragments is 1.45 grams for 1.9 psi but only 0.13 grams for 5.0 psi, so the average size and mass of glass fragments falls very quickly for small increases in peak overpressure (i.e., a 2.6-fold increase in peak overpressure here causes an 11-fold decrease in the average mass of the flying glass fragments).

The overall effect of the peak overpressure on median velocity and mass of the glass fragments is that the danger doesn't increase as you might expect with higher peak overpressures (and the accompanying blast winds). You get more fragments, but individually they carry less momenta, are less penetrating and more easily stopped by improvised duck and cover protection.

Table 12.46 in Glasstone and Dolan shows that 1 gram glass fragments need to travel at 140 ft/s to have a 1% chance of abdominal wall penetration, and 245 ft/s for a 50% chance. Compare this to the median 1.45 gram fragments travelling at 108 ft/s from windows broken by 1.9 psi (Table 12.43). Thus, at 1.9 psi peak overpressure, there is not even a 1% chance of having such glass fragments penetrate your abdominal wall even if you are both facing the window and unclothed!

Table 12.46 also gives data for 0.1 gram glass fragments: they need to go at 235 ft/s for a 1% chance of abdominal wall penetration and at 410 ft/s for 50% chance. But as Table 12.43 shows, the median 0.13 gram glass fragment velocity 5.0 psi peak overpressure is just 170 ft/s. Hence, at 5.0 psi, there is not even a 1% risk of abdominal penetration per median glass fragment! They are not very penetrating and are very easily stopped or shielded since there tiny splinters with little individual momentum.

Table 12.43 in Glasstone and Dolan 1977 is misleading when compared to the original nuclear weapon test report, because it purports to indicate the maximum number of glass fragments per unit area 10 ft behind the windows. It gives 4.3 fragments/ft2 for 1.9 psi and 388 fragments/ft2 for 5.0 psi, whereas the original report (I. Gerald Bowen, et al., Biological Effects of Blast from Bombs, AECU-3350, 1956, Table 5.1, p. 31) gives correctly the mean number of glass fragments per square foot of horizontal area, arriving at 10 ft behind the window, as just 2.1 fragments/ft2 for 1.9 psi and 100.9 fragments/ft2 for 5.0 psi. The change from mean to maximum between the 1957 and 1977 editions causes a large increase from the mean data in the 1957 edition, and no definition of "maximum" is given; in fact it the number of glass fragments per unit area physically must be a mean! Statistically, you cannot have a generally meaningful maximum of an average, without precisely defining the calculation.

The original nuclear test Teapot-Apple-2 glass fragment studies report WT-1168 (1956) shows that the 1.9, 3.8 and 5.0 psi peak overpressure data are from glass windows instrumented in houses located at 10,500 ft, 5,500 ft, and 4,700 ft, respectively, from ground zero. Pages 79-80 in WT-1168 show that 90% of the glass fragments had velocities within a factor of 1.50 of the median velocity, and 90% of had masses within a factor of 6.0 of the median mass.

The graph given by Glasstone and Dolan for the median velocity of glass fragments, as a function of both peak overpressure and window glass thickness, is shown (complete with the actual data points that Glasstone and Dolan omitted) as Figure 6 in Dr Fletcher's report ADA105824. Looking at the data points, you can see that the thickness of the glass (for thicknesses from 0.16-0.67 cm) has no significant effect on glass fragment velocity.

Figure 5 in Dr Fletcher's report gives the spread of individual glass fragment velocities as a function of individual fragment mass, showing it is only a very weak function (the velocity of a fragment for a fixed peak overpressure is inversely proportional to the 1/4-power or fourth-root of its mass, i.e. fragments 10 times more massive than the median mass have a velocity of only 56% of the median velocity).

The glass window fragment danger has been grossly exaggerated. It is true that velocities and masses quoted above are median, and the actual sizes have a statistical distribution around the median, but the standard deviation is small. Nuclear weapon test report WT-1468 (1963) investigated this, finding that the distribution of glass fragment masses is log-normal, and for a peak overpressure of 3.9 psi at Operation Plumbbob, the median glass fragment mass some 10 ft behind a window was 0.324 gram, with only 17% of fragments less than 0.1 gram, and only 17% were over 1 gram (just 1% were over 5 grams and none were over 10 grams).

The 1950 edition of The Effects of Atomic Weapons on pages 335-6 stated that: "Patients were treated for lacerations received up to 10,600 ft [3.2 km] from ground zero in Hiroshima and 12,200 ft [3.7 km] in Nagasaki." This glass fragment hazard therefore covers an area many times larger than the area of serious structural damage to buildings, emphasizing the immense benefits from duck and cover protective action for people standing behind windows. Figure 3 in Fletcher's report shows that the peak overpressure needed for a 50% probability of window shatter is inversely proportional to the area of the window glass pane, so bigger windows are more likely than small ones to be shattered by small peak overpressures, for a constant glass pane thickness. For an incident free-field (not reflected) peak overpressure of 7 kPa or 1 psi, a 1 m2 area window pane 0.8 cm thick facing the explosion has a 50% risk of shattering. The peak overpressure needed for a 50% risk of window pane shatter is proportional to [glass thickness]0.6.


Above: another Hiroshima building surviving with large window area was the Electric Company Building at 640 m (0.4 mile) from ground zero (source: Figure 32 in the Manhattan Engineer District 1945 report).


Above: The modern Fukoku building survived at just 274 metres (0.17 mile) from ground zero in Hiroshima. The British Mission to Japan inspected it in 1945 and stated: “There was no serious structural damage, although a roof panel was depressed and some internal partition walls were deflected.” (Source: British Mission to Japan, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, H. M. Stationery Office, London, 1946, Figure 7).



Above: the faked, airbrushed Hiroshima before and after propaganda photos, from Wikipedia. Contrary to these lies, only now-long-obsolete crowded wooden city centre buildings were burned in the firestorm 2-3 hours after the Hiroshima bombing (source: Manhattan Engineer District, Photographs of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945, Figures 8 and 19). Let's take a closer look and compare in detail the actual before and after photos (which were omitted from The Effects of Nuclear Weapons) and the popular propaganda photos used in numerous books of fakery and deception, attacking civil defense:


Above: real before and after Hiroshima photos of ground zero and the modern city area out to 1,000 feet (305 metres) radius, which is indicated by the white curved line in the right-hand photo (source: Manhattan Engineer District, Photographs of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945, Figures 4 and 19).




Above: the greatest photographic swindle of all time (more effective for anti-civil defense propaganda than Stalin's effort to airbrush Leon Trotsky out of the official photos of Lenin's speeches). All surviving buildings in Hiroshima were literally airbrushed out of the still-used lying propaganda media photos taken on 7 August (in a desperate American propaganda attempt to force Japanese surrender without having to drop another nuclear weapon). On the left is the classic widely-believed and still published fake propaganda photo of "nobody and nothing remaining" within 1,000 feet of ground zero in Hiroshima after the bomb (still being used on Wikipedia): all of the surviving buildings near ground zero have been airbrushed out to make it look as if nothing survived and more impressive as a weapon! (This fake photo of Hiroshima from Wikipedia is also located on the server here.) On the right hand side is the actual photo of the after effects near ground zero, which presents a diametrically opposite story of survival in the commonplace modern buildings of cities.







Above: actual photographs of Hiroshima ground zero, showing more than 14 surviving modern buildings within a radius 1,000 feet (305 metres) of ground zero (source: Manhattan Engineer District, Photographs of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945, Figures 19-22). All had broken windows and other damage from blast and the firestorm in the surrounding wooden buildings 2-3 hours later. All of the surviving buildings were the modern types of city buildings, made from steel and concrete (which is fire resistant, unlike the commonplace wooden houses that burned), and only the obsolete wooden buildings (no longer used in modern city centres, even in Japan) were burned down due to overturned charcoal braziers and ignited black coloured wartime air-raid blackout curtains (no longer used in cities today). Inside these concrete buildings (which despite having no modern fire sprinkler systems installed, still survived the firestorm that began after 30 minutes and burned fiercely for 2-3 hours), there was 50% survival within a radius of 630 feet (190 metres) or 0.12 mile from ground zero (source: Glasstone and Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977, page 546).



Above: U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey photo taken looking ground zero in Hiroshima, showing the depth of debris from blast and the firestorm from the collapse of the Honkawa Elementary School. The partially collapsed building on the left is the Hiroshima Gas Company Building at just 240 metres from ground zero, while on the far right the domed building is the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall (a three-storey brick building with a five-storey central core topped by a steel-framed elliptical dome clad with copper, now renamed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial) at just 150 metres from ground zero. Ground zero is located to the right of the photo, between the camera and the domed building.


Above: Nagasaki is located in a valley so the hills were used for air raid shelters. (U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey photo.)





Above: civil defense precautions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very simple and crude compared to those in Britain against the Blitz, but they still stood up to the nuclear weapons effects. The only problem was that people were not in the shelters when the bombs fell. Nagasaki lies in a valley, so shelter places for 70,000 people were dug in tunnel shelters in the hill sides, which survived very close to ground zero as shown by Figure 12.52a on page 389 of the 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons (the photo was removed from later editions), and by the photo taken by British serviceman Cecil A. Creber whose ship H. M. S. Speaker arrived in Nagasaki just a month after the bomb dropped (published in the London Daily Telegraph). The U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported in 1946 that due to the lack of effective warning (the weather aircraft going over the cities daily for weeks beforehand and two hours ahead of the nuclear bomber had lulled the radar operators in charge of the air raid sirens into generally ignoring small groups of aircraft, rather than give repeated false alarms) only 400 people were in the safe tunnel shelters of Nagasaki, which had places for 70,000 and could have easily saved most of the fatalities. In Hiroshima, there were poor quality earth-covered wood frame shelters, tested by the British Mission to Japan and found far less effective than British Blitz Anderson and Morrison shelters, as they state on page 9 of their 1946 report: "The provision of air raid shelters throughout Japan was much below European standards." The two photos of shelters above are from the British Mission to Japan, 1946: the partly above-ground earth-covered wood frame shelter at 270 m from ground zero in Hiroshima survived, as did a similar shelter 90 m from ground zero in Nagasaki, where 50% of these shelters survived intact at 270 m of ground zero. The point is, that great though the casualty-averting potential of such shelters is, it was worse than the lower floors of modern city buildings. At only 190 metres from ground zero in Hiroshima, there was 50% survival in the lower floors of modern concrete buildings, which makes them the best shelter, particularly if people duck and cover to avoid flying glass, blast winds and thermal flash from any windows which have an unobstructed view of the fireball. So who needs shelters when you have modern buildings? Even in London during the World War II Blitz, most people survived the collapse of their home by blast while sheltering in the cupboard under the stairs or under a strong table (or after May 1941, a Morrison indoor table-type shelter): outdoor shelters were too cold and liable to ground water flooding, and no more effective.

Overall lifesaving civil defence effectiveness in Britain and Germany during World War II

German bombing damaged or destroyed 2 million houses in Britain during World War II, but the 60,595 people killed from bombing in Britain was 0.030 persons killed per house destroyed or damaged. In London alone, 1,200,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, and 29,890 were killed by bombing, 0.025 persons killed per house destroyed or damaged. Without civil defence, the ratio of the number of people killed per house destroyed could have been much greater than 0.025-0.030. Assuming just 2 persons per house, this means that the assumption of 100% killed per damaged or destroyed house exaggerates deaths from bombing by a factor of 2/0.025 to 2/0.030 or 67 to 80.

In Germany, where there were firestorms in medieval wooden areas of Dresden and Hamburg, 300,000 people were killed and 3,600,000 houses were destroyed, a ratio of 0.083 persons killed per house destroyed. 7,500,000 people were made homeless, so there had been roughly 2 persons living in each house destroyed. Hence, the assumption of 100% killed in destroyed houses would exaggerate deaths by a factor of 2/0.083 = 24 times.

In November 1940 the government took a Shelter Census of central London to see who was sheltering where. It found

4% were sheltering in the Underground system
9% in public shelters
27% in domestic shelters [Anderson and Morrison shelters]
Most Londoners stayed in their homes, sleeping downstairs, under stairs, under tables, in cupboards. If they used a shelter at home then it would have been either an Anderson or a Morrison shelter.

2,250,000 Anderson shelters were given away free at the start of the Blitz. The roof was made of corrugated steel and was dome-shaped, the roof was bolted to strong rails and the structure was put 3ft underground with 18 inches of earth on top. People constructed Anderson shelters in their back gardens. Some of the drawbacks of this type of shelter was that it tended to flood regularly, the space inside was generally too small for a family to sleep in, it didn't keep the noise of the air raids out, and war-time shortages of steel meant that after a time they had to be stopped being produced.

The Morrison shelter was named after the Minister for Home Security, Mr. Herbert Morrison. It was a family shelter, free for most people, and one advantage it had over the Anderson shelter was that it could be kept indoors. This helped to reduce noise, it got rid of the flooding problem, and it helped to minimise disruptions made to normal home life. It had a steel roof, wire mesh sides, and could be used as a table during the day. It was 2ft 9 inches high and was just big enough to sleep in. 5,000,000 were given out by November 1941 and the Morrison shelter was widely used for the later air raid attacks from the V-weapons.




"A [Morrison type, house collapse-resisting] shelter should be designed to absorb some part of the applied energy in its own partial collapse; complete resistance was far too costly ... The Morrison table shelter was ... designed to withstand the debris load of a house by its own partial collapse, whilst still giving adequate protection to the occupants."

- George R. Stanbury, "Scientist in Civil Defence: Part 1", UK Home Office's Scientific Advisory Branch journal Fission Fragments (issue 17, June 1971).

The point is, your house is only going to collapse once, so the steel table (Morrison shelter) only needs to resist the kinetic energy of the falling debris of your house once, unlike public air raid shelters. Therefore, the brains of the table shelter is that you can allow a certain amount of denting to take place, and this allows the table to absorb the energy of the falling house without breaking the table. The same idea exists in car bumpers and "crumple zones" which absorb impact energy.

The U.K. Government's Shelter Census of central London during the Blitz in November 1940 found that 60% of the public were sleeping in their own homes during air raids, instead of getting up and dressed to go to a shelter upon the attack warning siren. Only 4% used the Underground system shelters, 9% used other public air raid shelters, and 27% used domestic Anderson shelters (Morrison indoor shelters were not even introduced until March 1941). The 60% who did not go out to any kind of shelter during air raids stayed in their homes, sleeping downstairs, under stairs, under tables, in cupboards. Sir John Anderson lost his job and was replaced by Herbert Morrison, who instructed Sir John Fleetwood Baker and his assistant Edward Leader-Williams at the Ministry of Home Security to develop an indoor shelter which could absorb the energy of the falling debris from the collapse of a normal house. These Morrison table shelters were named after the Minister of Home Security (Herbert Morrison) and were introduced in March 1941. More than 500,000 were issued by November 1941, when the following press release was issued:

Morrison Shelters in Recent Air Raids

A report of Ministry of Home Security experts on 39 cases of bombing incidents in different parts of Britain covering all those for which full particulars are available in which Morrison shelters were involved shows how well they have stood up to severe tests of heavy bombing.

All the incidents were serious. Many of the incidents involved direct hits on the houses concerned, a risk against which it was never claimed these shelters would afford protection. In all of them the houses in which shelters were placed were within the radius of damage by bombs; in 24 there was complete demolition of the house on the shelter.

A hundred and nineteen people were sheltering in these Morrisons and only four were killed. So that 115 out of 119 people were saved. Of these only 7 were seriously injured and 14 slightly injured while 94 escaped uninjured. The majority were able to leave their shelters unaided.




Above: with the resurgent Soviet Union exceeding nuclear parity and threatening the West, in 1981 the U. K. Government republished the World War II Anderson and Morrison outdoor and indoor shelter designs. Fifteen Anderson shelters had been secretly and successfully tested against blast and radiation at the very first British nuclear test, Operation Hurricane, Monte Bello, in 1952. Frank H. Pavry, a member of the British Mission to Japan who had been in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, authored the "Secret-Atomic" classified British nuclear test report, Operation HURRICANE: Anderson Shelters, Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, AWRE-T17/54. The 15 Anderson shelters had survived very well. Nearest to the bomb ship, they survived a peak overpressure of 55 psi or 380 kPa without internal damage: sand bags on the outside were hurled off when the blast wave arrived, but by that time they had done their job of shielding the initial neutron and gamma radiation. They could have been replaced before fallout arrived. At a peak overpressure of 12 psi or 83 kPa, even the sandbags on the outside remained intact. Pavry had used sand bags instead of the recommended packed earth as a convenience. If he had used packed earth as is recommended, the protection afforded would have been greater. Experiments at Maralinga with cobalt-60 salted fallout radiation shielding by concrete at Operation Antler in 1957 confirmed British experiments on fallout shielding for the worst-case gamma ray energy situation, as described in detail in the previous post. They added some extra designs tested against kiloton yield TNT blasts and simulated fallout from American Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil engineer Cresson Kearny, author of the Expedient Shelter Handbook and related publications. Unfortunately, the U. K. Government refused to publish all of its extensive secret research on civil defense, which was only released to the U. K. National Archives during the 1990s and 2000s upon declassification under the 30-years-rule, so loud, lying anti-civil defense propaganda from politically biased lobby groups went completely unopposed.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) blast-tested three models of an earth-covered corrugated metal blast shelter and three full-size blast door closures for such a shelter at the Defense Nuclear Agency’s detonation of 0.609 kt of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) at a height of 168 feet in the White Sands Missile Range Direct Course test of 26 October 1983. All these items survived blast overpressures of 2.55 MPa (370 psi). For earlier blast tests of improvised or “expedient” earth-covered emergency shelters, see also Cresson Kearny’s and Conrad V. Chester’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory reports Blast Tests of Expedient Shelters, ADA391034 (1974), Blast Tests of Expedient Shelters in the DICE THROW Event, ADA052913 (1980) (PDF version is linked here), Blast Tests of Expedient Shelters in the MISERS BLUFF Event, ADA083966 (1980), and Edward D. Esparza's report Blast Testing of Expedient Shelters in Model Scale, ADP005368 (1986).



Above: the illusion promoted in anti-civil defense propaganda is that the firestorm instantly burned down or vaporized all the wooden buildings and instantly burned all leaves of trees, when in fact they only burned down hours later when the city had been largely evacuated. This damnable lie is then used to claim that there is nothing to duck behind to obtain the protection from the thermal pulse. Most incompetent civil defense manuals repeatedly fail to clarify the basic effects of nuclear weapons, the time sequence, the actual data. This leaves the field open to lies from certain either ignorant or insanely criminal modern physics professors and other characters who falsely assert that the bomb vaporizes everything so duck and cover is ineffective. The 1946 British Mission to Japan report on Hiroshima and Nagasaki debunks myths about people being vaporised where shadows were cast on flash-burned material (even though the vegetation or wooden building was hours later burned down in the firestorm, after being evacuated): ‘There were cases where a clump of grass or the leaf of a tree has cast a sharp shadow on otherwise scorched wood. Therefore the most intense flash from the ball of fire had ended in a time less than that required to shrivel vegetation.’ It also notes that: ‘even the thin clothing protected from flash burn.’

Equally important, the British report by World War II Blitz civil defense experts who in 1945 surveyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the attacks debunks the horror rumours which were spread (and are still being spread today by liars for various political reasons, ranging from lunatic newspaper editors who are so bigoted against the truth and so fascistly arrogant against facts and so fanatically into fashionable groupthink that they only want to publishing damnable lies, to outright terrorists who want to undermine the public credibility and knowledge of civil defense for obviously evil reasons): ‘a rumour was current which age has made almost respectable, for it appeared in the London Blitz and before that in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. This was that large numbers of people had been ripped open by the blast, and their entrails exposed; their eyes and tongues were said also to have hung out. Experience in this country [Britain] has shown that blast pressure alone does not in fact cause these sensational effects ... two Nagasaki survivors who had spoken of seeing hundreds or thousands of such bodies on examination reduced their claim to one or two. Flying debris would be expected to produce a few such injuries.’ (Report of the British Mission to Japan, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, H.M. Stationery Office, London, 1946, pp. 17-18.)

According to the 1979 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War, p. 31: ‘... on a winter night less than 1 percent of the population might be exposed to direct thermal radiation, while on a clear summer weekend afternoon more than 25 percent might be exposed (that is, have no structure between the fireball and the person).’

Philip J. Dolan (editor) in the originally secret 1981 U.S. Department of Defence Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons (c. 10, p. 10) states that pain produced by intense thermal radiation provides: ‘a useful tool in warning an individual to evade the thermal pulse.’

R. A. Langevin and others in 1958 compared the ability of trained troops and the untrained civilian population to duck and turn away, covering exposed skin ("Effectiveness of Troops Exposed to Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Weapons", Operations Research, vol. 6, pp. 710-722). Trained troops duck and cover in 0.75 second when a very bright flash occurs. The untrained civilians fared less well: 2% protected themselves within 1 second, 15% by 2 seconds, 50% by 3 seconds, 70% by 4 seconds, 80% by 5 seconds, 90% by 7 seconds, but 7.5% are still fully exposed at 10 seconds after detonation. The young and the old react most slowly if they lack clear simple knowledge of the dangers. Langevin shows that even this untrained protective reaction increases the amount of energy required to cause burns to an exposed population, especially in the case of high-yield weapons which expose the most people. However, this data is valid for long-distance bright flashes and is not valid for painfully bright flashes which instinctively force people to quickly turn away and put their faces to the ground to minimize the pain.

Dr Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan stated in the 1977 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (U.S. Department of Defence, p. 561):

‘Persons exposed to nuclear explosions of low or intermediate yield may sustain very severe burns... 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, like mild second-degree burns.’

This rapid healing of uninfected burns is confirmed by the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 19 June 1946:

Page 17: “Uninfected burns healed promptly without any unusual clinical features [nuclear radiation synergism with thermal burns only occurred where there was infection of the burns wounds; high doses of nuclear radiation prevented the infections from healing normally from about 1-8 weeks after exposure, when the white blood cell count was suppressed due to bone marrow damage] ... Because of the brief duration of the flash wave and the shielding effects of almost any objects – leaves and clothing as well as buildings – there were many interesting cases of protection. ... The most striking instance was that of a man writing before a window. His hands were seriously burned but his exposed face and neck suffered only slight burns due to the angle of entry of the radiant heat through the window.”

Page 18: “Flash burns were largely confined to exposed areas of the body ... the thicker the clothing the more likely it was to give complete protection against flash burns. ... skin was burned beneath tightly fitting clothing but was unburned beneath loosely fitting portions. ... dark-colored clothing were most likely to be burned.”

Page 19: “A few burns resulted from clothing set afire by the flash wave, but in most cases people were able to beat out such fires without serious injury to the skin.”

Page 21: “Treatment of victims by the Japanese was limited by the lack of medical supplies and facilities. ... Allied doctors used penicillin and plasma with beneficial effects. ... A large percentage of the cases died from secondary disease, such as septic bronchopneumonia or tuberculosis, as a result of lowered resistance. Deaths from radiation began about a week after exposure and reached a peak in three to four weeks. They had practically ceased to occur after seven to eight weeks.”

Page 32: “Clothing ignited, though it could be quickly beaten out, telephone poles charred, thatched roofs of houses caught fire. ... Fires were started directly by flash heat in such easily ignitable substances as dark cloth, paper, or dry-rotted wood, within about 3,500 feet of ground zero; white-painted, concrete-faced or cement-stuccoed structures reflected the heat and did not ignite. ... Clothing as well as buildings afforded considerable protection against the flash. Even a clump of grass or tree leaf was on occasion adequate.”

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, high mortality from superficial burns occurred despite the slight depth of charred skin, because of synergistic interaction between nuclear and thermal radiation exposure. This was discovered by Dr James W. Brooks et al. in 1952, and published in their paper ‘The Influence of External Body Radiation on Mortality from Thermal Burns’ (Annals of Surgery, vol. 136, p. 533). Although superficial third-degree burns from the brief thermal pulse of a nuclear explosion are easily survived, a concurrent nuclear radiation exposure of 100 r interferes with recovery by suppressing the white blood cell count, allowing otherwise minor infections to become lethal.

Contrary to antinuclear propaganda claims that people were ‘vaporised’ in Japanese photographs of human ‘shadows’ left behind on otherwise melted asphalt paint and road surfaces, the fact that these shadows exist proves that people blocked the thermal radiation without disappearing. The peak skin temperature is reached when the rate of absorption of energy equals the rate of dissipation of energy by re-emission, blood circulation, and air-cooling. The human body (mainly water) could not be vaporised by the thermal exposures present at ground zero, even if the energy could have somehow diffused throughout a person within the time available. Skin has a thermal conductance of 8 kg.cal/m2/hour/C. Another recurring myth are spectacular keloids (overgrowths of scar tissue) misrepresented as ‘nuclear bomb’ burns: ‘The degree of the keloid formation was undoubtedly influenced by secondary infections, that complicated healing of the burns, and by malnutrition, but more important is the known tendency for keloid formation to occur among the Japanese, as a racial characteristic. Thus, many spectacular keloids were formed after the healing of burns produced in the fire raids on Tokyo.’ (Dr Samuel Glasstone, editor, The Effects of Atomic Weapons, U.S. Department of Defence, September 1950, p. 337.)

In a controlled sample of 36,500 survivors, 89 people got leukemia over a 40 year period, above the number in the unexposed control group. (Data: Radiation Research, volume 146, 1996, pages 1-27.) Over 40 years, in 36,500 survivors monitored, there were 176 leukemia deaths which is 89 more than the control (unexposed) group got naturally. There were 4,687 other cancer deaths, but that was merely 339 above the number in the control (unexposed) group, so this is statistically a much smaller rise than the leukemia result. Natural leukemia rates, which are very low in any case, were increased by 51% in the irradiated survivors, but other cancers were merely increased by just 7%. Adding all the cancers together, the total was 4,863 cancers (virtually all natural cancer, nothing whatsoever to do with radiation), which is just 428 more than the unexposed control group. Hence, the total increase over the natural cancer rate due to bomb exposure was only 9%, spread over a period of 40 years. There was no increase whatsoever in genetic malformations.

Contrast these hard facts to the propaganda first spread by Dr Harold Jacobson, a nuclear effects ignorant Manhattan Project physicist at Los Alamos, who claimed to the International News Service that Hiroshima will be uninhabitable for 75 years, and then falsely added: ‘Any Japanese who try to ascertain the extent of the damage caused by the atomic bomb are committing suicide.’

Examine the post-attack recovery rate in Hiroshima before any significant outside help arrived:


7 August (Day 2): Survivors open bridges and roads to pedestrian traffic, clearing away debris: “The [Hiroshima] prefectural governor issued a proclamation on 7 August, calling for ‘a rehabilitation of the stricken city and an aroused fighting spirit ...’. To prevent the spread of rumors and brace morale, 210,000 out-of-town newspapers were brought in daily to replace the destroyed local paper.” (Source: U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 19 June 1946, page 9.)

8 August (Day 3): Rail tracks cleared and trains to Hiroshima resumed.

9 August (Day 4): Street trolley bus (electric tram) lines return to service.

1 November (Day 86): “the population of Hiroshima is back to 137,000. ... The official Japanese figures summed up the building destruction at 62,000 out of a total of 90,000 buildings in the urban area, or 69%. An additional 6,000 or 6.6% were severely damaged, and most of the others showed glass breakage or disturbance of roof tile. These figures show the magnitude of the problem facing the survivors. ... In view of the lack of medical facilities, supplies and personnel, and the disruption of the sanitary system, the escape from epidemics may seem surprising. The experience of other bombed cities in Germany and Japan shows that this is not an isolated case. A possible explanation may lie in the disinfecting action of the extensive fires. In later weeks, disease rates rose, but not sharply.” (Source: U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 19 June 1946, page 9.)

Next, consider what civil defence did during the post-attack recovery process to help aid survivors in Nagasaki, subjected to a nuclear explosion just 3 days after Hiroshima:

9 August (Day 1): Emergency rations are brought in to feed 25,000 survivors (though less than the required amount, due to bureaucratic confusion). The survivors lived in the air-raid shelters, which had survived.

10 August (Day 2): Emergency rations are brought in to feed 67,000 survivors: “this represents a remarkable feat of organisation that illustrates the great possibilities of mass feeding.” (Source: Fred C. Ikle, The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958, p. 147.) “On the morning of 10 August [in Nagasaki], police rescue units and workers from the Kawami-nami shipbuilding works began the imperative task of clearing the Omura-Nagasaki pike, which was impassable for 8,000 feet. A path 6 ½ feet wide was cleared despite the intense heat from smouldering fires, and by August 15 had been widened to permit two-way traffic. No trucks, only rakes and shovels, were available for clearing the streets, which were filled with tile, bricks, stone, corrugated iron, machinery, plaster, and stucco. Street areas affected by blast and not by fire were littered with wood. Throughout the devastated area, all wounded had to be carried by stretcher, since no motor vehicles were able to proceed through the cluttered streets for several days. The plan for debris removal required clearance of a few streets leading to the main highway; but there were frequent delays caused by the heat of smouldering fires and by calls for relief work. The debris was simply raked and shoveled off the streets. By 20 August the job was considered complete. The streets were not materially damaged by the bomb nor were the surface or the abutments of the concrete bridges, but many of the wooden bridges were totally or partially destroyed by fire. ... Despite the absence of sanitary measures, no epidemics broke out here. The dysentery rate rose from 25/100,000 to 125/100,000. A census taken on 1 November 1945 found a population of 142,700 in the city [Nagasaki]. ... Of the 52,000 residential units in the city [of Nagasaki] on 1 August, 14,146 or 27.2 percent were completely destroyed (by Japanese count) (11,494 of these were burned); 5,441 or 10.5 percent were half-burned or destroyed; many of the remaining units suffered superficial or minor damage.” (Source: U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 19 June 1946, pages 12-13.)

7 October (Day 60): The first green shoots of recovery appeared on an irradiated and firestorm-burned chestnut tree, photographed by U.S. Air Force observers, and published in the U.S. Congress book, The Effects of Nuclear War, 1979:


Above: the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment published a very poorly researched book in May 1979 (full of popular lies about ozone layer damage, and so on) called The Effects of Nuclear War in which the one useful disclosure (on page 114) was this U.S. Air Force photo of the leaves and new shoots appearing on a chestnut tree in Nagasaki 2 months after being irradiated with gamma rays and neutrons and then charred and burned in the fires which followed. Predictably, this one piece of honesty is omitted from the online PDF version of that book by the Federation of American Scientists here (which is so poorly scanned for page 114 that not even a single word of the photo caption is readable), and also hosted by Princeton University here. Robert Jungk, Children of the Ashes (Heinemann, London, 1961): 'one morning in April 1946, the Vice-Mayor [of Hiroshima] gazed for a long time. For what met his eyes was a sight he had scarcely hoped ever to see again ... The blackness of the branches was dappled with the brilliant white of cherry buds opening into blossom.'

