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.

Update, Tuesday 19 November 2024: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4v0rey0jzo: "Vladimir Putin has approved changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, setting out new conditions under which the country would consider using its arsenal. The doctrine now says an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia. The update was proposed in September and rubber stamped on Tuesday [19 November 2024], the 1,000th day of the war with Ukraine. It also follows Washington’s decision on Monday to allow Ukraine to fire long-range US missiles into Russia. Under the changes, a large attack on Russia with conventional missiles, drones or aircraft could meet the criteria for a nuclear response, as could an attack on Belarus or any critical threat to Russia's sovereignty. Any aggression against Russia by a state which is a member of a coalition would be seen by Moscow as aggression from the whole group. The updates expand the number of countries and coalitions, and the kinds of military threats, subject to a possible nuclear response, according to state-run news agency Tass."

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.”

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.

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):

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 pseudoscience genocide schemes, and not the least interested in what they claimed they're concerned with, PEACE!

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.

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)!

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, also 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).

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 1949. 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 ... S. V. Utechin, an expert on Soviet affairs, regarded estimates of 8,000,000 or 10,000 victims as 'probably now exaggerations'. 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).

fCo2fnIEVVDG-6K0Kwk9cik87id46Qw5l0qJSBtQ/s1600/Moscow%20bomb%20shelter6.png"/>

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!

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.

Friday, December 09, 2011

Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, Chapter 14, Effects on Personnel, 2011 revised edition



Above: some excellent Japanese studies on the good casualty rates in different concrete buildings right beside ground zero in the Hiroshima firestorm are now becoming available, e.g. Koichi Murachi and Takeo Murai, Protection by Concrete Against A-Bomb Radiation Sickness in Hiroshima City, ADA382283, 1953. The graphs shown above use data from Ashley W. Oughterson, et al., The Report of the Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan, Volume VI, NP-3041, 1951. See also the data analysis of over 35,000 casualties in 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), and the 323 pages long Dirkwood Corporation Analysis of Japanese nuclear casualty data, DC-FR-1054 (AD0653922). Some photos of the typeset version of the formerly secret-classified U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey's May 1947 report 92, The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, volume 2, have also been published online by the International Center of Photography, which in 2011 finally republished some extracts from the secret reports in Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945. Note that the British National Archives has a printed typescript (not typeset) of the report, which we have quoted (which has different pages numbers), which has nothing to do with the misleading unclassified and widely published 1946 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey report The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which does not contain any of the detailed data collected on the cause of the firestorm, i.e. blast action on charcoal braziers in wooden houses, not heat).



Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 is a compilation of secret USSBS data and photos for different buildings, starting literally at ground zero: the front cover photo above, of the rubble of brick Shima Surgical Hospital (USSBS building 5), which had appeared in Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons captioned merely as debris (with no indication of the distance from ground zero!). This was directly below the explosion (the middle of the hospital was 100 feet from ground zero, so the blast wave reached it about half a second after detonation). Parts of walls, many tree stems, and a radio mast remain unvaporized at ground zero. The rubble is not vaporized or melted. Unfortunately, the editors fail to include any of the casualty data listed in DC-FR-1054 (AD0653922) for the many buildings, which was so carefully compiled by the Dirkwood Corporation. So it is a half-baked book, and casualty data for the buildings must be included, to make it less one-sided. It gives misleading impression, since people survived in the many buildings which were later burned out by the firestorm of wooden houses. It's a bit like the tactic of publishing a book full of photos of people who died in a hospital with emotional quotations from those with grievances, as a general anti-hospital propaganda, but claiming to be completely honest and objectively factual about what you do include, while excluding from the book all the key data needed to grasp the survival facts, and hiding away or ignoring the evidence which is vital to real understanding. Only on page 176, do they quote the USSBS secret Hiroshima report's volume 2, pages 126-8:

“Structural damage by blast to multistory, steel- and reinforced concrete-frame structures did not extend beyond 2,000 feet from GZ. The buildings within this radius sustained an average of 12 percent structural damage. The average for all the buildings of this type in Hiroshima was 8 percent.”


These are modern city buildings. The burned out areas in old photos are congested (a roof to ground area of over 40%) wood frame houses. On page 98, they quote the secret 1947 USSBS Hiroshima report, vol 1, pp 13-14 (typeset edition, not the typed manuscript in the UK National Archives at Kew):

“... 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 ... 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.”


The book first deals with ground zero, then has a chapter "GZ 1000" giving photos and data on buildings within 1000 feet, then "GZ 2000" detailing the buildings out to 2000 feet, and so on to "GZ 7000+". The most useful illustrations are the enormous (originally fold-out) map of Hiroshima on pages 234-235 (from USSBS Hiroshima, 1947, v2, p96) marking the positions of all 135 major modern buildings surveyed throughout Hiroshima (nobody can make any real sense of photos of damage from Hiroshima without this "SECRET"-marked map which shows locations with respect to ground zero), the building density map again "SECRET" on pages 232-233 (the area burned out around ground zero had an average of 42% area covered with buildings, mainly inflammable wooden ones), and the list of the 135 major buildings on page 247, linking the USSBS number for each building on the maps to the name of the building, e.g. 1 = Red Cross Building, 2 = Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce, 4 = Hiroshima Prefectual Commercial Exhibition Hall (the famous "dome" building 400 feet from ground zero in Hiroshima, preserved and still standing today, with completely insignificant residual radioactive contamination), and 18 = Geibi Bank Company, head office, 1000 feet from ground zero.





Due to secrecy since 1945, the Geibi Bank Company (building 18) has often since 1945 been accidentally confused in some photos with buildings 59, 92 or 110, all of which are "Geibi Bank Company" buildings in Hiroshima:

Building 18: Geibi Bank Company, 5 stories, 1,000 feet from GZ
Building 59: Geibi Bank Company, 3 stories, 4,100 feet from GZ
Building 92: Geibi Bank Company, 2 stories, 1,300 feet from GZ
Building 110: Geibi Bank Company, 2 stories, 5,900 feet from GZ

Because the few photos which originally "leaked out" simply called each of these different buildings the "Geibi Bank Company", confusion naturally reigned. This is a typical example of the fact that until the full truth is told, there is room for confusion, uncertainty, propaganda, fear mongering, and ammunition for "critics" of civil defense to simply point to such "inconsistencies" in order to ignore all of the evidence. The DCPA Attack Environment Manual used the excellent fire-fighting experience of Japanese personnel remaining in the "Geibi Bank Company", within the firestorm in Hiroshima, as a civil defence example. By keeping all the source documents limited in distribution, civil defense evidence can be ignored by the "critics" of civil defense who ignore all the hard-won facts and merely point out apparent "contradictions" in the (incompletely declassified) evidence (due entirely to secrecy and the limited distribution of the full facts).


Above: bar graph of WWII casualty rates is from the Basic methods of protection against high explosive missiles, H.M.S.O., London, 1949; the bombing effectiveness statistics from T. H. O'Brien's excellent, Civil Defence; History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Civil Series, H.M.S.O., 1955. Note that the 1950 U.K. Home Office Scientific Adviser's Branch report The Number of Atomic Bombs Equivalent to the Last War Air Attacks on Great Britain and Germany, CD/SA 16 (National Archives document reference HO 225/16) written by the scientists of the British Mission to Japan like Frank H. Pavry who in 1945 surveyed the damage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from nuclear weapon, compared that damage to what they had surveyed from conventional bombing in England during World War II. But it was Top Secret until 1958, and then only degraded to Restricted (for another 22 years). It was never published, but formed the backdrop to British civil defence planning.

It found that Hiroshima effects are not directly proportional to the energy of the explosives dropped but that civil defence would massively reduce casualties, concluding that the 60,670 civilians killed by bombing England in World War II was equivalent to the effects from 52 nuclear bombs, while the damage to Germany was equivalent to 330: "This figure for the weight of high explosive equivalent to the atomic bomb for causing casualties increases as the amount of protection of the population increases. Thus for the night raiding conditions on London in the last war, where something like 60% of the population were in houses, 35% in shelter and 5% in the open [firefighters and anti-aircraft gun crews], the number killed in inner London per ton of bombs was 4." The few megatons of TNT equivalent dropped in World War II in the form of many small bombs was equivalent to a far greater amount of explosive equivalent in the form of a few hundred nuclear weapons, since blast overpressure areas increase not as bomb energy but as only the two-thirds power of energy. e.g. a million tons of separate 1 ton bombs can produce 10 psi peak overpressure over an area of 106 units, while a single 1 megaton blast produces 10 psi peak overpressure over an area of (106)2/3 = 104 units, so 1 megaton in 1 ton bombs is not equivalent to a single 1 megaton explosion, but to 106/104 = 100 separate megaton explosions, thereby negating all crude CND-type and numerically illiterate historian-type comparisons of WWII bomb tonnage to nuclear war (fallout doses don't increase linearly with weapon yield either, because of the increasing average time for fallout to arrive from a higher cloud and over a greater distance, which allows more decay to occur before the fallout is deposited).

Although the blast duration increases for higher yields, the peak wind velocity is unaltered for a given peak overpressure. This only increases the severity of blast damage if the peak velocity and peak overpressure are sufficient to cause damage. If the peak overpressure and peak wind velocity are insufficient to cause damage, then increasing the duration does not affect the result. For example, a dynamic pressure of 1 psi lasting for 1000 seconds gives a dynamic pressure impulse of 1,000 psi-seconds, but will cause no damage if the damage threshold is above 1 psi. UK Civil Defence Manual of Basic Training volume 2, pamphlet 6, "Atomic Weapons" (which carried a Foreword by the Prime Minister, Attlee) explained this clearly on page 12: "The position is that the blast impulse is only the criterion of damage so long as the maximum blast pressure is substantially greater than the static strength of the target, and this is not the case at the limits of damage to normal structures with an atomic bomb." Put another way, if you push against a wall with a force less than the strength of the wall, it won't fall down, regardless of whether you apply your force for a second or a day. Therefore, the blast duration is only important in increasing the damage from nuclear weapons, if the pressure exceeds a damage threshold. Increasing the yield of the explosion spreads out the thermal radiation over a larger period of time, reducing the temperature rise caused by a given total thermal exposure, and giving more time for evasive action (the painfully dazzling brightness of several suns produces automatic evasive action, just as people blink and turn away from a photo flash at night). The blast wave and fallout arrival times increase over larger areas of destruction from higher yields, allowing more evasive action from each effect. Most of the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have ducked from windows before the blast winds blew glass fragments in their faces, had they been prepared for the delayed blast. The Marshallese 115 miles downwind of the 15 megaton Bravo test in 1954 had a 4-6 hours flash-to-fallout time in which to to evacuate or take cover, but were not informed to do either for 2 days. They could have washed the fallout off skin and hair in the ocean to avoid beta burns (the fallout concentration in a body of water is totally trivial compared to that in the small amount of sweat which retains fallout). Widespread effects of weapons are due to "sitting duck" exposures, where no evasive action is taken.

See also HO 228/1, Notes on the occupancy of shelters during attack by V1 weapons on London, 1944 (which found that during V1 cruise missile/doodlebug attacks, 48% of people with outdoor Anderson shelters used them in daytime and 69% at night, compared to higher usage of the more comfortable, dry and warm indoor Morrison table/bed shelters: 69% in daytime, 76% at night) 1948, and HO 225/12, A comparison between the number of people killed per tonne of bombs during World War I and World War II, Secret, 1949 (which found that for for people in shelters, 7 times fewer were killed than outdoors, while for people indoors but not in a shelter, 3.5 times fewer were killed than outdoors; the report also shows that 69.5% or 41 of the 59 people 59 killed in the 13 June 1916 WWI air raid were outdoors, a very different situation to that in WWII!).

Until daytime public air raid warnings and "take cover" advice began in June 1917, aerial bombing was a novelty, so many people stood in the open or stood behind glass windows to observe bombing aircraft or airships dropping bombs (Jones' War in the Air, v3, p179 states that the British Government was worried that people would actually come out into the open to watch the air raids if warnings were sounded). Tables 5 and 6 of HO 225/12, A comparison between the number of people killed per tonne of bombs during World War I and World War II show that in WWII, 5% of people were outdoors, 60% were indoors and 35% were in some kind of shelter, compared to 40% outdoors and 60% indoors for WWI (based on the fact that about 70% of those killed were found outside in the 13 June 1916 air raid). The report also shows that the overcrowded slums in East End of London during WWI had about double the population density that they had in WWII, increasing casualties. The overall statistic of 4.7 people killed per ton of bombs in WWI (1,413 killed by 300 tons of bombs) was ignored by UK Government planners in the 1920s and 30s, who preferred the immense casualty rates for the worst attacks of the war, where slow moving bombers precision bombed completely unprepared civilians. This led to predictions of millions killed, and motivated Chamberlain's attempt to appease the Nazis. In the event, 0.8 people were killed per ton of bombs and missiles dropped on Britain in WWII (60,595 killed by 71,270 tons of weapons). The V2 supersonic rocket produced the highest casualty rate, 2.6 killed per ton of TNT equivalent (2,754 killed by 1,054 V2s landing on Britain), because the first sound from it was the blast wave itself, preventing evasive action (the WWII air raid radar system was for aircraft and was not designed to detect guided rockets travelling through space). (Casualty statistics from: T. H. O'Brien, Civil Defence, HMSO, 1955, Appendices II and III, pp. 677-8, 680.)

Gas scare-mongering in the 1930s forced civil defense in Britain to concentrate on gas in all of the early research, air raid precaution handbooks, the issue of gas masks, etc., so that explosives were largely ignored and Anderson shelters were a last minute adaptation of army field defenses for civilian use. During the Blitz on London, the repeated nightly air raids threatened to disrupt comfortable sleep and Anderson shelters were soon rejected because of the damp from ground water flooding and the cold conditions. A census held in November 1940 discovered that only 27% of Londoners used Anderson shelters, 9% slept in public shelters and 4% used underground railway stations; the remainder were either on duty or asleep at home. So the comfortable indoor "Morrison" table-type shelter was manufactured in March 1941 by Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, containing a sleeping mattress and affording full protection from the collapse of a house and from flying debris. The Morrison shelter piled high with dense materials was tested with cobalt-60 radioactive sources by the same shelter designer, Leader-Williams (still working on civil defence at the Home Office), in 1955 as an indoor nuclear fallout radiation shelter, following the Castle-Bravo H-bomb test. Eventually, this core-shelter idea evolved into the 1980 Protect and Survive handbook. The Home Office also funded test experiments on the London underground tube station tunnels, proving that the fast-moving ground shock and cratering of an explosion intersecting a tunnel automatically seals it off before the air blast is produced, so the tunnels are largely protected against nuclear blast wave. See for example, HO 225/116 Research on blast effects in tunnels with special reference to use of London tubes as shelter, 1963.



Above: Richard M. Titmuss shows in Problems of Social Policy; History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Civil Series (H.M. Stationery Office, 1950, pp. 103 and 172) that in fear of a knock-out bomber attack (predicted by all "next war" fiction writers) at the outbreak of war, Britain from 1-4 September 1939 evacuated 1,473,391 children, mothers, expectant mothers, teachers, and disabled persons into dispersal areas in the countryside (the Anderson Committee report of July 1938 had decided that evacuation was not compulsory, but billeting was compulsory, and a dry-run evacuating nursery children was done by London CC during the Munich crisis of September 1938). No knockout blow arrived (it was the phony war period) and by January 1940 (just four months later), only 572,580 (39%) of the evacuees remained in the evacuation areas. The majority, 900,811 (61%) had returned home, back into the target areas, within 4 months of "crying wolf". However, this return was reversed after the Blitz bombing which lasted from 7 September 1940 to 10 May 1941, when additional 1.6 million were evacuated (Titmuss, pp. 559-63). However, except for dockside warehouses of books and inflammables, incendiaries produced no firestorm, and the universal issue of gas masks and some form of shelter access averted enemy escalation to gas and limited bombing casualty rates. The V1 cruise missile and the V2 rocket each carried a roughly 1 ton warhead. Titmuss's documents the emergence of the welfare state, which began in the health and social services set up during the war to care for both the immense number of target area evacuees and also for persons displaced from their homes and families by air raid destruction. Henry L. Roberts reviewed the book in the October 1951 Foreign Affairs: "Having full access to an enormous quantity of government documents, Mr. Titmuss has selected three leading topics to illustrate the human and social problems faced in the war - the evacuation of mothers and children, the work of the hospital services, and the social consequences of air attack. The book makes a valuable case study for current civil defense efforts." (For a refutation of criticisms, see John Welshman, “Evacuation and Social Policy During the Second World War: Myth and Reality”, 20th Century British History, v9, 1999, issue 1, pp. 28-53. The emergence of the British welfare state from wartime experiences is not an unprecedented example of social change in warfare. For example, women's voting resulted from the employment of women in key industries during the first world war.)

Titmuss shows how the welfare state in Britain arose from the experiences of state welfare and health care logistics, set up originally to support mass evacuation for the evacuees and care for persons who lost homes during air raids, a proof-test of the administrative framework experience Labour needed to back up the socialist policies for the National Health Service and other innovations of Clement Attlee's first post-war Labour government. The social problems of mass evacuation for cities in war was a key part of civil defence. Titmuss's shows that - far from destroying morale and economic viability, and causing pre-emptive enemy bombing or re-targetting on dispersed evacuees - there was no social breakdown but instead positive social reforms, motivated by the experience. (John Welshman's paper, "The Unknown Titmuss", Journal of Social Policy, v. 33, no. 2, pp. 225–247, on page 228 states that Titmuss joined the Eugenics Society in 1937, reforming quack left-wing eugenics into state welfare socialism: "It has been argued he was on the liberal wing of the movement and played a pivotal role in the attempt to get the Society to move away from the old behavioural and hereditarian arguments ... Hilary Rose suggests that Titmuss’s use of the language of national efficiency was ... less concerned with fitness for breeding, than with providing the whole population with a healthy environment ...")

Herman Kahn explained the relevance of the WWII evacuation model to nuclear warfare in his testimony to the U.S. Congressional Hearings, Joint Committee on Defense Production, Civil Preparedness and Limited Nuclear War, 28 April 1976, at pp. 12-13:

“Probably an even better prototype for the situation we are thinking about is pre-World War II. After World War I, much of the world became sick of war, and war became ‘unthinkable’ to most people, particularly in the victorious ‘Allied Powers.’ Strategists and publicists rallied about poison gas and knock-out blows, they thought all the capital cities would be destroyed by poison gas in the first few days of a war. They did not understand the idea of limitations in warfare – of mutual deterrence even after hostilities have broken out. ... With the invasion of Czechoslovakia, everybody got deeply concerned. Then, finally, there was the invasion of Poland, the formal declaration of war and then 7 months of more or less ‘phony war.’ ... We would argue that similar possibilities should be considered today. Nobody is interested in jumping into a nuclear war today. Nobody is going to want to execute the usual picture of nuclear war, in which each side presses every button and goes home. It is extraordinarily difficult to believe such a scenario. ... By the way, evacuations occur not as a result of secret intelligence or in any attempt to try to outrun the missiles or the bombers. The New York Times and the Washington Post provide the warning perhaps days before the attack. People or governments then get frightened and decide to decrease their vulnerability to attack. The idea is, can you exploit such warning if it is printed in the papers?”

In the same 1976 limited nuclear war civil defense hearings, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze (Vice Chair of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey for Hiroshima and Nagasaki damage assessment in 1945), testified at pp. 3-4:

“Mr Chairman, my interest in the questions which this committee is discussing began in 1944 when I was asked to be a director of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey ... appraising the effects of the immense U.S. strategic air effort in World War II. I spent the next 2 years in Europe and then in the Pacific in intensive work ... In the Pacific portion of the survey, as Vice Chairman, I was in effective command of the operation, including the detailed study of the effects of the weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ... the largest number of our nuclear re-entry vehicles today are Poseidon warheads, each of which has an equivalent megatonnage less than twice that of the weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“At Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was no air-raid warning and very few people availed themselves of the crude civil defense facilities which were available. Most of those that did, even at ground zero, in other words, directly under the explosion, which was at the optimum height of burst, survived. The trains were operating through Hiroshima 2 days after the explosion.”

Herman Kahn on pages 10-11 then gives an important discussion of the originally secret 1957 Gaither Report on civil defense, to which he was an adviser, and which disarmament activists have alleged gave a false Sputnik-era "missile gap" exaggeration that the USSR would have 300 ICBMs by 1960. Kahn points out that it is precisely the job of the defense analyst to err on the side of caution with intelligence assessments and to act before completely rock solid evidence of a threat arrives on your doorstep as a surprise missile attack on all your sitting-duck bomber bases, analogous to Pearl Harbor (the missile gap of USSR ICBM dominance finally became a reality about 15 years after the 1960 date used in the Gaither Report):

“The great contribution of the Gaither Report was to make clear that if the Soviets had 300 missiles and we did not have any kind of warning system, then we might not have 2,000 bombers, because they could be destroyed by a surprise attack while still on the ground. I also made clear, that while the Soviets probably would not have 300 operational missiles in 1960, if they did have them, we would be in trouble – that is, despite the predictions by the Republican administration we did not think they had such a force – but we were not sure. What does one do when the other side may be able to do something in the near future and if one waits until he is certain before reacting, it is too late, while if one reacts early it may turn out to have been unnecessary? Let me also make a remark about a release I saw from this committee which listed a series of predicted gaps which did not occur. In at least half the cases, people were rather clear that the gap might not occur, but they were not sure. But they felt they had to worry about it ahead of time and even make some preparations because they could not afford to wait until all the facts were in. ... Let me ask a question: what do you do if the other side exhibits a weapon system and has the production capability? You are not quite sure what he is going to do. Do you wait until he does it or do you worry about it?”

The civil defense deterrent viewpoint of Kahn and the anti-civil defense fanatics in the Cold War was no different from the situation in the 1930s, when civil defense was also opposed in Britain by idealists who believed in peace at any price. Kahn makes the point in On Thermonuclear War that the outspoken "pacifists" were effectively fellow-travellers with the aggressors, and were doing precisely the work of the enemy, in helping Hitler to coerce Britain's media and public into pro- appeasement policies. Hitler recognised that air war was primarily psychological:

“... Hitler regarded terror attacks on cities as primarily a psychological weapon which he wished to reserve for administering the coup de grace to an already defeated enemy. ... Hitler wanted to avoid a military showdown with Britain; he hoped that after the fall of France she would voluntarily agree to a negotiated settlement, or that she could be coerced into accepting one through the threat of invasion - the famous Sea Lion project - though actually he was doubtful about the success of an invasion and had no intention of carrying it out as long as Britain was still capable of effective resistance. ... The spectacular destruction of London, which would divert world attention from the invasion plan, was Hitler’s way out of this dilemma; it might even, as Goring maintained, prompt Britain to give up. On the British side, the transition to indiscriminate air warfare was gradual, delayed at least partly by moral scruples. But operational problems made it increasingly difficult for Bomber Command to hit precision targets, causing it to drift toward the night bombing of towns believed to contain military objectives.”

- F. M. Sallagar, The Road to Total War: Escalation in World War II, RAND Corporation report R-465-PR, AD688212, April 1969, pp. v-vi.

“... liberal commentator Stuart Chase warned that fleets of airplanes could attack cities with poison gas and chemical explosives so that within hours not even a roach would be left alive. ... Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told a dismayed House of Commons in 1932 ... ‘The only defense is in offense ...’ The European public grew increasingly frightened. ... during the 1930s gruesome attacks by Japanese bombers in China, by Italian bombers in Ethiopia, and by German bombers in Spain drove home the impression ... Many ideas that became central to debates over nuclear weapons in later decades got a trial run during the 1930s. ... The loudest debate was over civil defense. Some said that gas masks and bomb shelters would dissuade an enemy from launching an attack; others declared that defense against air raids was hopeless, a ruse of the ruling classes to lull the public and keep militarism alive.”

- Dr Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear, Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 26-7.

“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” - Eisenhower

In the 1930s, civil defense was opposed in Britain as a plot to create war psychology. It was no imaginary plot: si vis pacem para bellum (if you wish for peace, prepare for war) worked in the Cold War, with the Soviet Union forced to return to the arms negotiating table when Reagan continued to build up strength. You cannot negotiate successfully and safely with thugs if you are in a position of weakness. Civil defense is actually most successful when it creates a war psychology which deters opponents from even using weapons of mass destruction in the first place: 12,000 tons of Nazi tabun nerve gas was rendered ineffective by British civil defense precautions such as gas masks, even though they were never 100% foolproof. The classic “survivors envy the dead” anti-civil defense propaganda from Khrushchev was disproved by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, British civil defence experience in WWII, the fact that civil defense actually reduces the risk of the enemy using weapons of mass destruction in the first place as with Nazi nerve gas in WWII, and the fact that Khrushchev was being two-faced because he was pushing ahead with Soviet civil defense. The psychology trick leading to war is not civil defense, but the lies used against it: WWII largely was due to deluded experts who predicted that bombing of cities would cause immediate societal breakdown and capitulation. Churchill said: “The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.” Churchill also said that human morale is not destroyed by surviving: “Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.”

“No one images that coronary care units interfere with efforts to prevent myocardial infarctions, or that forbidding the use of cancer chemotherapy would encourage people to stop smoking. Furthermore, no one proposes to withhold treatment which is only partially effective. Yet, civil defense is dismissed with arguments analogous to these.”

- Dr Jane M. Orient, “Social Vulnerability or Responsible Preparedness? Physicians and Nuclear War”, Arizona Medicine, vo. XL, issue 9, September 1983, pp. 631-2.

EM-1 SURVIVAL IN FIRE AREAS

Philip J. Dolan’s “Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons”, U.S. Department of Defense, DNA-EM-1, 1972, Chapter 9, ADA955393, “Introduction to Damage Criteria”, contains a section on pages 9-28 to 9-28 called “Survival in Fire Areas”, which states:

“The best documented fire storm in history (but not the one causing the greatest loss of life) occurred in Hamburg, Germany during the night of July 27-28, 1943, as a result of an incendiary raid by Allied forces. Factors that contributed to the fire included the high fuel loading of the area and the large number of buildings ignited within a short period of time. The main raid lasted about 30 minutes. Since the air raid warning and the first high explosive bombs caused most people to seek shelter, few fires were extinguished during the attack. By the time the raid ended, roughly half the buildings in the 5 square-mile fire storm area were burning, many of them intensely. The fire storm developed rapidly and reached its peak in two or three hours. ... Estimates of the number that were killed ranged from about 40,000 to 55,000. ... More surprising than the number killed is the number of survivors. The population of the fire storm area was roughly 280,000. Estimates have been made that about 45,000 were rescued, 53,000 survived in non-basement shelters, and 140,000 either survived in basement shelters or escaped by their own initiative. ... carbon monoxide and excessive heat are the most frequent causes of death ... For most common fuels, one of the last of the reactions is the burning of carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide near the tips of the flames. If the air supply is limited ... the carbon monoxide will not burn completely. Fumes from the fire will contain a large amount of this tasteless, odorless, toxic gas. Carbon monoxide kills by forming a more stable compound with haemoglobin than either oxygen or carbon dioxide will form. ... Carbon monoxide that is absorbed by the blood reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, and the victim dies from oxygen deficiency. ... A person recovering from a moderate case of carbon monoxide poisoning may feel well while he is resting, but his blood may be unable to supply the oxygen his body needs when he exerts himself. ... victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently in good health, collapsed and died from the strain of walking away from a shelter. ... many of the people who died in the streets of Hamburg were suffering from incipient carbon monoxide poisoning. ... The fire storm area included 19 bunkers designed to hold a total of about 15,000 people. Probably twice this number occupied the bunkers during the fire storm, and all of these people survived.”



Civilisation is built on wars that overthrew slavery, fanatical self-serving dictatorships, and authoritarian imperialistic empires. In the long run, democracy emerges triumphant from the carnage of war, because only in its diversity of ideas, free criticisms of authority, and unchained freethinking are the keys to successful innovation and progress. Idealistic utopian disarmament for pacifism has been promoted at the price of appeasement of coercive dictatorships, at great human cost via “peaceful” evil or “politically correct ethnic cleansing.” So in the long run, social risks from cold-blooded “peaceful” genocide far outweigh risks from deterrence and war.

“No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.” - Churchill.

“It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century ... 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.”

– Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1923. (Explaining the popular complacency re: mass destruction in 1911.)

The 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases banned the use of “projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” But this Hague Declaration didn’t prevent everyone from using gas shells in World War I. Nor did it stop Iraq from using mustard and nerve gas against Kurdish civilians and Iranian soldiers, e.g. at Halabja in 1988. This is not a matter of disarmament: the first gas used effectively in WWI was chlorine, which anyone can easily make by electrolysis of sea water. When the costs of nerve gas production and storage are compared to chlorine, as a threat it is similar overall in terms of being ineffective in stormy weather (due to dispersion) but effective in calms and inversions. That there is no such thing (outside ivory towers) as effective disarmament or arms control was well proved by the rate of secret German re-armament in the 1930s. Nuclear weapons are no longer a secret and have been tested by North Korea and Pakistan. As the untested Hiroshima bomb demonstrated (only the Nagasaki bomb had been tested in New Mexico), you do not need to test a nuclear weapon design before exploding it in a surprise attack. Nuclear reactors for plutonium production are just a matter of natural uranium and a graphite moderator, while uranium enrichment is just a matter of gaseous diffusion through porous nickel tubes, made by submerging a nickel-tin alloy in acid. Both systems could be hidden underground. There is no longer any point in trying to use imaginary secrecy to return to the arms control delusions of the 1930s.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks using hijacked American commercial aircraft in 2001 highlight the perils of trusting peacetime security to the elimination of “visible weapons” threats. The first Nazi bomber aircraft used in war was a converted civilian airliner, a Junkers Ju-52 which on 14 August 1936 bombed and destroyed a Republican battleship in the Spanish Civil War. Such aircraft were used again on 26 April 1937, bombing the town of Guernica, which surrendered without resistance two days later. It is not just a kamikaze or military bomber that can be improvised quickly using peaceful civilian aircraft: Britain actually used the flat-decked civilian container ship SS Atlantic Conveyor as an aircraft carrier for vertical-take off Harrier jet planes and helicopters during the Falklands War. In fact, the first British nuclear weapon test of 3 October 1952 used a 25 kt nuclear bomb inside the hull of a ship specifically to discover the effects of a subversive nuclear attack underwater in a harbor! Furthermore, so far the only people to have used nuclear weapons in a surprise attack were democrats. Despite endless hyperbole, nuclear weapons ended WWII quickly when used, and successfully deterred the USSR.

The nuclear weapons effects exaggeration problem is simply logical morality versus idealistic laws. People rationalize breaking rules by a higher ethical goal, such as the Robin Hood syndrome in criminals. The ethical objective (a more equal distribution of wealth, for example) is used to justify the means. So they prefer to exaggerate the effects of weapons, despite the fact that appeasement of thugs encourages them to seek out precisely the most exaggerated and feared weapons, to use for coercion and extortion. Society needs to face the fact that the only real safeguards to peace in the world are truth about the facts, and preparedness, not relying again upon psychological exaggerations of weapons effects in order to foster 1930s appeasement delusions. Deceptions are no security from surprise attack by fanatical terrorists. Educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg has found that peoples go through six stages of ethical development (where stage 4 is observed in wild chimps and baboons):

(1) Conformity to rules and obediance to authority, to avoid punishment.
(2) Conformity to gain rewards.
(3) Conformity to avoid rejection.
(4) Conformity to avoid censure.
(5) Arbitrariness in enforcing rules, for the common good.
(6) Conscious revision and replacement of unhelpful rules.

(Reference: Lawrence Kohlberg, “Stage and Sequence: the Cognitive Development Approach to Socialization,” in D. A. Goslin, Ed., Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, Rand-McNally, Co., Chicago, 1969, pp. 347-380.)

Above: radiation is natural and we take massive nuclear radiation doses in medicine and natural background from the environmental uranium, thorium, potassium-40, radon, carbon-14, and cosmic rays all the time, without any political moralistic diatribes about natural radiation or assertions nobody should go to the moon where the radiation level is 1 mR/hr at solar minimum, a hundred times the level on the Earth (credit: NRC). Fear-mongering hysterical exaggerations must be ended.

Lying about civil defense did not make the world safe in the 1930s. Likewise, nuclear weapons did prove a success in ending World War II, despite the attempts of popular propaganda to ignore the facts and to pretend it was a ghastly mistake.

Henry Lewis Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War during WWII, “The Decision to Use the Bomb”, Harper’s Magazine, February 1947:

“In recent months there has been much comment about the decision to use atomic bombs in attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ... from May 1, 1943, until my resignation as Secretary of War on September 21, 1945, I was directly responsible to the President for the administration of the entire undertaking ... On June 1, after its discussions with the Scientific Panel [Dr. A. H. Compton, Dr. Enrico Fermi, Dr. E. O. Lawrence, and Dr. J. R. Oppenheimer], the Interim Committee unanimously adopted the following recommendations:

(1) The bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible.

(2) It should be used on a dual target plant surrounded by or adjacent to houses and other buildings most susceptible to damage, and

(3) It should be used without prior warning [of the nature of the weapon]. [In case of a misfire or fizzle and to avoid giving Japan the warning necessary to shoot down small groups of B-29s, rather than ignoring them.] One member of the committee, Mr. Bard, later changed his view and dissented from recommendation.

“In reaching these conclusions the Interim Committee carefully considered such alternatives as a detailed advance warning or a demonstration in some uninhabited area. Both of these suggestions were discarded as impractical. They were not regarded as likely to be effective in compelling a surrender of Japan, and both of them involved serious risks. Even the New Mexico test would not give final proof that any given bomb was certain to explode when dropped from an airplane [there is always a small but real statistical risk of natural pre-initiation by cosmic ray neutrons or spontaneous fission neutrons, before a nuclear weapon core has been optimally assembled, causing a very-low yield fizzle]. Nothing would have been more damaging to our effort to obtain surrender than a warning or a demonstration followed by a dud – and this was a real possibility. Furthermore, we had no bombs to waste. It was vital that a sufficient effect be quickly obtained with the few we had. ... On June 16, 1945, after consideration of that memorandum, the Scientific Panel made a report, from which I quote the following paragraphs:

“The opinions of our scientific colleagues on the initial use of these weapons are not unanimous: they range from the proposal of a purely technical demonstration to that of the military application best designated to induce surrender. Those who advocate a purely technical demonstration would wish to outlaw the use of atomic weapons, and have feared that if we use the weapons now our position in future negotiations will be prejudiced. Others emphasize the opportunity of saving American lives by immediate military use, and believe that such use will improve the international prospects, in that they are more concerned with the prevention of war than with the elimination of this special weapon. We find ourselves closer to these latter views; we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use. ...

“In the middle of July 1945, the intelligence section of the War Department General Staff estimated Japanese military strength as follows: in the home islands, slightly under 2,000,000; in Korea, Manchuria, China proper, and Formosa, slightly over 2,000,000; in French Indochina, Thailand, and Burma, over 200,000; in the East Indies area, including the Philippines, over 500,000; in the by-passed Pacific islands, over 100,000. The total strength of the Japanese Army was estimated at about 5,000,000 men. These estimates later proved to be in very close agreement with official Japanese figures. ... The Japanese Army was in much better condition than the Japanese Navy and Air Force. ...