Robert Jungk carefully investigated the history of the recovery in Hiroshima by interviewing the people involved and collecting first hand reports, and gives further interesting details in his book Children of the Ashes (Heinemann, London, 1961):

1. On 31 August 1945: 'the first locally produced and locally printed post-war edition of the Chugoku Shimbun was on sale in the streets of Hiroshima ... 'Our darkroom was an air-raid shelter dug into the hillside [which survived of course]', one of the editors remembers, 'but our type had to be cast in the open air, under the sunny sky.'

2. On 7 September 1945, the Chugoku Shimbun reported that Hiroshima then had a population estimated to be 130,000.

3. On 10 September 1945, electricity was reconnected to some parts of Hiroshima: 'huts made of planks quickly knocked together ... already had electric light.'

4. On 5 November 1945, the Chugoku Shimbun reported that - despite inertia and delays due to 'the rigidity of bureaucratic procedure' which was hindering the recovery rate - a lot of progress was being made:

'Housing. The building of houses is to be systematically begun on 15 November. ...

'Tramways. At present, ten trams are in commission on the main route, eight on the Miyajima route and five muncipal buses. These twenty-three vehicles must cater for an average of 42,000 persons daily.'

Some 70% of the destroyed buildings of Hiroshima had been reconstructed by mid-1949. (Ref.: Research Department, Hiroshima Municipal Office, as cited in Hiroshima, Hiroshima Publishing, 1949. Other recovery data are given in U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington, D.C., 1946, p. 8.)


Above: the Chugoku newspaper building 870 m east of GZ Hiroshima, gutted by fire. Unlike the CND 'survivors would envy the dead' propaganda of big name 'journalists' (anti-civil defense propagandarists) of today, those journalists at Hiroshima didn't let a nuclear attack deflect them from their duty of reporting news truthfully. They go on with the task of helping to keep morale up, and assisting the flow of information needed to rebuild Hiroshima. They rolled their sleeves up, and got to work, setting type outdoors, processing photographic prints in an old air raid shelter! These journalists are a model for civil defense!



'I must confess that as an expert, my original view, and the view I held during the time I was on the SALT delegation, was that there was no defense against nuclear war and that there was no realistic recovery from it. ... [However, upon checking the actual facts... ] The day after the blast, bridges in downtown Hiroshima were open to traffic. Two days later, the trains started to run again, and three days later, some of the streetcar lines were back in operation.'

- Thomas K. Jones, Program and Product Evaluation Manager, Boeing Aerospace Company, Testimony the Hearings before the Joint Committee on Defense Production, U.S. Congress, 17 November 1976.

See also the detailed report by L. Wayne Davis, Prediction of Urban Casualties and the Medical Load from a High-Yield Nuclear Burst, Dirkwood Corporation paper DC-P-1060-1 (1968). This paper is an unclassified summary of the classified paper DC-P-1060, which gives the accurate nuclear effects data for people in different kinds of buildings, in the open and in vehicles, and with different percentages of body area exposed to blistering and charring burns, from a computer analysis of the individual records of over 35,000 cases in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus the massive nuclear-size Texas City ship explosion. It negates all of the arbitrary blast and thermal effects casualty criteria used in the 1979 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report, The Effects of Nuclear War (which inaccurately assumed 50% blast casualties at just 5-6 psi and lethal burns outdoors at 6.7 cal/cm2) and in subsequent follow-ups by groups trying to deny civil defense by misrepresenting the nuclear weapons effects for exactly the same political reasons that led to popular exaggerations of weapons effects in the 1930s (with serious consequences).


Above: streetcar burned out by the firestorm 270 m east of ground zero in Hiroshima. Vehicles offered some possibility of shading from the thermal flash.

The Dirkwood Corporation report reveals that that the usual "composite casualty" curves widely published for all fatalities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not a blast wave effects curve for people indoors, but is thermal casualties for unshielded people outdoors, because these casualties extended for the greatest distance in both cities and contributed most to mortality outdoors. Essentially all the fatalities at the 50% lethal ground radius for the general population in each city were people who were standing in the open with no shadow from the flash. People indoors or in shadow contributed the remaining 50% (the survivors at that distance). Hence, the use of the composite fatality curve for blast effects in houses is a fraud.

Even indoors in wood frame houses (which were blown over at about 5 psi in similar yield Nevada tests in 1953 and 1955), in Nagasaki due to blast and initial nuclear radiation there were only 10% fatalities for unwarned people indoors at 10 psi, 50% at 15.6 psi, and 90% at 18 psi.

For Hiroshima, the Dirkwood corporation gives 7, 12.2 and 13.5 psi for 10%, 50% and 90% fatalities in wood frame homes, but these pressures are underestimates since they assumed a yield of 12.5 kt rather than 16 kt (determined by the DS02 dosimetry research) for Hiroshima. Taking account of this yield correction and also differences in the initial nuclear radiation emitted by the gun-type Hiroshima bomb relative to the implosion system of the Nagasaki bomb, the Nagasaki data are reconciled with those for Hiroshima.

In the 0.67 kt non-nuclear Texas City Disaster of 1947, the peak overpressures for 10%, 50% and 90% mortality due to blast effects in wood frame houses were 9, 22.5, and 30 psi, respectively. The difference is due to the initial nuclear radiation inside houses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was absent in the Texas City Disaster nitrate ship explosion.

A high survival probability even quite near ground zero was possible on the lower floors in concrete buildings because they shielded the initial nuclear radiation. All buildings provided good thermal and blast protection, although most buildings burned some hours afterwards, due to fires started by overturned charcoal kitchen braziers, after survivors evacuated or took shelter, fearing further raids.

In Hiroshima, the Dirkwood data (DC-P-1060-1 and DC-FR-1054) shows that the distance from ground zero for 50% survival ranged from 140 metres for the lower floors of earthquake-standard concrete buildings to 730 metres for vehicles (street cars/trolley buses/trams) and 880 metres for wood-frame dwellings. Outdoors, casualty rates depended essentially on the thermal radiation shadowing (by clothing, trees, buildings, fences, terrain, vehicles, etc.). People outdoors in thermal shadows were not burned and survived high peak overpressures like those in buildings, as shown. Most people outdoors moved out of shadows into a clear radial line of sight to watch the B-29 aircraft and saw the bomb fall, unaware of the danger, and were flash-burned in silence before the blast wave arrived and knocked them down. Mortality for people outdoors without thermal shielding was 10% for 12 cal/cm2, 50% for 16 cal/cm2, and 90% for 18 cal/cm2 (these figures apply to the light summer clothing worn in August and include enhancements due to synergism of burns with initial nuclear radiation).

At 3.05 km ground range in Nagasaki, 43% had 2nd degree burns (blistering) and 5% had 3rd degree burns (charring), although even light clothing offered complete protection here, so the body area burned was small and recovery was possible in all cases. There was no significant nuclear radiation at that distance to accompany the thermal flash burns and delay or prevent recovery from the burns. At 1.86 km ground range in Nagasaki, there was 10% mortality to persons outdoors without thermal shadowing, due to the 53% of cases having 3rd degree burns and 36% having 2nd degree burns, an average total body burned area of 20%. A rate of 50% mortality for unshielded persons outside in Nagasaki occurred at 1.37 km from ground zero, where 72% of cases had 3rd degree and 18% had 2nd degree burns, with an average total body burned area of 38%. The reason for the increase in area from 20% average area burned at 1.86 km (10% killed) to 38% average area burned at 1.37 km (50% killed) in Nagasaki was simply that the burns were more likely to occur under light summer clothing as the thermal radiation increased. At low thermal exposures, a low protection factor by clothing is sufficient to stop any burns under clothing. Such a protection factor at a smaller distances may permit enough skin heating to cause burns, and single layers of dark clothing in direct contact with the skin may result in conduction burns or (at high exposures) flame burns, before the person rolls the flames out.



Above: some of Penney's 1970 published data for the attenuation of peak blast overpressure by the act of causing destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which lowers the peak overpressure in a city relative to that over unobstructed terrain. This effect means that the desert nuclear test-validated cube-root distance scaling law severely exaggerates peak overpressures at large distances from nuclear weapons exploding in or over cities. The very first edition of Glasstone's nuclear effects handbook, The Effects of Atomic Weapons, 1950, on page 57 has a section written by John von Neumann and Fredrick Reines of Los Alamos (it is attributed to them in a footnote) stating factually:

"... the structures ... have the additional complicating property of not being rigid. This means that they do not merely deflect the shock wave, but they also absorb energy from it at each reflection.

"The removal of energy from the blast in this manner decreases the shock pressure at any given distance from the point of detonation to a value somewhat below that which it would have been in the absence of dissipative objects, such as buildings."


This was removed from future editions. This isn't speculative guesswork: it's down to the conservation of energy. I emailed Dr Harold L. Brode and other experts about why it isn't included in American nuclear weapons effects manuals. Dr Brode kindly replied with some relevant and interesting facts about non-radial energy flows in Mach waves and the transfer of energy from the blast wave to flying debris (which, alas, travels slower than the supersonic shock front because the blast wind is always slower than the shock front velocity). It is true that the energy loss from the blast wave near ground level is partially offset by downward diffraction of energy from the diverging blast wave at higher altitudes. However, this downward diffraction process is not a 100% efficient compensator for energy loss, particularly for the kinetic energy of the air (the dynamic pressure or wind drag effect). The dynamic pressure (which in unobstructed desert or ocean nuclear tests makes the blast more hazardous for higher yield weapons) is an air particle effect not a wave effect so it does not diffract like a wave, and it is cut down severely when transferring its energy to building debris. Even if every house absorbs just 1% of the incident energy per unit of area incident to the blast, then the destruction of a line of 100 houses cuts the blast energy down to 0.99100 = 0.366 of what it would be over a desert surface. Basically, this chops down the collateral blast damage from large yield weapons detonated in cities and affects the usual scaling laws, making nuclear weapons even less dangerous than predicted by the textbook equations and curves.

The key diagrams from DC-P-1060-1 are shown below; click on diagrams for a larger view. Remember, as pointed out on pages 37-38 of the 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons, that for the yields and burst heights of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Mach stem formed at a peak overpressure of about 16 psi and the Mach stem was something like 185 feet high when the peak overpressure at the shock front was 6 psi, so the Japanese data for overpressures below about 16 psi applies to the Mach stem, but at higher overpressures the buildings were in the regular reflection region (so points above the ground were hit first by a downward-slanted incident blast wave, then after a brief delay by an upward-slanted ground reflected blast wave), while the Texas City Disaster was a surface burst nuclear-sized conventional explosion of a ship:









Above: the effect of the firestorm and initial nuclear radiation in Hiroshima on mortality is clarified by comparing the mortality as a function of peak overpressure in different types of building in Hiroshima with (1) the data from Nagasaki (where there was no firestorm, and reduced initial neutron radiation due to shielding of the bomb core by the proton nuclei in the hydrogen-rich high explosive implosion system, not used in the Hiroshima bomb), and (2) the data from the April 16, 1947 Texas City explosion, when an ammonium-nitrate fertilizer loaded freight ship, SS Grandcamp, docked at Texas City exploded during a fire without warning (spectators believed it to be containing burning grain, not explosive ammonium nitrate) with a yield equivalent to a 0.67 kt surface burst nuclear explosion. It destroyed 1,000 buildings, killed 581 people in known locations within different kinds of structures in the city, and injured over 5,000.




Above: what everyone needs to know about the effect of the blast winds on a standing human being (from nuclear weapon test report WT-1693 by Taborelli, Bowen and Fletcher, which gives human dummy data for nearly ideal and precursor blast wave situations measured at the Priscilla and Smoky tests of Operation Plumbbob in 1957): the centre of mass (“centre of gravity”) of a standing human is above waist height, so the body rotates in the blast winds, with the legs swinging forward. This is useful, because it means that any impact at a high horizontal velocity is likely to be taken by the feet, instead of the head. Notice that in this example, from the Plumbbob-Priscilla nuclear test in 1957, this tilting of the body makes it effectively an aeroplane so it actually gains upward lift from the blast winds, thus the head and the centre of gravity falls vertically at a speed even slower than Galileo’s freefall law (fall distance = ½gt2, where g is acceleration due to gravity = 9.8 m/s2), a much better situation than the simplistic idea that the body is accelerated head-first and impacts head-first on highly decelerating objects (e.g. buildings) from the full horizontal velocity achieved by the blast wind acceleration. The dummy in the film which was lying down was unmoved by the blast wave since (1) a smaller cross-sectional area of the body was exposed to the blast, (2) area in contact with the ground was maximised (increasing the ground friction), and (3) the passage of the blast winds over the lying body tended to press it downwards. Lying down also reduces the body area exposed directly to flying debris and direct thermal radiation. There is also some increase in direct nuclear radiation shielding because of (1) increased line-of-sight protection by terrain irregularities and buildings between the fireball and the person when down low, and (2) increased self-shielding of the body when exposed along its long axis rather than side-on (see British National Archives report HO 225/14, The advantage of lying prone in reducing the dose of gamma rays from an airburst atomic bomb).

Although both neutrons and gamma rays lose some of their radial directional dependence as distance from the burst is increased, and the contribution of scattered radiation increases, the scatter is not completely random. For instance, Compton scattered gamma rays (Compton scattering is predominate) are on the average only scattered by a fairly small angle from the angle of the incident gamma ray. Figures 4 and 5 on pages 144-5 of Dr Hurst's testimony in the June 1959 U. S. Congressional Hearings, The Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, before the Special Subcommitte on Radiation of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, gives the measured angular distribution of the initial gamma radiation and fast neutrons from a fission bomb detonated at Operation Plumbbob in the Nevada in 1957. For a mid-body height of 1 metre above ground and 1 km slant range from the bomb, 87% of the fast neutrons (which contribute most of the neutron dose) came from the hemisphere around the observer which faced the burst, and only 13% was back-scatter from the opposite direction. Thus, protection by a building or terrain irregularity just on the side facing the burst could afford some useful protection. The situation was even better for the initial gamma radiation, since 98% of the initial gamma dose came from the hemisphere around the observer facing the burst, and only 2% came from the other hemisphere. Therefore, although a lot of the radiation is indeed scattered, most of it is still coming from that hemisphere around the observer facing the detonation. Even if the radiation were so randomly scattered that it came uniformly from all directions, lying down would reduce exposure since the side of the body in contact with the ground would be afforded protection on the side facing the ground, unlike someone standing up, who would be exposed from all directions.

At 1 mile from ground zero in Nagasaki, a “standard” standing man outdoors (165 pounds, acceleration coefficient 0.03 ft2/lb) would be blown off his feet and accelerated to 20 ft/second after a 10 feet translation, and to 23 ft/second peak velocity if he did not collide with any solid object. Head impact at that speed is likely to cause a skull fracture, but because the centre of gravity of a standing man is above mid-height, the body rotates during translation so that the legs are in front, so they will impact on highly decelerating objects first. Although the head may eventually hit the ground, it does so at the much lower vertical velocity just due to gravity, not the high horizontal translation velocity produced by the blast winds. (For nuclear test films data of the detailed translation of accurate articulated crash dummies by blast waves, see for example R. V. Taborelli and I. G. Bowen, “Tertiary Effects of Blast – Displacement”, Operation Plumbbob interim test report ITR-1469, 1957.) Anyone lying down (prone) facing away from the explosion flash would survive the blast winds and would also be a smaller target for blast wind-carried debris impacts. Contrary to deceptive films of explosions in general and sound track-edited nuclear explosions in particular, the blast wave does not arrive at the velocity of light with the flash, so the explosion flash advertises a visible duck-and-cover warning to anyone in a highly vulnerable line-of-sight behind an unprotected window facing the blast. Windows on other sides of the building may be broken by the overpressure, but the fragments from those windows will not be accelerated to high inward velocities by the blast winds, since the blast winds or dynamic pressure acts only in a radial line from the explosion in the Mach region and doesn't diffract sideways into openings (unlike the overpressure). Like thunder after lightning, the bright flash of a nuclear or large conventional explosion can provide a useful warning to many people when large areas are at risk from blast effects, even if all other warning methods fail. These physical facts are ignored in the anti-civil defense deception propaganda from the Cold War era, which governments avoid contradicting even in compendiums like The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (which present the blast arrival time data in a passive, technical way). At the same 1 mile distance, Nagasaki, 10 gram glass window fragments (acceleration coefficient 0.72 ft2/lb) are accelerated to 270 ft/sec after 10 feet of travel and to 350 ft/sec maximum velocity (if there is no impact with an object during acceleration by blast winds). Such fragments would be likely to cause serious wounds (such as abdominal wall penetration) to people standing behind windows.

Such fragments are stopped, along with the thermal radiation pulse, by a solid desk or strong table that a person can quickly duck behind or under. This is the basis for WW II “duck and cover” advice. (In London in the Blitz in WW II, survival was likely under strong tables when the building collapsed due to blast, and this inspired the development of the indoor “Morrison table shelter”, which proved more popular - and just as safe - as outdoor shelters liable to ground water flooding.) Since glass fragments move with a high velocity horizontally, simply lying face-down on the floor if there is no solid object for protection – while not preventing window glass fragments from landing on the body – will ensure that the velocities and numbers of glass fragment impacts are minimised. This is because the highest numbers and velocities of glass fragment lacerations and abdominal penetrations occur if a person is standing directly behind a window, since (1) the horizontal component of the glass fragment velocity is the highest directly behind the window, and (2) the cross-sectional area of the body exposed to the fragments is maximised. Lying down below window height reduces both the average impact velocity and also the average number of glass fragment impacts on the body, as well as obviously reducing the cross-sectional body area exposed to the blast winds.

For a detailed presentation and discussion of the Dirkwood Corporation data: L. Wayne Davis, Prediction of Urban Casualties and the Medical Load from a High-Yield Nuclear Burst, Dirkwood Corporation paper DC-P-1060-1 (1968), published as Appendix C in Mass Burns: Proceedings of a Workshop, 13-14 March 1968, Sponsored by the Committee on Fire Research, Division of Engineering, National Research Council, and the Office of Civil Defense, Department of the Army, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 1969, pp. 310-393 (Google PDF download linked here). The Texas City Disaster blast casualty versus peak overpressure data are appropriate for some terrorist nuclear weapon threats:




Key medical data on the Texas City Disaster casualties was collected and published by Drs. Truman and Virginia Blocker, specialists in burns and plastic surgery, who followed up the recovery of 800 survivors of the disaster for nine years. They also treated some of the burns casualties from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See: V. Blocker and T. G. Blocker, “The Texas City Disaster, a Survey of 3000 casualties”, American Journal of Surgery, November 1949, vol. 78, issue 5, pp. 756-71, and T. G. Blocker, Jr., V. Blocker, J. E. Graham, and H. Jacobson, “Follow-up medical survey of the Texas City disaster”, American Journal of Surgery, May 1959, vol. 97. Issue 5, pp. 604-17. (Ships laden with munitions equivalent for blast to the kiloton nuclear yield range have caught fire and exploded in ports in 1917 and 1944, although the recorded casualty data in these cases was not detailed enough to relate the peak overpressure to mortality in different structures. On December 6, 1917, the SS Mont-Blanc, laden with 2.9 kt of explosive munitions for World War I, caught fire and exploded at Halifax, Nova Scotia, killing 1,950 and injuring 9,000. On July 17, 1944, the Port Chicago disaster occurred, when 2 kt of TNT-equivalent World War II munitions in SS E. A. Bryan and on the adjacent pier exploded, killing 320 and injuring 390.)

Above: comparison of the blast from nuclear and chemical explosives. Because only a fraction of the nuclear yield appears in air blast, it follows that a smaller yield chemical explosion produces a similar blast to a nuclear detonation. However, the massive physical size of chemical explosives needed to simulate nuclear weapon blast waves reduces the energy density (joules/m3) of the source of the blast, reducing the blast pressures from the TNT chemical equivalent in the region above about 500 psi.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, roughly 99.7% of the buildings were relatively weak wood-frame inflammable buildings which suffered far greater blast and fire damage than the brick and concrete structures (which mainly survived with some fire damage to interior combustibles, due to fire brands from the surrounding mass fires in wood-frame buildings entering broken windows). Two-thirds of the 76,000 buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed by fire (due to blast-overturned breakfast charcoal braziers at 8:15 am, as discussed later), mainly in the period of 2 to 3 hours after the detonation when the firestorm was at its peak intensity (by which time many survivors had escaped). In Nagasaki, a higher yield burst than Hiroshima where there was no firestorm (due to the detonation at 12:01 pm, when fewer kitchen charcoal braziers were burning in wooden houses), only a quarter of the city's 51,000 wood-frame buildings were flattened or burned. For comparison to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the report by L. Wayne Davis, Francis J. Wall and Donald L. Summers, Development of 'Typical' Urban Areas and Associated Casualty Curves (Dirkwood Corp., Albuquerque, New Mexico, DC-FR-1047 and AD623087, April 1965, 192 pp.), shows in Table 42 on page 91 that 63% of downtown buildings in large American cities in 1965 were reinforced concrete, 33% were brick, and only 2% were wood-frame houses. Thus, 99.7% of Hiroshima's buildings were wood-frame, but only 2% of those in American cities in 1965 were wood-frame. Hardly any buildings in modern cities are now made of wood. This is why casualty curves must reflect the actual building construction today!

The longer blast durations for higher explosion energy yields accelerate heavy flying debris for a longer period, so the debris reaches higher velocities for any given peak overpressure, causing more casualties. However, this overpressure duration effect is not applicable for very light debris like small glass fragments, which attain their maximum or “terminal” velocities very quickly in the blast winds and are therefore unaffected in speed by increased blast duration. Furthermore, the production of heavy flying debris requires the destruction of walls, which is dependent upon the peak immediately reflected overpressure on the wall. At the threshold peak pressure which just breaks a wall, the wall resists until nearly all the blast wave has past by, and so there are no high velocity blast winds or blast duration remaining with which to accelerate the debris.

Therefore, the lower threshold pressures for casualties by heavy flying debris are less sensitive to the duration of the blast (and thus to the yield of the explosion) than the effects at higher pressures (well above the threshold pressures for wall destruction). These curves are taken from the Dirkwood Corporation analysis of all Joint Commission and other data for 35,000 checked case histories in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Texas City medical reports. Contrary to political propaganda, even near ground zero there were many survivors in buildings who could give the names of other people present at the time of the explosion. To avoid incorrect information due to incorrect recollections from individuals, the Dirkwood analysis utilized only situations where collaborative evidence from several witnesses was available. Another more recent source of information on the combined biological effects from nuclear weapons of various yields is the 2008 Russian atmospheric nuclear test effects summary by V. A. Logachev and L. A. Mikhalikhina, Animal Effects from Soviet Atmospheric Nuclear Tests, ADA485845, DTRA-TR-07-38 (beware of the serious error in the peak overpressure units used in this report; the correct units can be verified from the data provided for the 400 kt 1953 test, see pages 14-15).



As discussed in the previous post, all of the empirical data above is grossly different to the false "assumptions" made to make deceptive predictions of casualties from nuclear attacks during the Cold War. For example, the thermal energies needed to produce mortality are vastly higher than the energies needed to produce burns to bare skin, because any shadow or clothing provides protection and people instinctively close their eyes as an automatic reflex and turn away from a painfully bright unexpected flash, whatever the source may be, which provides some protection. The 1979 deceptive U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War used completely outrageous lies to calculate casualty rates, ignoring the facts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to exaggerate the difficulties facing civil defense, for politically expedient ends. As pointed out in the previous post, the vagueness and covering-up of the facts served a deterrent purpose during the Cold War, but against terrorists who exploit fear of the unknown, secrecy of the basis for countermeasures is an inappropriate response. As history showed before World War II, exaggerations of weapons effects can encourage terrorists and dictatorships to exploit the climate of fear for their own ends.

Exaggerations of nuclear casualty predictions: the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment's 1979 Effects of Nuclear War blast overpressure versus mortality effects criteria appeared in the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) civil defence manuals, such as the Attack Environment Manual (originated by FEMA's precursor, the DCPA or Defense Civil Preparedness Agency) from the 1970s, without citing any specific references. However, it the extremely exaggerated casualty figures they use (which imply 50% lethality from blast effects inside typical city buildings at 5-6 psi peak overpressure, compared to much higher figures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki data which included initial nuclear radiation and thermal effects to people near windows in sight of the fireball) were based on error-filled computer models such as that developed by IIT Research Institute of Chicago of the bodily translation from blast winds when a person is inside a building. This particular computer program (code) is stated and discussed in the "unclassified" report by David I. Feinstein, William F. Heugel, Merle L. Kardatzke, and Albery Weinstock, Personnel Casualty Study, IIT Research Institute, Chicago, AD842573, July 1968, which while not classified confidential or secret, was limited in distribution ("only authorized for distribution to U.S. Government contractors") from July 1968 until 7 October 1976.

The abstract states misleadingly that: "A validation of the code was was performed using existing Hiroshima data." The abstract does not mention that this "validation" actually disproved the model, instead of verifying it! See pages 131-133 of the validation (online link to PDF download, here). The main component of the model was the part of the program predicting mortality from bodily displacement due to blast winds entering a building and blowing a person into an object. This model was developed on the basis of dummies exposed outdoors on unobstructed terrain to two 1957 Operation Plumbbob nuclear tests, and was a reasonable model for predicting the peak velocity attained by a standing person outdoors. However, the "validation" using Hiroshima data was done for casualties in one building in Hiroshima only, the Hiroshima Telephone Office at 2,000 feet range from ground zero, where there 14 percent of personnel were casualties; the computer model predicted 93 percent casualties!

This is a massive error factor, exaggerating the casualty rate by 6.6 times, and it only "validates" the stupidity of applying a model for blast wind displacement based on personnel outdoors to inside buildings. This kind of translation model was applied in all the computer casualty codes of the 1970s, massively exaggerating indoor casualties. The report tries to explain away the error by suggesting that the translation model was not appropriate to air bursts for the regular reflection blast region, which extended out to about 2,000 feet in Hiroshima. However, in that case the model is also wrong from all air bursts in the regular reflection region (the FEMA manuals and the 1979 Effects of Nuclear War report apply the same blast casualty criteria to both surface and air bursts, without differences for regular reflection or Mach region).

In the regular reflection region, the incident blast wave arrives first and the accompanying blast wind is directed along the radial line from the detonation point, so it is not horizontal but is coming downwards (it comes vertically downwards at ground zero, but at an angle of 45 degrees for a ground range equal to the burst altitude, which is roughly the maximum range of the regular reflection region). This downward angle of the blast winds will reduce personnel displacement in an air burst, because the person will be blown down to the ground sooner than for a purely horizontal blast wind, which has time to accelerate the person to a higher velocity before the person hits an object or the ground.

Nevertheless, in the regular reflection region this downward directed blast wind component of the incident shock wave is followed by the reflected wave, which is accompanied by a blast wind with an upward component coming from the radial line of the mirror image of the burst, which would enhance translational injuries by blowing people into the air:


Above: in the Mach stem region, the shock wave and blast winds move horizontally, but in the regular reflection region there are two shock waves received at any height above the ground (e.g. in a building): the first is the incident blast wave, which has a blast wind or dynamic pressure with a downward component to it, and then the ground-reflected blast wave is received which has an upward directed angle to it. (Illustration is from Glasstone and Dolan, Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977.)

In the regular reflection region, the incident blast wave will tend to blow things down rather than just horizontally, but after a very brief period of time (for locations near the ground), the reflected wave arrives and the blast wind and associated dynamic pressure (responsible for displacing personnel) loses its downward component and blows with a slightly upward direction. Actually, once the blast wave enters the horizontal floors of a building, the blast winds will be constrained (or ducted) into a more horizontal direction anyway, if the airflow is to blow through. Overall, the excuse that the IIT model failed because of the direction of the blast winds in the regular reflection region is a red-herring. More likely, the blast winds in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in both regular and Mach reflection regions) tended to blow unimpeded through the buildings only above the waist-high window base heights, so the air drag loading to standing people was effectively limited to the upper halves of their bodies, simply knocking them over and down on to the floor, instead of accelerating them horizontally for large distances at high speeds before they hit something (as occurred for dummies exposed outdoors in standing posture for nearly ideal and precursor duststorm conditions at the Priscilla and Smoky nuclear tests of Operation Plumbbob in 1957).

This is the main reason why the 1979 Effects of Nuclear War blast casualty predictions for air and surface bursts were gross exaggerations. The Texas City ship explosion data given earlier (above) is for a surface burst, and confirms this conclusion because in a surface burst the incident and reflected shock waves are fused at all distances into a Mach stem, with horizontal blast winds at all distances. These horizontal winds did not increase casualties due to translation, as the curves above confirm.

The report states on page 133 that if the translation model in the computer code is ignored, the predicted casualties for the Hiroshima building at 2,000 feet are correct: 14 percent! However, it is silly to try to "validate" a computer model by trying to simulate just the casualty data from one building selected at random in Hiroshima from the full data for all buildings in the originally secret 1947 six volumes of Strategic Bombing Survey reports on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A statistically significant validation of a computer prediction system should be done using all of the data, such as that in the Dirkwood Corporation data summary, not just trying to simulate data for one building (which will magnify the risk of errors due to uncertainities related to the precise positions of the people and objects in that building when the blast wave arrived). By simulating casualties for lots of buildings in the cities, the random errors from individual cases will be statistically suppressed by the increase in the size of the data sampled. Another factor of relevance for casualty models is that in the 1960s and 1970s the dosimetry for initial radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was grossly oversimplified and the latest dosimetry from 2002 (the Dosimetry System 2002, or DS02) is verified by empirical neutron activation data (measurements of long-lived low-level neutron induced radioactivity in steel samples from the city buildings) and gamma dose thermoluminescence (the gamma radiation displaced atoms in the crystal structure of roof tiles, and this energy could be later released as light when the samples were heated, allowing the radiation dose to be determined accurately; this technique is easily and reliably calibrated by simply exposing the same sample to a known dose of gamma radiation afterwards and repeating the measurement of the light release upon heating using a standard laboratory instrument), as well as comparison of the new models with nuclear test initial radiation measurements. We discussed this DS02 model in detail in an earlier post.


Above: the IIT blast wind translation model with its gross casualty exaggerations for people in buildings persisted in the May 1973 report by Anatole Longinow, G. Ojdrovich, L. Bertram, and A. Wiedermann, People Survivability in a Direct Effects Environment and Related Topics, AD0764114, as illustrated in the computer simulation above of a person being blown out of a building and falling to the ground outside under gravity. (For a generally good compilation of effects data, see also Anatole Longinow, et al., Debris Motion and Injury Relationships in All Hazard Environments, ADA030815, 1976.)

Anatole Longinow, et al., “Casualties Produced by Impact and Related Topics of People Survivability in a Direct Effects Environment”, IIT Research Institute, AD-A011108, August 1974:

Page 1-1: “Ground plane impact is taken as a separate category because it involves those individuals who are swept out from the upper stories by the blast winds.”

The subsequent graphs of mortality (from different kinds of flying debris and floor impacts) in the report show that essentially all of the mortality predicted by the model is due to gravity accelerating people to impact the ground, after the blast is presumed to have blown people out of multistorey buildings.

This did not happen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the reason is clear: the blast winds with associated air drag (or dynamic) pressure blow in freely through broken windows, but unlike the overpressure of the blast, the wind pressure is not a wave phenomenon and doesn't diffract downwards from the window frame. Just as shallow trenches or depressions give protection from the wind drag (although the overpressure component of the shock wave diffracts into them), the wall portion below the broken window shelters the blast wind. See the following illustrations (adapted from Anatole Longinow, E. Hahn, A. Wiedermann, and S. Citko, Casualties Produced by Impact and Related Topics of People Survivability in a Direct Effects Environment, Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, ADA011108, 1974):


If the shock wave loading on the wall is only just enough to break it, then by definition the wall will only break up after the whole of the positive phase of the blast has passed, so there will be no wind pressure remaining to accelerate the debris. Those pieces of wall debris cannot then become high velocity flying missiles, and the wall will also have successfully sheltered the wind pressure, despite failing at the end. If the shock wave loading is slightly greater, then the wall will fail and break up before all of the shock wave positive phase has ended, and some wind pressure will persist to act upon the fragments and accelerate them. However, the dynamic pressure falls off much faster than the peak overpressure (dynamic pressure is proportional to roughly the square of the overpressure). Also, a fraction of the dynamic pressure impulse (at the "tail end" of blast wind pressure pulse) will be able to blow through the broken up wall and act upon a person inside the building. However, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki many modern city buildings survived high pressures with minor damage. (The large areas of ashes and soot were the result of the fires spreading in wooden buildings 30 minutes to 3 hours after the explosion.)


Above: double page spread of Nevada nuclear test experiment from the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, proving that although the blast overpressure diffracts like a wave, the wind pressure of the blast wave doesn't. Two complete sets of earth moving equipment were exposed where the peak overpressure was 30 psi, one set in the open and fully exposed to the blast winds, and the other in an open trench where the blast wave overpressure (but not wind or dynamic pressure) was able to diffract in. There was no significant wind drag damage because the sides of the trench stopped the free flow of wind pressure within the trench, effectively creating a dead air layer. Only the wave like overpressure component of the blast entered and caused damage: the wind just blew straight over the top without deflecting down into the trench. Similarly, a solid wall below window height will provide some shielding from the blast winds, which will blow over the top. If the room has an interior wall which stops the winds blowing straight through, the winds will blow in umimpeded only for a short time (the time taken for the shock to reach the far wall and bounce back), generally a time much shorter than the positive phase duration of the pressure in a large yield detonation. The free-flow of air pressure in the room will then be reduced much below the flow rate over open terrain.

This can be confirmed by anyone with the wind: the wind flow through a tube with both ends removed is more efficient than the flow of wind into a tube with the far end capped. Similarly, opening one window in a house will not allow the wind to blow freely through the house unless an exit is provided by opening another window on the other side of the house, to allow a draught to blow straight through. If there is only one entrance, the wind blowing in increases the air pressure within the house until it is just sufficient to oppose the drag pressure of the incident wind at the entrance, cutting off the wind inflow.

For these reasons, the computer models of people being blown straight out of buildings and falling to the ground exaggerates casualty rates. Moreover, the flash of the explosion gives visible warning ahead of the blast wave arrival time, like lightning before thunder. People behind windows facing an explosion over large blast damage areas will therefore usually have adequate time to duck and cover, reducing the body area exposed to the blast winds and the flying glass or debris they carry. This is the important lesson for civil defense that must not be ignored or downplayed for "political correctness" over Cold War dogmas of exaggerated effects to bolster the strength of nuclear deterrence or to motivate disarmament pipe dreams. Weapons effects exaggerations for disarmament led to disaster in the 1930s. Vulnerability through deception doesn't protect people or deter thugs. On the contrary, vulnerability through exaggerating the threat until it is made to look beyond rational control by civil defense countermeasures just ensures that nobody will duck and cover, thus maximising the helpless intimidation generated by terrorist threats and maximising the scale of any potential disaster (including non-nuclear explosions like the 0.67 kt nuclear equivalent Texas City disaster of 1947 which killed 581 people).

Although ABM offers protection and deterrence against a wide spectrum of accidental and limited war scenarios, it is always limited to airborne attacks and cannot defend against all kinds of subversive attack by smuggled explosives carried in ships or vehicles. ABM systems should not therefore be allowed to generate complacent "Maginot Line psychology" because it can always be by-passed by back door attacks. Even EMP-causing high altitude bursts cannot automatically be prevented by ABM, because a warhead can be equipped with radar sensors and fused to detonate when approached by an ABM missile, with the full effect.

Additional information:

The first five volumes of the 1951 Report of the Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan by Ashley W. Oughterson and others is online (link here), although the most important data analysis is in volume six which is unavailable. The originally secret six volumes of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reports on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1947 are still unpublished (only a completely misleading, non-quantitative discussion booklet on the results was openly published by them in 1946 (The Effects of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, June 19, 1946), which omits the vital statistical evidence on the origin of the firestorm in Hiroshima) but are held in the British National Archives, as documents AIR 48/160, AIR 48/161, AIR 48/162, AIR 48/163, AIR 48/164, and AIR 48/165 (declassified from secret in 1972, although in America they had been declassified earlier, while effectively limited in distribution, since they were never published). The originally secret May 1947 volume of the Strategic Bombing Survey report on Hiroshima states on pages 4-6:

"Six persons who had been in reinforced-concrete buildings within 3,200 feet [975 m] of air zero stated that black cotton black-out curtains were ignited by flash heat ... A large proportion of over 1,000 persons questioned was, however, in agreement that a great majority of the original fires were started by debris falling on kitchen charcoal fires ..."


This vitally important survey fact, that fires started mainly from the normal Hiroshima and Nagasaki wood frame dwelling debris like paper screens and bamboo furnishings falling on breakfast (8:15 am Hiroshima) and lunch (12:01 pm Nagasaki) charcoal cooking braziers, is extremely important. A few black coloured air-raid "black-out" curtains did ignite near ground zero due to thermal radiation under intense exposure in a line-of-sight to the fireball without intervening buildings or trees, but such dark air-raid avoiding curtains are not used in city windows today, nor are charcoal cooking braziers used amid highly flammable houses and furnishings. The vitally important evidence on the importance of the blast (not thermal radiation) firestorm mechanism in Hiroshima was been missed by Glasstone and Dolan (probably because of its initial secrecy and the vagueness of the widely-reported, unclassified "summary" volume of the 1946 U.S. Bombing Survey Report, which omits the vital survey data), and also by the late Walmer E. ("Jerry") Strope, the Pentagon head of American civil defense research in the 1960s (while civil defense under military control), who commented in his recent autobiography, Chapter 19, The Civil Defense Research Surge:

"The brilliant flash resulting from a nuclear explosion, called the “thermal pulse,” was believed to be the principal cause of the fires that raged at Hiroshima. Of course, Japanese houses were made of paper and Hiroshima was not much like modern American cities but the potential fire threat was uncertain. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons had a table of materials that could be ignited by the thermal pulse [the June 1957 and April 1962 editions of that book contained false data which greatly exaggerated the problem for ignition of newspaper and fine kindling materials; the February 1964 reprint and the 1977 edition give corrected data but it was too late and the exaggerations from earlier editions were widely hyped in the early Congressional Hearings and many anti-civil defense books in the early 1960s, as we have seen in previous blog posts]. The most ignitable was old, crumpled newspaper such as you may have seen caught up in a chain-link fence. It would flame up at a thermal pulse intensity of about 5 calories per square centimeter. Anti-CD [Civil Defense] activists seized upon this datum, which could extend beyond blast damage on a clear day, drew a circle around a hypothetical explosion point, and declared all within the circle lost in the resulting mass fire."


This problem and widespread ignorance continues today with Eden's book. One excellent way to address the futility of the firestorm lies is to point out that survival rates in both Hiroshima (firestorm) and Nagasaki (no firestorm) correlated to blast parameters. Despite the instantaneous flash-over in the inflammable rubbish-filled Encore test house with a massive window facing ground zero without line-of-sight obstructions at Nevada in 1953, the other house (not filled with rubbish) beside it contained more modern fire-resistant/retardant furnishings and survived despite the same immense unobstructed thermal radiation exposure!

Review of Mass Burns: Proceedings of a Workshop, 13-14 March 1968, Sponsored by the Committee on Fire Research, Division of Engineering, National Research Council, and the Office of Civil Defense, Department of the Army, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 1969 (Google PDF download linked here).

On page 37, the editors write:

"If clothing ignites, education should be so thorough that the immediate reaction is smother the flames.

"Every child should be trained to roll on the floor if his clothes catch fire, and every adult should know how to extinguish flames with the nearest material at hand - his own coat, a rug, or a blanket. They should know, in advance of the actual emergency, the importance of bringing the coat (or whatever else they are using) across the face to fend the flames and smoke away from the vital air passages."


On page 49, Dr Edward L. Alpen of the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory dispelled myths concerning the part of the thermal radiation spectrum which is most efficient at causing skin burns. It is not visible light, but infrared radiation which is not reflected by clouds like visible light, and suffers severe attenuation due to water vapor such as humid air or clouds. This is precisely why you don't feel heat from the sun when there is cloud cover intervening in the radial line from you to the sun. Ultra violet radiation is not important over large distances because it is absorbed by oxygen and gamma ray-produced ozone in the air (the nuclear explosion's initial gamma radiation ionizes oxygen and like lightning it automatically produces a "smog" veil consisting largely of ozone, O3, around the fireball, which absorbs the ultra violet radiation). Dr Alpen explains on pp. 49-50:

"About this question of the spectral dependence of radiant energy, I think Dr Haynes may have given you the impression that white light does the trick. There is later work which tends to refute that. The [incorrect] work done at Virginia used cut-off filters. The effectiveness of all energy above a certain wavelength or below a certain wavelength was measured. At the upper end the most effective and the least effective were mixed together and made it [wrongly] appear that infrared was not too good in producing burns. [This error was due to lumping together visible red (0.6-0.8 micron wavelength) and infrared wavelengths into the same energy spectrum interval, averaging the extremely burn-ineffective visible red light with extremely burn-effective infrared, to create a misleading result. Skin and most other body tissue is relatively transparent to visible red light of 0.6-0.8 microns wavelength, so red visible light does not cause skin burns: it is not stopped by a very thin layer of skin, so it does not cause large temperature rises compared to infrared radiation which is absorbed rapidly by the water in tissue.]

"When you subdivide the spectrum, the most effective energy in producing a flash burn is the infrared above about 1.2 microns. The importance of this, and the only reason I make an issue of it, is that a very important source of flash burn, both in civilian life and under wartime disaster conditions, is radiant energy burns from flaming sources ...

"There is one window of wavelength in the skin of man which does not burn. This is from about 0.6 to 0.8 micron, because the skin allows the transmission of this energy. You can demonstrate this simply by holding up your fingers to the sun and looking through them. You will see that red light is transmitted. This is a phenomenon all of you know. Energy in the wavelengths of 0.6 to 0.8 micron is about one-eighth as destructive as the rest of the spectrum. But long wavelength [infrared] radiation above one micron is extremely destructive, and the most effective of all. ... Anything that shields out radiation above one micron is extremely effective in preventing burns to the skin."


Dr Carl Jelenko, III, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Hospital in his paper beginning on page 68 explains clearly physiology of burn wounds:

(1) Water is lost through burned skin because the body is 70% water so a primary function of the skin is to retain moisture because evaporation is high at the normal body temperature (37 °C inside the body and 32 °C at the body surface). Lung tissues are coated in a layer of water in which oxygen from inhaled air is dissolved prior to transport around the body, so exhaled moist air is normally (in cool, non-sweaty conditions) the biggest source of water loss after excretion. When the skin is damaged by a burn, water is able to evaporate from from the exposed moist 32 °C tissue directly, and unless this moisture loss is compensated by oral or intravenous fluid administration, lethal shock may result if the burned area exceeds 15% of body area in children or 25% body area in adults. An adult with 40% body area burns loses 6 quarts (a quart is 0.946 liter) of water every day through that burned skin (until it is healed).

(2) Energy is rapidly lost via burned skin because the almost uninhibited evaporation of water from burned tissue is not just a problem in draining the fluid from the casualty and causing shock, because it also drains energy from the casualty because at the normal 32 °C skin surface temperature (or higher still in the case of a fever due to infection), it takes 579 calories to evaporate a kilogram of water. This energy drain due to evaporation of water cools the burned skin, therefore the body has to burn up more energy reserves just to maintain thermal homeostasis. Severe burns patients normally cannot hold down solid food, so have to be given water and an energy supply either orally (by almost continuous drinking) or intravenously. For oral administration, Dr Jelenko recommended that electrolytic balance is maintained by adding 2 level teaspoons of table salt and 2 level teaspoons of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to every 3 quarts of water, while some sweetener such as cola syrup is added to make the drink palatable. On page 85, it is noted that burns patients have a poor appetite for the first 36-48 hours, when it may be impossible even to consume fluids (intravenous administration is then important). Solid foods may not be digested and even if not immediately vomited, may be vomited later during sleep, causing inhalation of some of the material (thus resulting in either fatal choking or lung infections like pneumonia). Abdominal swelling indicates that the digestive system is not functioning and only liquid intake should then be given until recovery progresses.

(3) The skin damage permits infections of the burned skin tissue. This is particularly important after exposure to large doses of nuclear radiation, because of the decreased abundance of infection-fighting white blood cells which results from damage to the radiation-sensitive bone marrow.

A new innovative burns treatment aimed at combatting all of the problems above (at least in the short-term, for first-aid in disasters) consists of simply covering the burned area with aseptic transparent plastic film (an aseptic version of the cling film wrap commonly used to keep sandwiches and other foods fresh). This prevents water evaporation and infection, but the plastic film may stick to the tissue and cause damage to the skin when removed, and it may delay long-term healing. Care should be taken not to wrap the plastic film around burned areas too tightly, to allow for the inevitable swelling of burned tissue which could damage the skin by compression of damaged tissue and also by restricting blood flow (the tourniquet danger). However, since the plastic is transparent the wound can be visually monitored for problems and the plastic can serve as a short-term barrier to infection, to prevent immediate water loss and associated shock from setting in before burned people can escape from an explosion damaged area, and as a temporary countermeasure for keeping radioactive fallout particles from entering burns wounds in the event of a surface burst nuclear explosion:

Think Plastic Wrap as Wound Dressing for Thermal Burns

ACEP [American College of Emergency Physicians] News
August 2008

By Patrice Wendling
Elsevier Global Medical News

CHICAGO - Ordinary household plastic wrap makes an excellent, biologically safe wound dressing for patients with thermal burns en route to the emergency department or burn unit.

The Burn Treatment Center at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, has advocated prehospital and first-aid use of ordinary plastic wrap or cling film on burn wounds for almost two decades with very positive results, Edwin Clopton, a paramedic and ED technician, explained during a poster session at the annual meeting of the American Burn Association.

"Virtually every ambulance in Iowa has a roll of plastic wrap in the back," Mr. Clopton said in an interview. "We just wanted to get the word out about the success we've had using plastic wrap for burn wounds," he said.

Dr. G. Patrick Kealey, newly appointed ABA president and director of emergency general surgery at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, said in an interview that plastic wrap reduces pain, wound contamination, and fluid losses. Furthermore, it's inexpensive, widely available, nontoxic, and transparent, which allows for wound monitoring without dressing removal.

"I can't recall a single incident of its causing trouble for the patients," Dr. Kealey said. "We started using it as an answer to the problem of how to create a field dressing that met those criteria. I suppose that the use of plastic wrap has spread from here out to the rest of our referral base."

Although protocols vary between different localities, plastic wrap is typically used for partial- and full-thickness thermal burns, but not superficial or chemical burns. It is applied in a single layer directly to the wound surface without ointment or dressing under the plastic and then secured loosely with roller gauze, as needed.

Because plastic wrap is extruded at temperatures in excess of 150° C, it is sterile as manufactured and handled in such a way that there is minimal opportunity for contamination before it is unrolled for use, said Mr. Clopton of the emergency care unit at Mercy Hospital, Iowa City. However, it's best to unwind and discard the outermost layer of plastic from the roll to expose a clean surface.


If shock from thermal burns and other injuries cannot be avoided, it must be treated immediately. Whatever the cause, the physiology of shock stems from the thickening of blood caused by the loss of blood plasma from capillary walls into tissue, increasing the viscosity of the blood and slowing the circulation rate. This is an automatic reaction to trauma which reduces blood losses in bleeding and makes the blood more sticky, enabling faster and more effective clotting than is possible at normal blood viscosity and normal blood pressure. This loss of plasma from the blood is accompanied by a dilation of blood vessels in muscles and abdominal organs, which slows the rate of blood flow and thus the rate of oxygen transfer, and further reduces the blood pressure, to reduce blood loss rates and allow clotting to proceed effectively. The fall in blood pressure due to the pooling of blood in dilated deep vessels makes the skin pale. The fall in the oxygen delivery rate to tissue causes the heart to race in an effort to maintain a flow of oxygen, so the pulse increases from the normal 72 beats a minute to 100-120 or more for adults at rest. The reduced delivery of oxygen to tissue can cause the person to faint or to show symptoms of cold hypothermia (e.g. shivering) because there is insufficient oxygen being delivered to produce warmth in the tissue by oxidisation of glucose.

The cause of shock (thickening of blood and fall in blood pressure) is the natural response to trauma: it prevents excessive blood loss by bleeding (the bleeding rate is a function of blood pressure) and forces the casualty to lie down, making blood clotting more efficient. In summary, the symptoms of shock are faintness, pale and/or cold skin, fast pulse, and slow breathing. The basic treatment consists of hydrating the casualty to increase the blood plasma volume to make the viscous red blood cell content of the blood less concentrated: give the casualty non-alcoholic fluids such as water, soft drinks, etc. Short-term first-aid treatments for shock which do not increase the blood plasma volume and just mask the symptoms but not the underlying cause of shock, consist of treating the circulation and hypothermia symptoms by lying down the casualty and raising their feet, and using blankets to keep warm. The 1983 British Medical Association report The Medical Effects of Nuclear War on page 101 gave a recipe for oral administration, which is relevant for nuclear explosion casualties at risk of shock from blast, thermal and nuclear radiation effects:

“The effects of dehydration can be combated effectively by early and energetic oral rehydration with clean water containing sugar, i.e. glucose, dextrose or sucrose (20 g/litre), and common table salt, sodium chloride (3.5 g/litre). These additives to potable water are readily available in households and it is important that supplies of the two substances should be available.”


The first-aid measures against mechanical wounds and fractures are well known, except for the need to hydrate crush wounds casualties trapped under heavy rubble before or immediately after release (toxins are produced by crushed muscles which are released into the blood stream when the muscles are released, which can be concentrated enough to poison the kidneys unless adequate fluid has been given to dilute the toxins). Radiation injury in large but survivable dose cases (2-6 Gy or 200-600 rads free-in-air dose) is well known to consist of an initial phase of sickness for (poisoning symptoms due to hydrogen peroxide and other toxins created by the action of radiation on water in the body), followed by an apparent recovery phase of a few days before a final phase consisting chiefly of the symptoms of decreased abundance of various types of blood cells.

Cell proteins are sythesised using information carried by genes in DNA, so cells are particularly vulnerable to radiation during cell production. The shorter the lifespan of a cell, the longer the percentage of their life which is spent in the vulnerable production process (e.g., a cell with a lifespan of only 3 days must be normally produced at a rate which can replace the entire supply of that cell every 3 days, so the shorter the lifespan of a cell, the more rapid the production rate, and the higher the vulnerability to radiation during production). This fact explains why the fastest-reproducing cells of the body (blood cells) show greatest sensitivity to radiation, and it is also the basis of radiotherapy (because rapidly dividing cancer cells are more sensitive to radiation than normal, more slowly-dividing cells) as discovered in 1906 by French radiologists Jean A. Bergonié and Louis F. A. Tribondeau ("Interpretation de quelques résultats de la radiotherapie et essai de fixation d'une technique rationelle", C. R. Soc. Biol., Paris, 1906, v. 143, pp. 983-5). Mature cells are insensitive to radiation, but when they naturally die, they cannot be replaced quickly, due to the damage to the cell production mechanism. This is why blood cell counts only start to fall a few days after exposure to radiation, when the existing mature cells naturally die but are not replaced at the normal rate. White blood cells (leukocytes) include granulocytes produced in the bone marrow and lymphocytes produced in the lymphoid tissues (e.g., lymph nodes and spleen), and defend the body against infection. Their loss becomes apparent a week or two after exposure to radiation when the existing cells in the blood have died and have not been replaced in sufficient numbers, increasing the risk of infection at this time. In lethal cases in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the total white blood cell count fell from the normal 7,000 or so cells per cubic millimetre to below 2,000 in serious cases, and to below 500 in fatal cases (reference: Effects of Atomic Weapons, 1950, page 349). It is therefore a useful indicator of the dose and survival prospects if a radiation dosimeter is not available. The loss of red blood cells (erythrocytes) is less severe, but the fall in platelets can be severe after a week or two, and since platelets cause the blood to clot, their loss can cause bleeding (hemorrhage) in the gums of the mouth, the lining of intestinal tract, and under the skin (petechiae and purpura). These temporary effects were well documented in the irradiated survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they naturally disappeared as the blood-forming organs recovered. Likewise, the hair loss was only temporary:

"Burns of moderate second degree (and milder) usually healed within four weeks, but more severe burns frequently became infected so that the healing process was much more prolonged. Even under the best conditions, it is difficult to prevent burns from becoming infected, and after the nuclear bombings of Japan the situation was aggravated by inadequate care, poor sanitation, and general lack of proper facilities. Nuclear radiation injury may have been a contributory factor in some cases due to the decrease in resistance of the body to infection."

- The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, 1957, pp. 463-4.

"Hemorrhages breaking through a surface layer of epithelium, laden with bacteria, may give rise to other effects. ... Normally harmless bacteria, generally found within the digestive tract and on the skin, may actually gain access to the blood stream and cause blood poisoning and fatal infection. Boils and abscesses may form in any part of the body through a similar cause, but they are characterized by being more localized."

- The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, 1957, p. 501.

"Epilation (loss of hair), mainly of the scalp, was common among those Japanese who survived for more than 2 weeks after the explosion. The time of onset of epilation reached a sharp peak, for both males and females, between the thirteenth and fourteenth days. The hair suddenly began to fall out in bunches upon combing or plucking, and much fell out spontaneously: this continued for 1 or 2 weeks and then ceased. ... In severe cases, hair began to return within a few months and in no instance was the epilation permanent."

- The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, 1957, p. 500.

"Among 1,000 cases, chosen at random, of individuals who were in the open, within some 6,600 feet (1.25 miles) of ground zero at the time of the explosions, only 42 gave a history of keratitis [eye cornea inflammation] coming on within the first day. Delayed keratitis was reported in 14 additional cases ... Investigators have reported that in no case, among the 1,000 examined, was the thermal radiation exposure of the eyes apparently sufficient to cause permanent opacity of the cornea. This observation is surprising in view of the severe burns of the face suffered by many of the patients. ... Nevertheless, some three years later the corneas were normal. No persons in the survey group developed permanent central scotomata (blind spots), although several stated that they were looking in the direction of the bomb at the time of the explosion. ... it seems probable that the blink reflex was rapid enough to provide significant protection. ... owing to the bright sunlight the pupils of the eyes would be small, thus decreasing the exposed area."

- The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, 1957, pp. 465-6.


Continuing the review of the 1968 Mass Burns civil defense experts symposium, Harvard Medical School Professor of Surgery Oliver Cope summarized and reviewed the presentations on page 263-5, commenting on the fact that in science a "consensus" must only emerge naturally only after the acquisition of all of the facts, and this is the whole point of real science, which is distinguished in methodology from the groupthink prejudices and relativism of politics and fashion. Science is not a faddish dogma enforced by a tradition or dictatorial politics, points out Professor Cope:

"All of us people won't agree about every detail. Each of us puts a little different emphasis on this treatment or that, but, as knowledge develops, we become more secure, and ultimately unanimity of opinion will be reached. ...

"Society leaves us completely free. ... We are perfectly prepared in medicine to find that the thing that makes cells run wild may be something as new and different as bacteria were when Pasteur first described them. So that we, in medicine, are in a very, very fortunate position. Contrast this with the political position of the world in which our political leaders are not free to look at things in the open sense that medicine is. The political considerations are bound by tradition, which hampers progress. ... We must try to get our attitude toward society and toward research into world affairs."


This of course is the opposite of the approach taken by the International Physicians Against Nuclear War, a politically not scientifically motivated group whose approach is to exaggerate the effects of nuclear war in order to discredit the civil defense and thus to promote the lie that the only protection is nuclear disarmament, even though it is a fact that the disarmament in the 1930s simply encouraged fascists to attack Jews and invade defenseless countries with impunity.

Professor Cope continued on pages 264-5, explaining that mortality is often higher from civilian burns "accidents" than military burns accidents because up to 50% of civilian burns casualties are psychologically depressed, careless people, or engaged in self-harm, and such people have a higher burn mortality rate than non-depressed people:

"... in civilian burns we know very well that the morale factor is terribly important in recovery. ... A depressed patient does poorly. There has to be a will to live. ... the burns could easily have been assumed to be the results of accidents, if no further attempt had been made to understand the patients, establish a rapport with them and help them psychologically. ...

"Now you may find this hard to believe, but of all the burned children we have seen in Boston 50 percent have had an emotional reason for damaging themselves. Consciously, or unconsciously, they have taken the only way they could get the attention they desperately needed and have burned themselves. They have found a way of getting back at their parents for their neglect, by doing the very things they have been told not to do. It is a kind of accident proneness. In civilian accidents it is not enough to treat the burns. We must inquire into, and alleviate, the cause of the burns.

"These children who have burned themselves need very special attention. If they don't get it, they don't eat, they waste away, and mortality is high. If, however, they can be reached (and they can now with our better understanding), the mortality rate drops. [Therefore the mortality rate in civilian burns statistics is a function of not just the type of treatment and the age of the patient, but also of the psychological state of depression in patients who have burned themselves as a result of carelessness or deliberate exposure to fire.]

"... Depending on the victims' will to live the outcome may be far different from what statistics lead us to expect. Victims of a disaster, which is not likely to strike them again, may fare much better than the usual civilian accident victims.

[This was not the case in Hiroshima or Nagasaki where, as is well documented in numerous first-hand interviews, the severely burned and irradiated survivors were soon depressed by reports in the Japanese media of ignorant scare story originated by a report by Dr Harold Jacobson which falsely stated: "Hiroshima is contaminated with radiation. It will be barren of life and nothing will grow for 75 years. Any scientists who go there to survey the damage will be committing suicide ... Rain falling on the area will pick up the lethal rays and will carry them down to the rivers and the sea. And animal life in these waters will die ... Investigators in a contaminated area will become infected with secondary radiation which breaks up the red corpuscles in the blood. People will die much the same way that leukemia victims do." Dr Jacobson was just a laboratory based radiation health physicist of the Manhattan Project, who knew nothing about the physics of fallout creation in the Hiroshima air burst, but his wildly inventive claims were reported in the Washington Post on August 8, 1945. This news, reported extensively in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the newspapers which quickly restarted their presses, was extremely depressing for many survivors. Scientist correspondent William Laurence of the New York Times on September 3, 1945, wired the finding that the death rate was still 100 people a day in Hiroshima from burns complicated by initial radiation: “Japanese doctors told us they were helpless to deal with burns caused by the bomb’s great flash or with the other physical ailments caused by the bomb. Some said they thought that all who had been in Hiroshima that they would die as a result of the bomb’s lingering effects.” However, "Laurence denied that the black rain fallout in Hiroshima was significantly radioactive because it originated from the firestorm that began 30 minutes after explosion, when the radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown many miles downwind. Most survivors were injured mainly by blast and heat. Laurence was proved right: Hiroshima was not made barren of human and animal life for 75 years." As a result, Laurence has recently been accused by some journalists of masterminding an sinister conspiracy to cover-up the fallout radiation, which supposedly continues to make Hiroshima and Nagasaki uninhabitable, although both have been continuously inhabited all the time.]

"We've seen this in wartime. For the civilian, an accident is usually the start of the victim's stress and trouble. For a soldier, who has been in danger and under prolonged stress, the wounds, which incapacitate him from further duty, may represent the end of the period of stress, so that morale soars and recovery is swift.

"In German concentration camps during World War II, those who had no one to live for succumbed before their fellow immates who had families outside. Drr Rusk has found the same thing in his Rehabilitation Center in New York. He tried to find a correlation between recovery from strokes and a whole series of other factors, such as age, severity of the initial stroke, fats in the diet or in the blood stream and so on. But there was only one thing which showed a high correlation with recovery, and that was love. The patients, who had someone who cared about them, did better than those in whom no one was very interested.

"... If properly instructed, the family can be a tremendous help under disaster conditions, rubbing backs, turning the injured patients to prevent bed sores (or in a bedless fallout shelter the more promptly appearing floor sores), urging the patients to take deep breaths to prevent collapse of their air cells, and to exercise their joints to prevent undesirable clotting in their blood vessels, and positioning limbs in the position of function to minimize later crippling."


On page 272, Dr Eric Wolman of the Committee on Fire Research, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, summed up these facts very clearly:

"... the people who survive when they are in a tough spot are the ones who want to survive and are sure they can survive."


This is the reason why civil defense must consider it the primary duty to debunk exaggerations of the effects of nuclear weapons which have been invented to persuade people that nuclear weapons effects are unsurvivable.

On pages 277-80, the editors of Mass Burns summarize this disaster mentality problem:

"Dr Glass, in his outstanding paper on mass psychology, explained why it is difficult to persuade people to plan for disaster, especially nuclear disasters. The usual response when fear is aroused is to fight or run away, the so-called 'Flight or Fight Reaction'. If one does not know how to fight or where to flee, there is one more avenue of escape: running away mentally by denying the existence of the danger. It is because of this type of fleeing that people convince themselves that nuclear warfare is so ghastly it will never really happen and they need not plan for it.

"... A rug, blanket, or coat, thrown over the burning clothes in such a way as to sweep the flames away from the face may be lifesaving. The flames may also be extinguished by rolling on the floor, which every child should be taught. Smouldering clothes should be removed at once.

"... If nuclear disaster seems imminent, women and children as well as men should wear trousers and long sleeves, white preferred.

"... If caught outside, drop to the ground ... After the flash there may be a second or two to find more solid protection against the blast wave. Avoid positions in front of solid surfaces which may reflect the blast waves, doubling or trebling their damaging force."