“We were planning an intensified sea and air blockade, and greatly intensified strategic air bombing, through the summer and early fall, to be followed on November 1 by an invasion of the southern island of Kyushu. This would be followed in turn by an invasion of the main island of Honshu in the spring of 1946. The total U.S. military and naval force involved in this grand design was of the order of 5,000,000 men; if all those indirectly concerned are included, it was larger still. We estimated that if we should be forced to carry this plan to its conclusion, the major fighting would not end until the latter part of 1946, at the earliest. I was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties, to American forces alone. Additional large losses might be expected among our allies, and, of course, if our campaign were successful and if we could judge by previous experience, enemy casualties would be much larger than our own. ...

“With these considerations in mind, I wrote a memorandum for the President, on July 2 ... Memorandum for the President. July 2, 1945 ... There is reason to believe that the operation for the occupation of Japan following the landing may be a very long, costly, and arduous struggle on our part. The terrain, much of which I have visited several times, has left the impression on my memory of being one which would be susceptible to a last ditch defense such as has been made on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and which of course is very much larger than either of those two areas. ... The Japanese are highly patriotic and certainly susceptible to calls for fanatical resistance to repel an invasion. Once started in actual invasion, we shall in my opinion have to go through with an even more bitter finish fight than in Germany. We shall incur the losses incident to such a war and we shall have to leave the Japanese islands even more thoroughly destroyed than was the case with Germany. This would be due both to the differences in the Japanese and German personal character and the differences in the size and character of the terrain through which the operations will take place. ...

“On July 28 the Premier of Japan, Suzuki, rejected the Potsdam ultimatum by announcing that it was ‘unworthy of public notice.’ In the face of this rejection we could only proceed to demonstrate that the ultimatum had meant exactly what it said ... Had the war continued until the projected invasion on November 1, additional fire raids of B-29’s would have been more destructive of life and property than the very limited number of atomic raids which we could have executed in the same period. But the atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon.

“In March 1945 our Air Force had launched its first great incendiary raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage was done and more casualties were inflicted than was the case at Hiroshima. Hundreds of bombers took part and hundreds of tons of incendiaries were dropped. Similar successive raids burned out a great part of the urban area of Japan, but the Japanese fought on. On August 6 one B‑29 dropped a single atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and the war was over. So far as the Japanese could know, our ability to execute atomic attacks, if necessary by many planes at a time, was unlimited. ... The bomb thus served exactly the purpose we intended. The peace party was able to take the path of surrender, and the whole weight of the Emperor’s prestige was exerted in favor of peace. ...

“My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which I had helped to raise. In the light of the alternatives which, on a fair estimate, were open to us I believe that no man in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face. ... As I look back over the five years of my service as Secretary of War, I see too many stern and heartrending decisions to be willing to pretend that war is anything else than what it is. The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives. ... this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice.”

U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (memorandum to President Truman on 25 April 1945, five days before Hitler's suicide in Berlin): “... it is extremely probable that the future will make it possible for atomic bombs to be constructed by smaller nations or even groups, or at least by a larger nation in a much shorter time. As a result, it is indicated that the future may see a time when such a weapon may be constructed in secret and used suddenly and effectively with devastating power by a willful nation or group against an unsuspecting nation or group of much greater size and material power. With its aid even a very powerful unsuspecting nation might be conquered within a very few days by a very much smaller one.”

This secrecy is relevant to the capabilities of Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and other states today. We cannot predict a surprise attack in detail in advance, since if we were warned, we would prevent the attack taking place. This is the basic reason why civil defense is needed before an attack. As with Pearl Harbor and other surprise attacks, preparations are needed in advance (plans to start preparations when an enemy delivers an advance warning are no use against a surprise attack). Even democratic countries like America and Britain made their decisions to make the bomb in complete secrecy without any referendum or election on the issue. In Britain's case, Roosevelt and Truman (who ordered the production and use of nuclear weapons) were Democrats, and in Britain's case nuclear weapon development was ordered in peacetime by socialist Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee in 1947, despite Britain's enormous economic deficit due to WWII. The proof that secrecy is possible is that the Hiroshima uranium-235 gun assembly nuclear weapon was never tested prior to being dropped in war (only the Nagasaki implosion type bomb was tested in New Mexico). Although America used 125,000 workers to build its Manhattan Project bomb production plants and 65,000 to operate them, this was due to enormous unnecessary redundancy (using four completely different methods, two of which were completely uneconomic) in order to guarantee having a bomb within just 4 years.




Above: Dr J. R. Oppenheimer's 11 May 1945 (over a month before the first nuclear test, and two months before the combat air bursts over Japan) memorandum on the effects of nuclear weapons to Brigadier Farrell. This disproves the notion that nuclear radiation was poorly understood: "During the detonation, radiations are emitted which (unless personnel are shielded) are expected to be injurious within a radius of a mile and lethal within a radius of about six-tenths of a mile. ... If the bomb is delivered during rain, or under conditions of such high humidity that it itself causes rain, it may be expected that most of the active material will be brought down by the rain in the vicinity of the target area." (See also this report.)

The RERF life-span study (LSS) from 1950 to 2000 for leukemia deaths and from 1958 to 1998 for solid cancer occurrence showed that for 49,204 survivors in the leukemia study group, there were an excess of 94 leukemia deaths attributed to radiation, risk of 94/49,204 or 0.191% (above the natural number of cancers in the unexposed control group), and an excess of 848 solid (tumour) cancer deaths in 44,635 survivors, a risk of 848/44,635 or 1.90%. In each case, the excess radiation cancer risk was smaller than the natural risk of 0.22% for leukemia and 15.69% for solid (tumour) cancer deaths. It is significant that the natural cancer death risk was higher than the radiation cancer death risk for both leukemia and solid tumours unless the dose exceeded about 1 Gray (100 R or 100 cGy). E.g., 48% of leukemia deaths from doses of 10-100 R were due to radiation and 52% were natural (a bigger risk than radiation). Likewise, only 16% of solid tumour cancer deaths for doses of 10-100 R were due to radiation:







Above: on 30 July 1945, Manhattan Project chief Major General L. R. Groves issued a Memorandum to Secretary of War Stimson: “The following additional conclusions have been drawn from the test in New Mexico with respect to the probable effects of the combat bomb which will be exploded about 1800 feet in the air ... To persons who are completely unshielded, gamma rays may be lethal to 3500 feet and neutrons to about 2000 feet. ... At New Mexico tanks could have gone through the immediate explosion area at normal speed within thirty minutes after the blast. With the explosion at the expected 1800 feet, we think we could move troops through the area immediately preferably by motor but on foot if desired. The units should be preceded by scouts with simple instruments. ... as we increase our rate of [plutonium] production at the Hanford Engineer Works ... the blast will be smaller due to detonation in advance of the optimum time. But in any event, the explosion should be on the order of thousands of tons. The difficulty arises from an undesirable isotope [plutonium-240, which undergoes 400 spontaneous fissions/second per gram, thus over 1,000 neutrons per gram per second, as Glasstone explains on page 12 of WASH-1037] which is created in greater quantity as the production rate increases. ... In September, we should have three or four bombs. One of these will be made from 235 material and will have smaller effectiveness, about two-thirds that of the test type, but by November we should be able to bring this up to full power. There should be either four or three bombs in October, one of the lesser size. In November there should be at least five bombs and the rate will rise to seven in December ... By some time in November, we should have the effectiveness of the 235 implosion type bomb equal to that of the tested plutonium type. ... By mid-October we could increase the number of bombs slightly by changing our design now to one using both materials in the same bomb. I have not made this change because of the ever present possibilities of difficulties in new designs. We could, if we were wise, change our plans and develop the combination bomb.”















Page 5 of volume 1, issue 2 (dated September 2011) of the U.S. Government's Defense Threat Reduction Agency's DTRIAC (Defense Threat Reduction Information Analysis Center) journal, The Dispatch (original PDF linked here, our copy is linked here in case the original DTRIAC link ever gets corrupted due to future name changes - it used to be DASIAC before becoming DTRIAC) states:

"On 11 March 2011, DTRIAC efforts at updating our understanding of radiation effects on personnel gained greater immediacy when the Tohoku earthquake precipitated a series of large tsunami waves that pounded the east coast of Japan. ...

"The DTRIAC collection contains a wealth of nuclear effects data to include radiation effects on personnel. It is for this reason DTRIAC is supporting key DTRA efforts to develop greater understanding of radiation effects, update key planning documents, and promulgate emerging research throughout the nuclear effects community. The update of EM-1, chapter 14, “Effects on Personnel,” illustrates one key initiative. In the light of the recent incident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, this revision is even timelier.

"Last updated in 1993, EM-1, chapter 14, requires expansion to capture new research and insights. Sections on combined injury, psychological effects, and modeling and simulation will be added. Our increased understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment of acute radiation sickness (ARS) as the result of time-phased appearance of radiation effects on most organ systems rather than the traditional dose-related response of the hematopoietic, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular/central nervous systems will be reflected. Because of the changing threat environment that directly targets civilian rather than military populations, the effects of demographic factors such as age, gender, and comorbidities on radiation response will be covered.

"Late effects, both stochastic (neoplastic) and deterministic (cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease as well as cataracts) will be discussed. In the past few decades the importance of the cutaneous radiation syndrome has become better understood, and a subsection will be devoted to this as well. The expanded and technically updated chapter will hopefully be of even more value to planners and medical personnel.

"Another significant undertaking is DTRIAC publishing of U.S.-funded, Russian-conducted research on long-term exposure to radiation. This singular research and resulting papers mark a significant contribution to our collective understanding of radiation effects on personnel.

"After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the United States was concerned about the potential for scientists formerly involved in the nuclear weapons program to market their expertise abroad in an effort to make a living. To prevent this, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) participated in initiating cooperative work with scientists and physicians in Russia and Kazakhstan by supporting their continuing work in related fields not involved in weaponry. One of these programs was entitled “Long-Term Evaluation of Irradiated Personnel” and involved the subject of biological effects of radiation from the Former Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program, from start (radiation exposure from fuel generation in reactors) to finish (effects of fallout from atmospheric weapons testing in Kazakhstan on the surrounding populations).

"Twenty-four scientific documents were obtained under contract with the intent to publish these documents and make them available to the worldwide scientific and medical community. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, then part of DNA, published 12 of these documents between 1994 and 1998. DTRIAC took the initiative to complete editing and publication of nine of the remaining documents from 2006 to 2008. This international collaborative effort has contributed much valuable information to scientists worldwide."


Some of the Russian nuclear test biological reports referred to have already been declassified and released in summary report DTRA-TR-07-38, as we commented in an earlier post.

The manual EM-1 is Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, a title which may be slightly off-putting to Japanese nuclear industry sentiments, although of course it is the book behind all nuclear industry data, because the radiation effects data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is based on the DS02 computer calculations of initial nuclear radiation doses for the survivors and casualties which evolved from those which were developed for this book. It's the old story of using 1950s secret nuclear weapon test data to develop and check the model used for neutron and gamma ray scattering in the atmosphere during transmission from bomb to target, with compensations for the expansion of the fireball, the hydrodynamic enhancement due to the negative blast pressure phase (following the shock front), and the cloud rise rate during the fission product gamma dose delivery (it is of course the fireball's rise which actually cuts off the initial radiation arrival rate). The original forerunner of EM-1 was published in secret during the Korean War crisis. In July 1951 the Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, U.S. Army technical manual TM 23-200, was issued as a secret-classified "special supplement to the Effects of Atomic Weapons, prepared for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory". Various "page change" revisions and new editions were released as nuclear testing provided more information. It was reclassified Secret - Restricted Data after the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, but under pressure from Britain to share H-bomb testing data, it was downgraded in November 1957 to just Confidential, and traded for British nuclear test effects data (this was prior to - and totally separate from - the major 1958 US-UK agreement to share some strategic nuclear weapon design data, the British Grapple device blueprints exchanged for the U.S. W28 warhead blueprint, etc).

The declassified November 1957 TM 23-200 Capabilities of Atomic Weapons chapter 6 on personnel casualties is linked here, and can be compared to Philip J. Dolan's later revision in the declassified DNA-EM-1 Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons personnel casualties chapter 10 linked here. The fact it was pushed back to chapter 14 in the 1993 revision of EM-1 by Harold L. Brode (editor) shows how EM-1 has become excessively massive, with 22 separate chapters in 1993 on each effect. Each chapter was becoming a book-length treatise in its own right, turning the whole thing into a multi-volume encyclopedia, which negated the original idea of being a portable and user-friendly literature summary. So, after the anti-nuclear activists had that edition declassified (leading to a silly but predictable condemnation of it in the July 1997 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) albeit with deletions of the most sensitive data) under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, John A. Northrop in 1996 edited a single handbook which compiled the key declassified equations, diagrams and tables into the Defense Special Weapons Agency's Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects: Calculational Tools Abstracted from DSWA's Effects Manual One (EM-1), sold on Amazon.com in the usual "unclassified yet limited in distribution to the American homeland only" (not for sale to the public here in the UK; despite closer proximity to Iran and Russia). Britain of course had TM 23-200 in 1957 and received Dolan's EM-1 in the 1974-dated NATO edition issued to the AWRE (AWE) and also for civil defense planning at Home Office, as Dr John McAulay explained in his Restricted-classified article "EMP in Proper Perspective", British Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch magazine Fission Fragments, issue No. 21, April 1977, page 18 (declassified in January 2008 under the 30-years-rule):

"In 1974 the US Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) issued a new 1600 page, 2 volume new edition of their classified (Restricted) document, The Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons.

"Vol. I Phenomenology has 8 chapters of which chapter 4 deals with X-ray radiation phenomena, Chapter 6 with transient radiation effects in electronics phenomena, and chapter 8 with phenomena affecting electromagnetic wave propagation.

"Vol. II Damage Criteria has Chapters 9 to 17 of which Chapter 17 deals with radio frequency signal degradation relevant to communications and radar systems."




One question is, should the revised EM-1 personnel effects chapter 14 be released in full, so that scientists outside the Pentagon and the American security-cleared defense science contractor community, can make use of the information for nuclear reactor "disaster" events, making them even safer than Chernobyl (see our earlier post for a debunking of the LNT and the deliberate thyroid nodule diagnosis "errors" hyped in the media but never corrected in the media when refuted).

After the final public (1977) edition of Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons was issued, a 493-pages long report by M. K. Drake, M. P. Fricke, D. E. Groce, D. C. Kaul, and C. J. Rindfleisch, of Science Applications, Inc., was released which provided further key vital facts: Collateral Damage, DNA-4734Z, ADA071371. We will briefly summarize these key points now. Fig. 3.18 on page 3-61 shows that the mean atomspheric visibility in Northern Europe is 0-10 km, 10-20 km, and 20-50 km for 47%, 38% and 15% of the time, respectively, so the overall mean visibility is (5*0.47)+(15*0.38)+(35*0.15) = 13 km or 8.3 statute miles, much less than the typical 50 miles visibility for the Nevada desert where "successful" thermal ignition nuclear tests were done. Page 5-34 shows that in Hiroshima, 82.9% of the burns were due solely to thermal radiation (as opposed to the firestorm), compared to 90.9% in Nagasaki. Pages 5-37 and 5-61 point out that Glasstone and Dolan's estimates for harmful direct (unscattered) thermal radiation exposure do not take account of either the angle of incidence of the target surface or the effect of smoke or ground "popcorning" dust clouds formed between the target and the fireball.

The first factor requires the thermal exposure to be reduced by the cosine of the angle of incidence of the direct thermal radiation, e.g. cos 0 = 1, while cos 90 degrees = 1. So for the mean angle averaged over one side of a human body (which is curved, not flat): cos 45 degrees = 0.707. The second factor, the dust and smoke cloud created by the early thermal radiation, is clearly visible in nuclear test films which show clouds of smoke and dust rising from the heated ground near a nuclear detonation (i.e. between target or observer, and the fireball). Most thermal instrumentation was located deliberately on high towers to avoid this effect by getting a clear view of the fireball, and the early experimental bias led to film records showing the dust obscuration (rather than the fireball) being discarded in frustration, rather than used to work out the protection factor afforded by the smoke and dust. But some records were obtained on the early Nevada tests of Operation Buster in 1951, showing that for kiloton air bursts over a desert, the smoke and dust reduced the thermal exposure at ground level by 40%. (It would be greater over a darker surface, so placing strips of black plastic below or around windows will create protective smoke screens automatically by thermal ablation.)

Pages 5-85 and 5-86 summarize vital data on glass window fragment hazards from air blast. Because glass fragments from blast broken windows are small, they attain their peak speed very rapidly and the duration of the blast wave or weapon yield has no effect on their velocities for a given peak overpressure. Hence, WWII data from conventional high explosives is also valid for nuclear weapon blast, for the case of window glass. In Britain, the death rate due to hospitalized casualties with high explosive bomb blast (V1 cruise missiles with 1 ton warheads) with glass fragment injuries was only 0.3% (reference: R. C. Bell, "An Analysis of 259 of the Recent Flying Bomb Casualties", British Medical Journal, v2, 1944, pp. 689-692). Page 5-86 of the Collateral Damage report adds:

"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. Since the lateral spread of fragments is not great, the probability of hit decreases rapidly. This was extremely evident 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 (reference: R. C. Bell, "An Analysis of 259 of the Recent Flying Bomb Casualties", British Medical Journal, v2, 1944, pp. 689-692)."

Regarding blast effects, Collateral Damage summarizes the peak blast overpressures required for a 50% risk of lethality for both standing and lying personnel, for impacts, decelerative tumbling and direct air pressure effects on the lungs, in tables 5.27 and 5.29, for weapons of various yields (from conventional 10 ton WWII block busters to nuclear yields). The worst case for standing personnel is impact with a hard surface (like a wall) after being blown along, for which there is a 50% mortality risk at 38 psi peak overpressure for 0.01 kt (10 tons), 22 psi for 0.1 kt, 14 psi for 1 kt, 9 psi for 10 kt, and 6 psi for 100 kt nuclear yield. The peak overpressures are more than doubled for a person lying prone (again for impact on a hard wall surface, the worst case scenario): 79 psi for 0.1 kt, 34 psi for 1 kt, 20 psi for 10 kt, and 12 psi for 100 kt. The reason why the pressures required get smaller for increasing bomb yield, is simply that the time-duration of the blast wave at a fixed peak overpressure increases in proportion to the cube-root of the weapon yield. The longer blast wave at higher yields means that the blast wind blows longer, and accelerates a heavy object to a higher peak velocity before it passes by. A person standing on open terrain (no impact) will merely suffer from "decelerative tumbling", like someone falling from a moving vehicle or motorcycle. The body tends to roll along, minimising injury, or "skipping", as explained on page 5-99:

"If the angle of impact is low, the body will be able to 'skip' along the surface, releasing kinetic energy in a number of impacts and thus minimizing the seriousness of each blow."



Tables 5.27 and 5.29 show that a person standing in open terrain requires a peak overpressure of 68 psi for 50% mortality by decelerative tumbling from 0.1 kt, 33 psi for 1 kt, 21 psi for 10 kt, and 15 psi for 100 kt nuclear yield. But if the person is lying down, over 100 psi is needed for 0.1-1 kt, 43 psi is needed for 10 kt, and 24 psi for 100 kt. For 50% risk of mortality due to direct pressure effects on a person lying prone (radial to ground zero, i.e. either facing towards or away from the explosion), 74 psi is needed for 0.01 kt, 68 psi for 0.1 kt, 64 psi for 1 kt, 63 psi for 10 kt, and 62 psi for 100 kt. Conclusion: simply lying down affords immense protection against blast winds, which blow horizontally.

Table 4.2 on page 4-4 shows that the mean nuclear radiation protection factors for Northern European (e.g. West German) above ground residences are 4.6 for neutrons, and 10.6 for fission product gamma rays (not including the immense benefit Dr Carl F. Miller documents in USNRDL-466 due to low energy Np-239 and U-237 gamma rays which are easier to shield against in H-bomb fallout as explained by Dr Terry Triffet on page 205 of the unclassified June 1959 congressional hearings).

In Hiroshima, some people surviving in concrete buildings near ground zero had glass fragments injuries and were blown over, losing consciousness while the firestorm developed, but still managed to survive. For example, Akiko Takakura survived in the Bank of Japan, about 300 metres from ground zero in Hiroshima, and was knocked unconscious by the blast and received over 100 lacerations to her back from flying glass. By the time she recovered consciousness, it was too late to escape the firestorm, and she received flame burns while staying beside a water pool in the firestorm: “We first thought to escape to the parade grounds, but we couldn’t because there was a huge sheet of fire in front of us. So instead, we squatted down in the street next to a big water pool for fighting fires, which was about the size of this table.”

Irving L. Janis points out in his book Air war and emotional stress, McGraw-Hill, N.Y., 1951, pp. 37-38, that only one instance of hazardous mass panic was recorded after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, where a group of survivors near a river at Asano Park during the firestorm crowded towards the edge of the water and some of the people at the edge were pushed into the river. This conforms with the evidence from other mass bombing air raids during WWII, where few examples of hazardous panic occurred during actual enemy attacks, although media fear-mongering hysteria over radiation in 1987 has been observed to make 5,000 unexposed people display the symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea, and even rashes around the face and neck:

“Prior to World War II, the British government assumed that German bombing raids would produce [mass panic] as did U.S. Civil Defense planners in the 1950s. However, an extensive literature review of bombing raids on England, Germany, and Japan found little evidence of mass panic incidents. [Irving L. Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, RAND Corporation/McGraw-Hill, 1951] ... The power of the mass media to create or magnify mass anxiety has been demonstrated by numerous incidents. ... The most dramatic example is the radiological contamination incident in Goiania, Brazil, in 1987. Scavengers removed a cesium-137 source from an abandoned radiotherapy clinic and dismantled it for scrap metal. ... Only 249 people were contaminated; but to discover them, 112,000 people were screened for radioactive contamination in the first 2 weeks and a total of 125,800 were screened over a 7-month period. Of the first 60,000 screened, 5,000 had symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea, and rashes around the face and neck. Although these symptoms are consistent with acute radiation sickness, none of the symptomatic people were contaminated. [J. Petterson, “Perception vs. reality of radiological impact: the Goiania model”, Nuclear News v 31, 1988, pp. 84-90.] In the Persian Gulf War, Iraq attacked Israel with Scud missiles. Initially, there was concern that the missiles would contain nerve agent. In a study of people reporting to the emergency room at hospitals in Israel following the initial missile attack, there were 22 people physically injured, 172 psychological casualties, and 171 who injected themselves with atropine for fear that the missiles contained nerve agent.19 Thus, less than 10% of the casualties in the initial missile attack suffered from a physical injury. [A. Bleich, et al., “Psychiatric implications of missile attacks on a Civilian population”, JAMA, v. 268 (1992), pp. 613-5.]”

- LTC Ross H. Pastel, “Collective Behaviors: Mass Panic and Outbreaks of Multiple Unexplained Symptoms”, Military Medicine, Vol. 166 (2001) Supplement 2, pp. 44-46. (ADA400319).

The Bethnal Green Tube disaster in London on 3 March 1943, where 172 people including 62 children were killed in a stampede inside a badly designed, poorly-lit, underground shelter entrance, was a "friendly fire" incident and was not due an enemy air-raid, but instead by the incompetently "secret" testing of very noisy anti-aircraft missiles in nearby Victoria Park. (Bethnal Green Tube station was used purely as an air raid shelter during WWII.) One woman carrying a baby fell over at the an unlit bottom of the narrow stairwell, causing the people behind to trip and fall over them, which blocked the entrance while other people continued to enter in panic as the rockets were fired. The shelter entrance was immediately redesigned and the lighting improved to prevent the tragedy occurring again, as explained in the U.K. Government official World War II history by Terence O'Brien, Civil Defence, H.M. Stationery Office, 1955 (linked here).

“We have shown that common estimates of weapon effects that calculate a ‘radius’ for thermal radiation are clearly misleading for surface bursts in urban environments. In many cases only a few unshadowed vertical surfaces, a small fraction of the area within a thermal damage radius, receive the expected heat flux.”

– R. E. Marrs, W. C. Moss, and B. Whitlock, Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Detonations in Urban Environments, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCRL-TR-231593, June 2007, page 11.







Above: the Secret-classified May 1947 report No. 92, volume 2, pages 4-6, of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, on the cause of the Hiroshima firestorm, has never been published, and when it is published it will discredit the Stalin-deterring claims in their published propaganda documents, alleging that the firestorm was due to thermal radiation fires, when in fact it was due instead to the overturning of obsolete charcoal braziers in obsolete, overcrowded city-centre wooden housing slums (shown burned down in the many propaganda photos), something irrelevant for all modern cities today:

“Six persons who had been in reinforced-concrete buildings within 3,200 feet [975 m] of air zero [i.e., (9752 - 6002)1/2 = 770 m or 2,500 feet ground range] 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....”

America tested the first nuclear weapon on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico, three weeks before Hiroshima. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions were timed by U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to coincide with the expiration of Stalin's deadline for the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan. At the 4-11 February 1945 Yalta Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed (in return for Sakhalin and Kurile Islands) that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within 3 months of Germany's surrender, which occurred on 8 May 1945, causing Stalin to declare war on Japan on 8 August 1945. The triple effect of the Soviet Union declaring war and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced an "unconditional surrender" end to the war (Japan's Emperor was permitted to remain). President Truman warned Japan that every single city in Japan would be flattened or burned down with incendiaries if they continued the war:




There is a gradually growing interest in facts, rather than groupthink propaganda and delusional hubris against life-saving civil defense countermeasures:

“The promulgation of unrealistic estimates does the government and the general population a great disservice. People should not be persuaded to believe that a terrorist-initiated nuclear attack is the end of the world. ... People tend to rise to the challenge in adverse situations, but they give up in situations perceived as hopeless. ... Appeasement seldom works in the long term and even appeasement will not prevent every possible attack.”

- Robert C. Harney, “Inaccurate Prediction of Nuclear Weapons Effects and Possible Adverse Influences on Nuclear Terrorism Preparedness”, Homeland Security Affairs, volume V, No. 3, September 2009, pp. 1-19 (quotation from pp. 17-18).

“... before World War II, for example, many of the staffs engaged in estimating the effects of bombing overestimated by large amounts. This was one of the main reasons that at the Munich Conference, and earlier occasions, the British and the French chose appeasement ... Many people object to air and civil defense, not because they underestimate the problem, but because they overestimate it. They think there is nothing significant that can be done to alleviate the consequences ...”

- Herman Kahn, testimony to the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 86th Congress, 22-26 June 1959, Part 1, at pages 883 and 943. (Very large 139 MB PDF file; too large to open directly in most browsers.)

“The benefits of training are confirmed by the remarkable experiences of nine persons who survived the Hiroshima bombing and then fled to Nagasaki in time for the second atomic bomb. They remembered very well what they had done that allowed them to live, and they quickly instructed others in Nagasaki: “Yamaguchi's lecture on A-bomb precautions, he pointed out later, was not lost upon his colleagues. With the young designer's words still fresh in their minds [at the time of the second bombing] they leaped for the cover of desks and tables. “As a result,” said Yamaguchi, “my section staff suffered the least in that building. In other sections there was a heavy toll of serious injuries from flying glass.” (Reference: R. Trumbull, Nine who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1957.)”

- Dr G. Andrew Mickley, “Psychological Factors in Nuclear Warfare”, Chapter 8 in Textbook of Military Medicine; Part I, Warfare, Weaponry, and the Casualty; Volume 2: Medical Consequences of Nuclear Warfare, U.S. Army, 1989, pp. 184-5.

After studying hundreds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, Dr. Irving L. Janis reported that the bright flash arriving at light speed ahead of the blast wave allowed them to take evasive action in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a fact ignored in computer models of blast casualties (Psychological Effects of Atomic Bombing, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Publication No. L54-134, 14 May 1954, page 4):

“A substantial proportion of the survivors reacted automatically to the brilliant flash of the A-bomb as a danger signal, even though they knew nothing about the existence of atomic weapons at that time. Some who were not located near ground zero took prompt action – such as falling to a prone position – which minimized exposure to the blast and to the secondary heat waves. In many other cases, however, the opportunity to minimize the danger was missed because the individual remained fixed or because the action which was taken proved to be inappropriate.”

Following this up, Robert Trumbull’s Nine who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki (E. P. Dutton and Co., N.Y., 1957) interviewed nine of the sixteen who survived both/ of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions (by travelling to Nagasaki immediately after surviving at Hiroshima). The double-survivor Takejira Nishioka (a newspaper publisher) observed in Hiroshima that the blast wave was delayed after the flash, and, being friends with the Governor of Nagasaki Prefecture, tried (but failed) to get permission to send out a warning prior to the Nagasaki nuclear attack that people can avoid being knocked down or hit by horizontally-blasted window glass and debris if they duck and cover on seeing the very bright visible flash.

The advice was experimentally verified in the 37 kt Plumbbob-Priscilla nuclear test of 1957, where a standing dummy and a lying dummy were actually filmed being hit by a 5.3 psi peak overpressure blast wave. The lying dummy was completely unmoved, but the standing dummy was accelerated to 21 ft/s in just 0.5 seconds, and blasted a distance of 22 feet. However, in humans the feet rotate forward (because the centre of the body mass is above mid-height) so the only risk to the head is from the vertical fall, and even this is delayed for the blast duration, giving at least 0.5 second of extra time to use the arms to protect the head. Even in the 43.7 kt Plumbbob-Smoky nuclear test where the dummies were subject to the “precursor” (desert sandstorm blast wave) with a very much higher dynamic pressure impulse, the lying dummy was still only blown half the distance of the standing one.

In 1948, R. H. A. Liston predicted theoretically that a typical standing 76 kg man with a drag coefficient of 0.8 would be hurled 20 feet by a peak overpressure of 7 psi from a 20 kt nuclear detonation. The displacement is roughly proportional to the square of the peak overpressure, due to the dynamic pressure (wind pressure) effect. (R. H. A. Liston, The kinematic effect of blast on a man in the open, ARE Report 1/48, also FWE-224, 1949.)

Because the overpressure of a blast wave immediately engulfs small objects like a man or a glass window fragment, they are not accelerated by overpressure, but by the wind drag force or dynamic pressure. If ground friction is ignored (for standing posture), the dynamic pressure q exerts the force F = ACq (where A is the exposed area and C = 0.8 is the drag coefficient) which is equal to the inertial force ma (Newton’s 2nd law), so: F = ACq = ma. Rearranging this equation gives the acceleration: a = ACq/m, and integrating this acceleration over time (the blast duration) gives a maximum velocity of: v = ACIdynamic/m where Idynamic is the well-known “dynamic pressure impulse” (simply the dynamic pressure integrated over time). American studies designate the term AC/m as the “acceleration coefficient” (0.0061 m2/kg for a standing person or 0.0041 m2/kg for a 4.5 kg rock). But in a built-up area, most people will never even reach this peak velocity, because they will be stopped by obstructions after typically 10 ft, before they have been accelerated to that velocity. Therefore, the injuries will be less serious, due to the reduced velocity at the time of impact.

On 27 September 1956 dummy men were exposed to the 15 kt Buffalo-1 nuclear test at Maralinga (similar yield to Hiroshima). Dummies standing facing the burst were blown 0.35ppsi2 feet, where p is peak overpressure in psi. But the dummies lying facing radially towards or away from ground zero were only blown 10% of this distance, because of (1) the smaller area exposed to the blast wind and dust, and (2) the greater area in contact with the ground, providing frictional resistance against drag. Reference: W. J. H. Butterfield, E. G. Hardy and E. R. Drake Seager, The effects of blast on dummy men exposed in the open, Operation Buffalo, Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, report AWRE-T2/59, 1959 National Archives documents DEFE 16/165. See also report FWE-135, 1957. This was substantiated at the 6 kt Antler-2 nuclear test in 1957 (reference: A. R. F. Martin, The effects of blast on dummies and scout cars, Operation Antler, report AWRE-T6/59, ES 5/270, 1959). See also the research on the reduced blast displacement of lying dummies exposed to large conventional explosions: DASA 2710, illustration below.



For a person lying down facing the burst, the blast winds will be deflected over the person, thus pushing the person downwards and increasing the contact friction between the person and the ground. Gutters, ditches, walls, trees, and telegraph poles can be used to avoid air drag displacement and thermal radiation.

Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons gives a graph which predicts that a 75 kg human at an initial velocity v m/s will tumble a distance along the ground of 0.18v1.57 metres taking a time of 0.40v0.61 seconds. On 22 December 1942, Harry Griffiths, a 20-year-old pilot, dropped 6 metres from an aircraft travelling at 160 km/hour over the snow and ice frozen Lake St Louis. He survived with just cuts and bruises. Glasstone and Dolan predict a 70 metres skidding distance taking 5.34 seconds. Once a person is in contact with the ground, friction will rapidly reduce the person’s velocity. If the person is stopped too quickly, injury occurs by collision. A person displaced should therefore try to curl up into a ball, pulling the limbs in and covering the head with the arms, and prepare to be slowed gradually by rolling and bouncing along. The instinct to extend the limbs to regain balance may lead to more serious injuries. The report by I. G. Bowen, D. R. Richmond and C. S. White, Translational Effects of Blast Waves, “Minutes of the Tripartite Technical Cooperation Program, Panel N-1, Sub-group N, 14-16 March 1963”, Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 11 March 1963, states on page 39 shows that the acceleration coefficient for a 76 kg human lying prone aligned with the blast wind is only 12% (0.0063 fts/lb) of that for the same human standing facing the blast (0.052 fts/lb). Page 57 shows that 77% or 23/30 goats survived a blast wave which gave them a velocity of 51-78 ft/sec and a decelerative tumbling displacement of 59-151 ft over grassland. (The proxy of goats in blast displacement was compared to human dummies in the 0.5 kt 1964 Snowball test, see report DASA-1859.)

In 1957, at the 11 kt Plumbbob-Galileo nuclear test (500 ft tower) in the Nevada test site, the debris hazard was scientifically determined. A wall 64 inches (5’ 4”) high, 40 ft long, and 7.5 inches thick was built from 34 lb concrete blocks, facing the blast wave head-on. The wall was hit by a blast wave peak overpressure of 8.7 psi and 0.58 seconds positive phase duration. The geometric mean velocity of the wall debris was 9.75 m/s, and the geometric mean mass of each fragment was 615 grams. While these could cause injury (particularly to standing personnel, who expose a maximum area to flying debris), their mean kinetic energy of E = mv2/2 = 29 Joules is unlikely to prove lethal. A 70 kg person jumping 3 feet (0.914 m) receives a non-fatal impact energy of E = mgh = 70*9.81*0.914 = 630 Joules. The flash of light preceding the blast wave enables evasive action to be taken, getting the head down to avoid flying debris.

Recently declassified and de-limited reports on thermal radiation burns at nuclear tests

Philip J. Dolan Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons DNA-EM-1, 1972, in chapter 10, page 10, states that pain produced by intense thermal radiation provides "a useful tool in warning an individual to evade the thermal pulse."