On page 280, the editors point out Dr Phillips' Adult Age Plus Extent Rule of Burns, which states that in the absence of nuclear radiation, the fraction of the LD50 (lethal dose for 50%) produced by a serious thermal burn to X percent of the body area of a person aged Y years is equal to (X+Y)/90. Hence, 45% body area burns to a 45 years old person gives one LD50 (50% survival, 50% mortality), which is also given by 30% body area burns to a 60 years old person. The editors also point out on that page:

"During the period from 1939 to 1948, patients who died of burns lived only 3.5 days before death [on average]. With the improved therapy of today, those who die of burns live 14.5 days. For those who die, this must be a rather sterile triumph. We have grown accustomed to making heroic efforts to save even the most hopelessly burned, that we tend to forget that we are prolonging the suffering of those who die. Of 76 patients treated at the Massachusetts General Hospital, who would have been excluded from treatment if [treatment was reserved for patients with less than a thermal burns LD50, i.e. for a value of X+Y less than 90 in Dr Phillips formula], 64 died despite the best peacetime efforts. In those 64, sedatives were a blessing, but all other therapy only prolonged the patients' ordeals."


This is the justification for triage in a mass burns situation: a medical system in which limited resources are not withheld randomly from casualties but are instead sensibly administered to those who are most likely to derive the most benefit of those resources. One of the most persistent propaganda delusions repeatedly made against civil defense runs as follows: in any nuclear attack the entire civilian population will be outside wearing minimal swimming costumes and standing up in a direct unobstructed radial line facing the fireball in a perfectly clear atmospheric condition, with no intervening trees or buildings that would cast a "shadow". Under these "typical" and "probable" conditions, which were close to those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki where attacks occurred during morning commuting time and lunch time in fine August summer weather where many people were walking (or working ouside on clearing firebreaks) and in many eyewitness testimonies actually moved to get into a position to watch the apparently harmless B-29 bomber drop the nuclear bomb, thousands of serious thermal flash burns casualties can result.

Then the propaganda cites as an example the enormous amount of resources (miles of dressings, gallons of blood plasma, dozens of nurses, truck loads of oxygen cylinders) lavished on a single peacetime burns casualty who ended up dying anyway. To finish up, the anti-civil defense propaganda states that the entire country has only serious burns unit beds for 500 or so casualties, and a single nuclear weapon exploded over a large, highly-crowded beach on a clear day could produce many thousands of burns casualties. Therefore, the argument claims, there is guaranteed proof that the medical system of peacetime cannot cope with a single nuclear explosion, and then some media personality is quoted as saying that any terrorist use of nuclear weapons will automatically somehow escalate to an all-out nuclear war. So the rant continues that civil defense is therefore useless in all circumstances, and is a mean delusion to support nuclear deterrence, when in fact the only way to make the world safer is to reduce civil defence in order to increase vulnerability in a demented "peace" gesture to our enemies like Prime Minister Chamberlain's tea party with Hitler at Munich in 1938.



That way, the anti-civil defense propaganda claims, we can make historic signed peace papers with our enemies and prevent any war, thereby avoiding any need for civil defense in war or in natural disasters (so it is claimed; see picture above for an example of such an historical paper-signing episode from 1938): "War, you see, is not something people resort to in desperation when dialogue degenerates to violence; instead war is a silly impulsive thing that people could avoid by trying dialogue instead of violence. Just talk to Hitler and you will avoid war. Build common ground with Hitler by adopting racism. Collaborate with your enemies. Peace is worth any sacrifice of morality: the ends of peace justify the means used to achieve it." It's extremely difficult to reason with this sort of crazy delusion because it's built upon groupthink and fashionable belief systems: people who don't base their beliefs upon firm facts cannot be easily convinced by factual evidence which goes against their beliefs. Their attitude is that the facts are irrelevant, because they come from past experience which (being past experience) can tell us nothing of use to the present or the future (or so they conveniently claim).

Many civil defense proponents give up even trying to reason with such people, even though they have the mainstream media in their hands. However, they should begin stating the facts more, so that some people who are not too deeply stuck in the rut of fashionable propaganda delusions will become less dogmatic, and less susceptible to irrational beliefs. They will at least be equipped to question some of the more obvious delusions and deceptive propaganda spread by so-called civil defense "critics":





Above: the 1982 BBC QED "documentary" of anti-civil defense propaganda, A Guide to Armageddon, states at the start that it is based on the casualty effects criteria in the 1979 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War (the other two documents omit mortality-effects criteria), which are false as the Dirkwood data show. Page 19 of The Effects of Nuclear War claims vaguely (for unspecified bomb yield):

"... the winds associated with as little as 2 to 3 psi could be expected to blow people out of typical modern office buildings. ... People standing in such a residence have a 50-percent chance of being killed by an overpressure of 3.5 psi, but people who are lying down at the moment the blast wave hits have a 50-percent chance of surviving a 7-psi overpressure. The calculations used here assume a mean lethal overpressure of 5 to 6 psi for people in residences ..."



Above: 1979 FEMA diagram showing the same misleading casualty predictions as used in the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War.

As we have seen, far greater peak overpressures were needed for 50% survival in nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the computer models used for people being "blown out of buildings" for the 1979 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report were completely bogus, having failed validation using the data from Hiroshima! Page 21 of the The Effects of Nuclear War states:

"A 1-Mt explosion can cause first-degree burns (equivalent to a bad sunburn) at distances of about 7 miles [11 km], second-degree burns (producing blisters that lead to infection if untreated, and permanent scars) at distances of about 6 miles [10 km], and third-degree burns (which destroy skin tissue) at distances of up to 5 miles [8 km]."


This is a falsehood, because the energy required for skin burns caused by radiant infrared radiation is a function of the intervening clothing. Table 5 on page 32 of The Effects of Nuclear War "arbitrarily" assumes that 6.7 cal/cm2 of thermal radiation is 100% lethal to "exposed" people, defined on page 31 as being 25% of the population on a summer weekend afternoon, but the Hiroshima data in the Dirkwood report given earlier in this blog post shows that even for exposed people "unshielded outdoors" who were clearing firebreaks in Hiroshima in hot weather (minimal clothing), 16 cal/cm2 was required for 50% mortality, while 20 cal/cm2 was required for 100% lethality for unshielded personnel outdoors in Hiroshima, and even more is needed for higher yields where the thermal energy is released more slowly in time. See the Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, figure 5-2 on page 5-12 and table 6-2 on page 6-4, which show that the thermal energy for bare skin blistering or 2nd degree burns of 4, 5.1 and 9.1 cal/cm2 for 1 kt, 100 kt, and 10 Mt are raised to as much as 70, 90 and 120 cal/cm2, respectively, for skin covered by clothing. In addition, there is the effect of the intervening skyline of trees and buildings between people and the fireball (in general, most of the thermal radiation is received before the blast wave arrives), i.e. the shadows cast upon people who are not in a radial line-of-sight to the fireball. This shielding effect is greater in a surface burst than in an air burst where the fireball is elevated above the ground. Scattered visible light, as noted above, was found to be many times less effective than infrared radiation for producing burns, which is why we feel insignificant radiant energy heating when there is cloud cover that stops infrared radiation from the sun, even when there plenty of scattered visible light penetrating the cloud. The burn-producing infrared radiation is directional: it is not scattered as much as visible light (unless the scattering material is first heated up to fireball temperature, and re-radiates energy instead of simply scattering it). The curves above from the Dirkwood report show that in Hiroshima many times the 3rd degree burns exposures to bare skin were needed for mortality; clothes and fireball shadowing by the skyline increase the average lethal thermal exposure by several times for people outdoors watching the plane drop the bomb, and by many times for people indoors.

Figure 29 in the final Dirkwood report on Hiroshima and Nagasaki gives the thermal flash burns mortality rate in Nagasaki (where there was no firestorm, unlike Hiroshima) for 11,055 case histories, correlating the body area (instantly estimated from the familiar medical "rule of nines") covered by a given type of burn (2nd degree = blistering, 3rd degree = charring) with resulting mortality. This is vitally important for assessing the effects of thermal radiation in a nuclear explosion situation where accompanying nuclear irradiation of bone marrow suppresses the WBC a month after exposure (while the burns wounds are healing), allowing fatal infections in many cases where either effect alone would not be fatal. (This is an example of "synergism", a situation where the combination of two effects together is greater than the simple sum of the effects of the individual components, if they are received separately.) The result was 10% mortality for 20% of the body area burned (either 2nd or 3rd degree burns), with 50% mortality occurring for 37% body area subjected to 3rd degree burns or 53% body area subjected to 2nd degree burns.

“The high incidence of flash burns caused by thermal radiation among both fatalities and survivors in Japan was undoubtedly related to the light and scanty clothing being worn, because of the warm summer weather ... If there had been an appreciable cloud cover or haze below the burst point, the thermal radiation would have been attenuated somewhat and the frequency of flash burns would have been much less. Had the weather been cold, fewer people would have been outdoors and they would have been wearing more extensive clothing. Both the number of people and individual skin areas exposed to thermal radiation would then have been greatly reduced, and there would have been fewer casualties from flash burns. ... The death rate in Japan was greatest among individuals who were in the open at the time of the explosions; it was less for persons in residential (wood-frame and plaster) structures and least of all for those in concrete buildings. These facts emphasize the influence of circumstances of exposure on the casualties produced by a nuclear weapon and indicate that shielding of some type can be an important factor in survival. ... Had they been forewarned and knowledgeable about areas of relative hazard and safety, there would probably have been fewer casualties even in structures that were badly damaged.”

- Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977, paragraphs 12.14, 12.17, and 12.22, pages 545-7.


The 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons pointed out on page 337 that thermal flash burns occurred out to 14,000 feet from ground zero in Nagasaki and 12,000 feet in Hiroshima. The 1977 edition of Effects of Nuclear Weapons states on page 546 that lacerations from flying glass or other debris only occurred out to 12,500 feet from ground zero in Nagasaki and 10,500 feet in Hiroshima. Both flash burns and debris impact injuries are minimized or averted by taking cover. Page 549 of the 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons reports that the maximum incidence of eardrum rupture for either city was 9 percent for the survivors within 1,640 feet of ground zero in Nagasaki. Page 570 states that of 1,000 survivors within 6,600 feet in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only 4.2 percent suffered temporary inflammation of the cornea of the eye (keratitis) on the first day, and 1.4 percent more suffered delayed keratitis. It adds that in all cases the corneas were found to be normal three years later. The relatively small effect of the Hiroshima firestorm on mortality is indicated the comparison of the casualties for Hiroshima and Nagasaki on page 544: 26.5% were killed, 29.7% injured and 43.8% safe in Hiroshima, compared to 21.9% killed, 12.1% injured and 66.0% safe in Nagasaki. Obviously, if either city had been of modern brick, steel and concrete construction instead of inflammable predominantly wood-frame design, casualties from all causes would have been reduced by a large factor. Duck and cover on seeing the plane could have halved casualty rates simply by reducing thermal flash burns, neglecting the benefits from reducing body area exposure to flying debris and the blast winds.

Nuclear winter in Hiroshima



Above: the sun was obscured by the mushroom cloud dust and smoke for 25 minutes (from burst time at 8:15 am until 8:40) in Hiroshima as shown by the meteorological sunshine records printed in Figure 6 (3H) of Drs. Ashley W. Oughterson, Henry L. Barnett, George V. LeRoy, Jack D. Rosenbaum, Averill A. Liebow, B. Aubrey Schneider, and E. Cuyler Hammond, Medical Effects of Atomic Bombs: The Report of the Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan, Volume 1, Office of the Air Surgeon, report NP-3036, April 19, 1951, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (linked here). There were no reported casualties due to 25 minutes of sunlight deprivation.

Radiation after-effects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki



Above: contrary to the usual "survivors envy the dead" anti-civil defense propaganda on nuclear weapons effects, Hiroshima is not a toxic wasteland. The fallout radiation was below natural background within a year. This is a photo of the modern rebuilt city of Hiroshima today (which would have survived nuclear weapons effects far better than the old city of crowded wood-frame dwellings of August 1945), taken from September 2008 Radiation Effects Research Foundation: A Japan-US Cooperative Research Organization. A Brief Description which states on page 11: “analyses of extensive records at RERF were able to make estimates of shielding and to calculate that a bone marrow dose of 2.7 to 3.1 Gy caused 50% mortality within 60 days (with the new DS02 dosimetry system, the corresponding doses would be 2.9 to 3.3 Gy). The data came from about 7,600 survivors in 2,500 households exposed inside Japanese houses located within 1,600 meters of the hypocenter in Hiroshima. Survivors inside Japanese houses received special scrutiny because the homogeneity of such housing structures allowed better estimation of individual radiation doses.” (See also R. L. Stohler, Japanese Nuclear Casualty Data Combined Injury and Mortality Analysis, Dirkwood report ADA219691, 1990, linked here, where a comparison of figures 17 and 20 shows that the LD50 for free-in-air initial radiation was a factor of 1.40 times the LD50 bone marrow dose. Hence, the DS02 LD50 of 2.9-3.3 Gy in bone marrow corresponds to a free-in-air dose of 4.1-4.6 Gy, or 410-460 rads. The bone marrow dose is reduced by the surrounding tissue, so it is lower than free-in-air dose, which is what a normal radiation dosimeter shows. If the casualty also has burns, the radiation-burns synergism increases the casualty rate, but this is included in the burns mortality criteria from Nagasaki already given. Unlike burns, blast debris wound lacerations are usually sealed long before the white blood cell count has fallen to its minimum level at 30 days after exposure to nuclear radiation, so blast wounds infection risks are relatively small and the blast-radiation effects synergism was on average trivial compared to that from the more slowly healing burns wounds, as shown by Stohler's data, although his absolute dose values need updating for the revised DS02 dosimetry.)

No increase in genetic defects occurred. Page 45 of the RERF report summarizes the long term effects: out of 49,204 irradiated survivors, there were 204 leukemia deaths of which 94 were in excess of the rate in the unexposed control group. Hence the risk of leukemia death due to bomb radiation in the survivors was 0.19%. Of the 94 excess (due to bomb radiation), 56 had received a bone marrow dose equivalent exceeding 1 Sv or 100 rem (using the relative biological effectiveness/RBE of 10 for neutrons). Out of a group of 44,645 survivors, there were 7,851 solid cancers (tumors excluding leukemia) but only 848 of these exceeded the natural cancer rate indicated by the unexposed control group, a bomb radiation cancer death risk to survivors of 1.9%. Of these 848 solid cancer deaths due to bomb radiation, 307 had received a bone marrow dose equivalent exceeding 1 Sv (100 rem). The total cancer death excess for both groups is 94 + 848 = 942, and fewer than 2% of the survivors have died of cancer due to the bomb. Most cancer deaths have been from natural DNA copying errors in each city, not bomb radiation. Anti-civil defense propaganda in the media and TV documentaries lie that hundreds of thousands of cancer fatalities occurred.



Above: comparison of the measured residual radiation due to neutron induced activity (around ground zero) and self-induced rainout downwind in Nagasaki, with the predicted fallout pattern using a dynamic convection fallout model. The fallout patterns for Hiroshima and Nagasaki were measured in detail and are published (see Figures 1 and 2 in the DTRA document linked here) and were both self-induced rainout that resulted from the hydroscopic salt crystals and moisture entrained from the warm sea level coastal air to cooler regions at higher altitudes where it condensed and fell as droplets of precipitation, long before the firestorm and the black rain (soot) precipitation at 2-3 hours after detonation (by which time the radioactive cloud had been blown far downwind). Source: Charles R. Molenkamp, Numerical Simulation of Self-Induced Rainout Using a Dynamic Convective Cloud Model, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory preprint UCRL-83583, March 1980.

Countervalue nuclear attacks over cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki utilized air bursts to minimise thermal and nuclear radiation shielding by buildings and to optimise the Mach wave enhancement blast effects area. Neutron induced activity in the soil under an air burst was extensively researched by Philip J. Dolan and others in the 1950s and detailed predictions of neutron induced dose rates and decay rates in soil are included in the November 1957 Capabilities of Atomic Weapons (linked here), as a function of bomb design (bombs with thick hydrogen-rich TNT implosion systems around the fissile material allow fewer neutrons to escape into the air because when a neutron hits a hydrogen nucleus or proton head-on, it is stopped and the short-range proton picks up the energy, just as occurs in a billiard ball collision) and soil composition (aluminium, manganese and sodium in soils are the main sources of residual gamma radiation from neutron capture). This neutron induced activity is limited to a roughly circular region extending in radius to a few mean free paths of thermal neutron radiation around ground zero. (Calculations are simplified by the fact that most neutrons are captured in the soil only when they have been slowed down by collisions to ambient thermal energy, about 0.025 eV, because the cross-sections of most materials for neutron scatter is much greater than for capture at high neutron energies, and capture cross sections only predominate at low energy; the strong nuclear force is more likely to capture a neutron that is moving slowly than one that is moving fast.)

The self-induced rainout downwind from an air burst only occurs for bursts over or near ocean water and is due to the moisture and salt crystals entrained from the oceanic air. Thus, this rainout was observed after the 1952 King and 1956 Cherokee air bursts in the Pacific, and after the air bursts over the coastal cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, but not after Nevada air bursts, which were too far inland for salt-crystal laden moist air to be entrained. For evidence of the King and Cherokee rainout see WT-1317 and USNRDL-TR-899 table 1, page 5 footnote. See also C. R. Molenkamp, An Introduction to Self-Induced Rainout, UCRL-52669, February 1979, and R. A. Carhart, Effects of relative humidity and yield on self-induced rainout from tactical nuclear explosions published in Simulation, v. 51, pp. 191-194, November 1988: "Under mid-latitude summertime conditions and for yields of 20 to 100 kilotons, the model shows that self-induced rainout is not significant for low relative humidities, is very important for high relative humidities (>80%), and is moderately important for relative humidities down to about 50%. When self-induced rainout occurs, it is heavy within a couple of kilometers of ground zero and peaks early in the episode. The model has successfully predicted observed radioactive self-induced rainout for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations (both in the 20 kiloton range), and does not predict rain under conditions typical of U.S. tests in Nevada, where self-induced rainout has not been observed."

Update (31 October 2010):

The banner for this blog for some time has included the following quotation:

“... We learned about an enemy who is sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal. ... We learned that the institutions charged with protecting ... did not adjust their policies, plans and practices to deter or defeat it.” - Thomas H. Kean (Chair) and Lee H. Hamilton (Vice Chair), Preface to The 9/11 Commission Report, by the U.S. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004.


We temporarily deleted this and replaced it with a quotation from Glasstone and Dolan on the massive variability of the casualty rates that can occur due to a nuclear weapon in circumstances that differ even just superficially from the 8:15 am and 12:01 pm weekday August weather and population distribution in Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977, paragraphs 12.14, 12.17, and 12.22, pages 545-7:

“The high incidence of flash burns caused by thermal radiation among both fatalities and survivors in Japan was undoubtedly related to the light and scanty clothing being worn, because of the warm summer weather ... If there had been an appreciable cloud cover or haze below the burst point, the thermal radiation would have been attenuated somewhat and the frequency of flash burns would have been much less. Had the weather been cold, fewer people would have been outdoors and they would have been wearing more extensive clothing. Both the number of people and individual skin areas exposed to thermal radiation would then have been greatly reduced, and there would have been fewer casualties from flash burns. ... The death rate in Japan was greatest among individuals who were in the open at the time of the explosions; it was less for persons in residential (wood-frame and plaster) structures and least of all for those in concrete buildings. These facts emphasize the influence of circumstances of exposure on the casualties produced by a nuclear weapon and indicate that shielding of some type can be an important factor in survival. ... Had they been forewarned and knowledgeable about areas of relative hazard and safety, there would probably have been fewer casualties even in structures that were badly damaged.”


However, we have now returned the original quotation. The motivation for this blog is that civil defense is required against a wide range of possible terrorist and natural disasters, and with all due respect to secret planning by civil servants, quangos, committees, the military and bureaucrats, at the end of the day all these people behind civil defense failed to warn the people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki of impending disaster and most of the worst burns casualties resulted in fact from people outside clearing fire breaks against incendiary attacks in the cities: civil defense turned out worse than useless because people trusted official air raid attack warnings and the all-clear. Additionally, believing authority figures with secret evidence they refuse to publish is contrary to the whole nature of science, and people should have good reasons for keeping secret information of value to increasing the public credibility of civil defense.

A good example of how conspiracy theories and paranoia arise when the facts are kept secret is given by Charlie Sheen's crazy video about 9/11, below. Notice that near the end of the video, a spurious "quotation" from Thomas Jefferson, "Dissent Is the Highest Form of Patriotism" is displayed, which is a false quotation, because the nearest Jefferson actually came to such a statement was conditional to certain occasions, which may not include occasions like 9/11: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all."



The buildings collapsed in a way that looks like a controlled demolition because the heat from the aviation fuel-started fires in the towers heated the steel for a considerable time, and steel is a good conductor of heat which means the whole of the steel gets hot, not just the part actually in the fire! The heat reduces the structural strength of all the connected steel by making it all soft and flexible, which is why steel is heated traditionally to allow it to be shaped. The impulse from the collapse of one floor near the aircraft onto the floor below it is then sufficient to trigger the gravitational collapse of the lower floor because of the hot, soft steel, and the process is repeated like a row of dominos, except that the mass is ever increasing as more and more concrete floors are accumulated in the falling layer. Sheen refers in the video to 47 stories tall World Trade Center building number 7, near the twin towers, which was hit by burning debris when they collapsed and consequently suffered a similar "controlled demolition"-like mechanism for collapse as fire weakened the structural steel and Galileo's law of gravity then took control:

"The debris also ignited fires, which continued to burn throughout the afternoon on lower floors of the building. The building's internal fire suppression system lacked water pressure to fight the fires, and the building collapsed completely at 5:21:10 p.m. The collapse began when a critical column on the 13th floor buckled and triggered structural failure throughout, which was first visible from the exterior with the crumbling of the east mechanical penthouse at 5:20:33 p.m."

The rebuilt building 7 will not suffer the same structural failure weaknesses because it utilizes "a reinforced concrete core, wider stairways, and thicker fireproofing of steel columns." While the world applaud's Sheen's high moral standards of conduct in the entertaining comedy Two and a Half Men, maybe it should not trust his doubts concerning the physics of building collapse and its political significance. Nuclear explosions don't dump burning aviation fuel into buildings. What is interesting about Sheen's video is its slick presentation and the consequences as Sheen goes from presenting questions and some descriptions of the collapse as an "explosion" (a heavy floor hitting the one below is an explosion in its own right, just like a icy comet hitting a planet causes a hot explosion without any need for TNT; the rapid release of kinetic energy in the impact process is all that is required!) to claiming that these indicate a conspiracy of silence and cover-up. The only conspiracy is that of upholding incompetent fumbling explanations of the physical processes involved in building collapse, instead of getting the facts and stating them clearly. Computer simulations confirm the collapse mechanism:



Nuclear weapons testing grounds of Bikini Atoll become World Heritage Site

The World Heritage Committee, on August 1, 2010 at its 34th session in Brazil, inscribed the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site on the World Heritage List. This was based on a 2009 nomination report which focusses on the role of the tests in building a deterrent to end World Wars, beginning with the quotation used by the American governor of the Marshall Islands in 1946 to justify the 1946 postwar nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, Operation Crossroads:

“For the good of mankind and to end all world wars.”

- Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, military governor of the Marshall Islands, March 1946.

“A peace enforced through fear is a poor substitute for a peace maintained through international cooperation based upon agreement and understanding. But until such a peace is brought about, this nation can hope only that an effective deterrent to global war will be a universal fear of the atomic bomb as the ultimate horror in war.”

- Report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Operations Crossroads, June 30, 1947


Dose rate threshold evidence, a rejection of dose criteria

Hysteria over low dose rate radiation is due to the simplistic Health Physics community obsession with doses rather than dose rates as criteria for damage. In medicine, the life time dose is not the criterion for effects, but the dose rate: a lifetime dose of one painkiller per day obviously has a different effect if it is all consumed at once! What matters is the rate at which you are taking the dose, not the total number you have taken during your life.

Protein P53 and other DNA repair enzymes repair DNA breaks. Hence there will be a threshold dose rate (not dose) where the rate of DNA breakage (per unit time) exceeds the rate at which the P53 can repair the damage. Evidence:

‘Today we have a population of 2,383 [radium dial painter] cases for whom we have reliable body content measurements. . . . All 64 bone sarcoma [cancer] cases occurred in the 264 cases with more than 10 Gy [1,000 rads], while no sarcomas appeared in the 2,119 radium cases with less than 10 Gy.’

- Dr Robert Rowland, Director of the Center for Human Radiobiology, Bone Sarcoma in Humans Induced by Radium: A Threshold Response?, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting, European Society for Radiation Biology, Radioprotection colloquies, Vol. 32CI (1997), pp. 331-8.

This data indicate 10 Gy per roughly 20 years, i.e. a dose rate to bone of 57 microGrays per hour (5.7 millirads per hour) proved to be a completely "safe" dose rate in over two thousand cases!

Historically, an obsession with doses instead of dose rates took the first bone cancer data from the radium dial painters as a 10 Gy (1000 rad) dose threshold effect, not a dose rate threshold!

This was debunked by a risk (excess cancers, i.e. above the control group cancer rate) from just a few rads at Hiroshima and X-rays (both cases of high dose rates, with the initial dose at Hiroshima received over a few seconds, and X-rays received at high dose rates over a similar time).



If the Health Physicists had forgotten dose and instead specified in the first place a dose rate threshold for a 5.7 millirads per hour or 570 times the normal background dose rate (not a total dose threshold) from the radium dial painters in the first place, the all subsequent data would have agreed with that safe dose rate risk threshold, and people would be far better informed today about the risks of radiation and what causes the danger (dose rates that cause damage faster than DNA repair enzymes can work). Because those health physicists on the Manhattan Project took a "short cut" they screwed up everything in the nuclear age thereafter, by having their obviously daft dose threshold theory debunked and replaced by geneticist Edward Lewis's 1957 no-dose threshold model.

Dr John F. Loutit of the Medical Research Council, Harwell, England, in 1962 wrote a book called "Irradiation of Mice and Men" (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London), discrediting Lewis on pages 61, and 78-79:

"... Mole [R. H. Mole, Brit. J. Radiol., v32, p497, 1959] gave different groups of mice an integrated total of 1,000 r of X-rays over a period of 4 weeks. But the dose-rate - and therefore the radiation-free time between fractions - was varied from 81 r/hour intermittently to 1.3 r/hour continuously. The incidence of leukemia varied from 40 per cent (within 15 months of the start of irradiation) in the first group to 5 per cent in the last compared with 2 per cent incidence in irradiated controls. ... All these points are very much against the basic hypothesis of Lewis of a linear relation of dose to leukemic effect irrespective of time. Unhappily it is not possible to claim for Lewis's work as others have done, 'It is now possible to calculate - within narrow limits - how many deaths from leukemia will result in any population from an increase in fall-out or other source of radiation' [Leading article in Science, vol. 125, p. 963, 1957]. This is just wishful journalese. The burning questions to me are not what are the numbers of leukemia to be expected from atom bombs or radiotherapy, but what is to be expected from natural background .... Furthermore, to obtain estimates of these, I believe it is wrong to go to atom bombs, where the radiations are qualitatively different and, more important, the dose-rate outstandingly different."

This claim lied for political ends, as argued by Richard P. Feynman in his lecture, 'This Unscientific Age', published in his book The Meaning of It All, Penguin Books, London, 1998, pages 106-9: "Now, I say if a man is absolutely honest and wants to protect the populace from the effects of radioactivity, which is what our scientific friends often say they are trying to do, then he should work on the biggest number, not on the smallest number, and he should try to point out that the radioactivity which is absorbed by living in the city of Denver is so much more serious [cosmic radiation in high altitude cities exceeds global fallout doses] that all the people of Denver ought to move to lower altitudes."

Now should the public be informed about positive research reports on radiation such as the following report? Or do we suppress it? Do we cover-up evidence which doesn't fit the popular media "radiation is bad" ideology?

W. L. Chen, Y. C. Luan, M. C. Shieh, S. T. Chen, H. T. Kung, K. L. Soong, Y. C. Yeh, T. S. Chou, S. H. Mong, J. T. Wu, C. P. Sun, W. P. Deng, M. F. Wu, and M. L. Shen, ‘Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer?’, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 6-10:

"An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 ([low dose rate, gamma radiation emitter] half-life: 5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv, a collective dose of 4,000 person-Sv. Based on the observed seven cancer deaths, the cancer mortality rate for this population was assessed to be 3.5 per 100,000 person-years. Three children were born with congenital heart malformations, indicating a prevalence rate of 1.5 cases per 1,000 children under age 19. The average spontaneous cancer death rate in the general population of Taiwan over these 20 years is 116 persons per 100,000 person-years. Based upon partial official statistics and hospital experience, the prevalence rate of congenital malformation is 23 cases per 1,000 children. Assuming the age and income distributions of these persons are the same as for the general population, it appears that significant beneficial health effects may be associated with this chronic radiation exposure."

Thus, a dose rate of roughly 0.4 Sv per 9-20 years, i.e. a dose rate of 2.3-5.1 microGrays per hour (0.23-0.51 millirads per hour) or 23-51 times normal background causes the benefit of a fall in normal cancer rates by a factor of 116/3.5 = 33, and a fall in congenital heart malformations by a factor of 23/1.5 = 15. These are big numbers!

Let me repeat the facts again just clarify this very important point, Chen and thirteen other physicians investigated the apparent benefits of low level radiation in Taiwan, "Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer?", Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, v9 n1 2004. After a radioactive source was accidentally mixed into industrial steel and used to build apartments in Taiwan, 10,000 persons were unknowingly exposed to low-level radiation in Taiwan for periods of 9-20 years, and in this group cancer rates were lower than those in the general population by a factor of 33 (a reduction from 116 to just 3.5 per 100,000 person-years); while genetic defects fell by a factor of 15 (from 23 cases per 1,000 children to just 1.5). These are such enormous benefits that you would expect that all donor and publically funded "Cancer Research" institutes would be studying these benefits from dose rates of radiation a few hundred times background, which can apparently slash cancer risks and genetic defect rates to such an extent.

The statistics in the paper by Chen and others has been alleged to apply to a younger age group than the general population, affecting the significance of the data, although in other ways the data are more valid than Hiroshima and Nagasaki data extrapolations to low doses. For instance, the radiation cancer scare mongering of survivors of high doses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been prejudiced in the sense of preventing a blind to avoid “anti-placebo” effect, e.g. increased fear, psychological stress and worry about the long term effects of radiation, and associated behaviour. The 1958 book about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, “Formula for Death”, makes the point that highly irradiated survivors often smoked more, in the belief that they were doomed to die from radiation induced cancer anyway. Therefore, the fear culture of the irradiated survivors would statistically be expected to result in a deviancy from normal behaviour, in some cases increasing the cancer risks above those due purely to radiation exposure.