How much thermal flash radiation does it take to cause dangerous burns? Glasstone and Dolan's unclassified 1977 Effects of Nuclear Weapons is completely contradictory and obfuscating (giving a photo of a Hiroshima soldier surviving thermal burns stated elsewhere to be virtually certain of causing lethal shock) while the still-widely-used 1979 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War lies outright that 7 cal/cm2 is lethal.

Nuclear weapon test report WT-9 was written by Professor Herman E. Pearse of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and was classified Secret in 1951. Which was a shame, because it provided some answers and a debunking of the New England Journal of Medicine nuclear-exaggerations tradition. You see, Pearse had written the first nuclear-exaggerating article in the New England Journal of Medicine, an lavishly illustrated article called "Mechanical and Thermal Injury from the Atomic Bomb", in volume 241, 27 October 1949, pages 647-53. The article claimed falsely that the 70,000 burns survivors (40,000 of which were serious burns) in Hiroshima where people were taken by surprise (going outside or standing near windows to watch the B-29 actually drop the bomb) would destroy America because one single 40% burned gasoline burns patient in 1947 required miles of bandages and gallons of blood plasma. The lie was, of course, that a nuclear bomb is like the 9/11 aircraft and floods every building and every person's clothing with tons of gasoline before ignition. Not so. Pearse was duly shipped out to Eniwetok Atoll with 9 collaborators and a lot of pigs in 1951, courtesy of Uncle Sam, to see the real flash burns danger from the world's then-smallest deliverable nuclear bomb, 47 kt Greenhouse-Easy (detonated atop a 300 ft tower on Enjebi Island, a 2700 lb, 40 inch diameter, 92 point implosion B-5 bomb, with composite plutonium-oralloy core) and the world's first ever small-scale external fusion nuclear bomb, 225 kt Greenhouse-George (detonated atop a 200 ft tower on Eberiru Island, George Gamow's cylindrical implosion 8 ft diameter, 2 ft thick torus).

His report is only now publically available, sixty years later: Herman E. Pearse, Harry D. Kingsley, John A. Schilling, Lewis Hogg (Jr.), and Robert M. Blakney, Thermal Radiation Injury, Scientific Director's Report on Atomic Weapons Tests at Eniwetok, 1951, Operation Greenhouse, Weapon Test Report WT-9, University of Rochester, New York, October 1951, Secret - Security Information, ADA296858. Anesthetized pigs were used which were selected to have a skin response to thermal radiation which correlated closely to human skin.

BARE SKIN BURNS DATA, OPERATION GREENHOUSE, 1951, REPORT WT-9:

Table 3.13 shows that the 47 kt Easy test produced:

no burns at all in 6 pigs exposed to 3.6 +/- 0.3 cal/cm2,

while for the 8 pigs exposed to 5.6 +/- 0.3 cal/cm2 2 had no burns, and 6 only had 1st degree burns (sunburn).

A further 6 pigs exposed to 6.9 +/- 0.5 cal/cm2 gave 1 with 1st degree burns, 3 with 2nd degree (blisters) and 2 with 3rd degree burns.


For the 225 kt George test:

5 pigs exposed to 6.3 +/- 0.6 cal/cm2 gave 1 with no burns and 4 with merely 1st degree burns (sunburn),

while for the 9 pigs exposed to 9.1 +/- 0.7 cal/cm2, 1 had no burns, 3 had 1st degree burns (sunburn), and the other 5 had 2nd degree burns (blisters).


SKIN BURN PROTECTION BY CLOTHING, OPERATION GREENHOUSE, REPORT WT-9:

On page 30 of WT-9, Pearse reveals that no burns occurred at 9.1 +/- 0.7 cal/cm2 from the 225 kt George nuclear explosion, for pigs dressed in "herringbone twill, sateen, and serge, with and without underwear."

These findings don't exactly substantiate the 1979 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report The Effects of Nuclear War which alleges that 6.7 cal/cm2 is lethal, despite the photo in Glasstone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1977 of a Hiroshima soldier at 1.23 mile from ground zero, who survived that with fairly minimal injury, due to a simple tunic and cap:



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 and this data on the date and distance are taken directly from 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. Whether this is a "error", a "deterrence enhancing cover-up", or "politically correct Cold War propaganda", it is unhelpful for civil defense planning and advice in a nuclear terrorism disaster. What is needed is reliable data today. By the first-aid "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).

But the cover-up story gets worse, much much worse! The experiments didn't end in 1951. The reports go on through every series of nuclear tests, with increasing secrecy and an increasing gap between the secret literature data and the unclassified handouts from the Pentagon to the public and civil defense officials, like Glasstone's 1957-77 Effects of Nuclear Weapons.

Professor Pearse never published these secret nuclear weapon test results in medical journals, so the public remained duped on the thermal burns. He didn't withdraw his 1949 paper of falsehoods from the New England Journal of Medicine or inform the journal editors, who continue to print scare stories claiming that Glasstone's data for bare skin burns for skin at normal incidence to a nuclear fireball in an unobstructed radial line to the fireball, is somehow realistic and to be correlated with the fact that in peacetime accidents, even using hundreds or thousands pints of blood plasma and a hundred thousand specialist burns nurses for a single fatally burned petroleum-soaked automobile accident victim, the person will still die. (The New England Journal of Medicine later published the falsehood that the non-nuclear WWII incendiary firestorm in the medieval 5 story wooden building area of Hamburg has some relevance to modern cities with buildings containing concrete and steel construction, and fire sprinkler systems. This is "clever" propaganda, because most people simply don't understand that an incendiary bomb burns longer than a nuclear explosion fireball lasts, and thus has a better chance of actually igniting something in a building in a real city, which isn't in the tinder-dry Nevada desert, but is usually built around a river, ocean or lake.) Instead Pearse and Kingsley continued publishing completely obfuscating and misleading articles in unclassified journals, such as "Thermal Burns from the Atomic Bomb" in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics, vol. 98, pp. 385-94, Jan-June 1954, which fails to mention even the existence of the real nuclear test data from WT-9, instead giving useless "data" from laboratory burns which did not have the same pulse shape, thermal radiation spectrum, or any other feature of the thermal pulse from a nuclear explosion.

At Operation Upshot-Knothole in the Nevada in 1953, J. F. Oesterling led project 8.5, Degree and Extent of Burns Under Service Clothing which resulted in the secret report WT-770, Thermal Radiation Protection Afforded Test Animals by fabric Assemblies:

"Of the several summer and winter uniform assemblies evaluated at shots 9 (32 kt Harry) and 10 (15 kt Grable), two exhibited substantial degrees of protection, one of the assemblies, the four-layer temperate, provided protection against thermal burns up to 83 cal/cm2."

So the 1979 claim that 6.7 cal/cm2 is lethal is "slightly misleading"!

What about the soaking of clothing by gasoline like automobile accident victims, which the good old New England Journal of Medicine articles assume also occurs with a nuclear bomb? It's convenient to draw a false analogy with being soaked in burning petrol, you see, because it's so much harder to put the flames out by rolling on the ground or beating the flames out with your arms. Hiroshima lesson:

U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Medical Division, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Health and Medical Services in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, March 1947, page 25:

“A few secondary burns resulted from primary flaming of clothing but many people reported such instances in which they were able to beat the fires out without sustaining burns of the underlying skin.”


Also:

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 17: “Uninfected burns healed promptly without any unusual clinical features ... 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 ...”

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. ... 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.”


See also the detailed discussion of easily rolling out nuclear bomb flash ignited clothing in Mass burns: proceedings of a workshop, 13-14 March 1968, where 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."


We reviewed this Mass Burns report in full detail last year in the earlier blog post linked here, which also points out the modern field-tested development of plastic kitchen wrap as an emergency countermeasure to speed up burn recovery by reducing the serious risk burns wounds infection and fallout/dust/debris contamination risk, for civil defense rescue workers and first air workers. Most of the horror stories of burns come from the lethal shock which is not a brain reaction but is simply due to fluid loss with full depth skin injury due to 3rd degree skin destruction: the human body is 70% water at a temperature 37 C so it quickly cools and also dries out due to fluid evaporation - leading to a serious fall in body and therefore severe shock - if large areas of skin are destroyed, unless the burned areas are covered with a an evaporation-proof wrapping to reduce the evaporation of fluid.

It is the combination of evaporation of fluid with the cooling of the body due to the evaporation of water from burned tissue, which causes lethal shock. The old "groupthink" medical establishment dogma was to leave the burns wounds uncovered to maximise infection, fluid loss, cooling, shock, and then try to "compensate" by a saline drip, morphine pain-killer, and also pumping in gallons of blood plasma, plus a heavy dose of broad-spectrum antibiotics. The result for large area burns was invariably painful death, after a huge, expensive, and demanding course of treatment. Some of these "doctors" would then use this false "example" in "peer-reviewed" bogus papers: see link here to Jane Orient's article, "Homeland Security for Physicians", Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 11 Number 3 Fall 2006, p. 75, for a published paper which has a discussion of the terrible editorial scams involved. The lesson is that poor treatment and failure with a gasoline soaked peacetime burns victim is somehow as a "proof" that we must surrender to terrorism. No journalist in the mass-media has the guts to confront the New England Medical Journal on this falsehood.

The more realistic solution for civil defense is to cover the full-depth burns wounds with plastic to stop evaporation, infection, cooling, shock, and to avoid the need for massive medical resources per patient in a mass-casualty situation. An even more realistic solution would be to debunk the lies and inform the public of the credible scientific facts on how they can prevent burns in a nuclear terrorism attack. The medical establishment concentrates far too much on trying to deal with preventable problems, and not enough on telling people how to avoid them.

On page 272 of Mass Burns, Dr Eric Wolman of the Committee on Fire Research, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, gave the reason to discredit groupthink anti-civil defense nuclear effects delusions:

"... 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 precisely why the public needs to understand the truth about the effects of nuclear weapons, before nuclear terrorism occurs.

HAROLD L. BRODE ON FIRESTORM DELUSIONS

Dr Harold L. Brode intelligently explained the actual evidence on the problems of trying to start a firestorm in his RAND Corporation paper P-2745, AD0414345, Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Explosions, August 1963, pages 17-19:

“We have all had the frustrating experience of trying to light a fire with green, moist, or wet wood. Just as wet wood can’t be easily induced to burn, so thick combustibles are not easily ignited. ... Modern plastics tend to smoke and boil – to ablate but not to ignite in sustained burning – while paper trash burns readily. ... Outside the region of extensive blast damage, fires in trash piles, in dry palm trunks, in roof shingles, in auto and household upholstery, drapes, or flammable stores are normally accessible and readily controllable. By the very fact that these fires start from material exposed to the incident light, they can be easily spotted [unlike incendiary bombs falling through house roofs into loft spaces, inaccessible or unnoticed until too late in WWII firestorm air-raids] ...

“The firestorms of Hamburg and Dresden were ... more akin to a bonfire, and the conditions for it are those required for a bonfire. In a bonfire, the rising column of hot air sets up a draft which fans the fire, but at the same time contains it. If there is appreciable surface wind, then the rising column of hot air is swept off and the brisk up-draft is destroyed. A firestorm like the bonfire must have reasonably still air, must have ample fuel, and must have a good start, i.e., the fuel must be burning all over at about the same time.

“Hamburg and Dresden were first bombed with high explosives to break up buildings and then seeded with vast numbers of small fire bombs. ... But this nuclear super-match to light the fires cannot cause a firestorm where there is insufficient fuel or where the topography or weather interferes with the other bonfire requirements. Nagasaki did not develop a firestorm.”

Plumbbob-Priscilla, 1957

What happens from 1957 onwards is that pigs are anesthetized and strapped down prior to a nuclear test and thus unable to roll out the flames, then filmed being slowly burned because they are unable to roll the flames out. The results are then photographed and alleged to have something to do with nuclear weapons effects on human beings. It is not explained why anybody would use a nuclear bomb against people who have been tied down and are unable to roll the flames out. There is a "reductionist error", therefore, in weapon test reports WT-1440 and WT-1441 showing the effects of Plumbbob-Priscilla, 1957, on pigs in uniforms. If you are able to capture the enemy and tie them down, you are unlikely to waste a nuclear bomb on them. Apparently the logic was that the "scientific" thing to do was a highly-artificial highly-controlled experiment, in which pigs were unable to roll out the ignited clothing. These contrived, unnatural and unrealistic results from animals slowly burned to death due to being unable to roll the flames out from trivial ignitions of the surface of clothing facing the fireball, were then used to argue that clothing gives "ambiguous" protection, and for "safety" the protection from clothing must be discounted.

Some interesting data on skin temperature rises from known thermal radiation exposures was obtained at the largest Nevada atmospheric nuclear test, 74 kt Plumbbob-Hood. Report WT-1441 (AD360876) Tables 3.6 and 3.7 show that 16.3 cal/cm2 from Hood caused surface temperature peak rises of 75-81 C for bare light colour skin and 113-114 C for bare dark colour skin, while 4.0 cal/cm2 from Hood caused a 25.2-25.8 C temperature peak rise for bare light skin and a 40 C peak rise for bare dark skin. Table 3.2 in the same report shows that 17.5 cal/cm2 from the 10 kt Plumbbob-Wilson nuclear test caused a 95 C peak temperature rise for bare light skin, and 116 C rise for bare dark skin. Note that 10 kt Wilson had a final thermal pulse peak at 0.11 second after burst, compared to 0.27 second for 74 kt Hood: the longer the time the thermal energy is spread out over, the smaller the peak temperature produced (because surface heat is dissipated into larger volume in the extra time, giving a smaller amount of energy per unit mass, and consequently a smaller temperature rise). Page 12 of the report states that 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns result from temperature rises of 20, 25 and 35 C, respectively. This seems to be the basis of the thermal burns curves in Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons (which gives no specific literature references).

Page 49 of the Mass Burns symposium:

Dr Edward L. Alpen (U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory): “About this question of the spectral dependence of radiant energy, I think Dr Haynes may have given you the impression that [easily scattered] white light does the trick. There is later work which tends to refute that. ... When you subdivide the spectrum, the most effective energy in producing a flash burn is the infrared above about 1.2 microns.”

This is important because it explains the line-of-sight effects from unscattered infrared radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; scattered radiation is entirely visible light because only the fireball region is hot enough to emit infrared radiation. Infrared radiation is absorbed very easily by water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is not scattered appreciably. Therefore, scattered radiation is not a source for significant flash burns, unless a cloud is so close to the fireball that it is engulfed and heats up to a similar temperature, so that it can radiate burn-causing infrared radiation. In an case, atmospheric water vapour (humidity) cuts the infrared radiation intensity down very rapidly with increasing distance from a nuclear explosion.

Animal data from the 400 kt Russian nuclear test of 12 August 1953

V. A. Logachev and L. A. Mikhalikhina's report, Animal Effects from Soviet Atmospheric Nuclear Tests, U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DTRA-TR-07-38, December 2007, is all useless apart from the 400 kt thermonuclear test of 12 August 1953, because the remainder of the Russian nuclear weapons test data is lumped into large yield ranges and distance ranges of data from many tests, making it too vague to be useful. (There also seem to be unit conversion errors regarding peak overpressures.) However, the 400 kt test of 1953 is the only nuclear test in its category, so the effects are specific for this test in tables 2, 3, 12, 19 and 20 of the report, which shows that 100% (all 6 animals) exposed to 8-10 cal/cm2 survived blast, thermal and initial nuclear radiation, and only 3 out of 27 animals (11%) exposed to 15-26 cal/cm2 outdoors from this test were killed by blast and thermal radiation effects (13 others in the 27 had nuclear radiation sickness symptoms). Page 14 of the report adds that: "After this shot, lethality of animals on the ground surface was observed within a radius of 2 km. The boundary of the light injury zone was about 3.2 km."

The report also notes on page 57 that after the first Russian nuclear test (22 kt tower detonation, 29 August 1949), the nuclear radiation dose in an IS-3 tank at 500 metres ground range was 85 R (for this data, the report cites V. A. Logachev's article, "Neutron Bomb", in the Soviet Union's Military Review, 1978, No. 1, pp. 115-118). Since this was a carbon-copy of the Trinity American test, the free-field radiation dose is known so the protection factor is determinable.

Smoke screen technology against thermal flash burns and fires from 15 kt Grable nuclear test

At the 15 kt Grable nuclear test in 1953 (a nuclear cannon shell detonated 524 ft above the ground), a smoke screen of 3.8 grams of smoke per square metre was laid down to the east of ground zero using 175 standard smoke pots located 200-300 ft from ground zero, 3 minutes before detonation. The results are of interest for civil defense and also for military protection (smoke screen generators are an ancient military technology, with tanks and soldiers regularly equipped with a variety of very efficient smoke generators for camouflage purposes). The report is by Elmer H. Engquist and Charles W. Forsthoff, Protection Afforded by Operational Smoke Screens Against Thermal Radiation, Operation Upshot-Knothole, Project 8.4-1, WT-768, March 1954, ADA995215.

Grable smoke screen result: at a slant distance of 2238 ft fro the bomb (2166 ft from ground zero) the free-field thermal exposure of 57.5 +/- 5.0 cal/cm2 was reduced to just 0.8 +/- 0.1 cal/cm2 due to the smoke screen east of ground zero (there was no smoke screen to the west due to other experiments). Hence, this simple and not very thick smoke screen stopped 98.6 +/- 0.3 % of the thermal radiation, despite the fact that the wind blew it about and partly dispersed it in the 3 minutes prior to detonation! Smoke screens work as a simple protection against thermal burns and firestorms for wooden buildings with no fire sprinkler systems, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would be possible to cheaply use the same type of smoke screen generators employed on military tanks, in combination with ordinary building fire sprinkler systems, to prevent any fire damage in attacks, if the smoke generators were automated to produce a smoke screen directly outside the windows of school classrooms and offices when an imminent nuclear attack warning was given. Alternatively, window blinds could be closed automatically by suitable electronic devices upon an attack warning signal, or maybe even upon the receipt the EMP and the first flash peak (if the system was fast enough to cut out most of the thermal flash pulse).

The previous post on this blog is highly pertinent to this post, in the sense that we're up against the same kind of deluded "ethical ends-justify-the-lying" from your typical burns specialist who has seen plenty of road accident gasoline soaked burns casualties plus a few Hollywood "nuclear weapons" scare movies, yet are considered experts on nuclear phenomenology, flash burns, civil defense, firestorm risks, etc., by the popular media. It's impossible to overcome peer-review politics on this subject, the bias is just too great. Peer-review politics can be trusted to weed out all the facts, leaving just falsehoods that fit into CND propaganda, like the falsehoods of CND's pro-USSR-"World Peace Council"-propaganda book, Civil Defence: The Cruellest Confidence Trick. Anyone who points out the lies is attacked by the ideologues with a self-righteous arrogant fury against factual information.








Above: overcrowding of highly inflammable wooden houses led to both the 1923 Toyko great fire (caused by an earthquake), and the fires due to efficient incendiary bombing during World War II. "Built-upness" is the percentage of land area actually covered by buildings, and was over 40% in the over-crowded wooden housing areas of Hiroshima where the firestorm began after the blast wave overturned burning charcoal braziers in blast damaged wooden houses. The average inflammable fuel loading over the entire Hiroshima firestorm area was 8 lb/ft2, compared to 32 lb/ft2 reported by H. Brunswig for the Hammerbrook area of the Hamburg fire storm, which had a "built-upness" of up to 67% (AD0616638, original document pages 30-31). Some of the people outdoors (which included many people commuting to work, 15,000 school children, 40,000 soldiers, thousands of Korean "guests" and some prisoners of war) at 8:15 am in Hiroshima, 6 August 1945, were actually tearing down some of the overcrowded, paper screen and bamboo furnishings-filled wooden houses, to try to create "firebreak areas" in the city against the incendiary bombing threat which had been threatened in public broadcasts by President Truman. The small, narrow firebreaks are shown on the USSBS map below:


Jerald E. Hill, Problems of Fire in Nuclear Warfare, RAND Paper P-2414, AD673703, 1961, page 5:

"A survey of 11 Japanese cities indicated that for residential areas with 45% built-upness, 72% of the exposed areas burned. With 30.6% built-upness, 46% burned, and with 15.5% built-upness, 20% burned."

The overcrowding simply increased the probability of primary ignitions spreading to other houses (secondary ignitions) by wind-carried fire-brands, before survivors could put the flames out with sand-buckets or water. Modern cities don't contain large expanses of over-crowded, highly-inflammable wooden houses! Hill continues on page 11:

"It is important to point out that, if an enemy chooses to surface burst his weapons in order to cover large areas with high levels of fallout radiation, he cannot at the same time achieve the maximum area of primary ignition that would result from the same weapons, air burst, because part of the thermal energy is absorbed in the ground and debris from the crater which mixes with the fireball. Also the area of shadows cast by hills, buildings, etc., would be greater so that fewer potential sources of primary ignition would be exposed to direct thermal radiation."


Above: firestorms and other mass fires of incendiary and nuclear weapons, from T. E. Lommasson, Fire Casualty Study, Dirkwood Corp., DC-WP-1040-1, AD-827 029/0, 1964, as summarized on page 8 of A. J. Pryor and C. H. Yuill, Mass Fire Life Hazard, Southwest Research Institute, AD0642790, 1966, which points out on page 7 that 91,334 people were killed in the Tokyo/Yokahama fire of 1923, caused by an earthquake overturning charcoal braziers in wooden homes, as occurred in Hiroshima; this sets the data in this table in context of the far greater hazards due to natural events, than occur using the best incendiaries available in a war.

Table 18 of A. J. Pryor and C. H. Yuill, Mass Fire Life Hazard, Southwest Research Institute, AD0642790 compares in great detail the actual survival statistics from a wide range of individual shelters at known locations with the firestorm area of Hamburg, as reported by three different independent investigation teams who surveyed the damage (H. Bond's Fire and the Air War, U.S. National Fire Protection Association, 262 pages, 1946; 316 separate volumes of U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reports dated 1946-7, both unclassified and secret volumes, including Fire Raids in German Cities, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany, A Detailed Study of the Effects of Area Bombing on Hamburg, Final Report - Civilian Defense Division, A Detailed Study of the Area Bombing of Darmstadt, Effects of Incendiary Bomb Attacks on Japan; and finally the December 1943 reports and report appendices by the Police President of Hamburg, Kehrl, Report by the Police President and Local Air Protection Leader of Hamburg on the Large Scale Raids on Hamburg in July and August 1943, Experiences in the Building of Air Raid Shelters).

Table 18 shows no deaths in private air-raid shelters, no deaths from heat or carbon monoxide fumes in any splinterproof and bombproof buildings and shelters (out of 14 of these shelters, deaths from falling concrete debris from high explosive bombs, not fire, only occurred in 6 of the 14 shelters: these six shelters had fatalities of 1/52, 12/150, 1/300, 3/3, 23/35, and 2/2, respectively), while only 3 out of 8 public air-raid shelters had any deaths from fumes and carbon monoxide poisoning (the dead being 15/65 dead, 67/97, and 23/53, respectively). Note that as in Hiroshima, the peak intensity of the Hamburg firestorm occurred 2-3 hours after the attack, because wooden houses in normal humidity (water content) take a long time to really get burning (it's quicker in low humidity desert conditions, e.g. the Nevada desert nuclear tests). This delay time gives most people the opportunity to escape or to seek cover from the heat.

See also George R. Stanbury's paper Ignition and Fire Spread in Urban Areas Following a Nuclear Attack, Scientific Advisory Branch CD/SA/121, U.K. National Archives document HO 225/121, Tripartite Thermal Effects Symposium, October 1964. Stanbury found that the Hamburg firestorm started because the incendiary bombing initially ignited 2/3rds of houses in the firestorm area within 20 minutes, 2,500 fires per square mile. These initial fires then spread to include all buildings. No firestorms occurred in cities where 20% or fewer of the buildings were initially ignited. At least 50% of buildings need to be on fire to cause a devastating Hamburg-type firestorm. (Compare this figure to just 2% of buildings ignited at a peak overpressure of 2 psi in the 1979 Office of Technology Assessment report, The Effects of Nuclear War. Nuclear weapons which are surface burst for fallout in an urban area where the thermal flash is shadowed by most buildings, simply cannot set alight anywhere near enough buildings to cause a firestorm, even if the buildings were wooden with no fire sprinkler systems, like Hiroshima and the medieval portion of Hamburg.) WWII incendiary air raid analyst Stanbury - who also did the civil defence nuclear weapons effects research at Britain's first nuclear weapon test (Operation Hurricane, Monte Bello) also lambasted ignorant "academic" firestorm hype in his article "The Fire Hazard from Nuclear Weapons", published in Fission Fragments, No. 3, August 1962, pp. 22-6:

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

Once a firestorm in an overcrowded wooden medieval city reaches its maximum intensity, 2-3 hours after starting, people can be killed in the streets by the radiant heat, but most people in the basements of burning wooden buildings get exposed to some carbon monoxide poisoning which saturates red blood cells by binding rigidly to haemoglobin. Those red blood cells are then useless for carrying oxygen until they are replaced naturally with fresh cells (red blood cells have an average life of 120 days, and are thus being continuously replaced). The problem in Hamburg is that people in the basements of wooden buildings (basically massive bonfires) gradually became poisoned by carbon monoxide and when the heat forced them to leave and try to run away from burning streets, the poor delivery of oxygen by the blood caused heart failure. The carbon monoxide wasn't at a poisonous level for resting personnel: they died from oxygen exhaustion when they came out and tried to run, because their red blood cells have been gradually rendered unable to deliver oxygen by becoming bound to carbon monoxide (which chemically "looks" like oxygen, but is poisonous). This is explained in more detail by Philip J. Dolan in Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, EM-1, chapter 9, Damage Criteria, Survival in Fire Areas, pages 9-28 to 9-31, linked here.

The actual heat problem of hot air is therefore grossly exaggerated in lying propaganda about Hamburg, as compared to well-known burns from hot steam where the latent heat of condensation of steam delivers 700 times more energy to skin than hot air does at the same temperature (which is why you can briefly put your hand into the hot air of an oven without a burn, but get quickly burned by steam):

"Air at 100 C will transport to the skin about 0.007 cal/cm2-sec, and steam at 100 C will transport about 5 cal/cm2-sec. This 700-fold increase ... is due to the latent heat [energy from] condensation of steam. This is why steam is an enormously greater hazard than hot air in the production of heat injury (F. C. Henriques, Jr., and A. R. Moritz, Studies of Thermal Injury, I. The conduction of heat to and through skin and the temperatures attained therein, in the American Journal of Pathology, v23, 1947, p18)."

- A. J. Pryor, and C. H. Yuill, Mass Fire Life Hazard, Southwest Research Institute, AD0642790, 1966, page 47.

This is vital for understanding that steam burns from steam at 100 C have nothing to do with the effects of hot air at 100 C; hot air is 700 times less of a threat than steam at similar temperature:


Above: hot air is 700 times less likely to cause a thermal burn than steam at the same temperature, so your experience of being burned by the latent heat of condensation of steam from a boiling kettle is irrelevant to the burns threat from hot air in the case of heat convection from clothing heated by the thermal flash, or hot air and dust from the thermal "pre-shock thermal layer" or blast "precursor".

Recovery from incendiary and nuclear firestorms

Russell R. Dynes summarizes the effects and rapid response and recovery of firestorm and nuclear weapon destruction in Hamburg (incendiary firestorm, 1943) and Hiroshima (nuclear weapon firestorm, 1945), prior to the arrival of any significant outside help, in his 2002 University of Delaware Disaster Research Center Preliminary Paper number 326, Finding Order in Disorder: Continuities in the 9/11 Response:

“The primary case study here is Hamburg, Germany in late July 1943. Hamburg, with perhaps 2,000,000 persons in the metropolitan area, was an industrial and port city and a prime bombing target. While it remained a target over the course of the war, in late July 1943 over two days and nights, over 2,300 heavy bombers, primarily RAF, dropped over 7,200 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs on the city. The bombing created a fire storm, killing from 30,000 to 45,000 residents, destroying over 56 percent of the housing and leaving over 900,000 homeless. The number of civilian causalities here were nearly as great as the number of British casualties from all of the German air raids of the war. Hamburg responded in the following way: “Hamburg basically saw itself through this immediate post raid period under its local leadership and using its local resources. Essential services were restored; water was the first priority. Vast tonnages of debris were cleared from the streets. The remaining fires were extinguished. Hundreds of unexploded bombs had to be located and defused.” (Source: Martin Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg, London: Allen Lane, 1980, p.355)

“In addition to fighting fires, members of the fire brigade rescued over 18,000 people, freeing over 6,000 trapped in air raid shelters and digging several hundred out of the rubble. The First Aid services attended to 1,772 people on the spot and took 6,700 to emergency centers where over 25,000 persons were treated. On the fourth day, telegraph services were restored; on the 8 th day, some mail was delivered; on the 12 th day, outgoing mail was restored; on the seventh day, the activities of the Central bank was re-established and on the 13 th day stock and commodity exchanges reopened. In the first week, wartime rationing of food was abolished but community kitchens were established which fed from 5 to 11 percent of the population. After the second night of the bombing, July 27 th, authorities ordered all non- essential workers to evacuate the city. Estimates of the number evacuated range from 4 900,000 to 1,200,000, most of who had had their houses destroyed. But recovery activities continued. “At the end of the two months, the bodies of 30,000 had been recovered, 170 miles of choked streets had been cleared, 4559 ruined house demolished and 3109 dangerous house facades leveled.” (Source: Hans Rumpf, The Bombing of Germany, New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1963, p.91)

“Writing some four months after the raid in a detailed report of the response activities, the Police President commented in the following way: “The conduct of the population, which at no time and nowhere showed panic or even signs of panic, as well as their work, was worthy of the magnitude of this disaster. It was in conformity with the Hanseatic spirit and character, that during the raids, friendly assistance and obligation found expression after the raids an irresistible will to rebuild.” (Source: Report by Police President and Local Air Protection Leader of Hamburg on the Large Scale Raids on Hamburg in July and August 1943,London, Home Office, Civil Defense Department, Intelligence Branch, January 1946, p.23). Middlebrook reports: “Life returned to Hamburg soon after the bombings when approximately half of the evacuees returned before winter. All available accommodations were packed and many people lived in the basement of ruined houses or in garden sheds on the city outskirts. Many would live this way until the end of the war. ... Factories reopened, commerce resumed and Hamburg became a living community in an extraordinary swift time.” (Source: Martin Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg, London: Allen Lane, 1980, p.359) By September 1 st, over half of the 9400 employed in the shipyards were back at work and in five months the city was back to 80 percent of industrial production. After the end of the war, by 1950, Hamburg has recovered its pre-war population. Was Hamburg a unique case? No.

“Two years later, Aug, 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, a city of 245,000 which left 75,000 dead and an equivalent number injured. The day after, the military planning board met to determine responsibility for restoration among the mayor, the governor of the prefecture and the 5 remaining military forces in the city. That day, power had been restored to some areas of the city. The Branch of the Bank of Japan began making payments. Trolley lines leading to the city had been cleared. The next day, several priority government telephone circuits were restored and the railroad tracks above and below the city were open to traffic. The sixth day, food rationing was re-established and on the 10th day, Mitsubishi Machine and Shipbuilding Company resumed operations with 70 percent of their employees reporting. The city was eventually rebuilt with a larger population, 380,000 in 1957, and with expanded industries and a new university. (Source: Charles Fritz, Individual and Group Reactions to Disaster, unpublished mss, Newark, DE: Disaster Research Center Library, 1960.) In each of these communities, while many people were engaged in what might be called survival and immediate relief activities: rescue, medical treatment, burial, emergency housing, many others were involved in the establishment of normal community facilities and functions. The actual experience in Hamburg and Hiroshima is in sharp contrast with the expectation of what the results should have been, for some: the disorganization of social life.”

Incendiary napalm firebombing in the Korean War, 1950-3

“In 1951 young Samuel Cohen, on a secret assignment for the US Defence Department, observed the battles for the second recapture of Seoul and thought there should be a way to destroy the enemy without destroying the city. He became the father of the neutron bomb.” [Cohen wanted the neutron bomb to deter and end aggression, and eliminate civilian collateral damage in warfare.]

- Bruce Cumings, “Why Did Truman Really Fire MacArthur? ... The Obscure History of Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War Provides the Answer”, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2004

The incendiary bomb is more effective at starting fires than the brief thermal flash of a nuclear explosion, because it burns for longer (15 minutes) allowing the wood to heat up to ignition temperature (when the hot wood emits inflammable vapour that burns). A nuclear burst just ablates a fraction of a millimetre of the surface to create a smoke screen that protects the underlying wood from the rest of the thermal pulse exposure. If you increase the nuclear yield to make the thermal pulse last longer, this smokescreen still prevents ignition at the intense thermal exposures ideally required to overcome heat dissipation and reach ignition temperature. Civil defence was highly effective at negating the effects of incendiary bombing in World War II: civilian populations were instructed on how to extinguish incendiary bombs of different types - magnesium, thermite (iron oxide and aluminium powder), and phosphorus - before a serious fire occurred. The German Brandbombe B1 was a commonplace 1 kg incendiary bomblet manufactured in immense numbers for Hitler’s war stockpile in 1936 (three years before London was at war). Yet it was a military failure in the end, being fought by school kids and pensioners in London, because there were far too many of them dropped in Blitz air raids for the fire brigade to deal with (despite the idealism in the following 1940 pre-Blitz film):



Therefore, the enemy made efforts to drop various kinds of high explosive and fragmentation anti-personnel bombs as well during incendiary attacks, sometimes with delayed fuses, to interfere with fire-fighting, and allow time for fires to get started. Finally, a new sticky petroleum jelly incendiary agent was developed at the end of the war, napalm, which was an anti-personnel weapon in its own right. Napalm was designed to efficiently set wooden buildings alight, and was used for this purpose in the Korean and Vietnam wars, although collateral damage to civilians was serious when insurgents and combatants were located in civilian villages and cities. Cloud cover forced B-29 target bombing by radar, for example 500 tons of napalm were dropped by radar location on Hungnam on 31 July 1950, and 550 tons on Sinuiju on 8 November 1950. China entered the war on North Korea’s side, setting up a MIG-15 airbase in Manchuria which shot down three American B-29s on 23 October 1951. America lost 1,466 aircraft in the Korean War while dropping 635,000 tons of bombs, more than the 503,000 tons America dropped in the Pacific theatre of war during World War II (reference: Hugh Dean, The Korean War, China Books, 1999, p. 151).