For up-to-date data and literature discussions on the effects of DNA repair enzymes on preventing cancers from low-dose rate radiation, please see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

There is also evidence for low dose radiation benefits from Hiroshima and Nagasaki's joint American-Japanese Radiation Effects Research Institute (RERF) which is being covered up by the statistical fiddle of "lumping together" the majority of the survivors into one large dose interval group, and only taking small dose intervals at high doses, which is a fiddle that falsely omits the benefits from the boosting of the P53 DNA repair enzyme by low radiation doses in those cities (the statistical bias in the table below from the RERF Brief Guide is in every sense a classic example of the biased presentation of data; remember that at high doses the cancer data are least reliable because the average amount of radiation shielding by buildings needed to survive the initial effects and get cancer years later was very high, and estimates of the exact shielding factors are one of the greatest uncertainties continuing in the DS02 dosimetry, as shown for example by the inconsistent curve of percentage temporary epilation versus dose in the same publication - the dosimetry is more accurate at lower doses because the average radiation shielding of survivors is much smaller at those lower doses):



Radiation delivered over long periods at a few hundred times the natural background dose rates stimulates the use of body resources to produce more of the natural DNA repair enzyme, protein P53, thus utilizing more of the energy resources of the body for repairing DNA breaks than is usually allocated, and this reduces the natural cancer and genetic risks. This effect is in some sense like working out at the gym regularly: you end up after regular exercise not generally more tired, but generally fitter and more muscular, because the body responds in the long run by using more resources to adapt by strengthening itself and maintaining hormesis (an effect well known in chemotherapy: "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger").

In the West, freedom of speech allows politically incorrect facts to be censored by the fashionable media. If you want to see why this censorship of the benefits of low level radiation is continuing, see the relatively vague and unconvincing (apart from a quotation from Dr Robert Rowland) article by James Muckerheide in the year 2000, "It’s Time to Tell the Truth About the Health Benefits of Low-Dose Radiation", and see also weak graphical correlations shown in Dr T. D. Luckey's 2008 paper, "The Health Effects of Low-Dose Ionizing Radiation" in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, v13, n2, pp. 39-42, which does at least summarize the 2004 Chen paper in the same journal concisely:

"In 1982-1983, several apartments in Taipei City, Taiwan, were built with structural steel contaminated with cobalt-60. Chen et al. noted the total cancer death rates for radiation-exposed adult occupants and controls in the city were comparable when the apartments were first occupied. As both groups aged, the cancer mortality rate in the radiation-exposed group decreased while the cancer mortality rate of controls increased. The cancer mortality rate of those who had lived 9–20 years in these buildings was only 3% that of the general adult population."


Of course, it's always been known since the work (mentioned above) of French radiologists that radiation is more effective at killing rapidly dividing cancer cells than normal cells (because cells are more vulnerable during cell nucleus fission than at other times, and more rapidly diving cells spend a greater percentage of the time in this vulnerable state than healthy cells do). But this discovery that low dose rates of radiation can produce a health benefit by preventing cancer in the first place is new.

What is happening here is the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" effect: dose rates of 20-50 times normal background over a period of 1-2 decades stimulates a stronger DNA repair enzyme system. The body simply devotes more energy from food into building more DNA repair enzymes, and it over-compensates, thereby reducing natural cancer rates. This positive benefit from radiation would occur up to the threshold for cancer seen in the radium dial painters, 57 microGrays per hour (5.7 millirads per hour) or 570 times normal background. Only if the dose rate becomes too high does the rate of damage overwhelm natural DNA repair mechanisms and cause cancer:

‘... it is important to note that, given the effects of a few seconds of irradiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a threshold near 200 mSv may be expected for leukemia and some solid tumors. [Sources: UNSCEAR, Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, New York, 1994; W. F. Heidenreich, et al., Radiat. Environ. Biophys., vol. 36 (1999), p. 205; and B. L. Cohen, Radiat. Res., vol. 149 (1998), p. 525.] For a protracted lifetime natural exposure, a threshold may be set at a level of several thousand millisieverts for malignancies, of 10 grays for radium-226 in bones, and probably about 1.5-2.0 Gy for lung cancer after x-ray and gamma irradiation. [Sources: G. Jaikrishan, et al., Radiation Research, vol. 152 (1999), p. S149 (for natural exposure); R. D. Evans, Health Physics, vol. 27 (1974), p. 497 (for radium-226); H. H. Rossi and M. Zaider, Radiat. Environ. Biophys., vol. 36 (1997), p. 85 (for radiogenic lung cancer).] The hormetic effects, such as a decreased cancer incidence at low doses and increased longevity, may be used as a guide for estimating practical thresholds and for setting standards. ...

‘Though about a hundred of the million daily spontaneous DNA damages per cell remain unrepaired or misrepaired, apoptosis, differentiation, necrosis, cell cycle regulation, intercellular interactions, and the immune system remove about 99% of the altered cells. [Source: R. D. Stewart, Radiation Research, vol. 152 (1999), p. 101.] ...

‘[Due to the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986] as of 1998 (according to UNSCEAR), a total of 1,791 thyroid cancers in children had been registered. About 93% of the youngsters have a prospect of full recovery. [Source: C. R. Moir and R. L. Telander, Seminars in Pediatric Surgery, vol. 3 (1994), p. 182.] ... The highest average thyroid doses in children (177 mGy) were accumulated in the Gomel region of Belarus. The highest incidence of thyroid cancer (17.9 cases per 100,000 children) occurred there in 1995, which means that the rate had increased by a factor of about 25 since 1987.

‘This rate increase was probably a result of improved screening [not radiation!]. Even then, the incidence rate for occult thyroid cancers was still a thousand times lower than it was for occult thyroid cancers in nonexposed populations (in the US, for example, the rate is 13,000 per 100,000 persons, and in Finland it is 35,600 per 100,000 persons). Thus, given the prospect of improved diagnostics, there is an enormous potential for detecting yet more [fictitious] "excess" thyroid cancers. In a study in the US that was performed during the period of active screening in 1974-79, it was determined that the incidence rate of malignant and other thyroid nodules was greater by 21-fold than it had been in the pre-1974 period. [Source: Z. Jaworowski, 21st Century Science and Technology, vol. 11 (1998), issue 1, p. 14.]’

- Zbigniew Jaworowski, 'Radiation Risk and Ethics: Health Hazards, Prevention Costs, and Radiophobia', Physics Today, April 2000, pp. 89-90.



Protein P53, discovered only in 1979, is encoded by gene TP53, which occurs on human chromosome 17. P53 also occurs in other mammals including mice, rats and dogs. P53 is one of the proteins which continually repairs breaks in DNA, which easily breaks at body temperature: the DNA in each cell of the human body suffers at least two single strand breaks every second, and one double strand (i.e. complete double helix) DNA break occurs at least once every 2 hours (5% of radiation-induced DNA breaks are double strand breaks, while 0.007% of spontaneous DNA breaks at body temperature are double strand breaks)! Cancer occurs when several breaks in DNA happen to occur by chance at nearly the same time, giving several loose strand ends at once, which repair proteins like P53 then repair incorrectly, causing a mutation which can be proliferated somatically. This cannot occur when only one break occurs, because only two loose ends are produced, and P53 will reattach them correctly. But if low-LET ionising radiation levels are increased to a certain extent, causing more single strand breaks, P53 works faster and is able deal with faster breaks as they occur, so that multiple broken strand ends do not arise. This prevents DNA strands being repaired incorrectly, and prevents cancer - a result of mutation caused by faults in DNA - from arising. Too much radiation of course overloads the P53 repair mechanism, and then it cannot repair breaks as they occur, so multiple breaks begin to appear and loose ends of DNA are wrongly connected by P53, causing an increased cancer risk:



In a previous post, we examined in detail the May-June 1957 Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, U.S. Congress, The Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man, where the false dose-threshold (not dose rate-threshold) theory was publically killed off (in a political-journalism scrum sense, not a scientific evidence sense) by a consortium of loud-mouthed and physically ignorant fruitfly and maize geneticists (headed by Nobel Laureates Muller and Lewis), with only an incompetent and quiet defense for the scientific data from cancer radiotherapy experts with experience that high dose rates cause more damage than low dose rates. The argument they made was that genetic effects of radiation on fruitflies and maize showed no signs of dose rate effects or dose threshold effects. They they extrapolated from flies and maize to predict the same for human beings, and they also claimed that this genetic result should apply to all normal cell division (somatic) radiation effects not just genetic effects! Glasstone summarized this linear-no threshold theory on page 496 of the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons:

"There is apparently no amount of radiation, however small, that does not cause some increase in the normal mutation frequency. The dose rate of the radiation exposure or its duration have little influence; it is the total accumulated dose to the gonads that is the important quantity."


Flies and seasonal plants don't need DNA repair enzymes, which is why they show no dose rate dependence: they simply don't live long enough to get a serious cancer risk caused by DNA copying errors during cell fissions. This is not so in humans, and even mice. Glasstone and Dolan write in the 1977 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, pages 611-612 (paragraphs 12.209-12.211):

"From the earlier studies of radiation-induced mutations, made with fruitflies, ... The mutation frequency appeared to be independent of the rate at which the radiation dose was received. ... More recent experiments with mice, however, have shown that these conclusions must be revised, at least for mammals.

"... in male mice ... For exposure rates from 90 down to 0.8 roentgen per minute ... the mutation frequency per roentgen decreases as the exposure rate is decreased.

"... in female mice ... The radiation-induced mutation frequency per roentgen decreases continuously with the exposure rate from 90 roentgens per minute downward. At an exposure rate of 0.009 roentgen per minute [0.54 roentgen/hour], the total mutation frequency in female mice is indistinguishable from the spontaneous frequency. There thus seems to be an exposure-rate threshold below which radiation-induced mutations are absent or negligible, no matter how large the total (accumulated) exposure to the female gonads, at least up to 400 roentgens."


The Oak Ridge Megamouse Radiation Exposure Project

Reference: W. L, ”Reminiscences of a Mouse Specific-Locus Test Addict”, Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, Supplement, v14 (1989), issue 16, pp. 16–22.

The source of Glasstone and Dolan’s dose-rate genetic effects threshold data (replacing the fruitfly insect and maize plant data of Muller, Lewis and other 1950s geneticists who falsely extrapolated directly from insects and plants to humans) is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory “megamouse project” by Liane and William Russell. This project exposed seven million mice to a variety of radiation situations to obtain statistically significant mammal data showing the effects of dose rate upon the DNA mutation risk (which in somatic cells can cause cancer). Seven different locus mutations were used, which showed a time-dependence on genetic risk from different dose rates, which could only be explained by DNA repair processes. This contradicted insect and plant response, which showed no dose rate effect on the dose-effects response. With the results of this enormous mammal radiation exposure project, observed human effects of high dose rates and high doses could be accurately extrapolated to humans, without using the false linear, no-threshold model that applies to insects and plants that lack the advanced DNA repair enzymes like P53 in mammals:

“As Hollaender remembers it: ‘Muller and Wright were the only two geneticists who backed the mouse genetics study. The rest of the geneticists thought we were wasting our time and money!’”

- Karen A. Rader, “Alexander Hollaender’s Postwar Vision for Biology: Oak Ridge and Beyond”, Journal of the History of Biology, v39 (2006), pp. 685–706.


For an interesting discussion of the way that the radiation controversy led to a change in thinking about DNA, from being a fixed chemical structure (as believed in 1957, after the structure DNA was discovered in its misleadingly non-cellular solid crystal form, which was required for X-ray diffraction analysis) to today’s far more dynamic picture of DNA in the cell nucleus as a delicate strand that is repeatedly being broken (several times a minute) by normal water molecular Brownian motion bombardment at body temperature, and being repaired by DNA repair enzymes like protein P53, see the article by Doogab Yi, “The coming of reversibility: The discovery of DNA repair between the atomic age and the information age”, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, v37 (2007), Supplement, pp. 35–72:

“This paper examines the contested ‘biological’ meaning of the genetic effects of radiation amid nuclear fear during the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, I explore how the question of irreversibility, a question that eventually led to the discovery of DNA repair, took shape in the context of postwar concerns of atomic energy. Yale biophysicists who opposed nuclear weapons testing later ironically played a central role in the discovery of DNA excision repair, or "error-correcting codes" that suggested the reversibility of the genetic effects of radiation. At Yale and elsewhere, continuing anticipation of medical applications from radiation therapy contributed to the discovery of DNA repair. The story of the discovery of DNA repair illustrates how the gene was studied in the atomic age and illuminates its legacy for the postwar life sciences. I argue that it was through the investigation of the irreversibility of the biological effects of radiation that biologists departed from an inert view of genetic stability and began to appreciate the dynamic stability of the gene. Moreover, the reformulation of DNA repair around notions of information and error-correction helped radiobiologists to expand the relevance of DNA repair research beyond radiobiology, even after the public concerns on nuclear fallout faded in the mid-1960s.”

In fact, the “safe dose rate” concept has always existed (most recently dressed up with health physics sophistry like ALARA, “As Low As Reasonably Achievable”) in the way that radiation safety guides have formulated as a maximum dose per unit time interval. For example, on page 102 of the 1957 Congressional Hearings The Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man, nuclear testing scientific director Dr Alvin C. Graves testifies:

“I have forgotten the title, but I think it is the American Commission for Radiation Protection, or something of that sort, originally stated that the workers in radioactivity could take one tenth of a roentgen per day forever without suffering injury. [This is 36.5 R/year or 1095 R over 30 years, roughly the minimum dose needed for bone changes in the radium dial painters.]”

Dr Jane Orient, 'Homeland Security for Physicians', Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, vol. 11, number 3, Fall 2006, pp. 75-9:


'In the 1960s, a group of activist physicians called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) undertook to "educate the medical profession and the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons," beginning with a series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. [Note that journal was publishing information for anti-civil defense propaganda back in 1949, e.g. the article in volume 241, pp. 647-53 of New England Journal of Medicine which falsely suggests that civil defense in nuclear war would be hopeless because a single burned patient in 1947 with 40% body area burns required 42 oxygen tanks, 36 pints of plasma, 40 pints of whole blood, 104 pints of fluids, 4,300 m of gauze, 3 nurses and 2 doctors. First, only unclothed persons in direct line of sight without shadowing can get 40% body area burns from thermal radiation, second, duck and cover offers protection in a nuclear attack warning, and G. V. LeRoy had already published, two years earlier, in J.A.M.A., volume 134, 1947, pp. 1143-8, that less than 5% of burns in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were caused by building and debris fires. In medicine it is always possible to expend vast resources on patients who are fatally injured. In a mass casualty situation, doctors should not give up just because they don't have unlimited resources; as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they would need to do their best with what they have.] On its website, www.psr.org, the group boasts that it "led the campaign to end atmospheric nuclear testing." With this campaign, the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory of radiation carcinogenesis became entrenched. It enabled activists to calculate enormous numbers of potential casualties by taking a tiny risk and multiplying it by the population of the earth. As an enduring consequence, the perceived risks of radiation are far out of proportion to actual risks, causing tremendous damage to the American nuclear industry. ... Efforts to save lives were not only futile, but unethical: Any suggestion that nuclear war could be survivable increased its likelihood and was thus tantamount to warmongering, PSR spokesmen warned. ...


'For the mindset that engendered and enables this situation, which jeopardizes the existence of the United States as a nation as well as the lives of millions of its citizens, some American physicians and certain prestigious medical organizations bear a heavy responsibility.


'Ethical physicians should stand ready to help patients to the best of their ability, and not advocate sacrificing them in the name of a political agenda. Even very basic knowledge, especially combined with simple, inexpensive advance preparations, could save countless lives.'



‘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:

'... 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?'

(Dr Jane Orient's article, "Homeland Security for Physicians" (Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, vol. 11, number 3, Fall 2006, pp. 75-9) debunks some but not all of the popular propaganda about mass fires from nuclear weapons. One of the recurring examples is Martin Caidin's inaccurate book The Night Hamburg Died which claimed "not a single living soul survived" due to carbon monoxide and heat in the firestorm of burning medieval wooden buildings, whereas in fact Hans Kehrl,
Police President of Hamburg, found that 240,000 out of 280,000 people in the Hamburg firestorm area survived, i.e., 85% (see Kathleen A. Earp, Deaths from Fire in Large Scale Air Attack - With Special Reference to the Hamburg Fire Storm, Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch report CD/SA 28): Dr Orient quotes eyewitness Hans Brunswig denouncing Caidin's book as "the infamous fraud". Dr Orient omits to mention the relevant fact that exaggerations of firestorm effects in Hamburg and Dresden originated in Nazi propaganda, which in the Cold War was adopted by the Soviet Union's Moscow run so-called "World Peace Council" for precisely same purpose as the Nazi propaganda. For example, Nazi propaganda claims of up to 135,000 fatalities in the February 1945 Dresden firestorm were repeated in the 1963 book "The Destruction of Dresden" by pro-Nazi historian David Irving, when the actual Police President's report for Dresden stated there were 18,375 dead, 2,212 seriously injured, 13,918 slightly injured, and 35,000 missing (The Times, letters, July 7, 1966). Anti-civil defense propaganda activists during the Cold War seized on the Nazi firestorm propaganda lies from Irving's book, and they continue to be repeated today in an effort to exaggerate nuclear weapons effects for Cold War style political propaganda, ignoring all real data entirely. The incompetence which led to this civil defense fiasco is largely down to the secrecy culture of the British civil service, who failed to officially publish its April 1953 internal report by Kathleen A. Earp, Deaths from Fire in Large Scale Air Attack - With Special Reference to the Hamburg Fire Storm, Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch report CD/SA 28. A good source of data is A. J. Pryor and C. H. Yuill, Mass Fire Life Hazard, AD0642790, 1966, which summarises the survival in nuclear firestorms in Table 2 on page 8: a total of 28% of the population was killed in Hiroshima compared to 17% in Nagasaki. In non-wooden modern cities, the reduction in fire risk would reduce the casualties still further even in the worst case scenario of no warning which pertained to those Japanese cities.)

World War II as an effect of weapons effects exaggerations for pacifist propaganda, by delaying the implementation of effective civil defense and thus making Britain vulnerable to appease the threat from terrorist states instead of opposing them credibly before they can invade other countries and become strong enough to fight a large scale war

Extracts from the official British history by Terence H. O'Brien, Civil Defence, H. M. Stationery Office, London, 1955 (now out of the 50 years government copyright, linked here in PDF format):

[Summary of the following extracts: civil defense is "better than nothing", unlike propaganda exaggerating possible weapons and war effects (e.g. by falsely promoting worst case scenarios as the only possible - or most likely - scenarios) for peace treaties which proved to be worse than nothing, because those treaties were used as an excuse for a lack of preparation against terrorist state threats, leading to appeasement which encouraged aggressor psychology instead of deterring or defeating it.]

Page 27: "Austen Chamberlain, Briand and Stresemann had concluded in October 1925 at Locarno agreements [for peaceful cooperation]. ... Two years later the Briand-Kellogg Pact for 'outlawry of war' was enthusiastically received by world opinion ..."

Page 33: "In the optimistic atmosphere these events engendered the British Cabinet reaffirmed, for purposes of war preparation, that no major war was likely to occur for ten years. This 'ten-year-rule' [first adopted in 1919], as it was called in official circles, had no beginning by the calendar but, like the rising sun, was new every morning. Until such time as the Government decided to revoke it [a politically thorny decision, the sort of thing that Cabinets agree is best deferred until too late for action, for fear of being unfashionable and upsetting status quo], the possibility of major conflict was to be deemed on any given day as not less than ten years distant. This shifting yardstick (which was subject to annual review) was destined to remain in force ... It acted, it is hardly necessary to state, as a powerful curb on defence preparations of all kinds and on provision of public funds for defence."

Page 67: "After the General Election of November 1935 Mr Baldwin's National Government had returned to power with a large majority; but the Prime Minister had diluted his promise of rearmament with considerable assuagement of pacifist opinion. The swift public reaction to the Hoare-Laval Peace Plan [a secret 1935 appeasement plan by British foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare and French premier Pierre Laval that offered fascist Benito Mussolini most of Abyssinia/Ethiopia in return for a truce in the Italo-Abyssinia War; just like all other appeasement papers in the whole of history which were not backed up by force, it failed] had shown how many still clung to faith in the 'collective security' they thought was embodied at Geneva. ... Hitler took advantage of the Italo-Abyssinia war to march into the Rhineland."

Page 81: "Early in 1937 some [anti-civil defence] scientific workers at Cambridge University, who described themselves as the 'Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group' and their function as that of acting as 'a technical and advisory body to national and international peace movements', published a book attacking the Government's A.R.P. [Air Raid Precautions/civil defence] plans. This body had studied the official advice about the 'gas-proofing' of rooms, the civilian mask, and extinguishing incendiary bombs, and then conducted some experiments. It claimed to have shown that the measures officially proposed were ineffective or inadequate, and implied that these constitued deception of the public [this entire episode was precisely repeated fifty years later in the 1980s when SANA or 'Scientists Against Nuclear Arms' published a false smear campaign against the U.K. Government's Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch civil defence data; all of the problem in both instances was caused by official secrecy on weapons effects and countermeasures research, i.e. the published official handbooks omitted all of the very extensive experimental scientific data from the detailed research reports upon which they were based, leaving them scientifically unsubstantiated as presented and thus open to 'ridicule']. The mask they had put to various tests was of a 'civilian type' bought on the open market, and not the official article. And their books's declared aim of offering a critical examination of A.R.P. measures was faithfully followed, to the exclusion of any positive counter-suggestions. ... The Government's reply was that the experiments were academic (in the sense of removed from reality), and based on fallacious assumptions about the conditions likely to be met in actual warfare [i.e. the anti-government propaganda claimed that gas would slowly diffuse into a gas-proof room so that since gas masks were no use to protect skin, there was no protection possible and civil defence was a fraud; in reality extensive top secret experiments on gas ingress into houses at Porton Down had been made which showed that the delay in gas diffusing into a sealed room was in most weather and wind conditions and realistic attack situations plenty of time for the gas concentration outdoors to fall to levels where skin protection was unnecessary, and the point of the gas mask is not to protect against a skin blisters drenching of mustard gas liquid but to protect against a wide spectrum of volatile gases, because lung tissue is far more sensitive to most gases than skin]."

Page 86: "... in February 1937 the Home Office Fire Adviser staged a demonstration at Barnes at which [Spanish Civil War incendiary] bombs were successfully controlled and fires extinguished by teams of girls with only short training. At an exercise held later at Southampton a group of air raid wardens carried out this function with such success that the Department concluded it must aim to train all householders in the handling of incendiary bombs."

Pahe 86: on 28 October 1937, the British Committee of Imperial Defence approved an increased "scale of attack" for planning purposes of "no less than 600 tons" of bombs per day, i.e. 0.6 kt per day. Assuming 100 kg TNT bombs, this is 6,000 bombs daily with an equivalent megatonnage of 6,000 x (0.1 x 10-6)2/3 = 0.129 single bomb with a TNT equivalent of 1 megaton (this relationship is due to the fact that diffraction damage radii only scale as the cube-root of explosive yield, so areas and casualty rates for such buildings scale as the two-thirds power of yield). In other words, the scale of the attack assumed in 1937 was equivalent to the dropping of a single 1 megaton TNT bomb (equivalent to the blast from a 2 megaton nuclear bomb with 50% blast yield) on London every 7.7 days!

To emphasize, blast damage equivalent to that from a single 2 megaton nuclear bomb dropped on Britain every 7.7 days was assumed by the Government as constituting the Nazi threat in 1937 (not to mention the assumed effects from fires by incendiary bombs and delayed casualties from the assumed threat of mustard gas, which was in some respects analogous to fallout in the Cold War nuclear war civil defence context). This was precisely why Prime Minister Chamberlain caved in to Hitler's threats at Munich in 1938. The Government in 1937 had assumed (O'Brien, page 96) that 17 people would be killed and 33 wounded for every ton of bombs dropped on a city (this is World War I data applying to a situation, like Hiroshima, of no civil defence and accurate daytime bombing), producing 200,000 casualties a week of which 66,000 would be killed. Because of these false predictions, there was widespread apathy in the Government about the blast damage problem, so no concerted effort was made against blast until the last moment as shown by the fact that all the early civil defence handbooks were about gas. This irrational blast countermeasures apathy was well summed up in the oft-quoted 10 November 1932 statement by Stanley Baldwin: "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. ... The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves... when the next war comes ... European civilisation is wiped out..." (this was usually quoted to attack civil defence, much as certain very similarly ill-informed speeches by Earl Mountbatten of Burma, together with the farewell address to the American people by President James Carter, were repeatedly quoted by anti-civil defence groups during the 1980s). O'Brien makes the point on page 196 that the Government's Anderson shelters were first checked against real high explosive blast bombs in mid-1939, just before war was finally declared. This late blast effects research was a disaster because while the Anderson shelters were fairly hospitable in summertime, in winter they were freezing cold and usually flooded with ground water in London. O'Brien states on pages 527-528:

"Experience of raids ... led to the introduction of an entirely new type of household shelter. 'Andersons' [outdoor, earth-covered corrugated steel arches], though structually satisfactory, had not originally been intended for sleeping and became in many cases unfit for winter occupation. Domestic surface shelters were very cramped when used for sleeping and were in some places not popular ... After night raiding had ceased to be a novelty, many people preferred to stay in their houses rather than to go out of doors even to their own domestic shelters. ... Since many people were now determined to remain in their homes, it had become necessary to introduce some indoor shelter which might reduce the risk of injury from falling masonry and furniture. The fact that many who had hitherto sheltered under their staircases or furniture had been rescued unhurt from the wreckage of houses suggested that extra protection might be given by a light structure on the ground floor. ... the 'Morrison' shelter ... a rectangular steel framework 6 ft 6 in long, 4 ft wide and about 2 ft 9 in high ... could be used as a table in the daytime, could accommodate two adults and either two young children or one older child, lying down. Experiments showed that it would carry the debris produced by the collapse of two higher floors. ... In January 1941 the cabinet approved the manufacture of 400,000, providing protection for perhaps 1,200,000 people."

With regards to civil defence rescue planning in 1939 (for some details of rescue operations in WW II, see the civil defence training material extracts linked here), O'Brien states on page 215:

"Equipment for Rescue Parties, designed from experience gained in the 1931 Tokyo earthquake, consisted mainly of levers, crowbars, ropes, jacks and other instruments in common use. As every party would need a complete set of these for instant turn-out in war, the Government decided in March [1939, less than six months before it declared war on the Nazis] on the principle of central supply. It proved difficult, as usual, to procure the large quantities required, and in June orders were placed for two of the most important items, lifting tackle and ratchet jacks, in the United States."

A very important point about the role of effective asymmetrical civil defence in preventing attacks by gas is made by O'Brien on pages 329-330, where he states that although 44 million people in Britain had been issued a gas mask by the outbreak of war in September 1939, only 12 million gas masks had been issued to German civilians, due to the rubber shortage in Germany:

"The data available to experts had suggested that a high degree of protection could only be achieved by equipping every civilian with a gas-mask. [Qualitative objections that gas masks were useless because mustard gas can blister skin and that extremely high concentrations of gas can suffocate even with a gas mask, unless compressed air is supplied, ignored the overall quantitative protection factor. No gas mask can save someone in a confined space or drenched with liquid droplets of toxic chemicals, in the same way that a lifejacket is not guaranteed to save someone who falls overboard into icy cold water during a storm; likewise car seat belts, first aid, hospitals, and fire brigades are not guaranteed always prevent injury. The usefulness of a safety precaution is not zero if it is likely to fail in an improbable worst case scenario. The usefulness of a safety precaution is correctly judged on the basis of its validity and usefulness in the more likely and probable situations to arise, not the very worst case. No safety measure has ever been made which is proof against everything, and it would be so clumbersome as to defeat the whole purpose if such a safety device was made. People are prepared to tolerate some discomfort for an increase in safety, but in practice there are limits and safety precautions which to the extreme cause problems by being too expensive, difficult and uncomfortable to implement. Flak jackets that are too heavy, despite perfect protection, are liable to reduce mobility and make the wearer more liable to be a target. Carrying around a lightweight gas mask was more practical than carrying around a suit of protective clothing plus heavy duty breathing apparatus.] ...

"How far did Britain's [gas mask] defence on the outbreak of war and later deter Germany from using this weapon [gas] against her? It will be assumed throughout this volume that Hitler and Goering's restraint in using any weapon cannot be attributed to motives of humanity [they used gas in gas chambers], but solely to fear of reprisals or calculation that the aircraft and crews available could be used to better advantage in some other way. On this assumption, and taking into account Allied investigations after the war [where it was discovered that Germany had invented the nerve gases tabun, sarin, and soman in 1936, 1938 and 1944, stockpiling 12,000 tons of tabun as a war gas between April 1942 and May 1945], it would seem that the deterrent effect was considerable to the point, perhaps, of being decisive."

If Britain hadn't issued gas masks to the public and if Hitler had enough rubber to issue gas masks to all civilians in Germany to negate the dangers from gas retaliation, Hitler could have used his 12,000 tons of tabun nerve gas effectively against Britain, possibly with decisive effect. (The charcoal absorbers in the standard British WW II gas masks were proof against all nerve gases, and for all nerve gases the lethal inhalation concentration-time product "dose" or exposure is many times lower than the lethal skin absorption exposure. Thus, over most of the area contaminated by lethal inhalation threats, the gas mask without protective clothing provides adequate protection.)

Remarkably, however, anti-civil defence propaganda in Britain during the cold war tried repeatedly to claim the opposite, alleging falsely that gas masks proved civil defence was useless in World War II, because gas masks were never needed. The whole point about an effective civil defence system is that, if it is effective and is widely publicised as such, it won't be needed because potential enemies won't waste their effort in launching that kind of attack in the first place. Safe-crackers do not queue up outside Fort Knox. If you make an attack unlikely to succeed in the first place, and you don't keep this fact top secret but explain it clearly with scientific evidence to back up the explanation, it is less likely that such an attack will ever be made, and you will be ready to handle it if it is made. This required a strategy of ongoing vigilance against gas attacks from the Nazis throughout WW II. For example, in 1940 all of the British black-coloured gas mask cannisters were modified by the taped-on addition of the small green coloured "contex" end filter to improve protection against arsine particles (designed to bounce around through the charcoal without undergoing absorption, and then induce vomiting and the removal of the mask), as O'Brien explains on page 332:

"Early in 1940 the Government received reports that the Germans had found a method of using arsine gas (arseniurretted hydrogen) in the aerial bombardment of civilians. Since only the Service [military] masks offered full protection against this gas, the Government ordered the supply of 70,000,000 filters of an improved type for Civilian Duty, civilian and children's masks. In May the first of these - known as 'contex' since they formed small extensions to existing containers - were distributed to local authorities, and wardens began the considerable task of fitting them to the millions of masks in the possession of the public."



Above: the 1 cm thick green "contex" filter cartridges taped on to the front of all 70,000,000 issued and stockpiled (reserve) 1938 gas masks in 1940 to provided added protection against toxic arsine smoke particles. These gas masks, contrary to Cold War propaganda against civil defence, were not an "unneeded" or "token" countermeasure, but valuably helped to deter chemical warfare by credibly negating the Nazi chemical warfare threat, which included 12,000 tons of stockpiled tabun nerve gas, discovered by the Allies in 1945. Terrorists exploit vulnerability; they don't choose to attack using means that can be effectively countered. In this sense, the gas masks proved their worth.