“On 9 July 1950 - just two weeks into the war, it is worth remembering - MacArthur sent Ridgway a hot message that prompted the joint chiefs of staff (JCS) ‘to consider whether or not A-bombs should be made available to MacArthur.’ The chief of operations, General Charles Bolte, was asked to talk to MacArthur about using atomic bombs ‘in direct support [of] ground combat.’ Bolte thought 10-20 such bombs could be spared for Korea without unduly jeopardising US global war capabilities. ... At a famous news conference on 30 November President Harry Truman threatened use of the atomic bomb, saying the US might use any weapon in its arsenal. ... Washington was not worried that the Russians would respond with atomic weapons because the US possessed at least 450 bombs and the Soviets only 25. On 9 December MacArthur said that he wanted commander’s discretion to use atomic weapons in the Korean theatre. On 24 December he submitted ‘a list of retardation targets’ for which he required 26 atomic bombs. He also wanted four to drop on the ‘invasion forces’ and four more for ‘critical concentrations of enemy air power.’ ... Although Ridgway said nothing about a cobalt bomb, in May 1951, after replacing MacArthur as US commander in Korea, he renewed MacArthur’s request of 24 December, this time for 38 atomic bombs. ... The US came closest to using atomic weapons in April 1951, when Truman removed MacArthur. ... On 10 March 1951 MacArthur asked for a ‘D-Day atomic capability’ to retain air superiority in the Korean theatre, after the Chinese massed huge new forces near the Korean border and after the Russians put 200 bombers into airbases in Manchuria (from which they could strike not just Korea but also US bases in Japan). ... Robert Oppenheimer, former director of the Manhattan Project, was involved in Project Vista, designed to gauge the feasibility of the tactical use of atomic weapons.”

- Bruce Cumings, “Why Did Truman Really Fire MacArthur? ... The Obscure History of Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War Provides the Answer”, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2004.

Dangerous delusions of nuclear weapons propaganda, the 1979 entirely false Office of Technology Assessment hogwash report, The Effects of Nuclear War:

U. S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1979 issued a falsehood filled report, “The Effects of Nuclear War”:

Page 21: “Third-degree burns over 24 percent of the body, or second-degree burns over 30 percent of the body, will result in serious shock, and will probably prove fatal unless prompt, specialized medical care is available. The entire United States has facilities to treat 1,000 or 2,000 severe burn cases; a single nuclear weapon could produce more than 10,000.”

Table 5 states: “These calculations arbitrarily assume that exposure to more than 6.7 cal/cm2 produces eventual death and exposure to more than 3.4 cal/cm2 produces a significant injury, requiring specialized medical treatment.”

(COMPLETE LIES.)

Page 33: “Burn victims will number in the tens of thousands; yet in 1977 there were only 85 specialized burn centers, with probably 1,000 to 2,000 beds, in the entire United States.”

(NO, THESE NUMBERS ARE COMPLETE LIES AND ANYBODY WITH BURNS WILL HAVE NOT HAD THEIR CLOTHES SOAKED IN BURNING GASOLINE, CONTRARY TO LYING PROPAGANDA "MEDICAL" EXPERTS.)

Page 21:

“The best estimates are that at the 5-psi level about 10 percent of all buildings would sustain a serious fire, while at 2 psi about 2 percent would have serious fires, usually arising from secondary sources such as blast-damaged utilities rather than direct thermal radiation.”

(THESE DATA DO NOT PERTAIN TO MODERN NON-WOOD CITY BUILDINGS WITH CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION AND FIRE SPRINKLER SYSTEMS.)

Page 22:

“Some believe that firestorms in U.S. or Soviet cities are unlikely because the density of flammable materials (“fuel loading”) is too low–the ignition of a firestorm is thought to require a fuel loading of at least 8 lbs/ft2 (Hamburg had 32), compared to fuel loading of 2 lbs/ft2 in a typical U.S. suburb and 5 lbs/ft2 in a neighborhood of two story brick rowhouses.”

(IT IS NOT A "BELIEF". IT IS CONFIRMED FACT. NUCLEAR WEAPONS THERMAL RADIATION CANNOT IGNITE WOOD BECAUSE IT DOESN'T LAST LONG ENOUGH, UNLIKE WWII INCENDIARY BOMBS WHICH BURNED MAGNESIUM, THERMITE, PHOSPHORUS, GASOLINE, ETC., AND LASTED LONG ENOUGH TO START FIRES. FIRES IN HIROSHIMA WERE OVERTURNED CHARCOAL BRAZIERS IN PAPER SCREEN AND BAMBOO FURNISHING FILLED HOMES.)

On page 30 the report shows a misleading photo of the 5 psi house from Apple 2 in 1955, from an angle which makes the building appear to have completely collapsed. But another photo of the same house in ENW 1957 shows that although the exterior walls were blown out (this is seen in the movie of the house exploding), it did not collapse completely and the staircase survived. At higher yields, gravity (downward weight) remains the same, as does the peak horizontal wind velocity for any given peak overpressure, but it lasts for a longer period of time, carrying debris like the roof downwind, instead of allowing all the debris to fall on the prone occupants. Therefore, the mass of debris landing per unit area is reduced.

In particular, tough concrete modern city buildings will generally be exposed to the higher overpressures near the ground zero, and the lighter construction buildings will be miles away in the suburbs, and therefore exposed to weakened blast waves which take a considerable period of time to arrive after the flash of the explosion has warned people outdoors or behind windows to get down to avoid the blast effects which are delayed after the flash.


Some vital Cold War research into firestorms has now been declassified and published on the internet. See J. A. Keller's A Study of World War II German Fire Fatalities, DC-TN-1050-3, 1966 (linked here), and also AD094651, PVTM-16, Fire Spread in Urban Areas, 1955, Confidential (linked here).

Review of Jack C. Rogers and T. Miller, Survey of the Thermal Threat of Nuclear Weapons, secret report prepare for the U.S. Office of Civil Defense by Stanford Research Institute, November 1963 extracted version (secret diagrams and text deleted), AD602947:

The version of the document reviewed here is the PDF file located here (note that the PDF page numbers do no match the printed report page numbers; we use the latter below).

Page 1:
"In Germany, fire caused approximately 80% of the total [WWII] structural damage to cities attacked by airborne weapons; the 54 principal cities had a median of 40% destruction, most of which was caused by fire. ... In Japan ... 67 Japanese cities experienced a median of 48% destruction."


Page 6:
"In the Hamburg firestorm ... not a single casualty was reported in 19% of the population that sought shelter in bunkers and splinterproof shelters (Earp, 1953)."


Page 19:
"When the moisture content of heavy wooden materials is greater than about 15 to 16 percent, these heavier members are difficult to ignite and incapable of propagating a vigorous fire."


Page B-75 (Table B-VII):


Comparison of the totally delusional and wrong thermal flash ignition data from Glasstone's June 1957 and April 1962 editions of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons with the humidity-corrected data from S. B. Martin, On Predicting the Ignition Susceptibility of Typical Kindling Fuels to Ignition by the Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Detonations, U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, USNRDL-TR-367 (AFSWP-1135), April 1959. This led Glasstone to issue a correction in the February 1964 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, but it was far too late to stop the thousands of false articles, books, congressional hearings, and general anti-civil defense public prejudices due to hyping of the incorrect data by anti-civil defense ranting fanatics.


Executive Office of the President, National Security Resources Board, NSRB Doc. 132, Fire Effects of Bombing Attacks, August 1951, pages 8 and 24: “The central portions of German cities had a building density (the ratio of roof area to ground area) of approximately 40% and made excellent targets for incendiary attack. ... The average German city contained at its core a medieval town which was closely built up with narrow and winding streets. ... in Hiroshima ... Black cotton [air raid] black out curtains were ignited by radiant heat within 3,200 feet ... A large proportion of over 1,000 persons questioned were in agreement that a great majority of the original fires were started by debris falling on kitchen charcoal fires, by industrial process fires, or by electrical short circuits [in the era before any modern efficient electrical circuit breakers, or fire sprinklers].”



Above: Hamburg's medieval wooden area burned out after the July 1943 incendiary bombing air-raid, like wooden areas of Hiroshima which were ignited by thousands of WWII charcoal braziers overturned by the blast winds in paper screen and bamboo furnishings-filled wooden houses. Long-burning incendiary bombs like kilo magnesium bombs, phosphorus bombs, and gasoline bombs are capable of igniting wood and starting a firestorm. The thermal flash from a nuclear weapon is not capable of igniting wood or starting a firestorm, even if today's modern cities were full of medieval, congested multistory wooden houses, which they simply are not. Even if they were, would need to have charcoal braziers in those wooden buildings to be overturned to start a fire after a nuclear explosion: the thermal flash doesn't ignite. Hamburg has no relevance to nuclear weapons for these reasons:






What about the thermal radiation over vast areas from a high-altitude burst?

At the 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings of the Special Subcommittee on Radiation of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (then responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons program), Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, it was falsely alleged that a high altitude nuclear explosion would burn people and start firestorms over large areas. This hype was reported in the newspapers. Problem: in 1958 America tested two standard 3.8 Mt warheads at altitudes of 43 km (test Orange) and 77 km (test Teak) over Johnston Island. No birds at ground zero were burned. Even rabbits facing the fireball only received tiny retinal burns (in reality, few people will be facing the fireball). The problem is that the fireball is a massive "pancake" of X-ray absorbing air covering a large area and volume at high altitude, so the energy density (Joules per cubic metre) is simply too small for it to become and stay hot enough to re-radiate a significant fraction of the X-ray energy as thermal radiation (this is the opposite to the situation of a tiny X-ray fireball with a high energy density, and this great temperature, for a low-altitude burst) But this data was secret.

It's now been declassified in W. L. Derksen, et al., Effects on Materials of Thermal radiation from Nuclear Detonations, U.S. Naval material Laboratory, AD342537, WT-1647, Operation Hardtack, Project 8.1, 1960. Page 5 shows that for 3.8 Mt Teak at 77 km burst altitude, the thermal exposure at ground zero was merely 1.3 cal/cm2; for 3.8 Mt Orange at 43 km burst altitude the thermal exposure at ground zero was just 1.08 cal/cm2.

In addition, the report discredits the claim in Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons that in low altitude bursts the Wilson condensation cloud (the large white cloud which develops in the underpressure blast region around the fireball after a couple of seconds, as the shock wave expands in humid air) has no effect on the thermal radiation. It does have an increasing effect, completely cutting off the thermal radiation for the Yellowwood and Walnut surface burst nuclear tests at a time of about 8 times the time of the final thermal pulse maximum intensity. Page 17 states that 330 kt Yellowwood was detonated in 63% humidity air. Page 20 states that 1.45 Mt Walnut was detonated in 84% humidity air. Pages 27-28 state for 330 kt Yellowwood:

"The irradiance from the fireball was effectively cut off ... by the formation of the [Wilson condensation] cloud. The evidence of obscuration furnished by the calorimeters was confirmed by the subsequent examination of the motion pictures taken of the Yellowwood fireball. A clear view was obtained of the fireball until approximately 7.5tmaximum, when the [Wilson] cloud, which started to form above the fireball at approximately 6.5 seconds, obscured the top of the radiating hemisphere. The cloud grew steadily until at approximately 10tmaximum the entire fireball was obscured."

For 1.45 Mt Walnut, page 29 states:

"Here, even more than in shot Yellowwood, the irradiance was cut off prematurely. The radiant exposure which would have been received if the fireball had not been obscured is 2.57/1.96 times 14.7, or 19.3 [cal/cm2]."

Figures 2.4 and 2.5 for 330 kt Yellowwood show that at 2tmaximum, the thermal pulse power (watts) was only 50% of its final peak, dropping to 12% at 4tmaximum, 5% at 6tmaximum, and just 2.5% at 8tmaximum.

Figures 2.6 and 2.7 for 1.45 Mt Walnut show that the thermal power fell to 50% at 2tmaximum, 20% at 3.2tmaximum, 15% at 4tmaximum, 5% at 6tmaximum, and 0% (nothing) at 7.8tmaximum.

There are similar results in the recently declassified report from Operation Redwing project 8.1a in 1956: W. B. Plum, et al., Basic Thermal Radiation Measurements from Ground Stations, U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, AD338041, WT-1338, where page 64 states:

"The simple formulas and reasoning that can be applied to small air bursts in the clear Nevada skies are not applicable to the surface bursts in the cloudy skies of the Pacific. Factors such as burst geometry and obscuration may be more significant in determining the thermal inputs that is the yield of the nuclear device itself."

The report shows on page 67 that the 40 kt Redwing-Lacrosse nuclear surface burst had a thermal yield estimated at only 9.4% and 15.1% for measurements on Yvonne (8,121 feet) and Wilma (14,392 ft) islands, while page 68 reports that the 3.8 Mt air burst Redwing-Cherokee had apparent thermal yields of 33.4% and 20.6% for two islands over 8 km from the detonation point. (Page 37 states that the Cherokee bomb was dropped 19,000 ft north east of its intended ground zero point, in visibility of over 10 miles, with 76% air humidity, 20% cloud cover by cumulus at 1,800-2,500 ft altitude, and 20% cloud cover by cirrus at 38,000 ft altitude.)

3.8 Mt Cherokee nuclear test thermal ignition effects data

Table 3 of H. D. Bruce and W. L. Fons, Effects of Moisture Content on the Critical Ignition Energies of Some Combustible Materials, AFSWP-794, AD153166, October 1957 (originally Secret - Restricted Data, only 180 copies printed) shows that blue cotton denim survived 8.8 and 12.1 cal/cm2 without damage in the 3.8 Mt Cherokee test in 1956 (the bomb was dropped 5.8 km off target by the B-52 bomber, when a lighted instrumentation island was mistaken for the aiming point). Two newspapers exposed to 8.8 cal/cm2 from 3.8 Mt Cherokee were only "slightly charred", contrary to the Effects of Nuclear Weapons data which predict ignition! Cardboard and pondersosa pine needles were undamaged and not charred by 8.8 cal/cal/cm2 from 3.8 Mt Cherokee, while two samples of fescue grass at 12.1 cal/cal/cm2 were only "slightly charred". Ignition risks were much greater for the very dry Nevada desert, where crumpled newspaper with only 3.5% moisture content was ignited by 4.0 cal/cm2 from Upshot-Knothole shot 4. However, few cities are built in dry waterless desert regions; most targets are near water and have much higher humidity levels. The problem is that Glasstone's 1957 Effects of Nuclear Weapons used Nevada desert data from the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests (report WT-775), which was available before detailed data from the 1956 tests had been processed in the October 1957's AFSWP-794 and the 1959 weapon test report on Redwing, WT-1339. So misleading data became dogma.

The Cold War Nuclear War Exaggeration Problem Compared to the Terrorist Problem

“... before World War II, for example, many of the staffs engaged in estimating the effects of bombing overestimated by large amounts. This was one of the main reasons that at the Munich Conference, and earlier occasions, the British and the French chose appeasement to standing firm or fighting. ... It is hard to believe that just because you cannot strike the other person any more, that he will then behave very well. ... Many people object to air and civil defense, not because they underestimate the problem, but because they overestimate it. They think there is nothing significant that can be done to alleviate the consequences of a war.”

- Herman Kahn, testimony to the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 86th Congress, 22-26 June 1959, Part 1, at pages 883, 904, and 943. (Very large 139 MB PDF file; too large to open directly in most browsers.)

It is worth summarizing again the June 1959 U.S. Congressional Hearings on the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, linked above. This was the only ever full-depth published study of the effects of nuclear war during Cold War (the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report twenty years later obfuscated and lied, and contained no direct source references for any of the claims made, just a general further reading section). Page 13 of the 1959 hearings lists the assumptions made: 1446 megatons in 263 weapons (5.5 megatons mean yield per bomb) dropped on 111 U.S. Air Force Installations, 71 Critical target areas, 21 Atomic Energy Commission sites, 12 U.S. Army installations, 5 U.S. Navy installations and 4 U.S. Marine Corps installations. Page 52 lists the effects: 11.8 million houses with severe damage, 8.1 million with moderate damage, 0.5 million with fallout greater than 3,000 R/hr extrapolated to 1 hour reference time after burst, 2.1 million with 1,000-3,000 R/hr for 1 hour, 10.4 million with 100-1,000 R/hr, and 11.7 million with less than 100 R/hr for 1 hour. However, casualties were exaggerated by using gross Hiroshima-Nagasaki unwarned casualty data, as stated on pages 857. Allowing for the fallout protective factors of houses, page 858 states that "the average dose for all survivors was 110 roentgens, while the average for non-injured survivors was 60 roentgens."

Dr Frank H. Shelton testified on page 41 that some windows are merely broken to 25 miles from a 1 Mt burst, yet the blast winds behind the shock front are only strong enough to accelerate the glass fragments into a serious hazard out to 7 miles: "Don't stand behind windows in an attack. First you will get burned, and then you will have fine glass splinters driven into you ...". On page 68, Dr Terry Triffet, fallout characterization (Project 2.63) project officer on Operation Redwing H-bomb tests in 1956, showed that strontium-90 and cesium-137 are important long lived fallout nuclides because they have a high abundance on the fission product distribution curve, although he also showed that they are not very abundant in close-in fallout because they are fractionated (remaining as gaseous krypton-90 and xenon-137 precursors while the larger, close-in fallout particles are spilling out of the hot fireball; the same applies to iodine-131). Triffet testified on page 75 that dangerous local fallout requiring people to take shelter (1,000 R/hr at 1 hour) is visible: "like being in a mild desert sandstorm. ... These large particles would not present a serious inhalation hazard, could be easily brushed off clothes and skin, and once on the ground would tend to resist movement by surface winds."

On page 110 Triffet testified that the complex "irregular" fallout pattern from Redwing-Tewa at Bikini Atoll in 1956 is not typical of the more steady prevailing winds further north, making fallout prediction much easier (even without modern satellites and computer weather and fallout models): "the winds over the Eniwetok Proving Grounds have a tendency to vary more than the winds over the United States - the high-level winds, that is. This means that it might be possible to get a less irregular pattern over the United States ...".

On pages 899-901, Herman Kahn deals with fallout contamination of food crops by root uptake of long-lived nuclides like strontium-90 (iodine-131 and fallout dust on the growing crops is easily washed off, or the outer leaves can be discarded to decontaminate them; cattle can be switched to winter fodder, or their milk can be frozen or dried while the iodine-131 decays rapidly). Kahn simply suggests a food rationing system according to easily-measured radioactivity content of the food: "C food" would have the most radioactivity in it, just under the amount needed to produce cancer in the radium-dial painters (10 microcuries of strontium-90 per kg of bone calcium, giving 20 R/year bone dose), "B food" would contain 10 times less contamination per kg, and "A food" would be still another 10 times cleaner: "The A food would be restricted to children and pregnant mothers ... B food ... would be a high-priced food ... C food ... would be a cheap food ...". You could feed animals with relatively short lives the most contaminated food, since the strontium ends up in the inedible bone. Also, some crops, like potatoes, take up very little strontium-90. Deep plowing or adding calcium carbonate to the soil, are other options. Bikini Atoll coconuts were rendered safe to eat after many multimegaton H-bomb tests by simply adding potassium chloride to the soil, since the potassium greatly dilutes the uptake of cesium-137 from soil (as discussed in previous posts). On page 901, Kahn states:

"It is important to realize that world agriculture would soon adjust to this problem. We would find the United States growing nonfood crops and meat and Argentina growing dairy products, and so on. ... the patterns of agriculture will adjust to the contamination, and while food may cost a little bit more, it will not be excessive in either price or contamination."

(Farm and food decontamination after fallout from a massive nuclear war is particularly important. In 1960-1, Kendal D. Moll of Stanford Research Institute showed in Post-Attack Farm Problems that while a 400 Mt Russian first-strike on American military bases would kill 2% of the population (assuming a fallout protection factor of 20), farm food output falls by 10%. For 19,000 Mt, he found that a population reduction by 12% occurs with a 65% fall in food output. Consequently, Norman Hanunian stated in his 1966 RAND Corporation report Dimensions of Survival, RAND memorandum RM-5140-TAB, p. 33: ‘the possible post-attack state of the farm sector ... constitutes the greatest threat to national viability.’)

On page 906, Kahn deals with economic recovery from blast and fallout in cities:

"We divide the country into two separate countries, an A country composed of, say, the largest 50 to 100 metropolitan areas. (A metropolitan area includes neighboring suburbs.) Then we say there is a B country, the rest of the country, the medium cities, small cities, towns, rural areas. ... the B country could probably not only survive that destruction but rebuild the A country in something like 10 years."

(For a more detailed analysis of the recovery times from nuclear war, see also Proceedings of the Symposium on Postattack Recovery from Nuclear War, Held at Fort Monroe, Virginia, November 6-9, 1967, AD0672770, Recovery from Nuclear Attack, ADA080907, and June H. Karlson and Ellen K. Langer, Postattack Research, AD0708570, 1969.)

On page 925 of the June 1959 Hearings, carbon-dating originator Dr Willard Libby (photo below from the Time magazine cover, 15 August 1955) stated:

"The first action for anyone who does not already possess the knowledge is to learn what these weapons effects are. No one can be expected to act properly or at all for that matter on any problem unless he understands what makes it. It is necessary for people to learn about fallout, about nuclear radiation, about the effects of nuclear radiation on people, animals, plants, food, water: the things that are immutably linked to life. In a larger sense, this is a matter of getting up to date which is essential to good citizenship in any curcumstance. ...

"Second, we must teach people what to do to keep from being killed or injured by these effects in time of war. Actually, this goes hand in hand with public education, so that a man learns of the hazard and countermeasure essentially at the same time."

On page 903, Dr Libby explained how to make an improvised fallout shelter by piling heavy material on a table in a basement or building area well away from the outer walls and from the roof. Cresson Kearny added a twist to this method in the 1980s, making a video showing how cardboard boxes lined with plastic bags can be placed on and around the table, then filled with water using a hose pipe, like a fire hose or garden hose, which avoids the difficulty in finding a large handy mass of materials, and backache in moving it:













Above: measured outdoor (unshielded) gamma radiation doses to 4 days after detonation of 1.65 kt terrorist-type Small Boy surface burst, Nevada, 1962. For other kiloton-range explosions, the doses are directly proportional to the fission yield of the explosion in the diffused fallout region downwind, while in the ground zero circular throw-out region the doses are constant but the distances from ground zero scale in proportion to the square root of the explosion yield. Although fallout arrives quickly (within minutes) after such a kiloton surface burst, the areas are small and people can see the heavy fallout and walk or run away from the contaminated area, before getting a very large dose. In the 1950s when it seemed that the weather was unpredictable, the advice was to take cover rather than evacuate while the fallout radiation decays. But it is obviously best to move in a cross-wind direction, not remain in the area, to get out of the heavy fallout radiation areas quickly, before decontaminating (to avoid beta radiation skin burns from dust contact). (Source: Edwin H. Bouton, et al. Radiological Surveys: Sunbeam Shots Little Feller I, II, Johnie Boy, and Small Boy, Operation Sunbeam Project 2.8, Report WT-2266, ADA995490, 1964, Fig. 3.60. For more information, DNA-EM-1 Chapter 5 gives the effective wind shear and wind speed data for this Small Boy test, because it was used to validate the calculations from DELFIC, a fallout prediction computer program.)

Note that the Small Boy fallout pattern was predicted prior to the explosion by the best computer program then in existence, the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory Dynamic or "D-model", which is discussed in detail in weapon test report WT-2215. The 1951 Sugar 1.2 kt Nevada surface burst was detonated in sandy soil with a large particle size distribution, so that the crater and stem throw-out radiation was very high (7,500 R/hr at 1 hour at the crater lip), but the actual cloud dust fallout downwind was relatively trivial (a maximum of only 540 R/hr at 1 hour, which occurred at a distance of 900 feet downwind). By contrast, the 1962 Small Boy test was detonated on very fine silt (Frenchman Flat, a dried lake bed) with no large particles at all, which caused more of the radioactivity to be carried to large distances downwind. WT-2215 states on page 24:

"It was recognised that the predictions ... were based on particle size-activity distributions associated with Jangle S [the 1951 Sugar test]-like soils. In contrast, however, the Frenchman Flat ground zero soil [for the 1962 Small Boy test], to a depth of at least 30 feet in the vicinity of zero, contained virtually no particles >150 microns [bigger than 0.15 mm] in diameter ... Since the molten volume must be small compared to the total crater volume, it appeared that a sizable fraction of the total activity would condense on the large available surface presented by the physically unaltered fine particles. In this event, the fallout would extend many miles downwind in larger amounts than estimated, and the close-in fallout would be correspondingly depleted [the amount of fission product radioactivity produced by a nuclear explosion is not altered by either the wind or soil particle size distribution, so if the total downwind distance of fallout is increased by either factor, the amount of fallout arriving elsewhere is reduced]."

A proper understanding of this effect explains the wide areas of low radioactivity in air bursts where the fireball just avoids touching the ground. It was noticed in the surface bursts that the fireball takes a long "hover time" (several seconds) before it becomes bouyant and even starts to rise. The mechanism for buoyancy is that the fireball is a low density bubble, being pushed up by the fact it has a higher air pressure acting on its lower surface than on its upper surface (air pressure decreases with increasing altitude). So, while a fireball remains in contact with the ground, no buoyant rise mechanism is possible, because the ground shields the fireball base from ambient air pressure until the afterwinds have returned the air pressure towards normal at ground zero. In a low air burst, the ground has the opposite effect and kick-starts the fireball rise and toroidal circulation, since in a low air burst the shock wave hits the ground, reflects, and bounces back up to the fireball base, giving it an upward push. The fireball has been filmed to be actually flattened from a sphere to a hemisphere by this returning shock wave, with important consequences for thermal and initial nuclear radiation emissions, which are much reduced by this effect.

The afterwinds in an air burst then suck up a stem from the ground "dust pedestal" of popcorned sand and dust remaining after the blast precursor phenomenon, as described in J. W. Kirsch et al., Near-Surface Dust Cloud Phenomenology, Systems, Science and Software, DNA-3962F, 1976 (the Dog nuclear air burst produced a dust pedestal 50 ft high and 2,600 ft in radius, while the higher-yield Priscilla test produced one 85 ft high and 3,400 ft in radius). The maximum size of the dust pedestal in a Yucca Flat air burst is about 1,000Wkt1/3 ft and the maximum height is about 30Wkt1/3 ft. The "popcorning" of sand is due to water molecules of hydration inside the crystals of sand oscillating and causing the sand crystals to explode when heated (an analogy is the cracking of glass milk bottles by expanding milk in freezing temperatures), so the size distribution is a very fine powder, not the size of the original sand grains. If this dust arrives in the fireball after the fireball has cooled below the 1,400 C melting point of sand and has turned into a toroidal shape, the dust will not be melted and contaminated internally by fission products, so trivial fallout results unless a thunderstorm flushes the fission products down the storm drains with rainfall. The higher the burst height, the longer it takes for dust to be sucked up into the fireball because it must be carried up to a greater altitude just to reach the fireball, which has more time to cool before the dust arrives.

VACUUMING UP THE FALLOUT PARTICLES, OR WASHING THEM DOWN DRAINS

‘A number of factors make large-scale decontamination useful in urban areas. Much of the area between buildings is paved and, thus, readily cleaned using motorized flushers and sweepers, which are usually available. If, in addition, the roofs are decontaminated by high-pressure hosing, it may be possible to make entire buildings habitable fairly soon, even if the fallout has been very heavy.’

– Dr Frederick P. Cowan and Charles B. Meinhold, Decontamination, Chapter 10, pp. 225-40 in Dr Eugene P. Wigner (editor), Survival and the Bomb, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1969.




Above: high technology decontamination of a fallout-contaminated soldier by a highly trained health physicist, using an extremely expensive, delicate, and rare piece of sophisticated equipment, after a nuclear weapon test explosion at the Nevada Test Site. Cresson Kearny's factual advice that you can survive a nuclear blast with simple items like putting a shovel and broom in your car's trunk, driving out of a city and placing the car over a trench, was in 1982 "ridiculed" in the ironic book, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War. (Photo source: B. R. Buddemeier and M. B. Dillon, Key Response Planning Factors for the Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, report LLNL-TR-410067, August 2009, page iii.)

Unless the bomb detonates in or on the ocean and therefore causes sticky fallout particles composed of salt slurry, the fallout particles are dry, non-sticky, and easy to remove with existing inventions of a simple nature, called "vacuum cleaners", "hose-pipes", "mops", "brooms", and so on. These devices typically are quite immune from the effects of nuclear weapons. The efficiency of using them was first extensively demonstrated at the 1951 Nevada desert nuclear weapon tests of Operation Jangle, where it was found that essentially all of the fallout remains on horizontal surfaces (not vertical walls, or sloping roofs unless they have a very rough surface which enables them to retain fallout dust). Dry fallout on paved areas 0.6-1.6 km from nuclear tests Sugar and Uncle in 1951 was successfully removed:

"High-pressure water hosing was found to be the most rapid and effective ... None of the tested procedures [including dry sweeping and vacuum cleaning] resulted in significant contamination of the operator’s protective clothing."

– J. C. Maloney, Decontamination of Paved Areas (U.S. test report WT-400, June 1952, 229 pages, Chapter 5).

The contamination per unit area of vertical walls was only 0.3-10% of that on horizontal ground and roofs (reference: Jangle Project 6.2, WT-400, 1952).

Also in 1951, the decontamination of clothing was investigated at the Eniwetok Atoll nuclear tests of Operation Greenhouse: F. M. Steadman et al., Protective clothing and clothing and personnel decontamination, Office of the Quartermaster General, Operation Greenhouse, project 6.9, Scientific Director's Report, Annex 6.9, weapon test report WT-12 (1951), ADA995218. Soldiers were sent into areas contaminated by the Greenhouse-Dog and Easy nuclear tests at Eniwetok Atoll, and their clothes and over-shoes were laundered to check the efficiency of removing fallout contamination. Laundry staff received up to 1.955 R gamma radiation. The contamination was easily removed.

Washing skin removes 97.5% of fallout with a diameter of 0.02 mm, and removes 100% of fallout of 0.1-mm diameter or more. For clothes, 90% of the fallout on denim overalls is removed in 5 minutes by a washing machine (100 revolutions per minute, 1% detergent), for particle diameters over 0.01 mm. (Reference: E. Neale and E.H. Letts, Radiological Decontamination: Removal of Dry Fallout from Skin and Clothing, U.K. Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment, report PTP-R-16, 1958.)

Many further studies were done, including extensive decontamination of ships simply by turning on the ordinary ship deck fire sprinkler systems while sticky fallout was landing from surface bursts during Operations Castle (WT-927, also WT-928, and WT-934), Redwing (see particularly F. S. Vine and W. L. Owen, Standard Recovery Procedure for Tactical Decontamination of Ships, AD0357962, WT-1323, 1959, and WT-1324), and Hardtack (WT-1619 and WT-1621).

Some good research reports detailing the effect of dust loading and effort of decontamination on the efficiency of removing fallout and flushing it safely into below-ground drains (where the radiation is well shielded from people) were produced in the 1960s, particularly W. L. Owen, et al., Performance Characteristics of Wet Decontamination Procedures, Operation Stoneman II, volume 2, U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, USNRDL-TR-335, July 1960. (See also Owen's 163 pages long report, Radiological protective Construction: Principles for the Protection of Facilities and their Inhabitants Against Fallout, USBRDL, AD0275990, 1962.) For example, Owen shows that in an area hit by 300 R/hr of fallout at 1 hour after burst (10 grams per square foot of fallout particles), a firehosing effort of 15 minutes per man per 10,000 square feet of either asphalt or concrete, with 2,000 square feet being decontaminated per firehose nozzle per minute, the water consumption is just 0.05 gallons per square foot, but 94% of the fallout is flushed down the drains, leaving just 6% of the radiation level prior to decontamination. This is equivalent to boosting your fallout protection factor by 1/0.06 = 17 times. 300 R/hr is reduced to just 18 R/hr.

So there is a very good benefit from washing the fallout away with firehosing. Obviously, putting in more effort improves the decontamination effectiveness, but this must be offset against the need to decontaminate as widespread area as possible very quickly in a city, to cut down exposure to the inhabitants without excessive exposure to decontamination personnel. Roadsweeping will in any case be needed to sweep up fine glass fragments from blast-broken windows broken on the sides of buildings facing ground zero, to make areas completely safe prior to full recovery (this fact applies even for an air burst where no local fallout is deposited).

Fully remote-controlled decontamination vehicles are an obvious idea to improve this process and reduce radiation risks, in modern warfare. For example, Owen shows that the motorized flushing of pavements with standard street-sweeper trucks (used normally to keep city pavements and roads clean) is a very efficient way to remove radioactive fallout. Again for 300 R/hr at 1 hour (10 grams dry fallout deposit per square foot of pavement), a single person operating a street washing truck can decontaminate 10,000 square feet per minute at a forward speed of 15 miles per hour, using just 0.045 gallons per square foot of surface, and leaving just 5% of the original radiation level on concrete or 6% on asphalt (which is slightly rougher than concrete and slightly harder to decontaminate because some particles sift down into surface irregularities).

Owen also shows in AD0275990 that without any use of water whatsoever, you can still decontaminate quite effectively using an "Air Broom" brand road sweeper truck, which vacuums up the fallout dust before discharging it down drains, although it takes a longer period of time than using water. For 300 R/hr and 10 grams/sq ft of fallout, "Air Broom" vacuuming requires 16 minutes per 10,000 sq. ft., but leaves only 3% of the original fallout radiation. If such trucks were fitted out with radio control and video cameras, they could be controlled remotely from a safe location. On unpaved, rural areas out of cities, in the vicinity of houses you can simply use a tractor to deep-plough (plow for Americans) the fallout to a foot under the surface, where the overlying earth will shield most of the radiation.

An excellent summary report by Hong Lee, W. Leigh Owen, and Carl F. Miller, General Analysis of Radiological Recovery Capabilities Stanford Research Institute, AD684934, 1968, contains a brilliant data analysis of all the decontamination data in Appendix A, "Decontamination Performance Tables." For example, Table A-5 on page 129 shows that plowing to 10 inches depth takes only 0.083 hour per 1,000 square feet and a single pass reduces the gamma radiation level above the ground by a factor of 20, a very useful degree of fallout protection. Another example table:



Britain planned decontamination by fire-hosing residential areas where the 1-hour reference gamma dose rate was 500-3,000 R/hr (reference: Home Office Scientific report SA/PR-97, The value of area decontamination in reducing casualties from radioactive fallout, 1965, originally secret). At lower levels, there are few casualties indoors anyway (200 R producing a casualty), while higher levels expose decontamination crews to excessive doses even 5 days after detonation, so evacuation is then a better option. Human-crewed decontamination work becomes feasible at 1-5 days after detonation, when the 1-hour outdoor dose rate of 500-3,000 R/hr has decayed to 10 R/hr. Decontamination crews restricted to areas below 10 R/hr cannot get more than 10 x 8 = 80 R in an 8 hour shift.

The three key stages during radiological recovery after first aid, rescue and fire spread prevention: (1) evacuation of people with inadequate shielding from heavy fallout areas; (2) sheltering for 1-5 days in the part of the house furthest from the roof and outside walls, with as much mass around the ‘inner refuge’ as possible, and staying indoors as much as possible for a month, and (3) outdoor decontamination.