Updates recently added to the earlier blog post on fire ignition by nuclear weapons thermal radiation:

The 1950 U. S. Department of Defense book The Effects of Atomic Weapons stated on page 212: “It has been estimated ... that the physical damage to buildings, etc., equivalent to that at Hiroshima could be produced by approximately 325 tons of high explosive and about 1,000 tons of incendiary bombs.”

This nuclear blast inefficiency of the 12-16 kt nuclear bomb as compared to conventional weapons is due to the fact that blast damage areas due to peak overpressure are proportional to the two-thirds power of yield. E.g., a 1 kg TNT bomb is a thousand million times smaller in blast energy than a 1 megaton blast, but it produces equal peak overpressures over an area equal to (10-9)2/3 = 10-6 of that of a 1 megaton blast. Therefore, one million separate 1 kg TNT bombs, or 1 kiloton of TNT, is exactly equivalent to a single explosion of 1 megaton of TNT. This explains why the blast effects from a megaton bomb are approximately equal to a 1 kiloton World War II conventional bomber attack, with a hundred or more aircraft scattering a few tons of TNT in small bombs over a large area target. But all nuclear weapons media propaganda ignores such facts, presenting a megaton explosion over a city as an unparalleled disaster, a thousand times worse than a large World War II attack!



Now consider the thermal ignition mechanism. The 1957 U. S. Department of Defense book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons stated on page 307 that only 2 and 4 cal/cm2 were required by 20 kt and 10 Mt nuclear weapons, respectively, to ignite shredded newspaper, and on page 308 it stated that only 4 and 9 cal/cm2 were required by 20 kt and 10 Mt nuclear weapons, respectively, to ignite dry rotted wood. However, on pages 322-3 it stated: “Definite evidence was obtained from Japanese observers that the thermal radiation caused thin, dark cotton cloth, such as the black-out curtains that were in common use during the war [to stop enemy bombers from easily identifying cities by their illumination], thin paper, and dry, rotted wood to catch fire at distances up to 3,500 feet (0.66 mile) from ground zero (about 35 calories per square centimetre).”

So pages 307-8 stated that ignition of the most easily ignitable kindling materials, namely newspaper and dry rotted wood, from a 20 kt explosion occurs at 2-4 cal/cm2, while pages 322-3 stated that such ignitions required about 35 cal/cm2 for the nuclear explosions in Japan, an order of magnitude more energy! Part of the confusion was due to humidity and thus water content. The same book points out on page 319 that in the dry air of the Nevada desert, only 12 cal/cm2 was needed at the 1953 Encore nuclear test to ignite houses made of rotted wood or surrounded by a trash filled yard and wooden fence (the whitewashed wooden house with a clear yard survived). Two wooden houses were also constructed for that test, exposing 4 x 6 foot windows with a line-of-sight exposure to ground zero. Both were subjected to the same 17 cal/cm2 thermal flash from the Encore nuclear test, and the one full of inflammables ignited with immediate flash-over to the entire room, while the one with modern fire-resistant furnishings survived with just minor smouldering which was extinguished by the recovery party when they entered the house an hour after the test.

J. Bracciaventi and F. DeBold, Critical Radiant Exposures for Persistent Ignition of Cellulosic Target Complex Materials, Naval Material Lab., Brooklyn, report AD-249476, DASA-1194, July 1960:

"Winds up to 10 mph caused differences in radiant exposures for ignition up to 50%, and conditioning at relative humidities from 20 to 100% changed ignition exposures by 70%."



A controversy over the 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons data flared up with the publication of J. Bracciaventi and F. DeBold, Critical Radiant Exposures for Persistent Ignition of Cellulosic Target Complex Materials, Naval Material Lab., Brooklyn, report AD-249476, DASA-1194, July 1960, which found that at 42% humidity newsprint needs at least 16 cal/cm2 for ignition. Glasstone wanted a check to be done before including the new data in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, so the 1962 edition was published with the old false data, and the U. S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory and Naval Research Laboratory studied the problem, reporting in 1963 (e.g., S. Martin and A. Broido, Thermal Radiation and Fire Effects of Nuclear Detonations, 10 may 1963, AD042241, and S. Martin, Ignition of Cellulosic Kindling Fuels by Very Brief Radiant Pulses, USNRDL-TR-660, AD414174, 15 July 1963), which led to Glasstone’s February 1964 reprint of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons with corrected thermal ignition data, which is also used in the 1977 edition. One continuing problem with those simplified data tables is that they still do not state the humidity they actually apply to.



Above: the reported data in Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons for thermal flash burns to skin is misleading since such burns would be prevented by normal clothing, as demonstrated from these Operation Cue photographs of dummies located at 1.3 mile (7,000 feet) from ground zero of the 29 kiloton Teapot-Apple II nuclear test, Nevada, May 5, 1955. Notice that the clothing failed to ignite and burn, despite being dark in colour, although it was bleached slightly in colour, and dark patterns in a light dress produced scorching to the underwear. Data on the protection against thermal radiation by clothing is given in the originally Confidential-classified 1957 Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, Table 6-2, page 6-4 (up to 120 cal/cm2 are required for skin blistering under clothing for large weapon yields, a large protection factor, since even if clothing does ignite the thermal radiation is directional so a person can roll over to extinguish the flames as the thermal pulse subsides; thermal radiation pulses are not like being doused with burning gasoline, contrary to anti-civil defense propaganda which in the 1980s ignored all the facts about actual thermal radiation pulse exposure and instead quoted the "example" of a man with 85% body area third-degree burns from being doused in burning gasoline, who died 33 days later at Massachusetts General Hospital after being given 501 blood transfusions including 281 units of plasma, 147 units of red cells, 37 units of platelets and 36 units of albumin, plus 6 operations and 4,900 medical personnel hours at a cost of $3,500 a day: all this proves is that being doused in burning gasoline has nothing to do with thermal radiation induced clothing ignitions). This data is omitted from unclassified books by Glasstone and Dolan.

Update: Arnold Kramish (June 6, 1923 – June 15, 2010), RAND Corp physicist and one of the original four editors on the editorial board under Glasstone for the 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons (link to 87 MB PDF format high quality scan of vital pages; please use right click and save file or you will have a long wait for it to load in a browser window), died in June and there are obituaries in the Washington Post and New York Times.



Above: Arnold Kramish was on the board of editors of the 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons. While at RAND Corp, he undertook several early studies of nuclear proliferation risks and safeguards.

Kramish was author of the 1959 book Atomic Energy in the Soviet Union, the 1986 controversial history of The Griffin about science editor Paul Rosbaud, the major spy for the Manhattan Project, who reported on Nazi nuclear research. (The Manhattan Project chief, General Groves, kept the tale secret to justify continued research on the bomb after the Nazi nuclear failure due to the allied destruction of the Nazi heavy water plants. This failure was due to an incorrect decision taken by the Nazi, the first-quantization (intrinsic uncertainty principle) propagandarist Werner Heisenberg, who fortunately dismissed graphite moderators as useless and demanded heavy water instead. He was ignorant that the ordinary graphite production process used boron electrodes that contaminated the graphite with the neutron absorber boron. By contrast, the Manhattan Project's Leo Szilard (who had first come up with the neutron chain reaction idea in 1933), was a chemical engineer and he knew about this boron electrode problem, so cheap graphite produced with other methods was successfully used as the neutron moderator instead of expensive heavy water by the Manhattan Project to produce nuclear reactors and thus bomb plutonium.)

According to the Atomic Heritage Foundation site, Kramish was writing his memoirs. He suffered serious injuries during an explosion at the highly secret Philadelphia Experiment at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1944. It was the pilot plant for the liquid (not gaseous) diffusion of highly corrosive uranium hexafloride liquid under high pressure. It suffered a pipe blockage which exploded, covering Kramish and two others with the gas which reacted with steam to produce hydrofluoric acid. The basic idea was to produce a porous metal pipe and pump the liquid uranium hexafloride through it at high pressure, so that molecules containing the lighter uranium isotope (mass number 235) would be more likely to penetrate the tube due to its slightly higher average kinetic energy and velocity than the heavier molecules that contained uranium-238. Thus, the enrichment of uranium-235 for the gun-assembly Hiroshima weapon. Unfortunately, there were controversies in the precise design of the porous nickel tube barriers (used both for the gaseous and for the liquid diffusion plants), leading to a complete redesign (the details are still secret to reduce proliferation risks), and experiments were needed with a pilot plant to see if the liquid gaseous diffusion plant design was suitable. If the porous tube walls were too thick and the porosity was too low, the uranium hexafloride pressures required would be dangerously high; thinner walls would allow lower operating pressures but would be subject to more wear and tear.

After the explosion, a green cloud of the uranium hexafloride gas contaminated the entire area and a nearby Navy ship, causing other injuries. The other two persons with Kramish suffered lethal whole-body 3rd degree burns from the acid, although this was covered up by Manhattan Project chief, General Groves, leading to Chinese Whisper rumors a decade later that finally linked the experiment to the wrong theory of Einstein in a notoriously weird Hollywood movie based on the Philadelphia Navy Yard experiment, that got all of the facts wrong.

Kramish credited chicken soup with his unexpected recovery from horrific burns: "While recuperating from the severe burns from the incident at a Philadelphia naval hospital, his mother came to visit him by train from Denver, carrying with her a jar of chicken soup on the three-day trip, which she fed him upon her arrival at the hospital, which Kramish would credit for his unexpected recovery."

The Atomic Heritage Foundation website states:

The Philadelphia Incident

On September 2, 1944, three men entered the transfer room of the liquid thermal diffusion semi-works at the Philadelphia Navy Yard to repair a clogged tube. The tube they were working on consisted of two concentric pipes with liquid uranium hexafluoride circulating in the space between them; the innermost pipe contained high-pressure steam. ... Without warning, at 1:20 PM, there was a terrific explosion. As the tube shattered, the liquid uranium hexafluoride combined with the escaping steam and showered the two engineers with hydrofluoric acid, one of the most corrosive agents known. Within minutes, both Peter Bragg and Douglas Meigs, with 3rd degree burns over their entire bodies, were dead and Arnold Kramish, also burned, was near death. Thus began one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the Manhattan Project. Due to the extreme secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project in general and the experimental facility at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in particular, an immediate veil was drawn down over the incident by the highest authority available: General Leslie Groves.

Due to the extreme secrecy surrounding the incident, even the Philadelphia coroner was not made aware of the actual causes of death. It was not until many years later that the true facts began to emerge. However, it was too late for the parents of Peter Bragg, who both died never knowing of how their son had died.

On September 2, 1944, as the explosion ripped through the transfer room of the Naval Research Laboratory's thermal diffusion experimental pilot-plant, the battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin sat berthed not more than 200 yards away. Just back from its "shakedown" cruise, the sailors on board were never made aware that they had been exposed to a cloud of uranium hexafluoride. Although not highly-radioactive, the uranium-hexafluoride is nevertheless, toxic.

"Explosion at Navy Yard," The Philadelphia Record, September 3, 1944: "9 Are Injured; Blast Heard in Wide Area" SIDE OF BUILDING RIPPED OUT; FIRE EXTINGUISHED - Two specialists were killed and nine other men injured late yesterday afternoon when an explosion, followed by fire, ripped out the side of a building at the Navy Yard. The blast, heard throughout the Navy Yard and in some sections of South Philadelphia, occurred while Navy technicians were at work. Gas was released, burning the lungs of some of the men. They were given first aid at the scene and then sent to the Naval Hospital. At least one is in "a very critical condition," the Navy announced. Two other men, Navy Yard firemen, collapsed while fighting the blaze. Their condition is not serious ...


The cloud of green colored uranium hexafluoride vapor and the extreme secrecy involved (the whole experiment was used to produce the uranium-235 dropped in the Hiroshima bomb), corresponds to the Philadelphia experiment rumors. Some hints that nuclear power was connected would have given rise to speculations linking the experiments being carried out at the Philadelphia Dock Yard during World War II to Einstein's theories of relativity.

(Incidentally, Richard Rhodes gives a false account of the porous nickel barrier tube production; Glasstone's Sourcebook on Atomic Energy indicates that the tubes were manufactured simply by producing tubes out of an alloy of nickel and a more reactive metal like zinc, and then etching the zinc out of the alloy using acid. By using the correct percentage of each metal in the original alloy, which is of course secret to reduce nuclear proliferation risks, the porosity of the acid-etched metal tube walls was precisely controllable. The business of using highly corrosive uranium hexafloride to produce the Hiroshima bomb was what really got Teflon off the ground; Teflon had been invented years earlier but it was only when it was needed for coating the inner parts of pumps and valves that had to resist corrosion by uranium hexafloride in the Manhattan Project, that DuPont efforts were made to manufacture it on a large scale.)

Update (27 November 2010): Northrop's data on prompt gamma ray output and its implications for the high altitude burst, wide-area EMP threat from terrorist nuclear weapons such as North Korea

Sequence of events: 1. nuclear weapons effects data is kept secret, 2. critics of civil defense policy openly publish claims that the secret data does not exist ("nobody knows the effects of nuclear weapons reliably"), 3. nobody in government is able to disclose the facts, 4. critics of civil defense policy eventually manage to persuade the public (which is denied the secret data) that the government really has no idea what the threats are or how to combat them, 5. the public end up influencing government policy through the democratic process. This is what happened in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1989, Philip J. Dolan's 1972 two-part Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, DNA-EM-1, 1972, originally Secret - Restricted Data, was declassified with some page change updates from 1978 and 1981. Chapters 5 and 7 of this manual are online on this blog, and we have summarized some updates which have been made to this manual which have become declassified, on blast, nuclear radiation, thermal radiation (a massive change of thermal partitions and transmission data), cratering (massive changes, reducing crater sizes at high yields), fallout, and space effects. In 1992, I requested the earlier Capabilities of Atomic Weapons from the the Library U. K. Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (now AWE), and was told that Dolan's more recent Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons was then in the British Library on Microfiche. In 1993, William M. Arkin of the Natural Resources Defense Council requested (under the American Freedom of Information Act) the successor, Harold L. Brode's 1992 version of EM-1, which was subsequently slowly declassified with some important deletions (it is much longer than Dolan's version, with each chapter a separate lengthy document). Arkin writes about receiving the updated version in the July 1997 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, leering at the depth of research and totally ignoring the civil defense implications of accurate effects data for survival and damage mitigation during an enemy attack. The Natural Resources Defense Council apparently has decided to keep the actual details of the declassified data from the latest version under wraps (maybe it doesn't fit their Cold War era political agenda, whereby we will be safe when we disarm). At the same time that it was being declassified, the people of the Defense Special Weapons Agency who were declassifying it decided to summarize the declassified material (which is not everything) into a single brief summary volume. This was edited in 1996 by John A. Northrop (who as Deputy Director of the U. S. Defense Nuclear Agency in 1972, wrote the notice of promulgation on page iii of the 1972 edition of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons). Northrop headed S-cubed research into nuclear terrorism effects in the 1970s and 1980s, e.g. J. A. Northrop, The role of civil preparedness in nuclear terrorism mitigation planning, Systems, Science and Software, Washington Research Center, report SSS-R-80-4185, ADA081560 (1979):

“An assessment of the objectives and capabilities of terrorist groups leads to the conclusion that although an explosion of a small nuclear bomb in a city is improbable, planning for an adequate emergency response is necessary. At the Federal level current planning places primary emphasis on management of terrorist events themselves, rather than on subsequent mitigation. The responsible agencies that will be involved must develop working relationships which will allow a rapid and coherent response to the massive damage and casualties that would result. Some state planning has been made, but local authority planning is very limited. These plans, and their integration at all levels of government, would be greatly enhanced by the drifting of models which could be adapted to individual state and local requirements. Preliminary assessments of effects of low-yield nuclear explosions in cities show significant changes, produced by massive building structures, to conventional data. Such data when further developed will provide important guidance to urban nuclear emergency planners. A new methodology is proposed for modeling the economic impact of terrorist attacks tailored to the nationwide incapacitation of unique industrial processes.”


See also J. A. Northrop, B. E. Freeman, and R. E. Duff, Program to Develop and Codify Urban Nuclear Weapon Effects. Final Report, S-Cubed, La Jolla, California, report SSS-R-83-6228, ADA284141 (1983):

“A program is developed which, if implemented, would assess those effects of a detonation of a terrorist nuclear weapon located in a highly built-up urban area which are unique to the environment, and consider possible techniques for damage limitation. It is assumed that the weapon is of low-yield, that its hiding place can be located, and that there is sufficient time before its detonation for the application of mitigation techniques. A series of radiation-hydrodynamic, hydrodynamic, radiation transport, and fallout calculations are defined which would provide insight into the modification to classic nuclear phenomenology produced by unique urban hiding locations, possible mitigating of the blast and thermal threats by materials deliberately placed around the weapon, and changes in the propagation of blast, fallout, and thermal radiation due to surrounding buildings. It is anticipated that, were such a theoretical study program to be implemented, it would provide useful guidance to nuclear emergency response planners.”


Northrop's 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from DSWAs Effects Manual One (EM-1) (Defense Weapons Special Agency, Washington, D.C.) is unclassified but of limited distribution, exactly the status of Dr Carl F. Miller's report Fallout and Radiological Countermeasures between 1963-9. But it contains data on the prompt high frequency EMP source (the prompt gamma ray output of modern nuclear weapon designs) and the spectrum of the thermal radiation as a function of burst altitude and weapon yield which is vital for civil defense and is omitted from the 1977 edition of Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Dolan's 1972 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons DNA-EM-1 in Table 5-3 and Table 5-1 as well as many graphs of data, analyzed the radiation outputs from eight types of nuclear weapons. The revised version by Brode analyzes 13 nuclear weapons designs, and Northrop's 1996 extract handbook gives data from 4 of these designs: type 3 (subkiloton, unboosted fission implosion), type 5 (boosted fission implosion, 1 to a few tens of kt), type 8 (thermonuclear secondary with single yield, a few tens of kt to 5 Mt), and type 13 (the enhanced radiation weapon, 1-10 kt). Most fission weapons have neutron outputs on the order of 1023 neutrons/kt (see for instance Table 5-1 in DNA-EM-1), the enhanced radiation weapon emits 1.77 x 1024 neutrons/kt, according to Northrop (1996).



Above: Northrop's data on prompt gamma ray output from different nuclear weapon designs.

The shocking thing is the prompt gamma ray output (from fission and inelastic neutron scattering reactions with heavy nuclei in the bomb over the first 20 nanoseconds). An enhanced radiation bomb emits a prompt gamma ray output of 6.70 x 1023 MeV/kt with a mean gamma ray energy of 2.0 MeV, according to Northrop (1996). This is about 2.6 % of the weapon yield! Dolan's DNA-EM-1 chapters 5 and 7 (1978) gave a figure of 0.1-0.5 % for the range of prompt gamma radiation outputs. Additionally, Northrop states that the prompt gamma ray out for the type 8 thermonuclear secondary weapon with a single yield of up to 5 Mt is 3.55 x 1023Wkt-0.29 MeV/kt, i.e. 1.4Wkt-0.29 % of yield, which is 0.18 for 1 Mt, not 0.1 % as suggested by most unclassified EMP prediction treatments! The high prompt gamma ray output from the neutron bomb provides a example of how the weapon design can be engineered to produce immense outputs of EMP from a high altitude detonation. In fact, the use of enhanced neutron radiation bombs at high altitude has always been on the cards for ABM defenses, since one way to neutralize incoming enemy warheads is to melt down the fissile material they contain, using the neutron radiation from a defensive warhead. Neutron bombs have always been of relevance to ABM defense as well as deterring massed tank invasions.



Above: data on the thermal radiation spectrum from nuclear weapons in Northrop's limited-distribution handbook. This data is needed in the public domain to help counter anti-civil defense propaganda about there being no reliable data on the details of burn-causing thermal radiation. In fact, extensive data exists on the effects of nuclear weapons from intensive scientific studies at weapon tests and also from extensive computer simulations. The reason that critics of civil defense can falsely claim nothing much is known and get away with such a claim is simply that there are restraints on the publication of data which is needed for making a convincing case for civil defense. It's either secret or (when finally declassified) its "not secret but limited in distribution", which amounts to the same thing for the public (which just wants to know what the facts really are, so they can decide whether civil defense is justified by the data, for themselves):

“The obsession with secrecy ensured that almost all the public information on nuclear attack was provided by the government’s opponents.”

- Matthew Grant, After the Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Britain, 1945-68, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010, page 197.

Update: Samuel T. Cohen (January 25, 1921 – November 28, 2010), inventor of the neutron bomb, has died

Above: the target for Sam Cohen's neutron bomb was these T-54/55 Russian main battle tanks, which had the highest production run of any tank ever made (over 86,000 were manufactured). They were manufactured chiefly for the invasion of Western Europe, once tactical nuclear weapons had been removed by political lobbying of Western disarmament activists via the Kremlin-controlled World Peace Council based in Moscow.


Seen in 1999, Sam Cohen holds up a peace medal given to him by Pope John Paul I. He designed the neutron bomb with just pencil, paper and a slide rule. (San Jose Mercury News)

“The neutron bomb, so-called because of the deliberate effort to maximize the effectiveness of the neutrons, would necessarily be limited to rather small yields - yields at which the neutron absorption in air does not reduce the doses to a point at which blast and thermal effects are dominant. The use of small yields against large-area targets again runs into the delivery problems faced by chemical agents and explosives, and larger yields in fewer packages pose a less stringent problem for delivery systems in most applications. In the unlikely event that an enemy desired to minimize blast and thermal damage and to create little fallout but still kill the populace, it would be necessary to use large numbers of carefully placed neutron-producing weapons burst high enough to avoid blast damage on the ground [500 metres altitude for a neutron bomb of 1 kt total yield], but low enough to get the neutrons down. In this case, however, adequate radiation shielding for the people would leave the city unscathed and demonstrate the attack to be futile.”


- Dr Harold L. Brode, RAND Corporation, Blast and Other Threats, pp. 5-6 in Proceedings of the Symposium on Protective Structures for Civilian Populations, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Symposium held at Washington, D.C., April 19-23, 1965.


By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2010

LOS ANGELES TIMES, Samuel T. Cohen dies at 89; inventor of the neutron bomb

... President Reagan ordered 700 neutron warheads built to oppose the massive Soviet tank force that had been strategically positioned in Eastern Europe. He viewed the bomb as the only tactical weapon that could effectively stop the tanks without also destroying much of the continent. The weapons were later dismantled in the face of widespread protests and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. ...

Samuel Theodore Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York, on Jan. 25, 1921, to Austrian Jews who migrated to the United States by way of Britain. When he was 4, the family moved to Los Angeles, where his father worked as a carpenter on movie sets. Young Samuel suffered allergies, eye problems and other ailments, and his mother put him on a rigidly controlled diet, regular purges and daily ice-water showers to toughen him up, and fed him so much carrot juice that his skin was often yellow.

A brilliant student, he studied physics at UCLA, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1943. After joining the Army, he was posted to MIT for advanced training in physics and math, then selected for work on the Manhattan Project. Although he never received a doctoral degree, he calculated neutron densities on Fat Man, the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

After World War II, he joined the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica and spent most of his career there. He said the inspiration for the neutron bomb was a 1951 visit to Seoul, which had been largely destroyed in the Korean War. In his memoir, he wrote: "If we are going to go on fighting these damned fool wars in the future, shelling and bombing cities to smithereens and wrecking the lives of their inhabitants, might there be some kind of nuclear weapon that could avoid all this?"

He designed the neutron bomb using pencil, paper and a slide rule given to him by his father for his 15th birthday.


See also the New York Times,
Samuel T. Cohen, Neutron Bomb Inventor, Dies at 89
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: December 1, 2010

Samuel T. Cohen, the physicist who invented the small tactical nuclear weapon known as the neutron bomb, a controversial device designed to kill enemy troops with subatomic particles but leave battlefields and cities relatively intact, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.

... He insisted that many critics misunderstood or purposely misrepresented his ideas for political, economic or mercenary reasons. ...

A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Cohen was recruited while in the Army in World War II for the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M. After the war, he joined the RAND Corporation and in 1958 designed the neutron bomb as a way to strike a cluster of enemy forces while sparing infrastructure and distant civilian populations.

Fired via a missile or an artillery shell and detonated a quarter-mile above ground, his bomb limited death to an area less than a mile across, avoiding wider indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. ... its neutrons dissipated quickly, leaving no long-term contamination that could render entire regions uninhabitable for decades. ...

“It’s the most sane and moral weapon ever devised,” he said in September in a telephone interview for this obituary. “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact.”

Samuel Theodore Cohen was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 25, 1921, to Lazarus and Jenny Cohen, Austrian Jews who had migrated to the United States by way of Britain. His father was a carpenter and his mother a housewife who rigidly controlled family diets and even breathing habits (believing it unhealthy to breathe through the mouth). The boy had allergies, eye problems and other ailments, and for years was subjected to daily ice-water showers to toughen him up.

The family moved to Los Angeles when he was 4. He was a brilliant student at public schools and U.C.L.A., where he graduated in 1943 with a physics degree. He joined the wartime Army and was posted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for advanced training in mathematics and physics.

In 1944 he was tapped for the Manhattan Project to analyze radioactivity in nuclear fission. He worked on Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, days after Little Boy destroyed Hiroshima.

Mr. Cohen joined RAND in Santa Monica in 1947 and 11 years later designed the neutron bomb as a consultant to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

His books included “Tactical Nuclear Weapons: An Examination of the Issues” (1978); “The Neutron Bomb: Political, Technological and Military Issues” (1978); “Checkmate on War” (1980); “The Truth About the Neutron Bomb” (1983); “We Can Prevent World War III” (1985); and “Nuclear Weapons, Policies and the Test Ban Issue” (1987). His memoir, “Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb,” was published on the Internet in 2000.



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 T. Cohen's neutron bomb.




Above: the leaking of the Teller-Ulam X-ray radiation coupling mechanism began in 1966 with Dr Edward Teller's article on the hydrogen bomb in Encyclopedia Americana, which shows a cutaway view of the hydrogen bomb in which a physically separate spherical fission "primary" stage and a prolate spheroid-shaped fusion "secondary" stage are arranged with the "primary" stage nearest the curved end of the outer bomb casing. In a letter to his biographer (Energy and Conflict: The Life and Times of Edward Teller), Teller stated that his major contribution at Los Alamos was calculating the opacity of materials to radiation, which led him to replace Ulam's idea of compressing a fusion capsule using the physical blast (case shock) of a fission bomb with dense "hydrodynamic lenses" for the same scheme using X-rays and plastic X-ray mirrors. Dr Ralph E. Lapp's article on the H-bomb in the World Book Encyclopedia (which unlike many misleadingly illustrated discussions of nuclear weapons effects, contains a sequence of photos of the first hydrogen bomb explosion, indicating how the physical phenomena from a single explosion completely change with time, from a hemispherical fireball to a rising fireball surrounded in Wilson condensation clouds caused by the negative pressure phase behind the blast wave in humid air, to the expanding mushroom cloud) shows a higher yield nuclear detonation in which multiple primary stages surround and simultaneously compress a single prolate spheroid fusion capsule containing a "spark plug" of fissionable material to heat the fusion capsule from the inside when it has been compressed and heated by X-ray ablation of the outside.

Herbert York illustrated the design cross-section of a fusion stage capsule in a Scientific American article, with a core rod or "spark plug" of fissile material, surrounded by a thick layer of fusion material (lithium deuteride, containing the isotope lithium-6), and with an outer "pusher" or ablation layer of dense uranium-238 (the X-ray induced ablation of which causes the recoil which compresses the fusion capsule by Newton's 3rd law of motion). Then on 15 October 1976 Uwe Parpart published an article in New Solidarity showing how hard (high energy) X-rays from a fission primary stage are absorbed by a thin layer of plastic foam, which heats up and efficiently re-radiates the energy on to the fusion stage as softer (lower energy) X-rays.





Above: On 30 July 1975, Suzie Lovato had accidentally declassified secret report UCRL-4725, thus placing in the public library of Los Alamos National Laboratory a brief summary of all of the June 1956 Livermore Laboratory nuclear weapons design work and the evaluation of test results for the Bikini and Eniwetok H-bomb tests during Operation Redwing. After copies of this report were mailed to the media by student Dimitri Rotow and published in newspapers around the world, Pat Oliphant drew a cynical cartoon in the Washington Star, showing a line of "student" spies and bomb-building subversives queuing up in the Los Alamos Library and asking to be shown the secret reports. Senator John Glenn of the Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Federal Services then held hearings on the leak, during which Dr Theodore Taylor testified: "we have a price to pay for the fact that we have come to depend on these weapons. One price of that is, I am afraid, freedom of information. We can't have both."

In the media Howard Morland (a disgruntled U. S. Air Force pilot who had been discharged for questioning American tactics during the Vietnam War) compiled a "mosiac" of the various leaks to form one horrific Progressive magazine article, which the U. S. Government tried to suppress in a failed court case. The publication was attacked by critics on the Phil Donahue Show, who invoked the example of the justified denial of freedom to openly publish the dates of sailing for troopships in the Near vs. Minnesota court case (in reply, the remark by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco was quoted, that he wished the New York Times had leaked the date of the invasion and caused it to be called off). Morland then wrote a 1981 Random House book, The Secret that Exploded, which removed the genie from the bottle for once and for all.

On page 201, Morland describes how he was sent the article "The Secret of Laser Fusion" from Fusion magazine, which stated: "Why are soft X-rays classified? The usual answer given to this question is that they play a similarly important role in the compression and heating used in the ignition of a hydrogen bomb." Morland continued on page 202: "The X-rays were seen as heating a solid substance [the outer surface of the dense U-238 pusher surrounding the fusion stage] which then exploded, setting up a shock wave that compressed the fusion fuel; there was no mention of radiation pressure. ... I assumed the editors of Fusion were slightly confused." So Morland's article falsely asserted that X-ray pressure compresses the secondary state directly. Individual X-ray photons carry energy E = hf and thus momentum p = vm = cE/c2 = E/c if absorbed, and thus impart twice that much momentum if they are literally reflected back, which doesn't happen (the equal second impulse which doubles the momentum transfer is the recoil when the momentum is reversed, i.e. Newton's 3rd law of motion). Because light velocity c is so great, this momentum transfer and thus radiation pressure is trivial compared to the force of recoil F = dp/dt given when X-rays ablate or "explode off" the surface layer of dense metal in a brief period of time.

The defendants (Morland and Progressive) brief in the U. S. Government vs. Progressive 1979 court case was classified secret, since their attorneys obtained security clearances in order to read the secret documents that the U. S. Government was showing to the judge. That brief was declassified on 24 September 1979 and stated on page 47: "Essentially, the X-rays produce a plasma of energized matter [dense uranium/lead/tungsten metal pusher ablation recoil matter] which pushes on the fusion fuel tamper in much the same way that boiling water produces steam which pushes on the blades of a turbine. But Morlands discussion of the role of radiation coupling is as inaccurate as if he said that boiling water turns the blades of a turbine - he leaves out the steam ... Morland's discussion of the role of radiation pressure is entirely incorrect." Morland then suggested in an Errata to his article that plastic foam, which is Teller's X-ray radiation mirror, absorbs X-rays, explodes and thereby compresses the fusion stage. Actually, Teller's plastic foam is a "radiation mirror", i.e. just a lining of the outer case, which absorbs primary hard X-rays, heats up, and then re-radiates or "mirrors" the X-rays (with a softer energy spectrum) on to the fusion stage.