HOW ANTI-CIVIL DEFENSE LOBBIES TRY TO IGNORE EASY DECONTAMINATION FACTS

What they always do is try to conflate two different situations, by invoking the decontamination problems with ships at the underwater Crossroads-Baker nuclear test of 25 July 1946. In any sea water nuclear explosion in humid conditions, the fallout consists of salt-slurry droplets with highly soluble radioactivity, which dried into the rusted steel and the weathered wooden decking on the obsolete ships exposed near the Baker test. (This scandal was started by Health Physicist Dr David Bradley, who wrote a best-seller in 1948 about the Crossroads-Baker contamination, depressingly entitled No Place to Hide. The scandal intensified after beta burns to unclothed, unwarned, outdoor Marshallese on Rongelap Atoll and Japanese fishermen north of Naen Island, Rongelap, 100 miles directly downwind of the 14.8 megaton Bravo test in 1954. These people played in the "snow", unaware of danger of fallout. The media deliberately persists in missing the whole point that modern MIRV warheads have smaller yields and taking cover or brushing the fallout dust off would have prevented beta skin burns, and evacuation or cover in buildings reduces the gamma dose.) The soluble ions of radioactive fission products became chemically attached (ion transfer) to the contaminated surface when it dried out, so decontamination was ineffective:

"If the radioactive elements are inside fused glass particles, as they are for most of the larger fallout particles from near-surface detonations collected at the Nevada Test Site, they cannot react directly with a surface. Only the particles themselves interact with surfaces, and a decontamination method that removes the particles also removes the radioactivity.

"If the fallout from a detonation on or in deep water arrives at a surface in a liquid (rain), or as wet crystalline agglomerates in which many of the radioactive elements are present in the ionic form, the various radioactive elements can directly react with a surface material."

- Dr Carl F. Miller, Fallout and Radiological Countermeasures, volume 2, Stanford Reseatch Institute, AD-410521 (1963), page 378.

Notice that this dependence on the ionic fraction of the fission products is time-dependent, because the solubility and decontamination effectiveness of sea water fallout is a function of time after explosion. Dr Miller shows how the distribution of radioactivity contributions from ionic and non-ionic elements in the fission prodicts and induced activities like neptunium-239 varies with time, affecting the apparent efficiency of decontamination and water solubility of salt water burst fallout. In Tables 8.16 and 8.17 of AD-410521, Miller shows that at 6.7 days after a 1 megaton sea water detonation, water washing of smooth horizontal surfaces after the fallout has dried in, removes only about 50% of the radioactivity. Sand blasting or acid etching treatment is needed for greater decontamination. This is why an underwater burst in sea water near a city can cause a bigger decontamination problem than a land surface burst in the city itself. You either have to wash sea water off surfaces while it lands (before it has a chance to "dry in" and become chemically attached to the surface) using a continuous water spray (the U.S. Navy "washdown" method using fire sprinkler systems during fallout), or else you have to wait for the radioactivity to decay naturally. There is plenty of data on the contamination problem from such a terrorist nuclear attack on a port or harbour area, owing to the fact that the very first British nuclear weapon trial, Operation Hurricane, was specifically designed to give this data:



Above: 25 kt terrorist-type British nuclear test Hurricane fallout pattern. The bomb was detonated 2.7 metres below the water line inside a ship in shallow (12 m depth) water, Monte Bello islands, 3 October 1952, to deliberately simulate a subversive attack using a bomb in a cargo freighter on the Port of Liverpool or London. It was detonated when the winds were blowing across a range of islands, allowing a good land-survey of the contamination to be made (which was not the case for Baker in 1946, where only ships were exposed and some rainout drained straight off the deck). Fallout collected from Bluebell Island was fully analyzed. Note that an underwater detonation severely reduces the thermal and blast effects. The thermal flash yield of Hurricane was measured to be just 2%, due to the loss of heat to the ship and the water spray which cooled the fireball quickly (sources: ES 1/134, DEFE 16/937, ES 5/31, and ES 5/381.)


Above: the island areas covered by 10,000 R/hr gamma radiation fallout hotspots at 1 hour after Operation Hurricane in 1952 are still at slightly elevated background radiation, safe for fishing, scuba diving and nuclear tourism today, but unsuitable for a longer camping stay. However, the shaded radiation area at the far north of Trimouille Island was not contaminated by Operation Hurricane, but instead by the fallout from the G1 nuclear test on the island (16 May 1956), during Operation Mosaic. The "Anderson" type World War II civil defence shelters which survived the blast intact (albeit for some sandbags blown off) at just 400 yards from Operation Hurricane remain on Trimouille Island.

Britain's concern with underwater terrorist nuclear explosions (bombs set off inside the cargo holds of innocent-looking freighters in the harbor) began when British nuclear weapons effects expert Lord Penney who worked at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project attended the American 1946 Operation Crossroads-Baker test and later focussed many of the papers of the secret 1949 London Symposium on the Physical Effects of Atomic Bombs on the radioactive base-surge contamination problem in underwater detonations. This symposium was finally declassified and released to the National Archives in 2008, a mere 59 years after being held:

Symposium on the Physical Effects of Atomic Bombs (at Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, 27-28 September 1949) DEFE 15/2620

Paper 1, blast and model studies of the mechanical effects of explosives (A H Davis) DEFE 15/2621

Paper 2, blast from an air-burst bomb (H M M Pike) DEFE 15/2622

Paper 3, kinematic effect of blast on a man in the open (R H A Liston) DEFE 15/1038

Paper 4, the blast power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombs (W G Penney) DEFE 15/2623

Paper 5, Civil Defence Studies (E Leader-Williams) DEFE 15/2624

Paper 6, the general features of underwater explosions (J B B Owen) DEFE 15/2625

Paper 7, a summary of ship damage including studies with models (D E J Offord) DEFE 15/2626

Paper 8, photographic studies of small scale shallow underwater explosions with particular reference to the atomic bomb (J J McEnhill) DEFE 15/2627

Paper 9, the hard radiation, the neutrons and the fission products (W G Marley) DEFE 15/2628

Paper 10, observations of the delayed gamma radiation as a function of time in Tests ABLE and BAKER at BIKINI (J L Tuck) DEFE 15/2629

Paper 11, visible radiation from an atomic explosion (J Corner) DEFE 15/2630

Paper 12, the medical aspects of atomic weapons (E E Pochin) DEFE 15/2631

Paper 13, a review of investigations on the phenomenon of the base surge (J C Martin) DEFE 15/2632

Paper 14, the base surge - the mechanism of fall-out (E P Hicks and W G Penney) DEFE 15/2633

Paper 15, preliminary experiments in connection with removal of radioactive contamination from ships and dockyard installations (E W Jackson) DEFE 15/2634

Exaggerations of weapons effects are a source of misery

World War I cost millions of lives because offensive weapons effects had been exaggerated by the Kaiser’s Chiefs of Staff, and nobody opposed the exaggerations. Exaggerations of shelling, high explosive bombardment, and machine guns were clearly exposed by the efficiency of simple trench countermeasures against blast, flying debris, bullets, etc. Trenches prolonged a planned short knock-out blow war into a long war of attrition which the Axis powers were in a relatively poor position to sustain. Likewise, poison gas failed to achieve the intended knock-out blow due to weather dependence and negation by simple countermeasures like gas masks. Submarines failed to deliver the knockout blow to allied shipping due to the development of the convoy system, protected by ships equipped with hydrophones to detect submarines, and with nets and magnetic depth charges with which to disable them. If the effects of weapons had been properly predicted and publically debated, properly taking account of countermeasure responses, the German Chiefs of Staff may have been unable to escalate the Baltic crisis into World War I, and Britain’s Foreign Secretary Edward Grey would have been less intimidated by Germany. He procrastinated the decision to tell Germany in unequivocal terms that an invasion of Belgium would definitely precipitate a British declaration of war against Germany. By the time he finally made this clear, Germany had mobilized its population for war using a very complex and lengthy railroad troop logistics (described in A. J. P. Taylor’s War by Timetable), and the Kaiser was easily convinced that it was too late to back down. If Grey had been less intimidated, he would have deterred the invasion of Belgium by Germany in August 1914. (British military technology historians only in the 1980s began to point out that World War I was a result of European military ignorance of the trench countermeasure lesson of the American Civil War. This critical point went unnoticed, both by the media and by war historians in general.)

World War II again cost millions of lives because offensive weapons effects had been exaggerated, this time by the media, the pacifists, politicians in all parties and all nations, and various military authorities in popular books. In Britain, weapons effects were exaggerated and effective simple countermeasures were “ridiculed” and “laughed at” in fashionable groupthink until war was unavoidable. We have been through this in many previous posts on this blog. But the new point is this: nobody is going to change the deep-rooted popular and fashionable public prejudice with nuclear facts alone. You need to point out that lying for apparently laudable objectives caused terrible problems in the past. Democracy doesn't work if the media and government are in collusion to lie to the public by distorting and withholding data which may be vital not only in an actual act of nuclear terrorism, but also preparations via public education needed in advance, and in the coercion that can be gained by fanatics like Hitler who exploit popular pacifist exaggerations of weapons effects to "call the bluff" of others.

DEBUNKING THE MAJOR MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN NUCLEAR WEAPONS EFFECTS




Above: 43 kt Simon detonated atop a 300 ft tower on 25 April 1953, causing severe EMP electric shocks for both field telephone operators holding receivers at each end of a telephone line between trenches 1,830 metres from ground zero, who was holding the handset and was electrocuted by a powerful EMP picked up by coupling or "crosstalk" (mutual inductance between nearby cables) from the telephone and other wires running to ground zero. With the spread of modern electronic technology, it is probable that EMP will be the major, widespread source of injury, communications damage and recovery problems during and after a nuclear attack. Glasstone and Dolan ignore the fact that cables in a city can pipe-out the EMP energy at light speed from the intense fields near ground zero to power distribution systems across a city, far away from ground zero, before the blast and cratering destroys the cables. B. J. Stralser's 30 April 1961 E. G. & G. summary report of Nevada EMP damage at the control point 30 miles from ground zero remains classified, Electromagnetic effects from nuclear tests. This report is summarized in a British declassified civil defense report written by Dr Purnell, then chief scientific adviser for civil defense at the Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch. Thousands of amps were picked up in cables near the bomb in Nevada tests, and conducted in the cables back to the control point, which had to run on diesel generators or batteries whenever a nuclear bomb was set off. When atmospheric nuclear testing resumed after Stralser's report had presented EGG's EMP problems to the military, an entire nuclear test, 1.65 kt surface burst Small Boy was held in 1962 just to document the EMP: “The response of a typical field army electrical power system to the electromagnetic pulse was measured at sufficient distance from ground zero to prevent damage from blast and thermal effects. ... the electrical power system was shut down by a combination of effects such as prompt radiation and effects of the electromagnetic pulse. ... If induced currents in the distribution cable were the only cause of power system shutdown, a current pulse of approximately 3570 amps maximum would be required.” - D. B. Dinger and R. J. Bostak, Response of Electrical Power Systems to Electromagnetic Effects of Nuclear Detonations, Operation Dominic II, Project 7.5, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Laboratories, weapon test report WT-2241, AD0338967, June 1963.) No non-EMP injuries were reported in the trenchs, just EMP-caused electric shocks:

“Seven Army officers and one Navy officer, all knowledgeable in the effects of nuclear weapons, calculated a safe distance from which to view Simon, based on its predicted yield. The volunteers chose to occupy two trenches 1,830 meters from ground zero. Both trenches were 1.8 meters (six feet) deep and about one meter (three feet) wide. One trench was revetted with timber, the other was unrevetted, and both had a sandbag parapet [Camp Desert Rock, Exercise Desert Rock V, Final Report. Volume I: Operations, Camp Desert Rock, 24 June 1953, 198 Pages, AD/A078 559]. ... There was a direct telephone line between the volunteer trenches and the control trench in the main trench area, and the Exercise Director’s staff remained in constant contact with the volunteers before, during, and after the blast. ... One observer who was holding a telephone received an electric shock that caused a tingling sensation around his neck. The operator holding the telephone in the control trench reported receiving a ‘shock equivalent to that received when holding a bare 110 volt electric wire’.”

- Jeannie Massie, Carl Maag, Stephen Rohrer, and Robert Shepanek, Shot Simon, A Test of the Upshot-Knothole Series, 25 April 1953, DNA 6016F, 1982, pp. 21-22.

“Twelve officers had volunteered to occupy a trench forward of the main trench area at Shot Badger. Each participant calculated the minimum distance from ground zero at which he would receive no more than 5 roentgens of prompt whole-body radiation exposure, 8 psi maximum overpressure, and 1 cal/cm2 of thermal radiation. To assist in their calculations, they used data from TM 23-200, Capabilities of Atomic Weapons, published in October 1952. ... The trench, which was six feet deep and nearly four feet wide, was dug in soil consisting of rocks and fine silt.”

- Jeannie Massie, Carl Maag, Stephen Rohrer, Robert Shepanek, Shot Badger: A Test of the Upshot-Knothole Series, 18 April 1953, JRB Associates, DNA 6015F, 1982, page 20.

“During the Korean War, the Army conducted studies on the capabilities of atomic weapons in a tactical role. Colonel G. C. Reinhardt and Lieutenant Colonel W. R. Kintner wrote a book entitled Atomic Weapons in Land Combat. The authors stated that “atomic weapons, tactically employed, should be incorporated into our first line of defense against any creeping aggression.” General Maxwell D. Taylor and Lieutenant General Bruce C. Clarke completed studies in 1954 that looked at changing the divisional force structure. ... This new Army division needed more dispersion to prevent atomic weapons from totally destroying the unit during combat or preparation for hostilities. ... Peace operations are nothing more than another method the United States uses to obtain its strategic objectives. ... Since 1988, peace operations have almost doubled in frequency and have grown in complexity.”

- Major Wayne W. Grigsby, Jr., The Divisional Headquarters: Can We Do It All?, School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, report ADA309932, 1995, pages 6 and 23-24.

“ATOMIC WEAPONS IN LAND COMBAT by Col. G. C. Reinhardt and Lt. Col. W. R. Kintner, Military Publishing Co., Harrisburg, Pa. $3.95
Reviewed by George K. Tanham, Assistant Professor of History, Engineering and Science, volume 17, 1953, issue 3, p. 48:

“Atomic Weapons in Land Combat, the first book to appear on tactics for ground forces armed with atomic weapons, is full of new tactics for the land forces. The authors feel that atomic weapons, while extremely powerful, and thus part of the natural technological development from the simple rifle, are in no sense absolute weapons. ... For use on the offense, they feel it is best to hit the enemy at his strongest point because of the great destructive power of atomic weapons, and then at once rush exploiting troops through the breach. ... The need for better trained troops who have had intensive instruction on the effects of atomic explosions and careful psychological preparation is rightly stressed.”

How U.S. Army Nevada “Desert Rock” nuclear bomb tests reduced irrational panic and fear, disproving the "No Place to Hide" propaganda (started by David Bradley's 1948 book on the underwater 1946 Crossroads-Baker nuclear test base surge contamination) notion of harmful radioactivity, which simply doesn't exist after a non-contaminating air burst which actually maximises the destructive ranges of blast and prompt radiations in wartime:






“I’m Not Afraid of the A-Bomb”
By Captain Richard P. Taffe
Published in Collier’s magazine, 26 January 1952, page 14:

“I walked through an atom-bombed area. I didn’t get burned, I didn’t become radioactive, and I didn’t become sterile. And neither did the 5,000 guys with me. ... Why face away from the blast? Because we might get hurt? Because we might suffer permanent eye damage? No! ... it would have blinded us long enough to cause us to miss the rest of the amazing show. ... it was as though someone had opened the door of a blast furnace as the terrific heat reached us. ... Up to this point we had seen, but we had not heard and we had not felt, the explosion. But then came the shock wave. The ground beneath us started to heave and sway. ... Within minutes, the top was at 30,000 feet and then the huge cloud broke loose from the stem and drifted in the wind toward Las Vegas. ... Despite the devastation, there was no doubt that a successful attack could have been made by friendly troops directly through the blasted area—immediately after the explosion. ... The sheep [in simple, open, uncovered “foxhole” type army trenches near ground zero] were scared, and burned in spots where they were exposed, but they were living. I heard many soldiers express pleasure at the protection offered by a simple foxhole—and the absolute safety afforded by concrete or heavily reveted emplacements. ... the Geiger counter clicked madly ... It will also click madly when placed near the luminous dial of my watch. ... Observers drew several conclusions at Desert Rock.

“First, factual and simple orientation can eliminate most of the fear and apprehension concerned with atomic weapons. Secondly, properly covered, a soldier need have no fear of the effects of an atomic bomb air burst, from either blast, fire or radiation. Thirdly, properly warned and protected, troops could attack through an area ravaged by the weapon immediately after the blast.”

“Week’s Mail: Lingering Radiation?,” Collier’s magazine, 15 March 1952, page 6:

H. M. MARLOWE, JR., Baxter, Tenn.: “EDITOR: ... I’m Not Afraid of the A-Bomb should end long-fostered fears about the A-bomb that could prove disastrous to civil defense and the war effort should an enemy attack on the United States become imminent.”

CPL. HARRISON N. MATTI, Fort Eustis, Va.: “EDITOR: ... I too was privileged to witness the test Captain Taffe described. However, I fail to recall either the terrific heat, as if from a blast furnace, or the earthquakelike shock that followed the blast. I am wondering if the captain was with the rest of the observers or much closer to ground zero than the rest of us.”


Atmospheric nuclear testing at the Nevada test site or Bikini Atoll is unlikely to be resumed just to rehearse and help prepare for nuclear terrorism, but we can still gleam a great deal of data from recently declassified reports on the 1950s tests. People need to be made widely aware of the major lies, cover-ups, and propaganda hype on the effects of nuclear weapons. They need to be aware that the hurricane strength winds of a blast wave cause far less damage than a hurricane, because they last only a few seconds or less, whereas a hurricane's winds last hours so numerical comparisons of windspeed have no meaning. They need to be aware that the blast is not instantaneous with the light flash, despite the falsified films where the soundtrack was deliberately superimposed on the flash.

The painfully-bright flash brighter than the sun serves as a duck-and-cover warning, ahead of the arrival of the blast wave. Even if you have no time to get down, the blast wave accelerates the feet of a standing person faster than the head, creating aerodynamic lift, which gives standing people who are blasted enough time to protect their heads with their arms and hunch up to reduce the possibility of impact injury while they are being blown along.

“Dummy experiments (3) were performed on Priscilla (37 kt) and Smoky (44 kt) shots. The one for Priscilla Shot was located 5320 ft from ground zero where the maximum overpressure was estimated to be 5.5 psi and the duration of the positive overpressure, 0.964 sec. For Smoky, the dummy experiment was located at 3,406 ft range, and the measured peak overpressure and duration were about 6.6 psi and 0.868 sec, respectively. Because of precursor effects, the winds associated with the blast wave were much greater than those accompanying a classical wave with 6.6 psi maximum overpressure.”

- I. G. Bowen, D. R. Richmond and C. S. White, Translational Effects of Blast Waves, “Minutes of the Tripartite Technical Cooperation Program, Panel N-1, Sub-group N, 14-16 March 1963”, Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 11 March 1963, page 29.

A person lying flat to maximise surface friction and minimise the area exposed to the blast winds can avoid most of this effect, unlike the 1979 OTA computer models which ignored surface friction and assumed people would be blown straight out of windows in tall buildings by even the smallest blast winds. Note that nuclear tests (44 kt Smoky and 37 kt Priscilla, 1957) have actually been done to verify that lying down provides protection, even in the worst case scenario of a precursor blast wave. See WT-1469 for the raw data and DASA-1777 page 33 for identification of the two Operation Plumbbob nuclear test yields (and thus the test names) involved, and the distances from ground zero in each test. Glasstone and Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977, chapter 12 "Biological Effects", also gives a vaguer discussion of some of these results, plus some comments in paragraph 12.45 on page 554 about the ability of blasted-people to avoid injury by pulling in their limbs to adopt a ball-like shape. This reduced injuries and fractures in animal tests (illustration below).



People need to be aware that the Twin Towers collapsed because the steel frames were weakened by many tons of burning aviation fuel from the aircraft, and that flash ignitions near windows facing a nuclear fireball can be extinguished by fire sprinkler systems, which did not exist in any building in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.


Above: unvaporized steel remains of the 500-ft high, 29 kt yield Teapot-Apple-2 nuclear test tower at ground zero, Nevada Test Site, 5 May 1955 (Source: http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/photos/teapot.aspx). As proved in a previous post, the fireball heat can never last long enough even at ground zero to vaporize the exposed steel, debunking all the myths about things being "vaporized" by nuclear weapons.

“No structural damage was observed which was attributable to thermal radiation. Steel was observed for exposures up to 1,400 cal/cm2 ; concrete surfaces showed minor spalling at 650 cal/cm2. ... Heavily reinforced-concrete, earth-mounded structures (walls and roofs 5 to 6 feet thick with spans up to 5 feet) survived air overpressures up to 1,000 psi.”

– W. J. Flathau and R. A. Cameron, Damage to Existing Eniwetok Proving ground Structures, Operation Hardtack, Project 3.7, weapon test report WT-1631, AD355505 (declassified from Secret – Formerly Restricted Data on 27 August 1998), page 5.


People need to be aware of the hard-proved fact that the thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion doesn't last as long as the burning incendiary bombs of WWII, so it cannot set wood on fire, only thin, fine kindling like dry leaves and dry newspaper. You cannot generate a firestorm without magnesium, phosphorus, or petroleum incendiary bombs which burn long enough to set something on fire.

The high intensities of thermal radiation near ground zero failed to even vaporize the bomb towers in many cases, and steel balls exposed within the fireball region suffered only trivial surface ablation. The fireball is ionized air so it is highly opaque (not transparent) to thermal radiation, so you get conductive heating within the fireball not long-ranged thermal radiation exposure. The heat simply doesn't last long enough to penetrate far into solid matter. Blast effects and nuclear radiation are more important, but are still highly attenuated by modern buildings.

The wide areas of burned out buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki consisted of wooden buildings mainly set alight 2-3 hours later when the firestorm peaked, after most survivors had evacuated. Most casualties were caused by flash burns, initial nuclear radiation, and blast debris like flying glass. All of these effects were greatly diminished in the few modern concrete city buildings in the cities, which remained standing amid the burned out cinders of the wooden dwellings.

The deep message is that by UNDERSTANDING the facts, the wide-area collateral damage hazards are much reduced. At the same time, our weapons remain an excellent military deterrent because the ability to crater an enemy bunker or silo out of the ground, or shake it to pieces by ground shock waves, has no easy countermeasure.

Fanatics need to be debunked. The main uses of nuclear weapons are military deterrence against hardened targets, not collateral damage against civilians, despite the hype campaign from propaganda and deception.

No matter what anybody does to oppose CND anti-civil defense fanatics, they will never accept any facts that disprove their deluded propaganda. It is vital to discredit their lies, so that in the event of a disaster, people will have some chance of understanding the facts and doing what is necessary to minimise injury and help others to minimise injury.

“If individuals feel they can do little about possible dangers, they have to flee from such threats by the use of denial. ... such individuals are not prepared to deal with the danger situation when it appears. ... In the early days of training for nuclear disaster, we stressed the number of casualties that even a nominal bomb could produce. Our listeners were alarmed, thinking, ‘How could we care for a thousand burn cases when only four or five such cases demoralize our hospital?’ The result of this approach was to lose our audiences.”

– Albert J. Glass, MD, “Mass Psychology: the Determinants of Behavior under Emergency Conditions,” Mass Burns: Proceedings of a Workshop, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. (linked here), pp. 11-20 (quotations from pages 13-14).

(Glass did extensive research in the psychology of general and nuclear warfare: see his papers "Combat exhaustion", U.S. Armed Forces Medical Journal, v. 2, 1951, pp. 1471-1478, and "Psychological considerations in atomic warfare", U.S. Armed Forces Medical Journal, v. 7, 1956, pp. 625-639.)

Exposed burned skin evaporates water at the rate of 10 litres/m2/day, which dries out and cools the body temperature, and this water evaporation rate is the actual physical mechanism behind the well-known dehydration, hypothermia, and shock in serious burns victims. The exposed burned skin also offers direct entry to the body tissues for bacterial infections (sepsis) which overwhelm the immune system and in combination with lowered temperature due to evaporation, escalate to pulmonary complications, and also allow direct contamination with radioactive fallout particles after a nuclear attack. Because severely burned victims reject food, they soon lose the energy needed to recover due to the cooling from water evaporation from the burned areas. At Hiroshima nothing was done to address the causal mechanism for burns mortality, instead efforts were made to treat dehydration by providing more fluids and antibiotics for infection. Reversing this whole approach, in order to actually prevent the underlying causes of these secondary effects in an emergency situation (nuclear attack), it has been found that simply covering exposed severe burns wounds with plastic film has been proved to avoid or reduce the immense evaporation of water which actually causes all of these immediate dehydration, shock, and hypothermia effects, and also much of the infection and contamination danger in the first place.

See Carl Jelenko, III, MD, “The Burn Surface as a Parasite: Water Loss, Caloric Demands, and Therapeutic Implications” and E. J. L. Lowbury, “The Prevention of Sepsis in Burns” (which shows in table 2 that 70% mortality from infected burns is reduced to 5% mortality if the burns are not infected) in Mass Burns: Proceedings of a Workshop, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. (linked here).

Think Plastic Wrap as Wound Dressing for Thermal Burns

ACEP 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.

Three specific and recent examples of delusional "groupthink" dogmas in medicine and the incredible dangers of it to the lives of millions of innocent people follow.

(1) Malignant tumour treatment by avoiding all forms of sugar will reduce insulin production in the body, and insulin encourages all forms of cancer growth. If sugar intake is avoided, insulin levels will be minimal, which can in some cases immobilize the cancer long enough for the body's natural defenses to take care of it, because cancer cells have a relatively high metabolism, spending a larger proportion of their life cycle dividing than other cells. Research by P. J. Goodwin, et al., J. Clin. Oncol., v. 20, 2002, issue 1, pp. 42-51, showed that even in the early stages of solid cancers, insulin levels are strongly correlated with cancer outcome. Most rapidly-proliferating cancer cells are simply unable to reduce their metabolic rate in times of sugar shortage, which means that they are simply starved (and killed off) faster than the slower-dividing non-cancer cells, which may be better able to reduce their metabolism and survive. Note that this is research within a group of cancer patients, and therefore doesn't include the effect of insulin levels on the risk of a malignant cancer developing in the first place. Nor does it specifically test the effect of insulin levels on cancer proliferation at a late stage. Eating sugars provides insulin and abundant blood sugar (easily metabolized energy for rapidly-dividing cancer cells to proliferate faster than they can be identified and isolated by natural defense mechanisms). This is not a "quack alternative" to all cancer treatments, but regardless of what other treatments are also in use, it will always at least definitely help to minimize the speed of spreading of rapidly-dividing (proliferating) cancer cells relative to slower-proliferating non-cancer cells, thereby giving other treatments more time to be effective. Therefore, people need to be better informed about simple survival techniques, not just the money-spinning "big science" medical drugs industry which has a groupthink-type vested interest in denying the possibility of a simple, cheap solution, and instead hyping only very expensive biochemical research.

(2) Aspirin for stroke effects mitigation: it is better to advise people of stroke symptoms for self-diagnosis and self-treatment by aspirin, particularly people with high blood pressure, than to advise them to waste time calling an ambulance and then spending years trying to compensate for brain damage from a blood clot in the brain.

(3) the dogmatic "professional" money funding-obsessed censorship for the defense of misinformed factually incorrect status quo"groupthink-orthodoxy in the "no-go theorem" claim (based on a misleading test by an "acknowledged expert", with all contrary evidence simply censored out of the journals by Dr Goebbels' Gestapo-type undemocratic, pseudoscientific "scientific methology" tactics) that stomach ulcers were not due to bacteria, contrary to factual evidence, where a lone doctor proving correct and successful treatments was simply censored out then actually fined by status quo (accepting this discovery back in the 1950s could have cost the careers of top "experts", a bigger "tragedy" for the "status" of "big science orthodoxy" than the mere needless suffering for millions of patients, who were given poor or inconclusive mainstream treatments):

“In 2005, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery that peptic ulcer disease was primarily caused by a bacteria, Helicobacter pylori. ... The bacterial hypothesis first appeared in 1875. Two bacteriologists, Bottcher and Letulle, argued that peptic ulcers were caused by an unobserved bacteria. Their claim was supported by observations of bacteria-like organisms in glands in the stomach by another German pathologist. ...

“In 1954, a prominent gastroenterologist, Palmer, published a study that appeared to demonstrate that no bacteria is capable of colonizing the human stomach. Palmer looked at biopsies from over 1,000 patients and observed no colonizing bacteria. As a result, he concluded that all previous observations of bacteria were a result of contamination. The result of this study was the widespread abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, poetically described by Fukuda, et al.: ‘[Palmer’s] words ensured that the development of bacteriology in gastroenterology would be closed to the world as if frozen in ice. ... [He] established the dogma that bacteria could not live in the human stomach ...’

“John Lykoudis, a Greek doctor, began treating patients with antibiotics in 1958. By all reports he was very successful. Despite this, he was unable to either publish his results or convince the Greek authorities to accept his treatment. Undeterred, he continued using antibiotics, an action for which he was eventually fined. [In 1979] Robin Warren first observed Helicobacters in a human stomach, although reports of this result would not appear in print until 1984. Initial reactions to Warren and Marshall’s discovery were negative, primarily because of the widespread acceptance of Palmer’s conclusions. Marshall became so frustrated ... he drank a solution containing Helicobacter pylori. Immediately after, he became ill and was able to cure himself with antibiotics. ... Palmer failed to use a silver stain when investigating his biopsies, instead relying on a Gram stain. ... Warren did use the silver stain ... less comprehensive reports ... like those of Lykoudis ... contradicted what seemed to be much stronger evidence to the contrary ... Had the acid theory turned out to be true, the behavior of each individual scientist would have been laudable. Despite the fact that everything was ‘done by the book,’ so to speak, one cannot resist the urge to think that perhaps things could have been done differently. In hindsight, Palmer’s study was too influential.”

- Kevin J. S. Zollman, The Epistemic Benefit of Transient Diversity, Carnegie Mellon University, September 29, 2009.


Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1972

Janis, civil defense research psychologist and author of Psychological Stress (Wiley, N.Y., 1958), Stress and Frustration (Harcourt Brace, N.Y., 1971), and Air War and Emotional Stress (RAND Corporation/McGraw-Hill, N.Y., 1951), begins Victims of Groupthink with a study of classic errors by “groupthink” advisers to four American presidents (page iv):

“Franklin D. Roosevelt (failure to be prepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor), Harry S. Truman (the invasion of North Korea), John F. Kennedy (the Bay of Pigs invasion), and Lyndon B. Johnson (escalation of the Vietnam War) ... in each instance, the members of the policy-making group made incredibly gross miscalculations about both the practical and moral consequences of their decisions.”

Joseph de Rivera's The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy showed how a critic of Korean War tactics was excluded from the advisory group, to maintain a complete consensus for President Truman. Schlesinger's A Thousand Days shows how President Kennedy was misled by a group of advisers on the decision to land 1,400 Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs to try to overthrow Castro's 200,000 troops, a 1:143 ratio. Janis writes in Victims of Groupthink:

“I use the term “groupthink” ... when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”(p. 9)

“... the group's discussions are limited ... without a survey of the full range of alternatives.”(p. 10)

“The objective assessment of relevant information and the rethinking necessary for developing more differentiated concepts can emerge only out of the crucible of heated debate [to overcome inert prejudice/status quo], which is anathema to the members of a concurrence-seeking group.”(p.61)

“One rationalization, accepted by the Navy right up to December 7 [1941], was that the Japanese would never dare attempt a full-scale assault against Hawaii because they would realize that it would precipitate an all-out war, which the United States would surely win. It was utterly inconceivable ... But ... the United States had imposed a strangling blockade ... Japan was getting ready to take some drastic military counteraction to nullify the blockade.”(p.87)

“... in 1914 the French military high command ignored repeated warnings that Germany had adopted the Schlieffen Plan, which called for a rapid assault through Belgium ... their illusions were shattered when the Germans broke through France's weakly fortified Belgian frontier in the first few weeks of the war and approached the gates of Paris. ... the origins of World War II ... Neville Chamberlain's ... inner circle of close associates ... urged him to give in to Hitler's demands ... in exchange for nothing more than promises that he would make no further demands”(pp.185-6)

“Eight main symptoms run through the case studies of historic fiascoes ... an illusion of invulnerability ... collective efforts to ... discount warnings ... an unquestioned belief in the group's inherent morality ... stereotyped views of enemy leaders ... dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members ... self-censorship of ... doubts and counterarguments ... a shared illusion of unanimity ... (partly resulting from self-censorship of deviations, augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent)... the emergence of ... members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”(pp.197-8)

“... other members are not exposed to information that might challenge their self-confidence.”(p.206)



“If those Hiroshima children had been sitting under their desks when the bomb exploded, they would probably not have been burned.”

- Professor Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1984, p. 26.

“In those few areas in the US where conditions might support a firestorm, safe shelters could be constructed based on lessons learned from the Hamburg firestorm of 1943 in which 85% of the 280,000 people within the firestorm survived. If the people of Hiroshima had been in simple buried-pole shelters, not one person need have perished from weapon effects even at ground zero ...”

- Dr C. M. Haaland, Should We Protect Ourselves from Nuclear Weapon Effects?, paper presented at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Detroit, MI, March 27, 1984, Oak Ridge National Lab. paper CONF-840315-1, 1984, NTIS document DE84008520, abstract.

Update

Daily Mail, London, 24 January 2012
This is no time for sabre-rattling. War with Iran could tip us into the bloodiest conflict since 1945
By John R Bradley

The dark prospect of war now looms in the Middle East, as the West’s confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme inches towards the point of no return.

Voicing fears that the hardline Tehran regime may secretly be developing atomic weapons, the EU yesterday decided to implement a range of economic sanctions against Iran.

These include an immediate embargo on new contracts for crude oil and petroleum products and a freeze on the assets of Iran’s central bank in the EU.

Foreign Secretary William Hague claimed these measures are aimed at ‘bringing Iran to her senses’, and follow the imposition of other tough sanctions by the U.S. last month, including a blanket prohibition on any American company dealing with the Iranian Central Bank.

Aggressive

This aggressive stance by the U.S., Britain, France and Germany — which, in fact, amounts to nothing less than economic warfare — has been accompanied by a huge show of military force in the region.

Last week, six ships, led by a mighty 100,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier [USS Abraham Lincoln], were sent to the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which runs along Iran’s southern coast and is one of the world’s busiest routes for oil supplies.

In response to all this activity, Iran has been equally hostile.

Yesterday, Mohammad Kossari, the Iranian deputy head of foreign affairs, warned that ‘if any disruption happens regarding the sale of Iranian oil, then the Strait of Hormuz will definitely be closed’.

Despite such a threat, the West — especially the U.S. — cannot now easily pull back from this process of brinkmanship. Serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme have been growing for months, ever since it became clear that it has started a uranium enrichment programme.

Equally worrying is the fact that it is a nation led by an unstable, fanatical Islamist cabal that has pledged to destroy its Middle Eastern neighbour, Israel.