In his finally published November 1979 Progressive article and Errata in the subsequent issue, Morland mistakenly reverses the roles of uranium-238 (which he thinks is the X-ray mirror, but is actually the ablator in high-fission weapons, while lead or tungsten used as the pusher in clean weapons like Redwing-Navajo) and plastic foam (which he thinks is the ablative pusher, but is actually Teller's X-ray mirror). Richard Rhodes gave detail explaining Morland's error in interviews with the Ivy-Mike H-bomb design team in his 1995 book, Dark Sun: the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, and in 2001 official British Government historians Lorna Arnold and Katherine Pyne published a technical summary of British 1950s H-bomb designs and test results in their book, Britain and the H-bomb. Secrecy didn't stop Russia getting the bomb blueprints from spies even before the first nuclear test of 16 July 1945. Security through secrecy proved an illusion. Civil defense in combination with ABM, not "head in the sand" secrecy, is the only sure way of achieving some security, and it covers some natural threats as well as war and terrorism.

In fact, certain nuclear weapons details are needed in civil defense against low-yield nuclear explosions, where initial nuclear radiation, EMP, and the composition of neutron-induced actinides in the fallout, are all a strong function of the weapon design. Nuclear weapons effects only become reasonably independent of weapon design for the case of high yield air bursts, not low yield terrorist attacks!



Above: the neutron bomb is a small Teller-Ulam hydrogen bomb, the basic principles of which were leaked and declassified as a result of journalist Howard Morland's article on The Progressive in 1979 which resulted in a court case to protect the X-ray coupling secrets. However, Morland did not understand the basic effects of the density of material on the re-radiation of X-rays by materials, as opposed to energy use in shock wave formation (which favors high density not low density materials). Richard Rhodes clarified the role of Teller's X-ray "radiation mirrors" in an interview with the designer of the first full-scale H-bomb (Ivy-Mike, Eniwetok Atoll, 1952) designer Harold Agnew, in his 1995 book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon and Schuster, N. Y., 1996):

"The flux of soft X-rays from the primary would flow down the inside walls of the casing several microseconds ahead of the material shock wave from the primary. ... the steel [outer] casing would need to be lined with some material that would absorb the [soft X-ray] radiation and ionize to a hot plasma which could [re-]radiate X-rays [towards the secondary stage, like a mirror] to implode the secondary." (Rhodes, 1996, p 486.)

"I remember seeing the guys hammer the big, thick polyethene plastic pieces inside the casing ... They hammered the plastic into the lead [a lead layer was used between the outer steel case and the polyethene plastic] with copper nails." (Howard Agnew, Ivy-Mike bomb designer, quoted by Rhodes, 1996, p 510.)


Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam confirm this mechanism for X-ray mirroring on page 7 of their originally secret (now declassified) report LAMS-1225 on the principles of the staged hydrogen bomb, On Heterocatalytic Detonations. I. Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors, dated 9 March 1951 (linked here), by pointing out that when shock waves do form in low density radiation mirrors (such as plastic foam), they are at a high temperature, radiating more energy as X-rays, unlike high density materials which at the same shock strength give lower temperatures and thus less X-ray emission (less mirroring):

"... the same shock strength will produce a lower temperature in a material of higher density since in each material the given energy density is distributed among more particles."


The basic physics of the mechanism of the hydrogen bomb (Teller's X-ray mirroring, i.e. the difference in density between plastic foam and metal reduces shock wave formation and thus makes plastic into a relatively good radiation mirror) is therefore not secret and is necessary for understanding clearly certain effects of nuclear weapons. The way to counter nuclear proliferation threats is to increase widespread civil defense understanding of nuclear effects and their countermeasures (which are also applicable to various natural disaster scenarios), and to limit the acquisition of fissile materials and delivery systems by irresponsible nations. You can't pretend to be safe when in fact the basic physics has been published already.

The "radiation mirrors" concept is the Teller contribution: this is the key to the whole breakthrough. Ulam's hydrodynamic lenses never worked for the shock wave from the fission primary, which is too dense and slow to focus efficiently. Claims about plastic foam filling the radiation channel completely, are really Ulam's idea of hydrodynamic shock being used to compress the secondary, i.e. they falsely claim that X-rays are converted into plastic plasma shock waves which compress the secondary stage, precisely the failed mechanism of 1946 classical superbomb idea!

Rhodes on page 492 of Dark Sun, claims plastic foam "would expand rapidly and deliver the necessary shock [to the secondary stage]". This is disproved by a consideration of the time taken for the expansion of plastic foam using scaled fireball data from Brode's 1968 model: the "shocking up" time takes far longer and exerts far less pressure than the delivery of X-ray energy at light velocity. Agnew knew what he was talking about: the plastic foam is not something that fills the entire radiation channel. If you fill the radiation channel with plastic foam, the X-rays will be slowed down from reaching the secondary because they will be absorbed by the plastic nearest the primary, and will diffuse through the plastic slowly and in a random direction due to absorptions and re-emissions. This will be slow and ineffective, arriving in a time similar to the hydrodynamic shock from the primary.

The advantage of the plastic foam for a radiation mirror on the inside of the weapon case is that it allows the X-rays to penetrate more deeply than they can in metal. On metal, X-rays ablate the very outer surface. On lower density material like plastic, they penetrate more deeply, reducing the deposited energy density (J/m3) in the material, so that energy transfer into surface ablation and shock by recoil is reduced. The radiation mirror, like air at high altitude, is less subjectable to shock wave formation and more subjectable to heating and re-radiation.

Plastic foam is Teller's X-ray mirror because re-radiates X-ray energy more efficiently than uranium or dense metals. The lower density and lower mass per atom mean that shock waves form more slowly in plastic than in uranium. This reduces the formation of a shock wave in the outer casing, so that more energy is then available to be radiated as X-rays from the heated plastic foam. The plastic heats up and re-radiates X-rays on to the secondary stage, instead of losing the energy by ablating and forming shock waves as efficiently as a metal would do.

The X-rays are mirrored (Teller's "radiation mirror" idea of 1951) by low-mass number, relatively low-density plastic foam because they heat it up until it re-radiates X-rays, unlike relatively high-density, high-mass number uranium in which absorbed energy is converted into material kinetic energy (ablation and associated shock effects by Newton's 3rd law).

Glasstone and Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed., 1977, paragraph 1.36 on p10 and 7.90 on p315 and also Dr Brode, Ann. Rev. Nuc. Sci., v18, 1968, both point out in unclassified publications how this operates for the case of X-ray emissions from a fission bomb as a function of the variation of air density with altitude.

At low altitudes, the air is relatively dense so the mean-free-path of soft X-rays (1 keV or so mean energy) is small, and they are absorbed within a few cm radius in cold air. The high density of the sea level air means that air molecules are nearby and collide with one another rapidly, which allows energy to be transferred effectively by collisions of molecules (or rather ions), so a shock wave develops which contains much of the energy.

At high altitudes, the mean free path of soft-X-rays is greater because the air density is so low. Therefore, the radiation spreads out over a larger volume of air at high altitudes, and the air molecules have to travel large distances before colliding, because there are fewer air molecules per cubic metre than at sea level.

The result is that blast/shock waves form more slowly at high altitude, due to the lower air density. At high altitude, therefore, the blast partition falls and most of the fireball energy is radiated as thermal radiations.

Applying this basic physics to the Teller radiation mirror, the plastic foam is a just a layer inside the outer case (the part which has to mirror and focus X-rays from the primary to the secondary stage). There is no plastic foam layer on the secondary stage: that has a metal surface to maximise shock compression due to ablation and its recoil.

The plastic foam lining layer (2-3 cm thick) delays the metal surface ablation impulse, recoil, and rapid outward expansion of the dense outer casing, allowing much of the X-ray energy which absorbed by the plastic lining to instead be re-transmitted and focussed on to the secondary (fusion) capsule. Although plastic foam will ablate, its lower density creates a smaller impulse and less of the energy gets converted into shock wave formation than would occur for a dense metal. This maximises the coupling of X-ray energy from the primary (fission stage) to the secondary (fusion) stage, compressing and heating the latter efficiently. The existence of polystyrene or polyethylene foam inside the casing of a thermonuclear weapon was declassified in 1975 with the release of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory monthly progress reports on the Redwing and Hardtack nuclear test devices, UCRL-4725 (Weapons Development During June, 1956) and UCRL-5280 (Weapons Development During June, 1958), describing the use of plastic foam in weapons like the 3.5 Mt “Bassoon” bomb tested in 1956 as Redwing-Zuni.

Howard Morland, “What’s left to protect? The journalist who fought to reveal the ‘secret’ of the H-bomb says there are, in fact, no secrets left”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2000, Vol. 56, No. 6, pp. 51-55:

“I am told that there is still at least one non-trivial piece of the basic H-bomb design concept that has eluded publication in the open press ... something that makes the feat of the 1951 design team seem legendary and that gives each insider a grave responsibility to avoid being the one who lets this last kitten out of the bag. But this icon of nuclear secrecy, if it exists, is known to thousands of people in the bomb labs, the federal energy bureaucracy, congressional committee staffs, and defense contracting firms, and to their counterparts in Russia, Britain, France, and China. Somehow, after nearly 50 years, it seems implausible that one big secret remains. Whatever it is, it can’t be very important. We know that in the spring of 1951, the idea of a two-stage, radiation-implosion device was first placed on the design table. Eighteen months later, in November of 1952, the first 10 megaton explosion was set off.

“If it took less than two years to go from novel concept to full-scale demonstration a half century ago, the task would surely be easier with today’s technology. The channel codes that taxed the limits of the earliest electronic computers can probably run in the background on a modern laptop, ... It is simply not possible that the field of high energy density physics was more advanced in 1951 than it is today. ... In 1970, a blue-ribbon Task Force on Secrecy stated in its final report to the Pentagon: ‘Security has limited effectiveness. One may guess that tightly controlled information will remain secret, on the average, for perhaps five years. But on vital information, one should not rely on effective secrecy for more than one year.’

“The report illustrated that statement using the H-bomb as an example: ‘Certain kinds of technical information are easily discovered independently, or regenerated, once a reasonably sophisticated group decides it is worthwhile to do so. In spite of very elaborate and costly measures taken independently by the [United States] and the [Soviet Union] to preserve technical secrecy, neither the United Kingdom nor China was long delayed in developing hydrogen weapons.’ [Source: Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Secrecy, Task Force Chairman Frederick Seitz, Office of the Director of Defense Science Research and Engineering, July 1, 1970.] In 1979, Edward Teller told me he was the author of that passage.”


Morland is justified in quoting Teller on the illusion of trying to keep secret the basic physics of energy partition between heat and shock in X-ray irradiated foam. If you want to protect yourself against nuclear weapons and aggressive actions that could otherwise escalate to a situation in which nuclear weapons are necessary, you need all the technology available for civil defense and ABM, for shoring up a credible deterrent posture which deters not just direct nuclear attacks, but also Munichs and Pearl Harbors, which escalated through ever more terrible conventional warfare to end with the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The first objection to battlefield ER weapons is that they potentially lower the nuclear threshold because of their tactical utility. In the kind of potential strategic use suggested where these warheads would be held back as an ultimate countervalue weapon only to be employed when exchange had degenerated to the general level, this argument loses its force: the threshold would long since have been crossed before use of ER weapons is even contemplated. In the strategic context, it is rather possible to argue that such weapons raise the threshold by reinforcing the awful human consequences of nuclear exchange: the hostages recognize they are still (or once again) prisoners and, thus, certain victims.”


- Dr Donald M. Snow (Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of International Studies, University of Alabama), “Strategic Implications of Enhanced Radiation Weapons”, Air University Review, July-August 1979 issue (online version linked here).

“You published an article ‘Armour defuses the neutron bomb’ by John Harris and Andre Gsponer (13 March, p 44). To support their contention that the neutron bomb is of no military value against tanks, the authors make a number of statements about the effects of nuclear weapons. Most of these statements are false ... Do the authors not realise that at 280 metres the thermal fluence is about 20 calories per square centimetre – a level which would leave a good proportion of infantrymen, dressed for NBC conditions, fit to fight on? ... Perhaps they are unaware of the fact that a tank exposed to a nuclear burst with 30 times the blast output of their weapon, and at a range about 30 per cent greater than their 280 metres, was only moderately damaged, and was usable straight afterwards. ... we find that Harris and Gsponer’s conclusion that the ‘special effectiveness of the neutron bomb against tanks is illusory’ does not even stand up to this rather cursory scrutiny. They appear to be ignorant of the nature and effects of the blast and heat outputs of nuclear weapons, and unaware of the constraints under which the tank designer must operate.”


- C. S. Grace, Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, Wiltshire, New Scientist, 12 June 1986, p. 62.

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 manual provides initial nuclear radiation predictions in detail for eight different designs of weapons including Samuel Cohen's 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. It also discusses 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 later updated August 1981 page changes to this chapter provide detailed quantitative predictions of rainout doses.




History of the deployment of the neutron bomb, amid controversy

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.'


Above: Samuel Cohen's calculation of the gamma dose rate from deposited fallout formed Appendix D of Glasstone's 1950 Effects of Atomic Weapons. Cohen also contributed the analysis of dose rates to aircraft flying inside the mushroom cloud at various times after detonation. In his fallout calculations (Appendix D), Cohen ignored air scattered gamma ray contributions and just summed the direct gamma ray contributions from a smooth plane. It turned out that this approximation gave results which are accurate for typical rough ground if scattered gamma rays are included. For a smooth, infinite, uniformly contaminated surface including the contribution from air scattered gamma rays, 50% of the dose rate at 1 metre height comes from fallout within a 15 metres radius; for Cohen's approximation (ignoring air scatter) this radius is only 8 metres which is about the same as for rough terrain (where the terrain absorbs some of the radiation, particularly from great distances) where air scatter is included.

While he did not discuss Dr Samuel T. Cohen’s neutron bomb in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Glasstone in an article called 'Nuclear Weapons' for Microsoft's Encarta 97 critically argued that 95 % clean neutron bombs are the way forward, to totally avoid collateral damage in nuclear war (published by Microsoft Corporation in the Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopaedia CD-ROM, 1997):
‘If an H-bomb were made with no uranium jacket but with a fission trigger ... as little as 5 percent of the total explosive force might result from fission; the weapon would thus be 95 percent clean. The enhanced radiation fusion bomb, also called the neutron bomb, which has been tested by the United States and other nuclear powers ... is considered a tactical weapon because it can do serious damage on the battlefield [assuming a 1-kt air burst at 500 m altitude], penetrating tanks and other armoured vehicles and causing death or serious injury to exposed individuals, without producing the radioactive fallout that endangers people or structures miles away.’


Samuel Glasstone was well aware of the facts on the neutron bomb, for he had taught classified nuclear weapons design at Los Alamos until he retired and moved to Oak Ridge (Glasstone was co-author with Leslie M. Redman of the originally Secret - Restricted Data June 1972 report WASH-1038, An Introduction to Nuclear Weapons):

'When I arrived at the [Los Alamos] Lab 36+ years ago ... though I was a lowly postdoc, we took a course on nuclear physics (as did every new employee) and then a class on elements of bomb design both taught by Samuel Glasstone. This was required training. ... After that approximately 3 weeks of training, I understand what the Lab was about and why it was important to the nation. I'm certain it contributed to my wanting to stay on after my postdoc and has helped me in my work over the years. This was part of the "openness" despite the secrecy associated with the Lab. I believe we have lost this over the years ...' - Dr David Forslund

'During the Manhattan Project, classification was easy: everything in the project was classified. Then and later, information on nuclear weapons was "born classified" in the Restricted Data category. During the [Los Alamos National] Lab's orientation for new hires in the mid-1960s, Sam Glasstone, who had been a chemist in the Manhattan Project, drew one circle on the blackboard and another inside it. "Drawing concentric circles used to be classified," he joked. Fission bombs are designed in concentric circles.' - Dr Cheryl Rofer, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Part I - Historical Perspectives ['Cheryl Rofer is a chemist who worked for the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 35 years. ...'], Word Worth, September 2004, volume IV, No. 9.



Above (click on images to enlarge): the neutron bomb is included under the title 'enhanced neutron weapon' 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 yield ranges for each category of nuclear weapon given are taken from the declassified initial nuclear radiation computer program 'Weapons Effects', which was developed in December 1984 by Horizons Technology, Inc., of California for the Defense Nuclear Agency; some specific examples of yields and burst conditions are taken from some of the examples given in DNA-EM-1. According to the Medical NBC Battlebook, USACHPPM Tech Guide 244, May 2000, page 2-18, a 3 kt enhanced neutron weapon with a fission yield of 50% (i.e. 5% of yield as residual radiation, which is a trivial effect for the burst height of the neutron bomb) will release 30% of its energy as blast (trivial for the 720 metres height of burst for tactical use of a 3 kt neutron bomb), 20% as thermal radiation (again, relatively trivial even near ground zero, due to yield and burst altitude), and 45% as inital nuclear radiation. These ratios will be altered for other fission yields. At very low yields, there is a problem with using a small fission primary to ignite the fusion stage in a Teller-Ulam device because the fraction of yield released as X-rays by a very low yield fission device is small (it depends strongly on the yield to mass ratio of the primary stage), thus the fusion stage ignition-efficiency due to X-ray ablation induced recoil falls. Most of the energy from a low yield primary stage is in a relatively slow moving (compared to light-velocity X-rays) debris hydrodynamic shock wave, that delivers energy to the fusion stage slowly and without efficient focussing. Fortunately, the neutron bomb is not concerned with maximising Teller-Ulam efficiency, but with producing a small yield with a maximised neutron output!

The basic mechanism of the neutron bomb was discovered by Samuel Cohen of RAND Corporation in 1958 when studying the neutron outputs from two Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory clean (low fission) bomb designs (Dove and Starling) of low yield devices for peaceful explosive uses like excavating harbours, canals, and mountain passes, and is simply that the case thickness needed by a Teller-Ulam device to channel X-rays from primary to secondary scaled as the cube root of the total yield. Hence the casing required is 10 times thicker for 1 Mt than for 1 kt, so in a 1 kt Teller-Ulam device, most of the neutrons can escape from the thin casing, while in a 1 Mt Teller-Ulam device the neutrons are mostly absorbed because of the much thicker casing required. Thus neutron bombs have a yield range of 1-10 kilotons, with fission yield varying from 50% at 1-kiloton to 25% at 10-kilotons (all of which comes from the primary stage). The neutron output per kiloton is 10-15 times greater than for a pure fission implosion weapon.Above: neutron attenuation in air according to energy, 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 simple geometric inverse square law of divergence of neutrons from a point source isn't included in the shielding curves above). Notice that over small distances in the air, the neutron fluence is higher than in a vacuum, because there is little attenuation by air over a short distance, but you get an additional large neutron dose from neutrons being scattered back at you which have gone past (and also through) you, and have then been scattered back at you, by large number of nuclei which are obviously located at greater distances (beyond your distance from the detonation!). This is also why tanks can't be protected with a relatively light weight shield on top of the crew compartment, as we shall see later on: it is not possible to protect tanks existing against neutron radiation without adding so much mass the turret would be retarded and the performance of the tank would be crippled. A tank designed to properly protect its crew against 14.1 MeV neutron bomb neutrons and with a big enough engine to perform reasonably well, would be so heavy it would be swallowed up by the earth and simply disappear into soft ground, being rendered useless (the shielding of 14.1 MeV neutrons has nothing to do - either in mechanism or in amount of shielding - with the easy-to-shield thermalized 0.025 eV neutrons by cadmium control rods in a nuclear reactor).


Above: neutron bomb doses compared to other weapons, 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 enhanced neutron weapon or ‘neutron bomb’ is just a relatively clean very low yield two stage Teller-Ulam device; the low total yield means that only a very thin steel casing is required to reflect X-rays from the fission primary on to the fusion secondary stage. The thin casing of such a weapon ensures that most of the 17.6 MeV fusion energy from deuterium and tritium fusion into helium-4 escapes as neutrons: 80% of the energy is carried by neutrons, and 20% is carried by the helium-4 nucleus or alpha particle. This suppresses the amount of energy available for producing the blast and thermal radiation effects.

The primary strategic uses of clean, low fission yield enhanced neutron warheads are:

(1) to avert EMP collateral damage (due to low fission yield and low total yield) for ABM missiles by using the neutron output to melt and destroy plutonium cores in incoming ICBMs (neutrons have a long range in space);

(2) to deter massed tank attacks in cities or close to friendly forces. The deterrent here is the fact that neutron irradiated tank crews would be disabled within minutes and dead within hours to days; and

(3) to deter warship assaults by the threat of putting them out of action without nearby collateral damage or fallout.

Steel armour is resistant to blast and heat, but provides little shielding against fast fusion neutrons. The well-known neutron absorbers used in nuclear reactor control rods are little use against neutron bomb radiation, because they are good absorbers of 0.025 eV ‘thermalized’ neutrons in a nuclear reactor with a moderator, but useless against the 14.1 MeV neutrons from neutron bomb fusion, which have 560 million times more energy than thermal neutrons. Heavier armor, like that of the M-1 tank, employs depleted uranium which (although it is not significantly fissioned by low-energy thermal neutrons) actually increases the effectiveness of neutron radiation because it undergoes fission when hit by the 14.1 MeV high energy neutrons from neutron bomb, generating additional neutrons and becoming radioactive.

Because the blast and heat are suppressed in the neutron bomb, they have a similar damaging range to the lethal neutron radiation, so there is no collateral damage outside the target area. In some cases, a few broken windows can occur at greater distances, but there is no risk of dangerous blast-wind accelerated glass fragments, because the blast winds are trivial outside the neutron irradiate area.

Provided that the weapon was not used in a thunderstorm, no fallout effects would occur from the use of a neutron bomb, as the combination of 500 m burst altitude and low yield prevents fallout in addition to significant thermal and blast effects. The reduction in damage outside the target area is a major advantage of such a weapon to deter massed tank invasions. An aggressor would thus be forced to disperse tanks, which would make them easier to destroy by simple hand-held anti-tank missile launchers.

In 1979, Samuel Cohen was in Paris helping the French build neutron bombs, when presidential candidate Ronald Reagan came through on a European tour. Cohen met with Reagan to brief him on the neutron bomb. Reagan grasped the idea of neutron weaponry immediately, and made a pledge to Cohen that he would reverse Carter administration policy by building and deploying neutron bombs.

Sam Cohen's book, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb: the Inventor of the Bomb Speaks Out, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1983, on page 48 states that he referred to the two 1958 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory clean (low fission) enhanced neutron Plowshare (peaceful explosives) devices by their code names Dove and Starling:

'The first time I recall seeing the term "neutron bomb" was in U.S. News and World Report. This was in May 1959, when the magazine revealed that the U.S. was working on a "neutron 'death ray' bomb which would kill man with streams of poisonous radiation, while leaving machines and buildings undamaged.'

Cohen adds in a footnote on that page that the neutron bomb: 'never did catch on at RAND, which was far more of a campus department than an objective think tank. ... However, I did find out that a good-looking blonde down the hall had expressed interest in hearing my briefing. ... some months later I married her.' On page 61 he explains: 'From the very beginning of the neutron bomb saga there has been one thing that particularly impressed - better yet, depressed - me about renowned American scientists. This is their ability to be impeccably careful and responsible when working in their fields of specilization (if they're not, their colleagues will catch them and even punish them) but their sloppiness and irresponsibility when giving their scientific opinion on nuclear weapons when they have an ideological bias against them, because they know that their colleagues, who share their bias, don't give a damn when they do this.'


Above: Cohen's comparison of the destruction he saw first-hand in Korea from conventional war (1950-3), with the nuclear destruction in Hiroshima. The only difference is that Hiroshima had mainly wooden houses which were burned down, whereas Seoul had more brick and concrete buildings. The Hiroshima photo was taken on 12 October 1945 (U.S. Army Photo #SC 290666); the Seoul photo was taken on 1 November 1950 (U.S. Army Photo #SC 352260).

In 1961, Cohen briefed President Kennedy's national security advisor McGeorge Bundy on the neutron bomb (The Truth About the Neutron Bomb, 1983, pp. 72-3): 'His response was that if we had to use nuclear weapons to stop the Red Army from taking over Europe, he would favor hitting them with the biggest weapons we had. My riposte was: "On our allies' soil?" He didn't reply. ... He had gotten the point. That ended the meeting.' Consequently, President John F. Kennedy authorized the 1963 testing of the neutron bomb underground by Livermore scientists in the Nevada, which 'worked out extremely well' (page 83).

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev fanatically denounced the discriminate neutron bomb in his speech to the Romanian Party Congress in Bucharest: 'More and more frequently now, we hear from statesmen and military leaders, particularly in the United States, that they are working toward the creation of a neutron bomb. ... They are acting on the principle of robbers wanting to kill a man in such a way that his suit will not be stained with blood, in order to appropriate the suit. ... the bestial ethics of the most aggressive representatives of imperialism. ... Man to them is nothing. For them the main thing is to plunder, a quest for profit which prods the imperialists to the most horrible crimes.'



Cohen prints a Dunagin's people satire from 1977, showing a politician ordering physicists to modify the neutron bomb to fit Khrushchev's alleged morality:

'There are strong moral objections to a bomb that kills but doesn't destroy buildings. Fix it so it destroys buildings, too.'

On pages 91-2, Cohen explains: 'A discriminate tactical nuclear weapon is one whose effects can be confined mainly to the military target, minimizing damage to non-combatants and their property. So neutron bombs, which are intended to kill enemy soldiers but spare civilians and their towns, are, by this definition, discriminate weapons. For example, had they been available in the Korean War [which Cohen saw first hand] for use against enemy soldiers fighting in the city of Seoul, their application would have represented a highly discriminate attack - far more so than was the attack that actually took place using conventional weapons, and which pretty well levelled the city.'

He was inspired to invent and promote the neutron bomb by the vast civilian casualties from collateral damage due to the conventional weapons he saw in Korea, and by the NATO 'Carte Blanche' exercise of 23-28 June 1955, which predicted that the 268 nuclear explosions over 3 days in Germany which would be needed to defend Western Europe from Warsaw Pact forces would kill 1,500,000 civilians, and injure a further 3,500,000. By using neutron bomb air bursts (500-1,000 m altitude for 1-10 kt yields), all of these civilian casualties could be avoided. There would be no significant fallout, and the small area of neutron induced activity at ground zero decays very rapidly, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The uselessness of conventional defences to stop massed tank invasions was clearly demonstrated by the French anti-tank Maginot Line, which failed in World War II when Nazi tanks bypassed it and went through the Ardennes Forest to invade France.



On 12 July 1977, President Jimmy Carter publically announced the development of a neutron bomb to deter massed Soviet tank invasions of Western Europe because the Warsaw Pact had 25,000 tanks in Eastern Europe, ready for an invasion. Cohen on page 109 points out that President Reagan in 1981 stated that the Soviet Union responded by pumping over $100,000,000 into an anti-neutron bomb 'peace' propaganda campaign. Premier Leonid Brezhnev offered to refrain from building the neutron bomb if America agreed to do likewise! President Carter responded (Cohen, p. 111):

'The Soviets know and President Brezhnev knows that the neutron weapon is designed to be used against massive and perhaps overwhelming tank forces. ... The neutron weapons are designed to equalize that inequality. ... The Soviets have no use for a neutron weapon, so the offer by Brezhnev to refrain from building the neutron weapon has no significance in the European theatre and he knows this.'



But Carter chickened out when the Soviet anti-neutron bomb propaganda assault on the media commenced. Moscow radio was followed by 28 different European communist parties statements denouncing the neutron bomb as an immoral weapon, and the Soviet funded 'World Peace Council' (similar to Hitler's '25-year-peace plan' propaganda spin before World War II) called a week of international anti-neutron bomb action in August 1977, lying that the neutron bomb was designed to kill civilians and leave cities intact for American invasions and plunder. The pro-communist left-wing media of the West, plus the anti-nuclear biased groups, lapped it all up. Grigori Gokshin, Secretary of the 'Soviet Peace Committee' from 1973-91, conducted war on the neutron bomb through the media to protect the Soviet tank advantage in Europe!



The media pressure, including continuing bias from the BBC, which still falsely claims that horrific fallout and collateral damage was a good thing because it allegedly increased deterrence (in fact, collateral damage potential reduced deterrence by making the threat totally non-credible: as proved by the fact that the Soviets were so fearful of the neutron bomb but were undeterred by nuclear weapons which would produce collateral damage and amassed a tank superiority in the Warsaw Pact for a possible invasion of Western Europe precisely because they knew that indiscriminate American weapons could not be used without millions of casualties, so that such indiscriminate threats had zero, nil, nada, zip credibility as a deterrent to war or aggression), forced President Carter on 7 April 1978 to delay his decision to produce neutron warheads, and although he ordered the production of the fusion capsules for neutron bombs in October 1978, he continued to delay making a decision on the production of the rest of the bomb! (Cohen, page 115.) The next month, Premier Brezhnev responded to Carter's half-hearted decision by telling a group of U.S. senators visiting Moscow that 'many years ago, we tested but we never started production of that weapon'. They didn't want or need low yield anti-tank tactical weapons, because they were the ones with the 4-to-1 tank superiority in Europe! They didn't want or need low yield collateral-avoilding neutron bombs, because they didn't give a damn about civilian casualties and collateral damage. But Premier Brezhnev pretended that the reason they did not have neutron bombs was because they were morally superior!

Carter continued to postpone his decision on the neutron bomb. Undeterred, the Soviet Union in 1979 invaded Afghanistan with tanks in what many considered a forerunner to an invasion of Western Europe and the rest of the free world. President Ronald Reagan was elected, and he ordered the production of 700 neutron bombs (350 nuclear 20-cm diameter shells for howitzers, and 350 W70 warheads for tactical Lance missiles) on 8 August 1981 to help to deter an invasion from the 19,500 Warsaw Pact tanks. Responding on 8 March 1983 to the Soviet 'peace morality' propaganda, Reagan pleaded: 'I urge you to beware the temptation to 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.'

The neutron bomb is efficient against massed tank invasions, thus an aggressor would be forced to disperse tanks; making them easy for troops to destroy or halt individually using simple hand-launched anti-tank rockets.

Dr Edward Teller and Dr Albert L. Latter were the first to suggest this solution on page 171 of their book Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Opportunities, Criterion Books, New York, 1958:

'In a nuclear war it will not make sense to use massed manpower. Any such concentration will provide too good a target for atomic weapons. ...

'Any fighting unit in a nuclear war will have to be small, mobile, inconspicuous and capable of independent action. ...

'If an invader adopts extreme dispersion, it will become impossible to defeat him with atomic weapons. But a very highly dispersed army can be defeated by a determined local population [with hand-held anti-tank rockets, etc.]. Therefore the main role of nuclear weapons might well be to disperse any striking force so that the resistance of people defending their homes can become decisive. Nuclear weapons may well become the answer to massed armies and may put back the power into the hands where we believe it belongs: the hands of the people.'