Although the country’s rulers have repeatedly insisted that they want nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes, the idea of its erratic leader President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad possessing weapons of mass destruction is truly frightening.

His foreign critics understandably ask, if Tehran really has no plans for such weaponry, why is it not willing to talk openly about its nuclear programme? ...

In Britain during World War II, the defiance of the people was strengthened rather than weakened by the Luftwaffe’s murderous bombing campaign.

Iranians would be similarly emboldened by any conflict between Iran and the West.

Those who think Iran will be a pushover are therefore deluding themselves.

The nation has a powerful, well-trained, well-equipped military. Western naval vessels in the region, for instance, could soon find themselves vulnerable to Iran’s deadly anti-shipping missiles.

In addition, it is unlikely that one-off strikes against nuclear plants would halt their nuclear programmes, since much of the infrastructure is either hidden or deep underground.

But the West would have played its trump card, so the stakes could hardly be higher.

Open conflict would be a disaster, possibly plunging the world into lethal warfare on a scale not seen since 1945.

Given that, noisy sabre-rattling is no substitute for cool judgment and exhaustive diplomatic efforts for a resolution to this crisis.

John R. Bradley is the author of After The Arab Spring: How Islamists Hijacked The Middle East Revolts (Palgrave Macmillan).


Unfortunately, "exhaustive diplomatic efforts for a resolution" were tried by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on Hitler, all the while the threat was increasing. "Peaceful" trade embargoes are not an alternative to war, either. On 24 January 2012, the British national debt exceeded £1 trillion for the first time ever, and we're already cutting down on military expenditure (no aircraft carriers) to try to control the problem. The idea of diplomacy enforced with "non-military" measures like a trade embargo is today economic warfare in itself. It is sensible to remember that the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor which turned the European war into WWII, was triggered in part by the atmosphere created by President Roosevelt's moral yet wholly inadequate policy to "quarantine of the aggressors" by stopping Japan getting military supplies for its war on China. The only way to be sure that you don't increase the risk of war is to appease the aggressor, as Chamberlain did in the 30s, which itself just encourages more and more aggression by thugs until you find yourself backed against a wall or a cliff edge, and forced into a war in precisely the way the other side wants it, not on your own terms. The enemy sees appeasement simply as weakness and folly, not morality. There is also an "escalation" problem of the WWI kind, where lots of surrounding nations have alliances with one side or the other, and end up being sucked into the war to help out an ally. For example, Germany in 1914 had been waiting for two years for a suitable excuse for a war with France, and the assassination of Archiduke Ferdinand was just what they needed. British Foreign Minister Edward Grey befuddled his message to Germany and only told them in clear terms that Britain would go war with Germany if it invaded Belgium, after Germany had mobilized (A. J. P. Taylor's War by timetable). Below: 'A Chain of Friendship' - appeared in the American newspaper the Brooklyn Eagle in July 1914. The caption read: “If Austria attacks Serbia, Russia will fall upon Austria, Germany upon Russia, and France and England upon Germany.”



On Wednesday 25 January 2012 the London Daily Express published A military strike against Iran would be a catastrophe by Middle East expert Kevin Toolis:

"... on Monday [23 January 2012] in a surprising show of diplomatic unity the European Union imposed a blanket ban on Iran’s oil exports. It is a potentially fatal blow to Iran’s oil-reliant economy. HMS Argyll has been dispatched to patrol the crucial Strait of Hormuz which borders Iran and through which 35 per cent of the world’s oil exports flows. ... The once faint drums of war heralding a potential military strike against Iran just got a lot louder.

"Iran’s brutal regime has much to answer for. Last November the Iranian authorities deliberately allowed a mob of so-called “protesters” to ransack and burn our Tehran embassy. The UK, dubbed “the old fox of colonialism,” is a hate figure in the tightly controlled Iranian media along with “the Great Satan”, the US.

"Iran is a savage, unpredictable dictatorship whose real victims are the Iranian people. The weirdly creepy, anorak-wearing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rules with an iron fist. His regime supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and he himself has talked of “wiping Israel off the map”. ...

"In public the Iranians always claim they are only developing a peaceful nuclear programme. But with the fourth largest oil reserves in the world and a history of support for other terror regimes such as Syria, few right-minded people believe them. In reality Iran has probably spent billions developing the capability to create the enriched fuel for several nuclear bombs in deep underground secret laboratories in remote sites in the Iranian desert such as Nantanz. ...

"Wary of just such a potential air strike by either Israel or the United States the Iranians have spent the past decade dispersing their nuclear installations and burying them deep within mountains. Even the combined might of the United States air force and the Israeli air force could not fully destroy Iran’s nuclear programme in one preemptive strike. What would happen instead – regardless of the power of the initial aerial bombardment – is that the price of oil would shoot up to $200 a barrel.

"Oil traders, speculators, the greedy and the fearful, would rightly believe that the Iranians would strike back by shelling oil tankers on their way through the narrow Strait of Hormuz from the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to Western refineries. Or even launch an attack on neighbouring Saudi Arabia. The mere possibility would create a huge surge in speculation of the price of a barrel of oil. And the only way is up.

"Such a huge rise in oil – the basic life-blood of capitalism – would kill the frail global economic recovery stone dead. Across the world we would be talking about millions becoming unemployed as the world economy went into gridlock.

"Worst of all we would not necessarily have killed off the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb. All it would take would be one missed target and the Iranians might still have the capability, and a real motivation, to plan an overseas nuclear attack. ... Iran is an economic mess. The fanatics in charge have run the economy into the ground as Iran’s growing isolation has deprived the country of vital foreign investment.

"Rightly we should not give in or capitulate to such despots as Ahmadinejad but patiently stand our ground and seek to weaken their resolve by sanctions and negotiation. But neither do you tame a tiger by thrusting a burning torch down its throat."

The fact is, any economic pressure by the EU on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be counterproductive in two different ways. First, we need Iranian oil to stop prices going through the roof, just as we need trade with China despite its human rights record and its relatively immense nuclear missiles stockpile. Second, a trade embargo as a means to coerce a fanatical state into the path of peaceful diplomacy is something that has never worked. It failed with Japan leading to WWII, it failed with Iraq leading to the Gulf War, because it just adds to the paranoia and with skillful internal propaganda is always turned into an argument to strengthen internal support for the regime in defiance of the pressure. Reagan's arms race escalation in the 1980s only worked with USSR premier Gorbachev because he was a rational moderate, not a fanatical, ideological hard-liner, and the West could afford the arms race. Today the problems are religious zealots and we have too much debt to be able to afford another non-nuclear war.

At some stage politicians need to recognise that instead of relying on secrecy and diplomatic propaganda, the public needs to be issued with updated nuclear weapons effects information and civil defense justifications. The Cold War manual needs to be updated and published openly, to reduce the coercion and the actual nuclear threat that Iran and North Korea can pose with their nuclear missiles. Being prepared for war is the best way to avert it, reducing the risk of war. Diplomatic sanctions increases the risk of war by placing pressure on the fanatical regime and giving them a propaganda tool to claim they are being unjustly victimized. Conventional war against a fanatical regime armed with nuclear missiles is likely to be very destructive, but the main problem is that Russia and China oppose an attack on Iran. You can't successfully target and destroy conventional warhead cruise missiles against hardened underground nuclear facilities that you have no data on, and while nuclear warheads would work, the political fallout would deter politicians from even considering this option. The last time an Arab nuclear weapons proliferation facility was destroyed by a military strike was Israel's 7 June 1981 attack on Iraq's 70 MW nuclear reactor at Osirak, which Iraq denied was part of a nuclear bomb project. But Iran has protected and dispersed its facilities so Israel cannot easily do the same thing now. Iran received 5.545 kg of 93% U-235 enriched uranium for a in September 1967, 5.165 kg of U-235 (before the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran). The Hiroshima gun-assembly nuclear weapon contained 64 kg of this, but the amount Iran still has in storage is sufficient for an implosion type nuclear weapon, and it is enriching still more all the time, along with a growing missile delivery system capability:

As of October 2010, Iran had fed 34,737kg of UF6 into its cascades and produced a total of 3,606kg of LEU, with an average enrichment level of 3.37% U-235, at the Fuel Enrichment Plant. [6] In February 2010, Iran also began feeding UF6 into cascades at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant for the enrichment of UF6 to up to 20% U-235. As of September 2010, Iran had fed 487.2kg of LEU into the cascades and produced 43.6kg of UF6 with an average enrichment level of 19.7% U-235 ("Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran," The International Atomic Energy Agency, 25 February 2011). ... Iran committed itself to the development of one of the most sophisticated ballistic missile programs in the Middle East. Iran has pursued a dual track strategy, developing both liquid and solid-fueled systems. As a first step, Tehran acquired Scud-B and Scud-C missiles and production lines from North Korea (renamed Shahab-1 and Shahab-2). Tehran commenced producing considerable quantities of the missiles shortly thereafter. On 22 July 1998, Iran tested a single-stage liquid-fueled Shahab-3 with a range of 1,300km. Tehran began serial producing the Shahab-3 in early 2001, based upon the model used during the second Shahab-3 test in 2000. The Shahab-3, including its guidance system and engine design, is a derivative of North Korea's Nodong medium-range ballistic missile. On 2 February 2009, Iran launched the small cube-shaped satellite "Omid" into orbit using a modified Shahab-3. Some analysts fear that Iran's space launch vehicle, Safir, has established the technical basis for Tehran to develop long-range ballistic missiles. In 2009, Iran tested a two stage solid propellant missile with a range comparable to the Shahab-3. The development of multi-staged missiles is considered to be critical for the potential development of longer range ballistic missiles.


Before Israel's June 1981 strike on Iraq nuclear facilities, arguments arose over whether it is sensible to make either a conventional or nuclear attack on a nuclear proliferation installation, for fear of releasing additional long-lived radioactivity from a nuclear reactor or radioactive waste storage pool. Steven A. Fetter and Kosta Tsipis wrote a scare-mongering, countermeasure ignoring article called "Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity" (Scientific American, Vol. 244, No. 4, April 1981, pp.33-39) and Bennett Ramberg's book, Destruction of nuclear energy facilities in war: The problem and the implications, Lexington Books, 1980, exaggerated the dangers and claimed an attack would be more likely to disperse radioactivity and cause a danger, than to remove the danger. His anti-nuclear power prejudice is clear from his 1984 follow-up book, Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy, suggesting incorrectly that EMP and blast could damage nuclear reactor safety.

But the thick steel pressure vessel of a nuclear reactor is effectively stronger than a nuclear missile silo because it's not destroyed by being shaken by ground shock, so it is very hard for the blast wave of a nuclear explosion to destroy and the fireball heat lasts too short a time to destroy it, even at very close proximity (see our earlier post analyzing effects on Fukushima). While nuclear waste from storage ponds emits a hazardous level of radioactivity when concentrated, the dose rate is reduced when dispersed and is trivial compared to the early fallout dose rates downwind from a nuclear surface burst. The lower dose rate from reactor fission products when dispersed gives time to decontaminate then without getting a high dose in the process (the cobalt-60 bomb scare hyperbole in Dr Strangelove is the same in this respect). Propaganda ignores the difference in initial dose rates, and just compares the theoretical total doses over a long period of time, or the theoretical dose rates at a long time, which ignores decontamination, fractionation (the fraction of the fission product debris which is actually dispersed, since only about 1% of the crater volume in a nuclear explosion ends up as fallout in any event, etc.). Ramberg's scare-mongering "data" table on the danger completely ignores decontamination, fractionation, etc:




Above: decontamination is ignored, fractionation (the fact the fireball heat only volatizes nuclides with low boiling points for more than a few seconds) is ignored, and the fact that an earth-penetrator of 1 kt (not 1 Mt) yield is ignored. A 1 kt earth penetrator is a low-yield shallow underground burst on a hardened target which cannot spread significant amounts of debris very far, because the cloud only rises to a small fraction of the cloud height in a 1 Mt burst, and the fireball heat is dissipated quickly by cooling due to the subsurface detonation earth medium. The anger over this propaganda is that only about 1% of the crater mass ends up as small particles of fallout, while 99% remains in the crater or the nearby lip as crater ejecta. Computer simulations confirm that even if a nuclear explosion fireball engulfs a nuclear waste dump, it is treated at best as ordinary crater material so only about 1% of the waste ends up as fallout downwind. The other 99% is simply buried in the crater. In fact, because nuclear waste is better protected than ordinary soil, the fallout creation mixing is prejudiced against incorporating the material protected by tough steel capsules. The nuclear waste dump is not inside the exploding nuclear weapon, and therefore in most cases it does not gain the heating and energy needed to mix efficiently and quickly with small particles to create fallout before the fireball cools.

To emphasise: a 1 kt nuclear surface burst that craters say 20,000 tons of soil only produces 200 tons of lofted fallout, established from the specific activity of fallout from nuclear tests which show that only ~1% of the crater mass is dust lofted to become fallout. Thus, fallout is only 1% of the crater mass: the other 99% is the fallback in the crater and on the crater lip right beside ground zero. Hence, if you crater a nuclear reactor or waste dump, you do not get 100% of the material in the crater volume becoming widely dispersed fallout, but only 1 %, assuming it is in the form of fine particles like the soil. If it is protected by any kind of metal capsule, it is less likely to become fallout than particles of earth and dust in the natural soil within the crater region. So most of the nuclear waste is entombed in the nuclear explosion crater, rather than becoming tiny particles of wind blown dust in the base surge or fallout cloud. The popular propaganda which exaggerates this by a factor of 100 claims falsely that 100% of the crater mass becomes fallout. This is false!

This propaganda issue of military strikes spreading rather than preventing toxic fallout earlier arose with Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapon threat, see Robert W. Nelson, "Nuclear "Bunker Busters" Would More Likely Disperse Than Destroy Buried Stockpiles of Biological and Chemical Agents," Science & Global Security 12, no. 1-2, 2004, which includes some cratering data from Northrop's EM-1 handbook. Earlier, in 1993 Ed Mendelsohn’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report, Dependence of Nuclear Interceptor Effectiveness on Hydrogen Content of Chemical Warhead Agent, UCRL-ID-115728, calculated the lethality of nuclear weapons against attacking warheads containing a toxic chemical agent (sarin), which Nelson ignores. See also Michael J. Morgan's ever tactful paper, The Bunker-Busting Nuke: Essential Capability or Destabilizing Weapon?, ADA441722: "As that famous German war theorist Carl von Clausewitz suggested, the worst condition a belligerent can find himself is “utterly defenseless.” The bunker-busting nuke helps achieve that condition, and America may soon face a belligerent who needs to perceive that his every capability is held at risk."

By Alexei Anishchuk
Reuters

MOSCOW, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Russia warned on Wednesday that an attack on Iran would cause a catastrophe and said U.S. and European Union sanctions against Tehran were aimed at triggering popular discontent by "strangling" the economy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Western sanctions against Iran and talk of a potential attack undermine efforts to revive negotiations aimed at ensuring it does not develop nuclear weapons. Speaking at his annual news conference, Lavrov said Western nations must focus on efforts to revive long-dormant talks between global powers and Tehran "and not on sanctions, let alone threats to use force".

"I have no doubt that it would pour fuel on a fire which is already smouldering, the hidden smouldering fire of Sunni-Shi'ite confrontation, and beyond that (cause) a chain reaction - I don't know where it would stop," he said of an attack. ...

Israel has often said it could strike Iran to stop it developing nuclear weapons, and tension has increased following a Iranian threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping lane, if sanctions prevent it exporting oil.

Lavrov emphasised Russia's opposition to further U.N. Security Council or Western sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, which the United States and its European allies fear is aimed at producing weapons.

"All imaginable sanctions that could influence Iran's conduct in the nuclear sphere ... have been exhausted," Lavrov said.

Additional sanctions "are aimed at causing a strangling effect on the Iranian economy and the situation of the Iranian people, probably in the hope of provoking discontent," he said. (Reporting by Alexei Anishchuk, Writing by Thomas Grove and Steve Gutterman)



Above: Nine survivors of Hiroshima who travelled to Nagasaki avoided blasted glass and flying debris at the second nuclear explosion because they knew that the blast effect (breaking windows and blasting glass fragments and other debris horizontally) was delayed after the flash (like thunder after lightning), so they had time to literally duck and cover. Robert Trumbull - the New York Times Pacific and Asia war correspondent, 1941-79 - documented the facts about double survivors after an 11 October 1955 New York Times article - “Eleven Survived Two Atom Bombs” - reported the names of the survivors who had been found to have survived both nuclear explosions. Trumbull’s 1957 book Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Personal Experiences of Nine Men who Lived Through Both Atomic Bombings was stimulated by the Director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission medical investigation, who identified 18 double-survivors of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All survived Hiroshima and then took trains to Nagasaki, arriving in Nagasaki either early or late on the morning of 9 August 1945, just before the bomb dropped on that city. A census was held in 1950, and the information from other colleagues was used to check the accuracy of the survivor records. Trumbull with the help of the Japanese translator for the New York Times then tracked eleven down, of whom 9 agreed to give interviews. The 1957 jacket of Nine Who Survived emphasizes the value of this survival knowledge:

“The Japanese who survived the atomic bombings of both Nagasaki and Hiroshima are some of the most valuable people in the world. Now for the first time these men share the knowledge they gained then at such terrible cost – a knowledge which is vital for all humanity. ... Eight of the nine accidentally or deliberately took cover in the few seconds which elapsed between the unearthly flash of light and the blast ... To know what these men endured, and how they survived is supremely important for us all.”

Trumbull reported by radio from Iwo Jima while under Japanese mortar fire, and accompanied the first Marines to enter Japan after their surrender. Unlike the subjective emotional sensationalism and air burst fallout deceptions of dangerous populist books on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (it is a hard fact that the popular media only want to publish emotional anti-civil defense propaganda and exaggerations on this subject, not a balanced or objective assessment), Trumbull’s book is objective and honest, focussing interviews on establishing useful civil defense facts about how the thermal flash and blasted window glass fragments were dodged or stopped by quick action with futons. Trumbull points out (page 16) that Hiroshima’s 300 year old medieval castle “had been made an Army divisional headquarters, the heart of the command responsible for southern Japanese defenses. Besides shipyards and important war industries, the city contained at least 35 major military installations.” On page 86 he states Nagasaki was bombed because there was cloud cover over Kokura, the steel manufacturing center at the northern end of Kyushu island, but Nagasaki contained the Mitsubishi shipbuilding yards that made the biggest battleship of WWII, the 73,000 ton Musashi armed with 19 inch guns. Trumbull died aged 80 in 1992.

The experiences of double-nuclear bomb survivors Trumbull interviewed (with their ages on 9 August 1945):

Kenshi Hirata (26, accountant at Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Company, Hiroshima). Hirata explained how he ducked to avoid blasted glass and debris on seeing the nuclear flash in Hiroshima (Trumbull p25): “‘through an open window what looked like a golden lightning flash ... had blown up out of the earth. The weird light was everywhere. I immediately thought of an air-raid, and hurled myself prostrate in the passage.’ Hirata’s quick action probably saved him serious injury, if not his life.” The worst skin burns and glass fragment injuries occurred on bare skin (Trumbull p61): “Because it was the middle of summer, which is exceptionally hot in southern Japan, most of the people of Hiroshima were very thinly clad that morning, so they had less than ordinary protection against burns, Hirata observed.” After returning to his family in Nagasaki, he used his experience to prevent injury during second nuclear detonation (Trumbull p119):

“‘I shouted to my aged father ... ‘Lie face downward!’ In the immediate moment I was expecting that terrific explosion blast and roar.’ ... Kenshi and his father were unharmed. ‘But in two or three minutes ... I saw people running out of their houses, holding their hands over injuries on their heads, faces, and bodies. Most of these were wounds caused by flying pieces of glass.”

Tsutomu Yamaguchi (29, Mitsubishi ship designer, who insisted on having both Hiroshima and Nagasaki shown on his Japanese nuclear survivor medical records in 2009, and died in 2010 aged 93, soon after being visited by Titanic film director James Cameron). Yamaguchi explains how he survived in Hiroshima outdoors (Trumbull p28):

“‘Suddenly there was a flash like the lighting of a huge magnesium flare,’ Yamaguchi recalls. The young ship designer was so well drilled in air-raid precaution techniques that he reacted automatically. He flung his hands to his head, covering his eyes with his fingers and stopping his ears with his two thumbs. Simultaneously he dropped to the ground, face down. ... ‘As I prostrated myself, there came a terrific explosion’.” His left arm and the left part of his face were facing the fireball and were flash-burned. Then, after returning to Nagasaki by train early on 9 August, he was on the sixth-floor of the headquarters office of the great Mitsubishi industrial complex explaining the effects in Hiroshima to colleagues and his superior, when the Nagasaki nuclear flash occurred (Trumbull p109):

“Spelling out the danger of flying glass, he urged them to keep windows open during an air-raid alert, and at the instant of the flash to seize at once upon any shelter available ... the second A-bomb confirmed young Yamaguchi’s words, exploding in a huge ball of fire about a mile away. Yamaguchi’s lecture ... was not lost upon his colleagues. With the young designer’s words still fresh in their minds, they leaped for the cover of desks and tables. ‘As a result,’ said Yamaguchi, ‘my section staff suffered the least in that building. In other sections there was a heavy toll of serious injuries from flying glass’.”

But the BBC omitted ALL useful survival facts by pretending Trumbull’s book did not exist, and stupidly and offensively labelling Yamaguchi the “Unluckiest Man in the World” after his death aged 93 in 2010, during a Stephen Fry hosted programme - QI, series 8, episode 13, 17 December 2010 - leading to Yamaguchi’s daughter, Toshiko, stating on NHK TV Japan that Stephen Fry’s “joke” insulted her: “I cannot forgive the atomic bomb experience being laughed at in Britain.” London’s Japanese Embassy officially complained to the BBC, and producer Piers Fletcher missed the point about the facts being wrong, by stating: “I underestimated the potential sensitivity of this issue to Japanese viewers.” Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, wrote an “apology” to the Japanese Embassy. The BBC even tried to pass off the error by claiming that part of the “joke” was a praise of the efficiency of Japanese trains in resuming service rapidly after the Hiroshima nuclear explosion. Hilary Whiteman of CNN reported on 4 February 2011 that Stephen Fry cancelled a trip to Japan to film Planet Word as a result of upset he had caused in Japan.



Shigeyoshi Morimoto (46, maker of kites for air defense of Japanese ships). Morimoto used his Hiroshima experience to take cover in Nagasaki after seeing the flash, before the windows were blasted in.

Tsuitaro Doi (47, assistant kite maker to Morimoto). Doi was on his Hiroshima hotel bed, a thin floor mattress called a “futon”, on 6 August, and when he saw the explosion flash he used the futon to protect himself against blasted window glass (Trumbull p42): “I quickly rolled over and covered my head with the futon ... The floor of the room and my futon were covered with tiny bits of shattered glass. I noticed that I had a slight cut on one arm, and another on the leg, where I wasn’t covered. ... There were a lot of school girls in the crowd of wounded ... they said they were students who had been mobilized by the Army to pull down houses so as to prevent the spread of fire ... One girl said that all those who had been on the roofs, tearing off tiles, had been blown to the ground by the blast and had got terrible burns.” He was at home, 1.5 miles from ground zero in Nagasaki, when the second flash occurred (Trumbull pp106-7):

“Doi was telling his wife in detail about the bomb. ‘If you ever see that flash,’ he said, ‘immediately prostrate yourself on the floor, or the ground if you are outside. ...’ As he was saying these words, the windows lighted as if giant searchlights had been turned directly into the house. ‘There, you see it? That’s what I mean!’ Doi cried ... Mrs Doi startled, jumped to her feet impulsively and turned to run out of the house. Doi grabbed her and pulled her and the baby down as the blast wave shattered all the glass in the little cottage and ripped off the wood and paper sliding doors. As the flimsy house steadied Doi opened his eyes, and saw that the interior of the room was a wreck. But neither he nor his wife nor the baby was hurt.”

Shinji Kinoshita (50, assistant kite maker to Morimoto). Kinoshita was hit by falling roof slabs in Hiroshima warehouse but survived with his colleague Komatsu. Kinoshita was just outside the door of his family home when the Nagasaki nuclear explosion occurred (Trumbull p105): “he was momentarily blinded by a flash that seemed to cover the sky. Like the other survivors of the Hiroshima attack, Kinoshita realized at once what the strange, blinding light meant, and reacted without a second’s hesitation. He threw himself face first on the ground, at the same time shouting into the house, ‘Cover yourself with futons!’”

Masao Komatsu (40, assistant kite maker to Morimoto). Komatsu was hit by falling beam in Hiroshima warehouse but survived along with his colleague Kinoshita. The nuclear explosion flash in Nagasaki occurred as Komatsu’s train was arriving (Trumbull, p101): “the interior of the coach was bathed in a stark, white light. Komatsu immediately dived for the floor. ‘Get down!’ he screamed at the other passengers. Some recovered sufficiently from the daze of the blinding light to react promptly to his warning. Seconds later came the deafening crack of the blast, and a shock wave that splintered all the windows on both sides of the train. The passengers who had not dived under the seats were slashed mercilessly from waist to head by glass flying at bullet speed.”

Takejiro Nishioka (55, publisher of Nagasaki’s leading newspaper in 1945). He became Governor of the Nagasaki Prefecture in 1957. In Hiroshima on business on 6 August 1945, he survived the first nuclear explosion and noted the delay of the blast wave after the visible flash. When he returned to Nagasaki he was not allowed to publish the facts, and only survived by diving into an air raid shelter when he saw the flash after a single B-29 appeared over the city. He explained (Trumbull, p92):

“I had observed in Hiroshima that when the flash came, there would be a few seconds before it was followed by the blast wave ... I have often bitterly regretted the law that gagged me as a newspaperman, and forced me to confine my communications to the governor’s ear alone.”

Japan only permitted civil defense advice against nuclear attack to be published after the second nuclear attack on Nagasaki, which was too late. Even at ground zero, the blast wave was delayed after the first flash because of the height of burst, so quick reactions could limit exposure to flying glass. Proof of the efficiency of duck and cover advice against the blast wind and flying debris was given to Nishioka by Nagasaki’s police chief Mizuguchi, who had been told Nishioka’s advice by the Nagasaki governor and had passed it to his first-grade middle school student son, who was with three friends in Daikoku-Machi street, Nagasaki, when the flash occurred (Trumbull pp. 114-5):

“The police chief’s son remembered his father’s warning at once. Hauling his friend with him by the hand, he dashed for a shelter on the pavement ... The two boys in the shelter were saved; the other two, who stayed on the street, seemed to vanish ... Mizuguchi’s wife, at the same moment, happened to be standing just outside their house, under the eves, with a baby in her arms. The instant she saw the flash, she recalled her husband’s words of the night before and rushed back into the house. She opened a closet and, with the baby still in her arms, crowded inside and pulled shut the sliding door. ... The room, and the area outside the house, was covered with innumerable sharp, pointed slivers of shattered glass. Clearly, she had escaped serious injury by shutting herself in the closet. ... Nishioka was bitterly upbraided by Hiromasa Nakamura, chief of the foreign affairs sections of the Nagasaki Prefectural Office, for not briefing other government officials on the happenings at Hiroshima and the efficacy of bomb shelters. ... ‘I could only tell him that I was indeed anxious to tell everyone in Nagasaki what I had learned, but that if I had done so, I would have been liable for violation of the law against spreading ‘wild rumors’, and could have been arrested and convicted.”

Akira Iwanaga (25, engineer at Mitsubishi ship yard, a friend and colleague of Yamaguchi). After surviving at Hiroshima, he arrived in Nagasaki just as the bomb exploded, aboard the same train as another double-survivor, Masao Komatsu (Trumbull p101). Sakajiro Mishima (36, dockside worker at Mitsubishi ship yard) also survived both nuclear explosions.

Nuclear survivors in 1957 were subject to the same media radiation scare-mongering as today, and some shunned publicity. Yamaguchi’s friend Kuniyoshi Sato, along with Masako Suga and her baby boy and Hiroshi Shibuta were all also double-survivors of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but in 1957 they all declined publicity. Another double-survivor aged is Mrs Kazuko Sadamaru (aged 20 in 1945), first interviewed in The Observer (London, Sunday 24 July 2005) in 2005, aged 80. She was a nurse in a Nagasaki’s Ohmura Naval Hospital, but on 5 August 1945 had to accompany a soldier to Hiroshima by train. The Hiroshima explosion occurred just as the train arrived at 8:15am, and she returned to Nagasaki by train, surviving a second nuclear explosion:

‘“I never wanted to speak out about my experience. I haven’t published anything or talked to anyone because I didn’t want anyone to know. I only became a nurse because I wanted to devote myself to patients and the country. I never dreamt Japan would lose the war. I worked and worked believing Japan would win. I cannot forget the events on 6 and 9 August 1945. I saw the flashes and the mushroom clouds of both A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So many were exposed to the A-bomb but I am one of the few people who have experienced the two bombs, and still I am in good health. It was fate that I was there, but I had good luck in that I survived both bombs.” Despite being close to both bombs, she suffered only a temporary abnormal white blood cell count and loss of hair.”’


Above: overcrowded wood frame housing containing charcoal braziers on the edge of the damaged area in Hiroshima (U.S. National Archives photo). How many cities in the world which contain this type of overcrowded wooden housing with charcoal braziers are targets for nuclear terrorism today? U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, never-published full May 1947 report 92 on Hiroshima, volume 2, typeset edition pages 126-8 (quoted on pages 176 and 98 of Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945):

“Structural damage by blast to multistory, steel- and reinforced concrete-frame structures did not extend beyond 2,000 feet from GZ. The buildings within this radius sustained an average of 12 percent structural damage. The average for all the buildings of this type in Hiroshima was 8 percent.”


These are modern city buildings. The burned out areas in old photos are congested (a roof to ground area averaging 42% in firestorm areas) wood frame houses. On page 98, they quote the secret 1947 USSBS Hiroshima report, vol 1, pp 13-14 (typeset edition, not the typed manuscript in the UK National Archives at Kew):

“... 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 ... 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.”


The electric power was rapidly cut off by the overload, so sustained heat came from charcoal fires in Hiroshima's houses (due to breakfast, i.e. 8:15 local time).


Above the U.S. Department of Defense's 1973 DCPA Attack Environment Manual, chapter 3, panel 26 used the examples of successful amateur fire-fighting modern Western-type city buildings in Hiroshima as proof that people can survive in modern city buildings exposed near ground zero within the firestorm of a nuclear explosion (due to overcrowded wooden housing areas). The manuals data came from reports which remained limited or secret in distribution, however. Panel 27 in chapter 3 of the 1973 DCPA Attack Environment Manual states: "The evidence from Hiroshima indicates that blast survivors, both injured and uninjured, in buildings later comsumed by fire 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 within the first half hour. The remainder were consumed by fire spread, some as late as 15 hours after the blast." Panel 3 also points out that the predictions of thermal burns in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons omit protection due to shadows by tall buildings in modern cities, and duck and cover evasive action: "Persons caught in the open or near windows can also take advantage of the relative slow pace of the thermal pulse from large-yield weapons. ... Further out, even more time would be available. In the light damage area (1 to 2 psi), evasive action within the first four seconds would avoid significant burn injury."


Above: tall buildings protect against thermal burns by the shadowing effect, whereas the people in Hiroshima in many documented survivor accounts of serious burn and flying glass injuries had moved into a position (behind windows or outdoors) with a direct radial line to the fireball, to watch the B-29 bomb carrying aircraft.

Proof-tests of a heat-reflecting plastic against thermal radiation (suitable for fire-proof protective clothing and other materials to resist heat flash and fire)





Rose George, “Starlite, nuclear blast-defying plastic that could change the world: Two decades ago amateur scientist Maurice Ward invented a material that could resist the force of 75 Hiroshimas. So why haven’t we all heard about it?”, The Telegraph, London, 15 Apr 2009:

“Fire-resistant uniforms; better fire doors; safer furniture. Laser-resistant tanks and weaponry; more efficient missile nose cones. It could coat launch sites for vertical take-off aircraft and spacecraft. ... In early 1990, presenter Peter McCann introduced viewers to Starlite by means of an egg. Ward shows me the first videoed test of the oxyacetylene torch meeting a Starlite-coated hen's egg. Not only did a Starlite coating prevent the egg from combusting, it was also an astonishingly efficient insulator, as McCann demonstrated by cracking the egg, after five minutes of it being torched, to reveal a completely raw yolk. There are other thermal barriers, the presenter said, but none that resist heat and yet give off no toxic fumes, and can be easily moulded. ... In July that year, Ward was invited to the British Atomic Weapons Establishment at Foulness, and the egg went nuclear. ‘They’d been trying to get something to withstand a nuclear flash for 45 years, and we did it in five minutes.’ Ward was reluctant to take part at first. ‘I was happy with my egg. It was just a challenge and I didn’t want to lose.’ This was a different league. Starlite-coated eggs were subjected to light-energy sources that simulated a nuclear flash, equivalent to a temperature of 10,000 C. 'They did it twice and it was still there. Charred, but intact.’

“The Foulness equipment couldn’t keep up. ‘I said to one scientist, “Are we doing all right?”, and he burst out laughing. He said, “Normally, we do a test every couple of hours because we have to wait for it to cool down. We’re doing it every 10 minutes, and it's sat there laughing at us.”’ Most materials vaporise beyond 2,000 C. Pure carbon, which has the highest melting point of all elements, melts at 3,500 C. ... In tests at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, Starlite was pulsed with lasers that would normally have burned through polymer. Instead, as Pohling-Brown reported in a widely-read article in International Defence Review in 1993, ‘Starlite showed little damage to the surface, merely small pits with the approximate diameter of the beam and with little evidence of melting.’ Pohling-Brown reported that it included ‘... polymers and copolymers, and small quantities of ceramics’. ... [on 21] June 1991, a sample was sent to White Sands atomic weapons testing site in New Mexico, in the care of the SAS, and subjected to a simulated nuclear onslaught. ‘It was classed as the biggest bang in town. I’ve seen a video [on which] it shredded forest to sawdust, rolled some tanks around, stripped an aircraft into pieces.’ But Starlite survived. ... Ward certainly believes in his product, claiming publicly that it could have prevented the space shuttle disasters. ‘Starlite has a Q-value [an energy absorption rating] of 2,470. The space shuttle tiles have a Q-value of 1.’ Not only that, but because Starlite is so lightweight – 1mm thick, compared to 75mm for the space tiles – it’s actually ... better’.”

Slaked lime painted on wood has been used as a flame-proofing since medieval times, and was used in WWII to reduce the fire risks from incendiary bombs, along with flame-resistant fight-fighting clothing made by soaking clothes in a solution containing borax and boric acid. Plastic “smart” materials, like starlite, are compounds containing clay and polymer plastic, whose infrared radiation reflection albedo increases with temperature as the clay is fired into ceramic, resisting a nuclear heat flash, which ends before the slower-moving blast wave arrives. Inventor Maurice Ward was motivated to investigate the applications of this heat proof plastic for safety when on 22 August 1985 fire spread rapidly through the flammable plastics in a British Airtours plane at Manchester Airport, killing 55 in 40 seconds. Propagandarists who oppose all civil defence against terrorism ignore the fact that these same safety measures are also effective against peacetime fires, and natural disasters or accidents.