On page 135 of The Truth About the Neutron Bomb, 1983, Cohen stated that the neutron bomb is inefficient against cities with civilians because: 'All they have to do is construct very simple radiation shelters and, as the eemy approaches, get into them. ... Because there is no blast to contend with ... all that is called for is piling several feet of earth over the shelter. And dirt is cheap.' Earth slows down neutrons efficiently (removing neutron energy) because it contains a lot of light elements, but the heavy iron nuclei in steel tanks don't absorb much energy when they scatter neutrons around, so tanks only have a protective factor of about 2 against neutron radiation (tanks have a protection factor of 10 against initial high energy gamma rays, which are better attenuated by scattering the many electrons in iron atoms).








This is simple physics, but chemist George Kistiakowsky falsely claimed in MIT's Technology Review that 'A 10-cm (about 4 inches) layer of a suitable hydrogenous material, say water in plastic bags over the crew compartment, followed by a thin sheet of cadmium metal, would reduce neutron radiation intensity by about a factor of 5.' A factor of 5 reduction only reduces the neutron range by 15-20% because the dose drops off sharply with distance. But the factor of 5 calculation is false anyway, as Cohen explains on page 142, because the majority of the neutron dose is not coming straight down, but is coming from all directions due to the scatter of neutrons by the air, the ground around the tank, and the remainder of the tank itself! Kistiakowsky's stupidity is like trying to shield gamma radiation from fallout by wearing lead-soled shoes, in the mistaken belief that the hazard is due to fallout under your feet:

'Shielding a tank crew against neutrons is an enormously complicated problem. It is not solved by simply placing the shield over the crew compartment. By the time the neutrons reach the tank, they are bouncing around in all directions, and to protect the crew properly, the shielding will have to be placed around the sides of the crew compartment as well. As a consequence, the shielding weight begins to pile up: to a much greater level than Kistiakowsky realizes. ... The tank's mobility would be cut appreciably, as would the ability to swing the turret around to fire at acquired targets. In fact, were the tank to be shielded to a degree where the radiation was no longer the primary threat ... the added weight would cripple the tank's combat effectiveness.'

Another wild claim against the neutron bomb, made by Dr Herbert Scoville, Jr., which Cohen debunks (page 140), is that tank crews who are lethally irradiated will fight a 'Kamikaze' attack even more efficiently that they were fighting before, despite having radiation sickness. Cohen points out that they will not know exactly what their neutron dose is in a combat situation, and in any case the symptoms of radiation sickness will prevent their efficient execution of military functions.

Cancer and genetic effects are another hoax which was levelled against the neutron bomb: lethally irradiated people don't get cancer (as we shall see, Cohen shows that the effects of radiation sickness are no worse than other lethal combat injuries in modern conventional warfare due to organ damage, burns effects, and so on). In any case, no excess of genetic effects occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as compared to a matched non-exposed control group. For all types of cancers, radiation has only contributed a small fraction of the cancer in survivors, most of which is natural cancer, as shown by comparison with the matched non-exposed control group. Claims that neutron bomb radiation is 'inhumane' ignore the comparison with the organ damage consequences by conventional nuclear weapons (as well as with conventional weapons, which rip organs to pieces, burn, crush and so on), and they ignore the primary purpose of the neutron bomb is to deter an aggressor.

Cohen further points out (pages 153-5) that two radiation accident victims who survived 400-600 cGy air doses (300-450 bone marrow doses): 'were back to normal some number of weeks [discharge from hospital at 2 and 6 weeks, respectively, and full recovery of strength at 10 weeks postexposure] after their accidents. They bore no scars from their mishaps (apparently not even emotional scars) and were able to pick up where they left off when they were irradiated. As to how these aftermaths compare with those resulting from being wounded by conventional weapons, if one so desires you can find out by visiting the nearest Veterans Administration hospital.'

On 11 November 1981, the Los Angeles Times printed an article called 'Neutron Weapons: an Agonising Death (I've seen it)', by Professor J. Garrott Allen at Stanford University Medical School, falsely claiming that the death of Dr Louis Slotin 9 days after a criticality accident in May 1946 indicates the radiation effects of a neutron bomb: 'The production of neutron weapons is probably as immoral a concept as human minds have yet devised.' Cohen debunks Allen on pages 156-7: Dr Slotin was touching a plutonium bomb core with his bare hands when he made it supercritical, so he got terrible localized exposures to his hands and arms, which were way higher than the doses you can get from a neutron bomb. This is why Dr Slotin had the painful radiation burns which Allen observed in treating him. Allen was dishonest in claiming that those radiation burns were analogous to neutron bomb exposures. In any case: 'Allen never mentioned the terrible burns that can result from ... the heat from fission battlefield nuclear weapons.'

On 10 September 1981, two months before Allen's notoriously inaccurate article was published, Cohen had written to the Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards, asking:

'Why is it, Mr Secretary, that after more than four years of intense, often acrimonious and almost always highly emotional, debate over the neutron bomb, the government has never put out an official statement to dispel the distorted technical charges which have been made about the weapon's effectiveness and alleged immorality? It seems to me that had this been done at the start, today we would not have the same anti-nuclear scientists making the same distorted charges; leaving the American people as confused as ever - and probably the Europeans as well.

'I would strongly suggest that DOE and DOD get together (as they did some 30 years ago, when they first issued The Effects of Nuclear Weapons to responsibly inform the American people what nuclear weapons were all about) and provide an official document spelling out the true facts of the issue.' (As we shall see, the declassification of Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons is a step in that direction.)

In December 1977, the 653 pages long revision of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons,, compiled and edited by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, was published by the U.S. Department of Defense, and was a brief summary of some of the material from extensive data in the secret Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons.

Joseph C. Harsch, Neutron Bomb: Why It Worries The Russians, Christian Science Monitor, August 14, 1981, p. 1. (quoted here): '[there] are 19,500 tanks in the Soviet-controlled forces of the Warsaw Pact aimed at Western Europe. Of these, 12,500 are Soviet tanks in Soviet units. NATO has 7,000 tanks on its side facing the 19,500.'

FROM THE NEW EDITION OF SAM COHEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY:

'... I [neutron bomb inventor Samuel T. Cohen] asked him a direct question: "Father, why don’t you like the neutron bomb?" His answer was equally direct: "Because it’s immoral." "Why is it immoral?", I asked. "Because it’s a nuclear weapon", he replied. "Why are nuclear weapons immoral?", I asked.

'And now came the answer I was hoping to get: "Nuclear weapons are vastly more destructive than conventional weapons." Now I had him.

'I proceeded to explain to him and the others, as I’ve explained to you, what the neutron bomb was all about, summing up by saying that the only thing "nuclear" about this weapon, as compared with other nuclear weapons, was that it derived its effectiveness and discrimination from nuclear reactions. I could have added, hypocritically in my mind, that it was God, not me, that ordained the Bomb to be nuclear and that it was also God who established the precepts of Just War theory I assumed he religiously subscribed to, but I couldn’t get myself to do that. Instead, I reacted emotionally and intemperately, and shamefully, for I never doubted the sincerity of his beliefs. I informed him in no uncertain terms that I held his views on the neutron bomb to be, in effect, immoral, grossly immoral. Where did he get off implying that I was, in effect, an immoral person for having devised and espoused a weapon that allowed a country to defend itself in a fashion having practically none of the grossly immoral features of conventional weapon defense he and his Harvard professors seemed to espouse?

'The father flushed in anger, as I had been doing, but did not respond. At this point, Casaroli finally opened his mouth to say he had just flown in from Rome, was dead tired, and badly needed some sleep to get ready for his UN speech the next day. He thanked me so much for coming, and left. So did the priest from Harvard, without thanking me. The others diplomatically stayed around for a while, I guess to let me know they weren’t as offended as the Harvard guy was.

'Some weeks later I received a medal from his Holiness, Pope Paul VI. ...

'About a year goes by. One day [in June 1979] while I was in Washington on some business, I got a call from Dick Cella. It was elevation time at the Vatican. The new Pope, John Paul II, had promoted a number of bishops to cardinalcy, one of them being Casaroli, who was also to become Vatican Secretary of State, Number Two on the church totem pole. A contingent from the U.S., headed by Cheli (who by now had been double-jumped in rank to archbishop), was heading off for the affair and I had been invited to join up. (Not invited was Father Hehir.) Could I drop whatever I was doing and get up to New York right away to join the party. ...

'I stopped what I was doing, participating on a Pentagon committee, put myself on unannounced vacation (and unpaid to stay honest) and took the first shuttle out of Washington National Airport. A few hours later I was on another airplane heading for Rome. We landed. Dick and I checked into a hotel, freshened up and headed off for the Vatican. There we met Cheli who escorted us to Casaroli’s Vatican apartment where he officially greeted us as his guests. We chatted amiably about almost everything but nuclear weapons and neutron bombs, after which Cheli escorted us around the Vatican showing us what I had seen 20 years back when I first visited Rome as a gaping tourist, plus a number other places tourists normally weren’t allow to gape at, where those in attendance gaped at my seersucker suit. The greeting formalities over, Dick and I left, strolled around the Eternal City for a few hours and spent a pleasant evening with some of his wife’s friends and relatives. As for my comportment around the dinner table, it was identical to the first hour or so at Dick’s restaurant; I sat there happily eating, saying nothing, while everyone else chatted away in Italian.

'The next morning was investiture time for the new cardinals. Off to the Vatican again, where we were met by Cheli who escorted us and the rest of the U.S. delegation to a huge auditorium where the ceremonies would take place. As we walked in and to our seats (way up front, probably due to Casaroli’s impending status), I had the feeling I was attending a U.S. presidential nomination convention, sans flags, banners, buttons, etc., representing delegations from the 50 states. The various contingents from the various countries whose archbishops were about to be promoted were assigned seats in certain sections of the auditorium and the place was abuzz with excitement.

'On stage were all the cardinals from all over the world, plus the cardinal designates. This was the first time I’d ever seen a cardinal, let alone all of them; and in seeing all this clerical brass together had me totally dumbfounded. Suddenly a tremendous roar went up. The Pope was coming on stage. When the cheering had died down, the ceremonies began and one-by-one, their contingencies whooping it up, the cardinals-elect rose, knelt at the feet of his Holiness (now John Paul II, Paul VI had died not too long after bestowing the medal on me), and received their scrolls. Casaroli, about to become the most eminent of their Eminences, was first to be called up. ...

'The first guy was a little Italian cardinal of such timid demeanor that if it weren’t for his priestly finery I would have guessed him to be a downtrodden clerk in a Charles Dickens tale. "Your Eminence," says Cheli, in English, "may I introduce you to Sam Cohen. He is the Father of the Neutron Bomb." ...

'It’s my last day in Rome (Cella had left the night before) and early that morning I grabbed a taxi and headed off to the Vatican again. There I met Cheli and a few others who had been invited to attend a special Mass given by the Pope honoring Casaroli. A few dozen people were there, including some of Casaroli’s relatives ... A few minutes go by and the Pope appears, stands a few feet in front of me and conducts Mass, in Latin.

'The Mass over, the Pope leaves the altar and starts mixing it up with the audience. I’m standing there off to the side, wondering what to do with myself, when Casaroli comes up to me and with a look of total innocence on his face (God forgive him) asks me if I had met His Holiness. ... I gave Casaroli an honest answer and said no I hadn’t met His Holiness. Whereupon he took me by the arm and led me to the Pope, introducing me in glowing terms as the Father of the Neutron Bomb. Unlike the little cardinal a couple of days before who had practically trembled in the presence of Satan, the Pope was one cool customer. He didn’t bat an eyelash.

'We shook hands, he expressed his pleasure over meeting me. I expressed mine. Then he looked me squarely in the eye (I’m not so sure how squarely I looked back at him) and asked me, "Mr. Cohen, I trust you are working for peace?" What could I say. I told him I was, as best I could, in my own way, and then poured it on by telling him how much I appreciated his own efforts for peace.' - How Cohen met Pope John Paul II in June 1979 (Shame, online edition, pages 216-8).

http://www.athenalab.com/:
'Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (Sam Cohen)

'This second edition (2005) supersedes the previously printed (2000) version. This is the second edition of the controversial and myth-shattering book on national security that was turned down by every conventional publisher and agent that I contacted (despite Sam's previously successfully published books). [(PDF) (about 1.1 MB).]

'The second edition ... has all the original expletives fully restored. I've also fixed a bunch of typos and misspellings and updated the bibliography.

'Also see Charles Platt’s 2005 article about Sam Cohen, “The Profits of Fear”, and Sam Cohen’s 1998 article, “Needed: A Real ABM Defense”.

'Some publishing history: I converted the raw manuscript file (produced by Sam’s daughter) into standard book format, did the subsequent technical editing work, created the index, and made arrangements for print-on-demand publishing. (Please don't hold my amateur efforts against Sam.) The printed version of this book has now been available for many years, but soon after a (non-exclusive) publishing agreement was made, the greedy publisher quickly and drastically raised prices way above what many people were willing to pay. At the same time, to drive sales through their own web site, they reportedly lowered standard discounts to other outlets, so Amazon.com dropped Shame. Moreover, Amazon.com only showed the earlier planned World Scientific version of Shame (which the publisher inexplicably cancelled, while I was in the midst of making initially-requested editorial changes), which of course was marked as unavailable. At long last, years later, Amazon.com now carries Shame again. To their credit, BarnesAndNoble.com has carried it for the duration. In any case, with Sam's permission, I've put the new second edition of Shame online.

'After Shame was published, Sam Cohen’s daughter got another interesting book of Sam's similarly published. It's called “Automat: Jess Marcum, Gambling Genius Of The Century”. Jess was one of Sam’s many brilliant and peculiar co-workers at RAND.'

The free online edition of Shame is here: http://www.athenalab.com/Shame_Sam_Cohen_2005_Second_Edition.pdf

Despite the beautifully written narrative, it is unlikely to be rejoiced widely as a classic in Samuel Cohen's lifetime, or indeed until his ideas become mainstream. The world has an excess of bigotry, intolerance to radical ideas. The mainstream is a laggard by definition; if it was not laggard but ahead, then it would no longer be the mainstream. I reviewed Shame on Amazon some years ago, giving it the maximum possible rating. It is a frank and amusing book, the story of a scientist at RAND Corporation who finds a way to stop all wars using nuclear weapons technology, then finds nobody wants to stop all wars, and everybody wants to attack him for false reasons (claiming he is trying to start wars or whatever). It pulls no punches. It is filled with anecdotes ranging from the shameful to the outrageous conduct of famous characters. Oppenheimer, as Freeman Dyson discussed in his 1984 book Weapons and Hope, was a fan of deterring even small wars by the employment of tactical nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer said in a speech:

'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 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.' (Shame, online ed., p. 99).

Cohen was put through hell as a child at school. He was a reluctant physicist as he writes in his new preface: ‘I was in college against my will, for I would rather have been a gravedigger, which I was for a while...’

Shame is indeed an inspiring read; the sort of book that you keep returning to, a stunning testimony to the way the world really works. The world doesn’t work by group think and consensus. Even fashions and gadgets had hard-done-by, sneered-at, individual innovators behind them! Sneering ‘authority’ figures that edit and feverishly try to dominate the world through control the media pamper their egos by denying others a fair hearing. People I feel empathy with are those who are dismissed or even attacked by the fascist mob for any disability or shortcoming, but who do their best to defend themselves and to expose the hard unbiased facts behind the callousness of evil propaganda which saturates the world and causes suffering. I agree fully with the editor’s rather conservative highlight of the major selling points:

‘1. It’s an inspiring story of dogged triumph over considerable childhood psychological torment and medical adversity.

‘2. It’s a remarkable story of recognizing the right problem to solve, versus merely reinventing bigger conventional weapons in new technologies. The neutron bomb aimed at reducing the civilian slaughter that now characterizes large-scale war—conventional and otherwise. It makes the morally crucial and counterintuitive case that the neutron bomb is the most moral weapon ever invented, and is thus the best type of nuclear bomb ever invented. (Keep in mind the prior actual and continuing dependence on monster stockpiles of inherently indiscriminate civilian-slaughtering—and civilian life-support infrastructure destroying—city-obliterating bombs.)

‘3. It’s a one-man American Perestroika and Glasnost movement, which honestly shows how many high-profile credit-mongering "Cold Warriors" and Cold War institutions were generally groups of cynical political opportunists who actually (and often knowingly) undermined real national security in their greedy lust for power, glory, and profit.

‘4. It’s to the foreign policy, national security, and military-industrial establishments what Feynman’s myth-shattering activities were to NASA’s phony Challenger ‘investigation’ (doublespeak for ‘cover-up’). It’s an amazing chronicle of how a handful of remarkable people can sometimes prevail over enormously larger institutional packs of political animals dominated by self-serving groupthink. It puts on record the sort of ‘real world’ bureaucratic skullduggery that others will generally only speak about off the record, and often only after swearing you to secrecy.

‘5. It shows why George Washington’s foreign policy advice—far from being allegedly obsolete—is actually becoming increasingly more important with proliferating advances in smaller and more powerful weapons.’

What this brief list of highlights fails to mention is the witty humour that will crack you up repeatedly, the engaging personal anecdotes, and the sweeping saga of war and peace from 1944 to the present day. My favorite humor piece is the fact Cohen's greatest 'critic' was a Freudian analyst who claimed to be a specialist in 'treating UFO victims' who had been 'abducted by aliens'! That was a corker. But it is typical of the pseudoscience on radiation and nuclear weapons effects which dominates media. My favourite anecdotes are those concerning Cohen’s famous college friend, the strategist Herman Kahn, and General LeMay, and Edward Teller. Cohen was at the meeting where Teller put forward an early H-bomb idea, and Teller told the audience it would not start off a self-sustaining nuclear fusion of Earth’s atmosphere because the nuclear reaction rates would be too small by a factor of ten. As you can guess, Teller later had to admit that the calculation was only reliable to a factor of ten, so he really didn’t know what he was talking about when he said it was safe! (It actually is safe, by a massive reliable factor.)

Cohen points out that the neutron bomb doesn't have the collateral damage of fallout, blast and heat effects that occurred in Hiroshima, but enhanced neutron flash radiation: 'in about a thousandth of a second it will seriously irradiate enemy soldiers (in tanks, self-propelled artillery vehicles, armored personnel carriers, in field bunkers, and most other places where they may be) out to a distance of about half to three-quarters of a mile for a warhead yield of a kiloton... Roughly half will die, most rather quickly from shock to the central nervous system. ... What doesn’t it do? Well, for start-offs, when the war is over the civilian areas — villages, towns, cities — will be in just about the shape they were in before it started. There will be no lingering radioactivity [residual doses from neutron induced activity in soil are insignificant compared to the flash dose of neutrons, and it decays quickly as in Hiroshima] prevent occupation of these areas; in fact, they can be reentered almost immediately. (Compare this with every major war we’ve fought in this century, with what I saw in Seoul that affected me so deeply.)

'As for the enemy soldiers, the bad guys, who during a war we make out to be as barbaric as the troops of Attila the Hun (they usually are), those that die are dead; but that’s always been the main objective in battlefield conflict — to kill. As to how they die, which hasn’t been of real concern in conventional war, all I can say is I doubt whether the agony an irradiated soldier goes through in the process of dying is any worse than that produced by having your body charred to a crisp by napalm, your guts being ripped apart by shrapnel, your lungs blown in by concussion weapons, and all those other sweet things that happen when conventional weapons (which are preferred and anointed by our official policy) are used.' (Shame, online edition, p. 130.)

One other factor here: deterrence. Civil defense at the same time as replacing "unthinkable" (relatively indiscriminate) 300 kiloton strategic warheads with discriminate 3 kt neutron bombs for air burst at 500 metres (preventing local contamination, blast damage and thermal burns; see the previous post for the factual blast and thermal criteria and for the lack of hazardous fallout for two 500 metre air bursts over Japan) can deter dictators and aggressors more credibly while having some actual protection against terrorism.

The aim is not to kill people by radiation, but to avoid collateral damage and so credibly deter a wider range of threats than can be credibly deterred with today's Cold War era strategic deterrent. As Herman Kahn points out in On Thermonuclear War, disarmament propaganda efforts continued to help the fascist states by hindering deterrence and civil defense efforts right up to the outbreak of World War II in Europe, and America's pacifism towards fascists did not protect it against a surprise attack from Japan. It's no good having a deterrent which can't deter actions which will escalate to nuclear attacks. In order to reduce the risk of being attacked by nuclear weapons, you need to have nuclear weapons which the enemy fears as a credible threat. Collateral damage to civilians is not a deterrent option for an enemy which doesn't care less about its people. Disarmament is not an option: having no weapons did not save millions of people from extermination by the Nazis. Trying to "find common ground" with the Nazis was the appeasement policy tried by Chamberlain, which was helpful to the Nazis.

Cohen argued that neutron bombs would have been able to prevent both World Wars from beginning in the European theatres without the risk of immense civilian and collateral damage, by deterring the massed infantry and tank invasions which sparked off the wars. Nevertheless, propaganda based on lies is preferred by the media, which steadfastly avoids confronting the facts. Cohen also explained the health benefits from low dose rate radiations.



Above: neutron bomb supporter Dr Edward Teller of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory stated in the San Francisco KQED-TV television Fallout and Disarmament debate with Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling on 20 February 1958:

“I believe that the second world war was brought on by a race in disarmament. The peace-loving nations disarmed, and when the Hitler tyranny armed inertia was too great ... he got away with his army and he almost conquered the world. ... If there is war, if the terrible catastrophe befalls us, then next we must try to keep that war as small as possible, and at the same time we must try to be sure that no more people will unwillingly be subjected to the Russian yoke. ... If such should happen, then it would be of great importance that these weapons should do as little damage in human life as possible. If a war of this kind has to be fought, then the danger from radioactivity will be very great indeed. ... there should not be unnecessary, uncontrollable radioactive dust – radioactive contamination, which would kill friend and foe alike. ... It is even possible, to my mind, that there is no damage; and there is the possibility, furthermore that very small amounts of radioactivity are helpful. ...

“Here is a recent quotation from Nature - the British publication. This says that due to our wearing tight clothes, and due to the increased temperature of the sperm plasm, to the organs which make our sperm, there will be an increase in mutations. Then it goes on to say that since our modes of dress have been predominant for several centuries, it might explain almost half the present load of spontaneous mutations. So we see how modes of dress, based chiefly on sexual taboos, might present genetic hazards one hundred to one thousand times greater that those estimated from different sources of radiation. ... even in the terrible event of war, I believe that in this war, if it were fought with the highly flexible and highly mobile nuclear weapons, it would not be necessary to take so many young people away from their homes. I do not believe, if we can localize wars, that the casualties need be very great.”





Here are some extracts from Dr Orient's letter to FEMA about the continued use of the lying LNT theory of radiation for long-term effects propaganda:

Jane M. Orient, M.D.
President, Physicians for Civil Defense
1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9
Tucson, AZ 85716
(520) 325-2680
www.physiciansforcivildefense.org

To Rules Docket Clerk
Office of the General Counsel
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Room 840, 500 C Street S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20472

RE: Docket #: DHS-2004-0029
Docket #: Z-RIN 1660-ZA02

FEMA-RULES@dhs.gov

We agree that flexibility is required in responding to incidents involving radiological dispersal device (RDD) or improvised nuclear device (IND). It is critical that actions taken do more good than harm. The dangers of panic, the shut-down of essential services, and disruption of the economy and social arrangements could vastly outweigh the supposed dangers of an increased exposure to radiation, particularly in the event of the use of an RDD.

We are disappointed that the document does not explicitly recognize that current radiation protection standards are based on the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory of radiation carcinogenesis. This theory calculates casualties based on collective doses. The assumptions are the equivalent of saying that if one person dies from ingesting one thousand aspirin tablets all at once, that one person will die if each one of the thousand persons ingests one aspirin tablet each. In fact, all actual evidence indicates that radiation, like most other potentially adverse exposures, exhibits a biphasic dose-response curve. While high levels are damaging or lethal, within a certain range at the lower end of the scale there is a seemingly paradoxical stimulatory or protective effect. Persons with accidental or occupational exposures within this “hormetic” range have a lower incidence of cancer and birth defects, and have had an increase in longevity as well. Thus, measures to “protect” people against exposures in this range may deprive them of a beneficial health effect, as well as harming them through excessive costs or deprivation of the other potential benefits of technology.

... It should be noted that the average background dose on the Colorado plateau is 600 mrem per year, and in some areas of the world, much higher than that. For example, in Ramasari, Iran, the average background is about 48 rems per year-that is 4,800 mrem per year-without noticeable adverse health effects. Forced resettlement, on the other hand, would cause many billions of dollars in damage to the economy as well as social upheaval. Because of widespread public fear of low-dose radiation, many people might choose to be resettled than face such increased exposure, but persons should not be forced to abandon their homes, personal property, and businesses based upon unfounded fears. ...

In appointing technical advisory committees, it would appear important to include persons whose reputation is not strongly invested in the linear no-threshold hypothesis, who would thus find it difficult or impossible to change their position. A full range of views must be heard and not suppressed by a “consensus” process that strongly pressures participants to approve a predetermined position and excludes those who do not.

We think it is critical that the United States government should not enable terrorists to destroy a large area of the country and cripple its economy by exploiting unwarranted fears. Instead, we need to be prepared to mitigate the damage should efforts at interdiction fail.

posted by Nuclear Weapons Effects 4:09 pm 9 comments

All of this data should have been published to inform public debate on the basis for credible nuclear deterrence of war and civil defense, PREVENTING MILLIONS OF DEATHS SINCE WWII, instead of dDELIBERATELY allowing enemy anti-nuclear and anti-civil defence lying propaganda from Russian supporting evil fascists to fill the public data vacuum, killing millions by allowing civil defence and war deterrence to be dismissed by ignorant "politicians" in the West, so that wars triggered by invasions with mass civilian casualties continue today for no purpose other than to promote terrorist agendas of hate and evil arrogance and lying for war, falsely labelled "arms control and disarmament for peace": "Controlling escalation is really an exercise in deterrence, which means providing effective disincentives to unwanted enemy actions. Contrary to widely endorsed opinion, the use or threat of nuclear weapons in tactical operations seems at least as likely to check [as Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as to promote the expansion of hostilities [providing we're not in a situation of Russian biased arms control and disarmament whereby we've no tactical weapons while the enemy has over 2000 neutron bombs thanks to "peace" propaganda from Russian thugs]." - Bernard Brodie, pvi of Escalation and the nuclear option, RAND Corp memo RM-5444-PR, June 1965.

Update (19 January 2024): Jane Corbin of BBC TV is continuing to publish ill-informed nuclear weapons capabilities nonsense debunked here since 2006 (a summary of some key evidence is linked here), e.g. her 9pm 18 Jan 2024 CND biased propaganda showpiece Nuclear Armageddon: How Close Are We? https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vgq5/nuclear-armageddon-how-close-are-we which claims - from the standpoint of 1980s Greenham Common anti-American CND propaganda - that the world would be safer without nuclear weapons, despite the 1914-18 and 1939-45 trifles that she doesn't even bother to mention, which were only ended with nuclear deterrence. Moreover, she doesn't mention the BBC's Feb 1927 WMD exaggerating broadcast by Noel-Baker which used the false claim that there is no defence against mass destruction by gas bombs to argue for UK disarmament, something that later won him a Nobel Peace Prize and helped ensure the UK had no deterrent against the Nazis until too late to set off WWII (Nobel peace prizes were also awarded to others for lying, too, for instance Norman Angell whose pre-WWI book The Great Illusion helped ensure Britain's 1914 Liberal party Cabinet procrastinated on deciding what to do if Belgium was invaded, and thus failed deter the Kaiser from triggering the First World War!). The whole basis of her show was to edit out any realism whatsoever regarding the topic which is the title of her programme! No surprise there, then. Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia are currently designing the W93 nuclear warhead for SLBM's to replace the older W76 and W88, and what she should do next time is to address the key issue of what that design should be to deter dictators without risking escalation via collateral damage: "To enhance the flexibility and responsiveness of our nuclear forces as directed in the 2018 NPR, we will pursue two supplemental capabilities to existing U.S. nuclear forces: a low-yield SLBM warhead (W76-2) capability and a modern nuclear sea launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) to address regional deterrence challenges that have resulted from increasing Russian and Chinese nuclear capabilities. These supplemental capabilities are necessary to correct any misperception an adversary can escalate their way to victory, and ensure our ability to provide a strategic deterrent. Russia’s increased reliance on non-treaty accountable strategic and theater nuclear weapons and evolving doctrine of limited first-use in a regional conflict, give evidence of the increased possibility of Russia’s employment of nuclear weapons. ... The NNSA took efforts in 2019 to address a gap identified in the 2018 NPR by converting a small number of W76-1s into the W76-2 low-yield variant. ... In 2019, our weapon modernization programs saw a setback when reliability issues emerged with commercial off-the-shelf non-nuclear components intended for the W88 Alteration 370 program and the B61-12 LEP. ... Finally, another just-in-time program is the W80-4 LEP, which remains in synchronized development with the LRSO delivery system. ... The Nuclear Weapons Council has established a requirement for the W93 ... If deterrence fails, our combat-ready force is prepared now to deliver a decisive response anywhere on the globe ..." - Testimony of Commander Charles Richard, US Strategic Command, to the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 13 Feb 2020. This issue of how to use nuclear weapons safely to deter major provocations that escalate to horrific wars is surely is the key issue humanity should be concerned with, not the CND time-machine of returning to a non-nuclear 1914 or 1939! Corbin doesn't address it; she uses debunked old propaganda tactics to avoid the real issues and the key facts.

For example, Corbin quotes only half a sentence by Kennedy in his TV speech of 22 October 1962: "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", and omits the second half of the sentence, which concludes: "requiring a full retalitory response upon the Soviet Union." Kennedy was clearly using US nuclear superiority in 1962 to deter Khrushchev from allowing the Castro regime to start any nuclear war with America! By chopping up Kennedy's sentence, Corbin juggles the true facts of history to meet the CND agenda of "disarm or be annihilated." Another trick is her decision to uncritically interview CND biased anti-civil defense fanatics like the man (Professor Freedman) who got Bill Massey of the Sunday Express to water down my article debunking pro-war CND type "anti-nuclear" propaganda lies on civil defense in 1995! Massey reported to me that Freedman claimed civil defense is no use against a H-bomb, which he claims is cheaper than dirt cheap shelters, exactly what Freedman wrote in his deceptive letter published in the 26 March 1980 Times newspaper: "for far less expenditure the enemy could make a mockery of all this by increasing the number of attacking weapons", which completely ignores the Russian dual-use concept of simply adding blast doors to metro tubes and underground car parks, etc. In any case, civil defense makes deterrence credible as even the most hard left wingers like Duncan Campbell acknowledged on page 5 of War Plan UK (Paladin Books, London, 1983): "Civil defence ... is a means, if need be, of putting that deterrence policy, for those who believe in it, into practical effect."