Fire proof plastics have peacetime utility as well as wartime utility. The anti-civil defence claim (seatbelts encourage accidents and anything which could save lives in a nuclear war is immoral), is disproved by the facts of anti-civil defence appeasement causing war in the 1930s. In his pre-war book The Peril from the Air and articles, Sir Malcolm Campbell argued for underground concrete car parks in London to both ease street congestion in peacetime and pay for themselves with parking revenue, yet afford effective life-saving shelter for civil defence during bombing. Such ideas were deplored by the miserable and militant so-called idealist-pacifist of the popular media until subdued by the 1938 Munich crisis. They were out to attack anybody realistically making the world safer by discouraging aggressors through reducing vulnerability to attack. For the mean peace-at-any-price fanatics, anything that could reduce terrorism is a deflection from utopian dreams of world disarmament. Some continue to refuse to acknowledge that there are, always have been, and always will be, thuggist idealistic fanatics in the world who are a danger and who try to intimidate by exploiting vulnerability, possibly some are idealistic fanatics themselves. If you discuss the facts with hard-line anti-civil defense CND supporters, the more delusions you demolish with hard fact, the less interested they become. If someone's religious dogma is called disarmament for utopia, and they find attacking civil defense a useful means to divert attention to their aim of vilifying effective military technology, they any facts which disprove their assertions will not make an impact. If they are not rational or interested in reason to begin with, they cannot be defeated with reasoned argument.

This is a key point that civil defense must confront. To be taken seriously, you must not only give people the full facts on civil defense, but you must also give the whole truth on the delusions of the "alternatives" to civil defense and their ineffectiveness in history, so that the public is aware of the historical experiences of trying to avoid war with dictators using diplomacy or peaceful blockades. Only full disclosure of the facts leads to an informed democratic public debate. Civil defense will not be taken seriously, regardless of the scientific data declassification proving its effectiveness, until and unless the whole spectrum of exaggerations and prejudices on no-longer secret weapons is debunked by the historical example of the 1930s. Brett Holman is writing a book which hopefully will do this. One delusion is that a world police can prevent war: the problem here is that in democracy the police usually work on "innocent until proved guilty", rather than locking people up on mere suspicion in order to prevent crime. If you scale this idea up to a world police force, you have to be aware that the police is not 100% effective in preventing crime, nor even in bringing criminals to justice. So you no longer have a utopian foolproof plan, and then you are into difficult quantitative questions like, "will this idea actually end up setting off more conflicts and wars than it prevents?" This kind of fruitless polemical "debate" (with no real facts under discussion, just emotional ranting) has always had enormous political and ethical support from people like Stalin, Hitler, and and others, since it detracts public attention in democratic countries from more realistic countermeasures to disasters, e.g. civil defense. Technical data: here, here, and here.



Above: people survived all of the nuclear explosion effects within the Hiroshima firestorm in the Bank of Japan and Geibi Bank Company, and extinguished fires 2-3 hours after the nuclear explosion when firebrands (burning cinders) were blown through broken windows from the wooden areas firestorm surrounding these modern concrete city buildings. The photos above are from the U.S. Department of Defense DCPA Attack Environment Manual 1973, chapters 3 and 8. The illustraion on the right shows radiation protection factors from fallout.


Above: the overcrowding of wood-frame buildings in 1945 Hiroshima was such that 42 percent of the ground areas in the main firestorm areas was covered with wooden buildings containing charcoal braziers, paper screens, and bamboo furnishings. This compared to 45 percent ground coverage by buildings in the central wooden medieval part of Hamburg which suffered a firestorm in July 1943.


Above: conventional warfare dropped 240 kilotons of bombs on Germany in the month of March 1945 alone, equivalent to 15 times the 16 kt Hiroshima bomb, i.e., one Hiroshima every 2 days during March 1945. Distributing the same energy over many small bombs (rather than a single large bomb) is actually more damaging, since the overpressure-damaged area from a bomb scales only as the two-thirds power of the explosive energy, and is equivalent to megatons of nuclear weapons per month. Manhattan Project in 1945 at best could produce only two bombs per month. There is a tendency among many politicians, historians, disarmers, and others to down-play conventional warfare and to exaggerate the effects of nuclear weapons, by misleadingly selective use of statistics.

Updates (3 March 2012)

Whole World on Fire—And All Wet. Walmer (Jerry) Strope

I have just finished reading a strange book, Whole World on Fire, by Lynn Eden, published by Cornell University Press a month ago. Ms. Eden is an historian at Stanford University. Her thesis is that Air Force targeteers perversely continued to use blast damage as the basis for targeting even though fire damage "would extend two to five times farther than blast damage" because of institutional biases stemming from the emphasis on precision bombing in World War II. That is, "organizations draw on past practices and ideas even as they innovate to solve new problems."

To Ms. Eden, the question of prioritizing nuclear weapon effects is just a convenient example of this institutional characteristic. She does not purport herself to be an expert on the physics of mass fires. ...

In Chapter 1, Ms. Eden introduces her readers to the problem by postulating the detonation of a 300-kt bomb 1,500 feet above the Pentagon. It is here that I encounter more of the strangeness. ... close in, we are told "the fireball would melt asphalt in the streets." But when the description gets to the Capitol building some three miles away, there is no comparable sentence. The previous image is permitted to carry over. ... we are told, "Even though the Capitol is well constructed to resist fire, and stands in an open space at a distance from other buildings, light from the fireball shining through the building’s windows would ignite papers, curtains, light fabrics, and some furniture coverings. Large sections of the building would probably suffer heavy fire damage. The House and Senate office buildings would suffer even greater damage. The interiors of these buildings would probably burn."

Hold on! Wait a minute! The Capitol building is completely protected by sprinklers. So are the House and Senate office buildings, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court building, and the massive buildings lining the Mall and in the Federal Triangle. These buildings may become sopping wet but they probably will not burn. The monuments also will not burn.

Why don’t mass fire calculators take sprinkler systems, venetian and vertical blinds, and other fire protection measures into account? Is the situation in the Nation’s Capital unusual? Not anymore. For decades, the lowly fire protection engineer and his employer, the fire insurance industry, have been gnawing away at the fire problem. According to the National Fire Protection Association, between 1977 and 2002 the annual number of building fires in the United States declined by 50%, from 3.2 million a year to 1.6 million a year. Fires in hotels and motels, which killed over 100 people a year as recently as the late 1960s, have become so rare that the U.S. Fire Administration no longer keeps statistics on them. If it were not for a sizable increase in wildfire damage—resulting from timber management practices—the statistics would look even better ... lots of people survived in the fire areas at Hamburg and Hiroshima. The late Dr. Carl F. Miller (after whom the California chapter of ASDA is named) did the definitive analysis of the records of the Hamburg Fire Department. About 20 percent of the people in the fire area were in underground bunkers. Eighty percent were in shelters in building basements. Survival in bunkers was 100%; in basements, it was 80%.


Walmer E. ("Jerry") Strope (April 9, 1918 - August 15, 2010) worked on fallout at the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in California and on nuclear tests starting with the underwater Baker shot on 25 July 1946 at Bikini Atoll, where he did the definitive analysis of dose rate and film badge radiation dose data from the target ships, establishing the partition between fallout deposit doses and transit base surge radiation doses.

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy transferred responsibility for civil defense to the Department of Defense, and Strope was made Director of Research under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civil Defense. He also sat with Dr Carl Miller and others in the USNRDL earth covered fallout shelter just a mile away from 17 kt shot Diablo of Operation Plumbbob, Nevada, 1957. In the 1960s and early 1970s (before FEMA), he was head of civil defense research for the Office of Civil Defense (at the Department of Defense) which was later renamed DCPA (Defense Civil Preparedness Agency) in the Pentagon, where he commissioned much of the Dirkwood Corporation and Stanford Research Institute research we're reviewing in this blog. So why didn't he assemble and publish all the facts? Well, Strope states on his March 1977 Resume that he was the author of the renowned 1973 DCPA Attack Environment Manual: "Author of DCPA Attack Environment Manual and numerous classified and unclassified federal in-house research reports." That manual is the only fact-based summary of the facts, but it relies on secret and limited distribution references which were not available to back it up, and so it could not demolish Postol and others. The anti-civil defense and nuclear firestorm delusions rely on official secrecy to stop the full facts coming out. Delusions breed in an information vacuum. Secrecy continues today with EM-1, and with the volumes of DASA-1251 dealing with the specific activity (visibility) of fallout deposits at nuclear tests, their gamma ray spectra measurements, and other vital basic civil defense data on fires, damage to structures near nuclear tests. The 1953 Annie and 1955 Apple-2 "open shots" which produced the propaganda of filmed wooden and brick fascade cinder-block houses exploding outwards with plenty of dust in the negative pressure phase, hardly much of a problem for people inside who have ducked under strong tables on seeing the flash.

"My first NRDL report was AD-77, “A Review of the Radioactive Waste Disposal Problem from the Military Viewpoint.” ...

I had never heard of Samuel Glasstone myself but his name struck a chord in many of the nerds at NRDL. It seemed he had written an important textbook in physical chemistry that had been used in their studies. Accordingly, his name was uttered with the same sort of awe that Webster’s is used in connection with a dictionary. I concluded that Glasstone had been brought into the picture to lend a little cachet to the Handbook in the eyes of the scientific community. In one of his letters written after the announcement of the Russian bomb test, Glasstone mentioned that “the Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy is breathing down our necks, and we are anxious to complete the HANDBOOK as soon as possible.” Things did drag on though and it was not until the following spring that I received a paper-bound copy of The Effects of Atomic Weapons together with a letter from Carroll L. Wilson, the general manager of the AEC, thanking me for my contributions and announcing that the book was scheduled for publication on August 12, 1950. It was a form letter no doubt received by every one of the contributors listed in the Foreword to the book. Hirschfelder was listed too but Glasstone was singled out as the editor.

Glasstoned Again

In the summer of 1950, as the Marines were desperately trying to halt the North’s invasion of South Korea, we received word from AFSWP that Samuel Glasstone would be arriving to accomplish the final editing of RD2. I was aghast. We had the damn thing about done and besides, I had looked over The Effects book and did not think it that great an editing job. What had been done was to divide every chapter into two parts; the first written for the lay person and conveying general results while the technically literate reader was referred to the second part that contained details. I had no way of knowing whether that arrangement was Glasstone’s contribution, of course, but none of the draft material had been organized that way. I hoped that approach would not be foisted onto RD2 but I feared the worst. ...

It was an insult to send Sam Glasstone to NRDL but I could do nothing about it. The nerds thought I was lucky to be able to sit at the feet of their hero. Shortly, Glasstone arrived but not by himself. He had his wife with him. She, it turned out, did not come to keep house for Sam. She was his helpmeet at work; not a secretary, mind you, but a full-fledged partner. Fortunately, the office I had reserved for Glasstone was large enough for the Glasstones. They sat across from each other at a library table and passed our drafts back and forth. Maybe she edited his stuff.

I do not have any picture in my mind these days of how the Glasstones looked. All I remember is that they were old. They were old like my father. (He was in his mid-50s then.) The net effect of Glasstone and Glasstone was to delay the publication of Radiological Defense, Volume II by about six months. (It was eventually published in mid-1951.) Every chapter got the same treatment: no content changes but numerous changes in organization and presentation. I fumed but told my team to accomplish the changes. Only occasionally would I object to Sam that a proposed change would make the meaning inaccurate or misleading. My objections were always accommodated. ...

Radiological Defense, Volume II, was published in mid-1951 in beautifully bound navy-blue imitation leather with gold lettering. It got wide distribution in the services and outside. The copy I now have has been declassified and was in the library of the Federal Civil Defense Administration until I liberated it. Inside is a foreword by Brigadier General Herbert Loper, chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, in which he acknowledges that most of the material was prepared by NRDL with too many contributors to be named individually but that the book was edited by Samuel Glasstone. Glasstoned again!" - Walmer E. Strope, autobiography, ch 9, p112 and 115-116.


Above: Walmer Strope's photo on an Operation Hardtack (1958 nuclear tests) badge, marked "Top Secret: Sigma 4". This American "Sigma" system continues today: Sigma 1 is thermonuclear weapon design, 2 is fission and boosted fission design, 3 is general nuclear weapons data, 4 is nuclear test data, and 5 is stockpile data. In America, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 controlled security, while in Britain the Official Secrets Act was used. The problem is that key basic nuclear weapons effects data of essential value to civil defense credibility was kept under lock and key and outside public discussion. This also affects its discussion by cleared personnel, because it constrains discussions to secure office conferences with work time limits, even for the handful of people with data access.

Virtually all this research ended with FEMA, which wasn't based in the Pentagon, and was disconnected from EM-1, relying on the deliberately vague and increasingly relying instead on the completely misleading Hiroshima firestorm analysis in the Glasstone Effects of Nuclear Weapons book instead. Why didn't anybody point out to Glasstone the errors of omission in his Hiroshima firestorm description in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons? Probably vested interests. The few people who were aware of the exaggerations were precisely those who were relying on those exaggerations for research grants, and thus didn't feel a particular urge to cut off their own lifelines by debunking the exaggerations. Despite this, the review of Eden's book is milk-and-water because he makes no mention of the firestorm cause in Hiroshima as established in USSBS 92 v2.

Chapter 18, "Fire in WWII" of Brode's interesting book The Cold War: Who Won? (57 pages, numbered on the from 67-123, including 5 pages of references) is available on Scribd, and it seems to throw some light on Brode's thinking about firestorms during his association with Lynn Eden (author of Cornell's 2004 Whole World on Fire, demolished in review here by Walmer Strope - head of DCPA civil defence nuclear war research at the Pentagon in 1960s and early 1970s, before FEMA existed). Brode (editor of the 1992 edition of EM-1) manages to survey a wide range of WWII firestorm data and reports, even including some by the excellent George Stanbury who assessed the British fire raids on Germany, while missing the whole point that nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki failed to burn anything in the mechanism claimed in nuclear winter propaganda and firestorm propaganda. The whole problem is that the secret USSBS report 92 volume 2 on the Hiroshima firestorm found it was due to the blast wave overturning charcoal breakfast stoves in paper screen and bamboo furnishings filled overcrowded wooden houses. Therefore, it is incorrect to take a blast effect radius and interpret it as a thermal flash ignition radius as Theodore Postol does, and Brode should have set Lynn Eden straight. However, from Brode's writings, you can see several good reasons why he didn't. Brode wasn't thinking in this way because USSBS 92 v2 wasn't widely available due to its secret classification and was never reprinted. He doesn't cite it or quote it.

So there is no evidence that he was aware of the key facts in USSBS 92 v2 at all. It is a similar story to the continued "secret-restricted data" classification of neutron induced activities and gamma spectra of fallout in the May 1972 Secret-Restricted Data basic fallout data compilation,

LOCAL FALLOUT FROM NUCLEAR TEST DETONATIONS (U) VOLUME IV. ANNOTATED COMPENDIUM OF DATA ON RADIOCHEMICAL AND RADIATION CHARACTERISTICS OF FALLOUT (U) PART 2. RADIOCHEMICAL COMPOSITION, INDUCED ACTIVITY, GAMMA SPECTRA, DNA-1251F,

which is a 562 pages long declassified report in which only 53 pages remain in the declassified version (those remaining pages are the preliminary and end pages, omitting all the vital data inbetween). This goes so way to explaining hysteria about fallout today, why most people still today don't know the difference between an invisible "particle" emitted by fallout, and the visible deposit of particles that establishes an acute danger. While the video at the top of this blog explains that the blast and thermal ablation create blast, but this dust will not "confuse" anyone about fallout which has been contaminated in the fireball. If people are unsure about the origin of dust after a nuclear attack, they can simply err on the side of caution and treat it as nuclear fallout (until measurements show otherwise, Kearny fallout meters are easy to make, and the fallout direction is determined by the wind structure, which is not completely unpredictable today). The low specific activity of fallout in a surface burst (or the raindrop carriers in an air burst with rainout) provide visible warning of of a hazard that demands taking cover or evacuating the area promptly. Fallout gamma ray spectra nuclear test data secrecy won't help people to protect themselves from fallout in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack. The absence of data will be filled by 1.25 MeV cobalt 60 gamma ray data from the cold war, which exaggerates the real penetrating power of the radiation from fractionated fallout. The NRDL submitted a paper including photos of fallout to the May 1957 congressional hearings on The Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man but, although the title is listed in the NRDL reports section, the report was missed out from being printed. Glasstone and Dolan finally included a few microscope photos of individual fallout particles for the first time in the 1977 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, but didn't give photos of the actual visible deposits of fallout corresponding to different radiation hazards as obtained from NRDL incremental fallout collectors at nuclear tests.

Lynn Eden's Whole World on Fire

On page 290, Eden refers to Jerry Strope's unpublished "Autobiography of a Nerd", which in chapter 19, pages 219-220 explains the problems with the Postol-type approach to firestorm predictions, missing the USSBS 92 v2 data on the Hiroshima firestorm: "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 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 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.

"In retrospect, our breakthrough in this area took place in the course of one of our earliest contracts. Stan Martin pointed out in his proposal that ignitions were not the same as sustained fires. Ignitables do not usually contain sufficient energy by themselves to cause a sustained fire. What is needed is a fuel array containing both tinder and other burnables. Martin proposed to survey a suitable sample of American cities to determine the likelihood of sustained fires resulting from exterior ignitables. These detailed surveys of urban areas were carried out and found that the number of exterior ignitables that could result in sustained fires was negligible! Essentially all fuel arrays that could produce a sustained fire are in rooms within buildings.

"The ignitables of interest, then, were light cotton curtains, heavy drapes, paper cartons, typing paper, upholstered furniture and beds. These have critical ignition energies of 20 to 25 calories per square centimeter, quite a bit different from the crumpled newsprint favored by the anti-CD activist. Moreover, they are in the environment of dirty windows, screens, window blinds and sprinkler systems."

The problem here is that getting 20 to 25 calories per square centimeter on to a non-fire resistant dark cotton bed cover is not as easy as it sounds. The object must have a direct view of the fireball from a window with a clear radial line to the fireball, with no other building in the way, no tree in the way. Even then, how likely is the thermal radiation to strike inflammable dark coloured non-fire resistant bed or other materials, even if it shines into a room without being obscured by buildings, trees, or the clouds of dust and steam ablated from objects or the ground nearer the fireball, near the path the thermal radiation is travelling along? If the burst is at low altitude, skyline shadowing is a major barrier to the thermal radiation. If the burst is at a high altitude, the thermal radiation will not shine far into a room and probably won't reach most beds unless they are close to the window (like sunlight exposure when the sun is high in the sky).

Eden's conclusion chapter, "Routine surprises", tries to blame organizational bureaucracy for ignoring the fire hazard. However, the facts are the exact opposite! Organizational bureaucracy actually covered up the reason why the fire hazard did not exist in modern Western cities: namely the secret U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey report 92 volume 2 on the Hiroshima firestorm. I got a hint of the problem when I emailed Harold Brode myself about the blast wave attenuation by buildings which Dr (Lord) William Penney established in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from precision measurements of the bending of metal beams, the volume reduction in crushed petrol cans and blueprint containers, and the overturning of memorial stones. Penney arrived in the nuclear bombed cities before the main USSBS team and shipped all the reliable blast pressure indicators back to England, so the USSBS was deprived of that data on how the blast pressure decreased due to the work done in causing destruction.

My question to Brode: why isn't this fact (which gets more important for higher yield weapons because it is cumulative and gets bigger for greater distances in a city, thereby cancelling out the effect of the increased blast wave duration) included in any of the collateral damage predictions for nuclear war? He did not have a convincing answer to Penney's data, and pointed out that non-radial energy flows might occur and that part of the blast energy is transformed into the kinetic energy of flying debris (part of it is also used to mechanically break and heat materials). However, in the Mach region the major energy flow in the blast wave near the surface is horizontal and radial, and the flying debris moves more slowly than the shock front, and is therefore soon left behind the blast wave, where it falls to the ground and decelerates by air drag, by tumbling, or (as seen in many films of blast on houses) reverses its direction as the negative phase of the blast wave sets in (which blows towards ground zero, but at a slower speed than the shock front). Therefore, the conversion of blast energy into the kinetic energy of debris does not compensate the blast wave. It is an irreversible loss of energy from the shock front, which does not occur in unobstructed desert and ocean nuclear tests.

It puzzles me why Lynn Eden didn't ask Brode similar questions, and really uncover the facts. There is of course some groupthink error in the secret world of EM-1. It's just not the error which Eden thinks is the case. There are only so many times that you can repeat an "error" about the Hiroshima firestorm and conflate nuclear fire esperience with the incendiary action at Hamburg, before it begins to sound like a deliberate disinformation or propaganda campaign. If somebody claims 1 + 1 = 10 once, perhaps it was a mistake, or perhaps there were counting using base 2 and didn't say so by accident. But if people persistently promote an error without retracting or correcting what they said, it looks increasingly like propaganda.

"The arguments that weather and climate variabilities make fire prediction highly uncertain are specious. Fire spread is the major factor, and that can be reliably predicted. ... even with the most extremes of weather, target susceptibility and operational circumstances, fire damage is not appreciably less predictable than that due to blast."

- Harold Brode, letter to Lynn Eden, 7 Dec 1995, quoted on page 15 of Whole World on Fire.


This is a brilliant example of being at sixes and sevens. Brode is right that fire is predictable and not less predictable than blast. However, his blast wave predictions are an exaggeration for high yields on cities, because he ignores the energy loss due to the cumulatve damage done to the buildings, which is a factor that doesn't apply to the 1953 Annie Nevada test or the 1955 Apple 2 nuclear test, when a few buildings stood with an empty desert between them and the nuclear explosion. If you have 100 intervening buildings and each absorbs just 1% of the blast energy, the blast has only 0.99100 36.6% of its energy when it reaches you. This effect was brilliantly documented by Penney at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in his massive 1970 analysis of the damage in both nuclear bombed cities.

The thermal radiation error goes back to the effect of atmospheric transmissivity on fires. Most cities are beside rivers, lakes or the ocean. The water can produce fog or even just humid air at times which greatly absorbs the fire-starting infrared component of the thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion. The 1950 edition of The Effects of Atomic Weapons contained curves for all atmospheric visibility conditions, but this was cut back in the later 1957, 1962/4 and 1977 editions. The 1962/4 editions only included curves for 10 miles and 50 miles visibility, corresponding to the average visibility at Bikini Atoll and the Nevada test site. The 1977 edition only includes data for 16 miles visibility, thus giving many people the misleading impression that a single curve is representative.

There is also the delusion regarding the ignition of thick wood or bed mattresses by thermal flash ignited newspapers or dark cotton covers in houses or outside. As documented earlier in this post, ignition of newspaper and houses was far easier in the dry Nevada desert nuclear tests than in the humid Pacific tests (Bikini and Eniwetok). Brode's statement seems to be based on the effects of humidity on think fuels like newspapers, where humidity variations only vary ignition energy by a relatively small factor, because the thermal pulse can dry out a thin piece of newspaper and them ignite it at high thermal exposures. But this newspaper ignition mechanism and humidity effect conclusion cannot be carried over to thicker fuels.

If you try to ignite damp logs with matches, you will find it practically impossible, because the matches cannot dry out the thickness of the logs quickly enough for them to ignite. The thermal flash is similar surface heating effect. So in realistic city conditions, newspapers and maybe even some dark coloured curtains that have a view of the fireball will ignite, but they won't cause the rapid room flashover of the inflammables-filled room in the 1953 Encore Nevada desert nuclear test, because thicker wood takes time to ignite at normal city humidity (in buildings people are exhaling humid air continually). So the Encore house is misleading for civil defense firefighting. A small increase in air humidity has little effect on the ignition of newspapers, but disproportionately larger effect on the time taken for thicker fuels like wood to ignite. The experience of Hiroshima is more important than the Nevada Encore test, because it is more realistic.

Understanding the censoring of the facts: what is truth?

“A book that challenges theocracy is blasphemous by definition. Not just because it questions the divine provenance of a sacred text ... but because it criticises the bigotries the sacred text instructs the faithful to hold. ... Rules for Censors:

(1) Demand a Respect You Don’t Deserve [simply ignore all criticisms which don’t begin by humbly licking the boots of the lying groupthink liars who caused WWII by outright lying to the public to get attention for their evil, deluded utopian dreams];

(2) A Little Fear Goes a Long, Long Way [spurious fear mongering lies behind evil ideologies, from witchcraft to ecofascism];

(3) Go Postal! [ensuring that lies are not exposed to the public];

(4) Say that it is Bigoted to Oppose Bigotry [the propaganda technique of deliberately “shutting down” discussions after stating your lying arguments, thereby banning corrections or opposition; the old ideologue’s first dictatorial trick when stating a lie];

(5) People Don’t Want to Know [ideologues rely on the fact that people don’t want to check up on the details of gory claims]

(6) Money Makes you a member of a master race [money hires lawyers or simply bribes the media thugs to persecute critics];

(7) Look to the past/think of the future [to circumvent any revolution in the freedom of information from the internet].”

- Nick Cohen, You Can’t Read this Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom, Fourth Estate, London, 2012, p. 3 and chapter section titles (rules for censors).


Brian Martin (Professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong), “When you’re criticised”, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, vol. 43, no. 2, January 2012, pp. 230-237:

“What should you do when you or your organisation are subject to lengthy, published criticism, in a way that you think is seriously distorted and misleading? The three main options are to ignore the criticisms, to counter-attack and to respond with information and arguments. To make a choice, it is important to assess the way audiences are likely to perceive things. ...

“In informational cascades, people believe something because others do. In conformity cascades, people censor themselves when they see others taking a position contrary to their own perceptions. Finally, members of like-minded groups are likely to have more extreme views after discussing them. The communication capacities of the Internet can facilitate each of these processes, leading to substantial groups of people believing falsehoods and being resistant to correction. ...

“The easiest option is not to reply. This is usually best when the critics have little credibility or visibility compared to the person being attacked. Think of a high-profile person, like Nelson Mandela, who is subject to political criticism. If the critics are obscure and publish in little-read magazines, then Mandela would be better off ignoring them. In fact, to reply would give these critics much greater visibility and credibility - it would be seen as taking them seriously.

“However, if the critics are high-profile and their criticisms are reported in widely read outlets, then it is more risky to not respond. Suppose Mandela is criticised by other African leaders and the criticisms are reported in leading newspapers. Then not responding might be interpreted as accepting the criticisms, under the assumption that ‘silence implies consent.’

“Another problem with not responding is that it can be seen as arrogant - as refusing to engage in debate. If a controversial issue is being debated - say abortion or vaccination - and a radio station invites proponents from each side to participate in a discussion. If you say ‘I won't speak if Jamie Zust is on the same programme,’ this might look bad. ...

“There is another consideration. Perhaps you are a dissident or a member of a marginal group and have had the experience that your criticisms of dominant ideas or powerful organisations are perpetually ignored. What you would like most of all is a sensible reply and, more generally, to be part of a conversation, but those with more power and connections refuse to engage with you. ... You can call them liars and expose their unsavoury motives, vested interests and unholy agendas. ... Counter-attacking can be emotionally satisfying, but is it a good idea? The disadvantage is that many observers will think less of you.

“Some of those reading or observing the exchange won't know the details of the claims and counter-claims. All they have to go on is the style of the engagement. When you counter-attack, what they see is two sides behaving in a similar way: being personal and derogatory. It doesn’t matter that what you say is correct and what the critics say is false and unfair. You are judged by your style: when your style is nasty and abusive, observers may assume that you yourself are nasty and abusive. ...

“It’s like two people having a conversation. If both are shouting and swearing, observers won’t have much to distinguish between the two: the shouting and swearing overshadow what's actually being said. The style becomes the message. ... Some observers will always be on the side of the critics and some always on your side. But many of those who are less committed or less informed will be swayed by appearances. It’s hard to win them over using counter-attack. Because counter-attacking can be counter-productive, beware of being goaded into making abusive comments. They may be used against you. ...

“There is another whole dimension to counter-attack: you can go beyond words and exercise power, for example by suing for defamation or using influence to subject your critics with reprisals such as getting them fired. This opens a whole new set of questions, but the same principles apply. If you are seen to be the attacker, and your methods are seen to be excessive or unfair, then your actions may backfire: you may lose credibility. ...

“A third option is to respond without counter-attacking. But how exactly? In many cases, the most effective response is one that seems sensible, rational and polite. The idea is to behave the way you would prefer your critics to behave.

“If you do this, observers see one side - your critics - behaving aggressively or even rudely while you respond without getting ruffled, just presenting information and reasoned argument. Neutral observers will be more likely to see your critics as bullies and you as a strong, confident target who does not give in and who is not easily provoked.

“Let’s look more closely at the features of a response. Suppose you write something that is highly technical (for the audience) or very complicated or just plain obscure. ... You are being precise, but the message may be lost in the detail.

“Some readers will take what you say on trust but others will not be impressed: they might think you are being superior or trying to hide something. So, in general, assuming you having nothing to hide, it's better to be as clear as possible.

“Sometimes you need to go into technical detail, for example concerning scientific claims about climate change. But you can still communicate to non-specialists by providing, as well, a lay interpretation and take-away message. In other words, you offer technical details for specialists and a translation for non-specialists. ...

“When you respond to an attack, it's very tempting to immediately address every one of your critic's claims - after all, you don't want to let any of the points go unanswered. But before going down this path, think of others reading the exchange. Are they going to follow all the details? Usually, only a very few will be so familiar with the details that they can remember all the points covered. Therefore, often it’s worth including a summary of the key issues. ... Often they want to know what the dispute is all about, especially if the long critique raises a lot of different points or is complicated. You can oblige by providing a summary of the key points, highlighting your critic’s assumptions and explaining the driving forces behind the dispute. So, strangely enough, by explaining what is happening - rather than immediately attempting to rebut the critic’s claims - you open lines of communication and gain credibility. Furthermore, you get to frame the issue in a favourable way. ...

“Before responding to criticism, it is worthwhile asking a basic question: are the critics right or wrong? In principle, there are three possibilities: the critics could be 100% right, 100% wrong or somewhere in between. If the critics are completely right, you can make a gracious acknowledgement - but hardly ever are the critics entirely correct. If the critics are completely wrong, then you can challenge everything they say. However, critics are hardly ever entirely wrong on every point, though many responses give this impression. ...

“When you admit - occasionally and appropriately - that you're wrong, you can actually gain credibility. When witnesses in court make admissions against their own interest, judges and juries may think these witnesses are more honest - why else would someone make such an admission? That means the witnesses’ other statements are treated as more credible than they would have been otherwise. No one gets everything right. So when know-it-alls refuse to admit a single mistake, they lose credibility. ... Your best prospects are to make your response appeal to them. … It is extremely valuable to obtain comments from people who don’t know anything about the issue: their queries can prompt you to better explain your position to wider audiences. ...

“In summary, the keys to an effective response aimed at a non-committed audience are clarity, simplicity, honesty and insight. If your critic is long-winded, your pithy reply will be more appealing. If your critic is convoluted, your clear explanations are more likely to be accepted. If your critic never admits a weakness, your honesty about both your weaknesses and strengths will be more credible. ... Sometimes it's better not to respond, especially if your position is publicly available and the weaknesses or absurdities of the critic's claims are obvious. But if uncommitted readers might be swayed by an unanswered attack, then consider your opportunities for reply and prepare your response in a way that effectively communicates, in content and style, to the audience. Most people are too busy or not interested enough to read through long, complex arguments. They will appreciate a brief, informative treatment of the key issues. If you write clearly and fairly enough, your reply might become their preferred entry point into the dispute.”

This article seems to be written from a Machiavellian rather than an ethical standpoint; “what is the best way to overcome bigotry” rather than “just tell the facts and assume your critics will listen even though they are all a bunch of emotional, counter-factual, self-deluded, groupthink-obsessed, mad, dead cockroaches”. It provides a useful set of rules for a war in which the primary aim is to fight in order for the opportunity to force others to negotiate in a reasoned way rather than just try to exterminate everyone whose facts get in their way. Yet it doesn’t address the key problem of hubris, where high and mighty people don’t allow any response or discussion at all, by only publishing lies in books or newspapers/magazines/TV where an army of Brezhnev-era orthodoxy enforcing censors deliberately delete or suppress any response whatsoever. How can you respond if response is banned? Moreover, response is actually more likely to be banned if someone famous deliberately publishes lies.

All propagandarist liars will deliberately impose their dogma using a one-way, one-to-many medium, specifically to prevent criticisms, because they are not completely stupid or completely deluded by their own lies, so they know that their lies can be shot to pieces if democratic debate is permitted. It’s also an error to make short, concise, decisive comments to try to debunk an entrenched dogmatic orthodoxy on subjects like nuclear weapons and civil defense, because most people will automatically dismiss them as insubstantial sound-bite propaganda. You may need a large thesis to present a full response to a complex argument in a convincing manner. There are no short-cuts, although obviously editing is needed to ensure clarity, regardless of the length of the thesis. Brian Martin is nevertheless just about the most rational authority on the censorship problem (he’s a former physicist and has written about the nuclear golem), which is as deep and primeval as traditions and taboos in human culture. We all rely on and need censorship to keep the noise level down. The Nazis and USSR permitted people to say what they wanted when alone in sound-proof rooms, and so does Western democracy today. The problem is distinguishing facts from pseudoscience:

“If a man reads or hears a criticism of anything in which he has an interest, watch whether his first question is as to its fairness and truth. If he reacts to any such criticism with strong emotion; if he bases his complaint on the ground that is not “in good taste” or that it will have a bad effect—in short, if he shows concern with any question except “Is it true?” he thereby reveals that his own attitude is unscientific.

“Likewise if in his turn he judges an idea not on its merits but with reference to the author of it; if he criticizes it as “heresy”; if he argues that authority must be right because it is authority; if he takes a particular criticism as a general depreciation; if he confuses opinion with facts; if he claims that any expression of opinion is “unquestionable”; if he declares that something will “never” come about or is “certain” that any view is right. The path of truth is paved with critical doubt and lighted by the spirit of objective inquiry. To view any question subjectively is self-blinding.”

- B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970), “Why don't we learn from history?”, 1944, pp. 15-16 of PDF version (linked here).

The last word on this blog post goes to one of the greatest human beings in human history, Herman Kahn, the founder of ethical rationality, banned by the publisher of the so-called Scientific American from responding to deluded pseudo-mathematician and grandiose sewer lawyer James Newman’s inaccurate book review of Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War, which didn’t advocate preventative war, but sought to strengthen freedom with credible civil defense, in order actually to prevent a war by making deterrence credible in the eyes of the monsters, and to minimise damage and casualties if the Soviet ideologues went more mad than usual and launched an attack (like another nation in Dec 1941). Kahn:

“Seventy-five years ago white slavery was rampant in England. Each year thousands of young girls were forced into brothels and kept there against their will. ... One reason why this lasted as long as it did was that it could not be talked about openly in Victorian England; moral standards as subjects of discussion made it difficult to arouse the community to necessary action. ... Social inhibitions which reinforce natural tendencies to avoid thinking about unpleasant subjects are hardly uncommon. The psychological factors involved in ostrich-like behavior have parallels in communities and nations. ... Despite the progress in removing barriers in the way of discussing diseases formerly considered shameful, there are doubtless thousands going without vital medical treatment today because of their inhibitions against learning, thinking, or talking about certain diseases. Some will not get treatment because they do not know enough to recognize the symptoms, some because they are consciously ashamed to reveal illness, and some because they refuse to think about their condition—it seems too horrible to think about. ... Perhaps some evils can be avoided or reduced if people do not think or talk about them. 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, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it. The book was greeted by a large range of responses—some of them sharply critical. Some of this criticism was substantive, touching on greater or smaller questions of strategy, policy, or research techniques. But much of the criticism was not concerned with the correctness or incorrectness of the views I expressed. It was concerned with whether any book should have been written on this subject at all. It is characteristic of our times that many intelligent and sincere people are willing to argue that it is immoral to think and even more immoral to write in detail about having to fight a thermonuclear war. ... In a sense we are acting like those ancient kings who punished messengers who brought them bad news. This 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 judgment and strategy. ...

“Clemenceau once said, “War is too important to be left to the generals.” A colleague of mine, Albert Wohlstetter, has paraphrased the remark to the even more appropriate, “Peace is too important to be left to the generals.” If we treat all questions of the deterrence and fighting of war as a subject to be entrusted solely to those in uniform we should not be surprised if we get narrow policies. The deterring or fighting of a thermonuclear war certainly needs specialists in and out of uniform; but it involves all of us and every aspect of our society. … Critics frequently refer to the icy rationality of the Hudson Institute, the RAND Corporation, and other such organizations. I’m always tempted to ask in reply, “Would you prefer a warm, human error? Do you feel better with a nice emotional mistake?”

- Herman Kahn, Thinking about the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon Press, 1962), reprinted in “The Essential Herman Kahn: in defense of thinking” pp. 9-10, 20, and 22.

Update (13 May 2012): Nobody "vaporized" in Hiroshima or Nagasaki

"Finally, we wanted to know how we could protect against these burns. ... I didn't care what happened to the fabrics; I wanted to know what happened to the man under the fabric. So we conceived this idea, that the important factor in studying clothing was what happened under the clothing; how it shielded the animal with cloth of different composition, weight, texture, weave, and color. We have made a great many studies in the laboratory and in the field on this problem of the protective effect of clothing. ... If you have 2 layers, an undershirt and a shirt, you will get much less protection than if you have 4 layers; and if you get up to 6 layers, you have such great protection from thermal effects that you will be killed by some other thing. Under 6 layers we got about 50 percent first degree burns at 107 calories/cm2."

- Dr Herman Elwyn Pearse, Professor of Surgery at the University of Rochester, "Biomedical Effects of Thermal Radiation", page 143 (published in the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration's book, "Cue for Survival, A.E.C. Nevada Test Site, May 3, 1955", pages 140-144). (Emphasis added in bold.)

This is for yields similar to Hiroshima (for modern larger nuclear weapons, even more heat is needed for a burn, because it is spread out longer in time and more heat is lost by diffusion, and of course people have longer to take evasive "duck and cover" countermeasures to get into a shadow). Therefore, if the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima in cold weather, even at ground zero the skin under clothing would not be burned worse than 1st degree burns, mere sunburn. The outer clothing if dark in colour would be smoked to ignition on surfaces directly facing the fireball, but ignited clothing was easily rolled out or beaten out in Hiroshima. It is NOT the same as peacetime clothing burn accidents where people get their clothes soaked in gasoline before ignition!

This is interesting, since ground zero in Hiroshima (600 metres from detonation) received approximately this much thermal radiation (~120 calories/cm2). Dr Herman Pearse (Professor of Surgery, Rochester University) and colleagues wrote the original panic-mongering thermal burns disaster papers on Hiroshima in places the "New England Journal of Medicine", claiming that the effects for people outdoors in the surprise of the first nuclear attack in history somehow are generally valid; but he began to grasp that this was survivable when he went to Eniwetok Atoll in 1951 to expose animals to the 47 kt boosted Easy test and the 225 kt thermonuclear George test. The medical journals never published the facts on how clothing reduces burns.

Sure, if you ground burst a nuclear bomb on a packed beach where people are not wearing clothes, those near the middle of the crater area of the bomb will be quickly vaporized and pulverized by the great heat of the radiating shock wave near ground zero (a blast effect, not a thermal radiation effec), just as they would be in a conventional explosion. What many people (deliberately) forget here is that in WWII conventional bombs of up to 10 tons were dropped, and the cube-root blast scaling law applies to this hot blast wave. Hence 10 kilotons blast yield in a Hiroshima or Nagasaki burst has just 10 times the radius of destruction from the WWII conventional bomb: (10,000/10)1/3 = 10. Big deal! All war is destructive, and nuclear bombs are a disproportionately expensive way of achieving results which could be had more cheaply from conventional weapons; which explains the deception since Hiroshima in order to use nuclear weapons to deter WWIII instead of conscripting a massive army. On balance, the risk of WWIII is bigger with the massive arms and armies of conventional warfare, than nuclear weapons. This worked well in the Cold War for the West, but exaggerations are dangerous in encouraging terrorists and in making civil defence appear hopeless, when it is not hopeless unless you're near the crater.

Democracy requires facts, not widespread delusion. The moment we give up searching for facts and surrender to fashionable delusion, we will be like Russia 1917, Germany 1933, or Japan 1941. If a terrorist state or group does make an attack, and people are unprepared due to widespread delusions, what happens then? Answer: the usual. The blast/radiation/thermal effects are maximized as at Hiroshima, because nobody ducks and covers before the blast arrives, or takes radiation shielding. Then we spend billions on military operations to neutralize the thugs, who are well hidden and have a Vietcong mentality. While military operations against thugs are needed, it's obviously a good thing to mitigate the effects on people as far as possible in the first place.

We need to permit critical scientific appraisal of facts, instead of suppressing them. People need to know what they the effects of nuclear weapons really are, not lies for political "solutions" which so far have never prevented wars from occurring, and have often encouraged aggression by leading to appeasement through helpless vulnerability to terrorism and coercion. The "nonsense" comes from the liars who sell lies to the public to make them give up on civil defence so they can concentrate solely on provable failures like lying for disarmament and claiming this will solve human problems; despite the fact that it actually encouraged thugs to exploit the lies in the 1930s. Really, the liars who suppress the facts are using the "Reichstag Fire" scare-mongering in order not to increase democratic freedom, but to close down rational debate in favor of their fascist-like ideologies. Some of this comes from the kind of "science" which consists of treating the consensus of ignorant big shots (whose minds are "protected" from reality by underlings called peer reviewers) as religious dogma.

The only reason that the top 0.1 mm of roof tile surfaces bubbled at ground zero in Hiroshima was the failure of the ~120 cal/cm2 to penetrate more deeply than 0.1 mm. The tiny depth of the surface which absorbed the energy ensured that the temperature rise was massive, over 2000 C in that tiny 0.1 mm tile surface.

People in the open at ground zero received surface burns on the side facing ground zero: the thermal exposure at ground zero (600 metres height of burst) from a 16 kt Hiroshima air burst detonation with 1/3rd thermal radiation yield (ignoring atmospheric attenuation) by the inverse square law is equal to {16 (1/3) * 1012 calories}/(4*Pi*6002) = 1.28 x 106 calories/m2 or 118 cal/cm2. Here 1 cal is the temperature needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram (1 cm3) of water (humans are 70% water) by 1 degree centigrade or 1 K, from 15 to 16 C. For humans, to reach vaporization you need to go from 37 to 100 C. If 118 cal/cm2 is distributed in the top 1 cm thickness of flesh (with no loss due to heat reflection, ablation of the top 1 mm layer, and other damage-limiting processes) then that top 1 cm layer could potentially gain about 118 C in temperature, reaching 155 C (37 C body temperature + 118 C = 115 C), IGNORING the change of state from water to steam when 100 C is passed. However, you need a massive amount of energy (enthalpy of vaporization) to drive water from 99 C to 101 C, because water molecules have strong bonds between them which need to be broken when water turns to steam.

"... the molecules in liquid water are held together by relatively strong hydrogen bonds, and its enthalpy of vaporization, 40.65 kJ/mol [note that 1 cal = 4.186 J, while 1 mole consists of 6.022 x 1023 molecules of water per 18 grams of water], is more than five times the energy required to heat the same quantity of water from 0 °C to 100 °C."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_vaporization

So the Hiroshima bomb did not deliver enough heat flash energy at ground zero to even vaporize a layer of water 1 cm thick. (If you surface burst the bomb, or decrease the height of burst, the shadows from buildings provide even more thermal radiation shielding than in the case of an air burst.) If you look at the data on the scorching depths of wood by the thermal flash at the 1955 Operation Teapot tests (Kyle P. Laughlin, Thermal Ignition and Response of Materials, Report to the Test Director, Operation TEAPOT, Nevada Test Site, February-May 1955, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, weapon test report WT-1198, December 1957, AD0611227), less than 1 mm of the surface of the wood was removed even by in excess of 50 cal/cm2. Additional energy did not increase the depth of charring (the extra energy just went into ablating the top 1 mm more forcefully into a smoke cloud, which then absorbed the remainder of the heat flash and kept the heat absorbed well away from the underlying wood). The same applies at Hiroshima, where the moisture content of skin was 70% (much higher than wood, which was easier to heat, due to less water content; water has the highest specific heat capacity of any common material on this planet).

Will this dispose of the "everyone was vaporized in Hiroshima" myth? No, because the nuclear myth has a large number of layers, like an onion. Peel off one layer of delusion, and you find many further layers below. By the time you have gone through all of them, the audience is asleep or has forgotten the technical reasons why the first delusion was wrong, so you get into a cycle of repeating yourself. Bottom line: if people want to believe something in a dogmatic moralistic way, you can't use objective science because they are believing the delusions for a non-scientific (say political disarmament) reason, not just because they are unaware of the penetrating power of a given form of radiation or some other technical point! The deluded will remain deluded because they can see than any particular disproof of hysterical anti-nuclear lying is just one specific example, and they have a large number of inter-related delusions. They can always bring up the other myths, changing the goalposts of the discussion, until time for the discussion runs out, or - more likely - they will return to the first again. We get the subjective switch between holistic and reductionist philosophies: if you try to reduce the sum of their delusions to a specific yield, height of burst, etc., they will simply change the goalposts and claim that in the "bigger picture" a terrorist could "simply" drop thousands of megatons on everyone. The self-serving argument that "the public doesn't believe in civil defense so it is hopeless" goes like this:

"OK, even if the Hiroshima firestorm and nuclear winter soot clouds and nitrogen oxides (which turn to harmless nitric acid in moist fireballs, just as in lightning storms) and cobalt fallout and radiation-resistant cockroach plagues and cancer + genetic effects (ignoring DNA repair and dose rate effects in mammals), and blast (attenuated by buildings in a radial line from ground zero, due to the work energy used up in pushing walls, energy = force * distance), and nuclear/thermal radiation shadowing by the skyline of tall buildings in a modern city, is correct, civil defense is still useless because nobody will believe it. You can't overturn entrenched dogma. The media won't publish facts, only lies.

"The only lobby groups are all biased in the same direction, so no hope from any of them. There is no mechanism by which people can be persuaded to take civil defense seriously. People have been brainwashed into believing that (1) the thermal flash energy is received instantly because it goes at light speed, and (2) the blast arrives instantly because the films of nuclear explosions are all faked to superimpose the blast sound on the flash of the explosion. It is no good arguing against that kind of dogma. It's like Aristarchus in 250 BC when he argued that the sun doesn't orbit the earth daily. It contradicted what everybody thought they could see with their eyes every sunrise and sunset. Trying to explain the facts against widespread apathy is like Aristarchus trying to explain that the earth rotates daily. Most people will therefore never understand the facts, will go on believing the lies from the moralistic, ethical, saviours of universal nuclear disarmament, and will panic in an attack. Therefore, civil defense is hopeless."

I remember a "discussion" in which genetic lies were debunked. DNA repair mechanisms were proved by the eight million mice exposed to different radiation dose rates by the Russells at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which showed a strong dose rate dependence on mutation rate which debunked the claims of Dr Herman "fruitfly" Muller and friends at the 1957 U.S. Government Congressional Hearings, "The Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man". The anti-nuclear fanatics ignored everything with an air of bored impatience and then declared that even if DNA repair enzymes do repair radiation damage if the dose rate is below 0.5 R/hour, the public "has got the message" that all radiation is harmful regardless of dose rate!

These people are pseudoscientists; their version of "science" is political correctness. They see "science" as an old boys club, where you subscribe to mainstream orthodoxy as the price of membership, and where ignoring facts which disprove the dogma is a sign of strength and savy, not weakness and ignorance. This is the real crime of the Marxist socialism belief system of much of today's physics "academic intelligensia"; the plain lie that by "cooperating" and not arguing too much, we are doing good (in particular the lie that any "controversy" permissible in the journals must come from big personalities with reputations already established in the relevant field, not the little boy who spots a problem with the emperor's new clothes). Science since the time of Marx has gradually taken the mantra of Marxist groupthink, becoming organized into a strict rules-based Islamic style religion, complete with sacred texts, dogmas, priesthoods, with its vital heresy-shooting (messenger-shooting) activities. This imposes limitations to scientific progress where radical innovations in thinking are demanded by the facts.

Update (9 August 2012): declassified, out of copyright formerly Top Secret British nuclear weapons civil defence reports (including the typeset Top Secret Operation Hurricane civil defence effects data report which Prime Minister Thatcher refused to release in 1983 when requested in the House of Commons) from U.K. National Archives photocopies online as PDF documents are linked here (together with other relevant civil defence reports from WWII and the Cold War).

At page 87 is an extract from U.K. National Archives document HO 225/12 (Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch): "A Comparison between the number of people killed per tonne of bombs during World War I and World War II". This notes that WWI bombs dropped on Britain (by airships and Gotha bombers) by Germany were mainly 12-50 kg, while WWII bombs dropped on Britain were mainly 150-200 kg (mean 175 kg).

It records that during the 13 June 1916 air raid on London, 69.5% of people were outdoors and were therefore highly vulnerable to the blast of the bombs. During WWII, only 5% of people in Britain were in the open during air raids (e.g. fire observers, firemen, police, etc.), 60% were under cover such as under tables in houses, and 35% were in shelters. Being in a house was 3.5 times safer than being in the open; being in a shelter was twice as safe as being in a house or 7 times as safe as being in the open.

The point is, WWII civil defence precautions stood up very well to nuclear weapons effects, both in Hiroshima/Nagasaki (where nobody was actually in the shelters) and in Australian trials. This fact continues to be ignored on both sides of the civil defence debate, largely because of disarmament bias, but also because the full facts are essentially still unpublicised. This is an exact duplication of the situation in the 1920s and 1930s, where gas warfare civil defence effectiveness data was kept secret, and the public was issued with easily ridiculed advice:

http://archive.org/details/ArpBooksTechnicalCriticismsOfGasCivilDefence

“The Cambridge Scientists’ Anti-War Group” (led by an editorial committee of 11 scientists, headed by J. D. Bernal), “The Protection of the Public from Aerial Attack, Being a Critical Examination of the Recommendations Put Forward by the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office”, first published by Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, on 12 February 1937, reprinted the same day. They report on page 21: “the time taken for the gas to leak out to half its original value was measured in four rooms – the basement of a shop, the dining room of a semi-detached house, the sitting room of a Council house and the bathroom of a modern villa. ... the leakage half-times of these rooms were 2.5, 2.5, 3.5 and 9.25 hours respectively.” Rooms with closed steel frames (or double glazed) windows gave the best protection.

On page 41, the Cambridge Scientists admit that since the gas is wind carried: “the gas will not remain for long periods in any one place except on still days [when it won’t be blown over large areas].” For example, a massive gas cloud 1 mile in diameter blown by a typical 10 miles per hour breeze will only spend 1/10 or 0.1 hour over any given location. This means that the half-penetration times of carbon dioxide gas (a small molecule, with a faster speed and penetration rate than the larger, slower molecules or Nazi tabun nerve gas or mustard gas) of 2.5-9.25 hours in British houses are much larger than the 0.1 hour time taken for the gas cloud to pass by. Consequently, very little gas can penetrate into a British house in this time. However, the Cambridge Scientists fail to point this fact out. They are politically biased and this is proved by their deliberately obfuscating account of the phosgene gas disaster in Hamburg on pages 41 and 109.

On page 42 they suddenly switch from discussing gas bombing to assuming that gas is released slowly (50% every 10 minutes) from gas cylinders as in the first use of chlorine in World War I battlefields. This spurious change of goalposts from bombs to cylinders is completely deluded because any cylinders of gas dropped from aircraft would explode on impact, like bombs. The slow release of gas from cylinders gives more time for people to take precautions, such as taping up cracks in window frames in a house. On page 58, the Cambridge Scientists then resort to more fantasy, by assuming that incendiary bombing will set everybody’s house on fire in an air raid, forcing people outdoors, when they will be gassed by gas bombs. This is “backed up” by mere unproved and false assertions such as (on page 59) the statement: “whoever deals with them [incendiary bombs] will require, almost certainly, simultaneous protection against gas.” There is no scientific evidence given for this assertion that it is “almost certain” that gas bombs will be used in conjunction with incendiaries. It is merely guesswork, disproved in WWII.

Page 68 cites anti-civil defence propagandarist Philip Noel-Baker as claiming that 9 aircraft could cause 1,800 fires which would spread like the San Francisco (1906) or Tokyo (1933) earthquake-caused great fires, leading to “the probable amalgamation of separate outbreaks into a vast conflagration.” This is not “scientific evidence” and has no model or detailed evidence for modern Western (non-wood frame) cities, but mere “authority”-style assertion, and was proved false in WWII.

Page 70 summarizes the sophistry so far: “… it would be possible on the average to remain alive for about three hours in the ‘gas proof’ room; in other words the ‘gas proof’ room is not gas-tight.” No mention that even a massive 1 mile wide gas cloud only takes 0.1 hour (6 minutes) to leave the vicinity of your house in a typical 10 miles per hour breeze! Page 71 again offers similarly spurious fear-mongering: “... it is pointed out that gas-masks only protect the face and lungs ... mustard gas ... attacks the whole surface of the body.” This “argument” against gas masks ignores the gas proof room!

Page 109 in the Cambridge Scientists’ book gives a completely misleading treatment of the Hamburg phosgene accident of 1928, when 11 tons of phosgene was released into a populated area by accident and without warning in summertime (when windows were open), killing just 11 people! The Cambridge Scientists omit to give the percentages of people killed, and point out the maximum lethal distance was 2 kilometres, with injury up to 2.7 kilometres downwind. They then try to obfuscate the facts by assuming that gas is released from cylinders, not bombs, to exaggerate the hazard indoors.

On page 56 of this PDF, there is another publication by the same Cambridge Scientist’s Anti War Group, issue 13 of “Fact” magazine, April 1938, “Air Raid Precautions: The Facts”. This makes their prejudice clear on page 17 of “Fact” (page 59 in the PDF document): “There is no necessity for any such measures, if the Government adheres to a proper foreign policy.” In other words, disarm to prevent war with the Nazis, then you can be proud of being anti war and forcing peaceful coexistence.

Page 71 of our PDF gives J. B. S. Haldane’s September 1938 book “ARP”. Haldane with his father invented the first war gas mask in 1915 after Germany used chlorine gas. On page 18 (page 83 of the PDF document) Haldane states: “These gases can penetrate into houses, but very slowly. So even in a badly-constructed house one is enormously safer than in the open air.” On page 21, he points out that liquids (mustard agent or nerve agent spray droplets) sprayed from high altitudes are liable to evaporate and be blown away and diluted harmlessly before ever reaching the earth’s surface. On page 22 he discusses the Hamburg phosgene accident objectively. On Sunday 20 May 1928, 11 tons of phosgene was released from a burst container in the Hamburg docks and was blown over the suburb of Nieder-Georgswerder: “Most of the victims were out-of-doors, playing football, rowing, or even going to vote in an election. The windows were open, so a few people were killed indoors ... There would probably have been nil [casualties] had the people received ten minutes’ warning, so that they could have got into houses and shut the windows. No doubt enemy aeroplanes could have dropped the gas in a more thickly populated area. But they would not have taken people by surprise ... Eleven tons of gas could be carried in about fifteen tons of bombs [and more casualties could be caused by fifteen tons of high explosive bombs than the 11 killed by the Hamburg phosgene gas disaster].”

On pages 94-5 (pages 101-102 of this PDF), Haldane summarises the Home Office White Paper Circular of 31 December 1937, “Experiments in Anti-Gas Protection of Houses” which gives the experimental tests of the anti-gas advice using mustard gas liquid in trays around a house: “Animals outside were badly affected. Of those in an unprotected room none were seriously harmed. Those in a ‘gas proofed’ room remained normal, and the amount of mustard gas in it was measured by chemical methods. It was found to be so small that a man could have remained in it for 20 hours without harm, even if unprotected by a respirator.”

On page 248 (page 106 of the PDF), Haldane states: “Certain pacifist writers are severely to blame for our present terror of air raids. They have given quite exaggerated accounts of what is likely to happen.”

http://archive.org/details/NuclearWeaponsEmploymentManuals

This PDF compiles extracts from Cold War declassified nuclear weapons employment manuals, showing how collateral damage and fallout is controlled by the yield and height of burst.

Update: The June 2012 issue of DTRIAC’s (Defense Threat Reduction Information Analysis Centre’s) “The Dispatch” (Vol 2, issue 2) contains an obituary of Dr. John Allen Northrop, Deputy Director of Science and Technology of DASA, editor of the 1996 Handbook of Nuclear Weapons Effects which is an unclassified published book compiling key declassified parts of Dr Harold Brode's 22 volume multi-thousand page Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons from 1992. Although it is declassified, it remains limited in distribution to U.S. Defense Contractors only (although it is clear that the Russians have access to it, see this report which compared it to Russian nuclear test data). We have discussed some of the unlimited public distribution information it contains, such as some of the source reports it uses to characterize the initial nuclear radiation from 13 different kinds of nuclear weapons, the revised thermal radiation output data for surface bursts and transmission data, prompt gamma output from different weapons for producing EMP damage to electronics, etc. here and here. For example, it gives detailed data on how the soil cratered into the fireball of a 1 kt nuclear surface burst cools the fireball, reducing the peak Planck distribution radiating temperature from 5000 K (0.4 micron wavelength light) in an air burst to just 2000 K (1.1 micron wavelength infrared radiation). In other words, in 1 kt air burst the fireball is hotter than a surface burst, because there is no cratering of dirt into the fireball, which has a cooling effect. The longer wavelength infrared radiation that characterizes the 1 kt surface burst is more easily attenuated by water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than visible light.

The June 2012 issue of DTRIAC’s (Defense Threat Reduction Information Analysis Centre’s) “The Dispatch” (Vol 2, issue 2) states:

“DTRA has lost a pioneer; Dr. John Allen Northrop, Deputy Director of Science and Technology of DASA, died 15 April 2012 at the age of 85.

“Dr. Northrop was born 5 June 1926 in Poughkeepsie, New York. He joined the US Navy, honorably serving in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. He received an American Theatre and Victory Medal. Dr. Northrop graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and earned his doctorate in Nuclear Physics from Yale University.

“Dr. Northrop came to DASA from Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was a deputy for testing. He was confirmed the acting Deputy Director, Scientific, on 8 June 1969, succeeding Dr. Nils Wikner. The office was re-designated Deputy Director, Science and Technology.

“As the Deputy Director, Dr. Northrop supervised the formulation and execution of the Nuclear Weapons Effects Research and the Nuclear Weapons Effects Test programs. ...

“Dr. Northrop left DNA in 1972 and worked as the Chief Scientific Adviser for General Alexander Haig at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers of Europe (SHAPE). Five years later, he joined Systems, Science, and Software as Vice President. The company changed its name to S Cubed Corporation and was acquired by Maxwell Laboratories (now Maxwell Technologies, Inc.). ...

“Notably, Dr. Northrop was the editor of the Handbook of Nuclear Weapon Effects while at Maxwell Technologies. The handbook was written to address the length and classification limitations of the eighth edition of DSWA’s Effects Manual One. “Dr. John Northrop was responsible for many publications, but the preparation of a detailed technical nuclear weapons summary called the Handbook of Nuclear Weapons Effects was a classic example of his attention to detail,” Dr. Don Linger stated.

“The inclusion of many characteristics and details not found in any similar publication is a tribute to the insight and the technological excellence which Dr. Northrop brought to all of his endeavors, “ Dr. Linger continued, “His ... understanding of important complex scientific issues was classic.”



How to end war

“A world where every state was a democracy [Immanuel Kant wrote in 1785] would be a world of perpetual peace. Free peoples, Kant explained, are inherently peaceful; they will make war only when driven to it by tyrants. ... The United States ... never has fought a democratic government basically like its own. ... The governments of Serbia and Croatia in 1991, although elected, were hardly democratic ... during the past century there have been no wars between well-established democracies. ... R. J. Rummel ... was joined by Bruce Russett and others ... What was the probability, they asked, that the absence of wars between well-established democracies is a mere accident? The answer: less than one chance in a thousand. ... They showed convincingly that the lack of wars between democracies is not an artifact caused by the limited number of such regimes – there have been more than enough to provide robust statistics (even if the democratic alliances of the Cold War are left out).”

- Dr Spencer R. Weart’s book, Never at war: why democracies will not fight one another, Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 2-5.

Dr Spencer R. Weart’s book, “Never at war: why democracies will not fight one another” (Yale University Press, 1998), examines the evidence that stable democracies do not fight stable democracies. Once every nation in the world is an economically stable democracy (not a fascist dictatorship or a communist banana republic), therefore, war will end. Wars were not ended, but caused, by efforts of dictators and ideologues like communists, fascists, and appeasers to disarm peace loving democracies and to create a impossible-to-agree Tower of Babel “world government” in the style of the “League of Nations” or “United Nations” in the name of peace or other ideals. What goes wrong is that, instead of giving everyone in the world the right of democracy and freedom, democracies try to live with dictatorships, pretending that the people in those regimes support them, and then disarm to invite potential aggressors to coerce or attack them. This is precisely what caused the appeasement which gave Hitler time to start WWII.

If you realistically want peace, you have to want a world which is democratic and prosperous for everybody, and in which the people and economy are resistant to attack or coercive terrorism. Doing away with weapons and exaggerating weapons effects to try to concentrate attention on peace through vulnerability is crass. Wars start with general discontent in failed, corrupt democracies, which are converted into dictatorships by extremists who win the vote (being the most decisive alternative to the corrupt, incompetent, status quo party which caused the economic disaster), by promising what they can't deliver, or simply by a military coup d'etat. The dictators then find that they can't make the economy pick up without free capitalist enterprise, so they try to detract attention from internal problems by invading their neighbours. Alternatively, ideological or religious extremists like the communists or Al Queda, respectively, try to win an ideological battle against freedom and democracy by the use of coercion and terrorism. What is needed is economic stability, which means tighter control of speculative investments, and more defense of freedom.

There are too many nutty media pundits who are ideologically Marxist and believe in trying to use state socialism as a kind of sneaky back door communism to equalize wealth through taxation, while at the same time believing that disarmament of democracies is a guarantee of - or first step towards - peace and stability. All they do is to foul up the gearbox of capitalism and free enterprise, while making democracies vulnerable to coercive threats and attacks. If they were genuinely interested in peace, they would see the distinction between freedom and dictatorship and promote democracy instead of defending dictators and seeking to making democracies vulnerable to them through disarmament leadership. These people don't genuinely want peace. What they want is back door socialist Marxism, even though its failure in the USSR is plain. Marxism is their religion. They think it is scientific, moral, ethical, etc. This blinds them to its failure.

The best example is Professor Cyril Joad's August 1939 Why War? British best-seller. Joad had led the infamous 1933 Oxford Union argument for the motion "This country will not fight for King and Country", which sent dictators everywhere the message that Britain was turning pacifist and weak. On page 71, Joad uses sophistry to defame Winston Churchill's demand to stop the Nazis, by writing about an undergraduate meeting at Oxford before World War I, when Cabinet Minister Winston Churchill said: "There is 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." Joad comments: "A small man [Sir Normal Angell] 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. A faint titter ran through the meeting ..."

This "ridicule" of Winston Churchill in Joad's 1939 book was based on the assumption that Germany and Britain were both seeking "security and peace", when in fact Germany (since the Schlieffen plan of 1912) had been looking for any excuse to start a war. Joad's pacifist delusion of moral "relativist" - i.e. of assuming both sides to be always equally at fault - was blown away by President Ronald Reagan in his 8 March 1983 speech: "... I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong ..."

This is still contrary to the moral "relativism" of the Marxists and fascists. They can't learn the lessons of weapons effects exaggerations as the cause of WWI, WWII, or the Cold War. They don't want to learn those lessons, which would upset their most fundamental and basic dogmas: (1) to end war simply get rid of military technology in democracies, (2) to justify disarmament, exaggerate the collateral damage from weapons effects using the data from surprise attacks in which people took no evasive action, and (3) pretend that there are no cheap, easy proved countermeasures against them, making use of the official policy which is to keep most of the data secret or in limited reports. The only way civil defense will be taken seriously and peace ensured is by opposing this false dogma.

25 September 2012 update


Above: Daily Express 25 Sept 2012 page 26, tongue-in-cheek report on AD611316, U.S. nuclear weapons test report WT-1213, "Operation Teapot, Project 32.2a, The effect of nuclear explosions on commercially packaged beverages" by E. Rolland McConnell, George O. Sampson, and John M. Sharf, 24 January 1957. Beer cans survived with seals intact and no significant induced radioactivity at 1,270 feet from ground zero of civil defense exercise Operation Cue (a 29 kt tower detonation held during the nuclear test Apple 2, of Nevada nuclear test series Operation Teapot on 5 May 1955). There was a slight amount of induced activity in the glass bottles themselves, which decayed with a 15 hours half life (hence showing that a small amount of the sodium-23 in the glass had captured neutrons to become radioactive sodium-24). The amount of radioactivity induced in the beer was proportional to its normal sodium content.

The summary on page 18 states: “In summarization, it was found that conmmercially packaged beer and soft drinks in cans or bottles will survive the effects of the blast overpressures such as found at 1,270 ft from GZ on shot II [Apple 2 of Operation Teapot]. ... Shipping cartons and cases offered definite protection from blast. Induced radioactivity, at the forward test locations of 1,270 ft from GZ during shot II, was not great in either beer or soft drinks and would allow the use of these beverages as potable water sources for immediate emergency purposes as soon as the storage area is safe to enter after a nuclear explosion. Although the containers, whether of metal or glass, showed some induced radioactivity, none of this activity was transferred to the contents. The beverages themselves exhibited only mild induced activity, well within permissible limits for emergency use. Some flavor change was found in the beverages, more in beer than soft drinks. However, the alterations may well be considered as equivalent in most respects to ‘ageing’ and were not found to detract from the potential usage of these beverages for emergency supplies of potable water.”

Update (8 October 2012): there are numerous minor typing errors in the post above, including words missed out or transposed (hopefully I will have time to go through it and correct the text soon), but it makes the main points. I have uploaded to Internet Archive the U.K. Home Office "Experiments in Anti-Gas Protection of Houses" and related reports:

Experiments in Anti-Gas Protection of Houses

Experiments in Anti-Gas Protection of Houses, U.K. Home Office experiments publications for civil defence against chemical warfare, with related extracts of reports on experiments and warfare experiences with nerve gas and radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons, incendiary weapons, and conventional explosive bombs.

Additional information:

http://archive.org/details/BritishNuclearTestOperationHurricaneDeclassifiedReportsToWinston

http://archive.org/details/NuclearWeaponCasualtiesInHiroshimaAndNagasaki

http://archive.org/details/ArpBooksTechnicalCriticismsOfGasCivilDefence

http://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheSecondWorldWarCivilSeriesCivilDefence

http://archive.org/details/TheEffectsOfAtomicWeapons

http://archive.org/details/TheEffectsOfNuclearWeapons1957

http://archive.org/details/TheEffectsOfNuclearWeapons

http://archive.org/details/NuclearWeapons

http://archive.org/details/CapabilitiesOfAtomicWeapons

http://archive.org/details/CapabilitiesOfNuclearWeapons

http://archive.org/details/DnaEm1CapabilitiesOfNuclearWeapons

8 November 2012 update: The deficit bomb from Gordon Brown; 20,000 British soldiers sacked in budget cuts, what about security against Iranian nuclear missile terrorism?
British Secretary of State for Defence, Philip Hammond MP, with whom I discussed nuclear weapons when he turned up on my doorstep looking for a vote in North West Surrey during his first election campaign in 1997, today announced that the British Army is to be cut by 20,000 regular troops to 82,000 by 2018 as a (Gordon Brown) deficit reduction measure, with a doubling of the territorial army from 15,000 to 30,000. This news comes a day after the European Union's auditors refused to sign off its accounts for the 18th year in a row: the European Union managed to spend £89 billion in 2011 while the debt crisis in Greece, Spain, France and Britain got worse (all British "debt reduction" measures so far are merely reducing the rate of increase of the national deficit, not actually reducing the debt because the tax shortfall forces the Government to continue to borrow more money). Philip Hammond has personally explained Gordon Brown's error of selling Britain's gold at the lowest possible price in the video linked here. This decision was hidden in secrecy at the time (see link here). See also the Telegraph article here, and the discussion linked here arguing Brown deliberately announced the sale in advance - breaking protocol - to bail out a large bank; there is also a video of Gordon Brown squirming and obfuscating deceitfully to cover up his error linked here, and in the commons deceitfully claiming that the Euro has risen in value like gold linked here.

The BBC's Robert Peston tried to excuse Brown by saying that others made similar - but much smaller gambles in other countries - but at least he points out that allowing for the moderate rise in Euroes compared to the massive rise in gold prices "the effective net loss on Gordon Brown’s great gold sale would be a bit less than $9bn – but it would still be a very significant loss ... They ... hoped and believed that rampant global inflation was a thing of the past, and that the days of gold’s soaraway success would never recur. ... Gordon Brown’s error was probably to place too low a premium on gold’s bothersome habit of retaining its intrinsic value over the very long term." Brown simply gambled with our money on the basis of his own hopes and beliefs, not facts (getting the result wrong, not right, as he continues to claim) on gold back in 2002, and more importantly he failed to honestly admit it, thus staying as chancellor and making even bigger blunders than the gold sale, in allowing banking deregulation to cause the UK Northern Rock and other banks/building societies mortgage debt bubble to grow out of control, while simultaneously increasing the national debt by increasing the Labour Party's trade union rampant state sector at taypayer's national debt expense to support his comrades who want cushy state sector jobs, rather than free market wealth generating private sector jobs where unions have less power to control wage rises, as explained to Gordon Brown's face in the video linked here. It was only on 31 December 2006 that Britain finally finished repaying America for its WWII loans, just before the banking mortage bubble burst.

The Army must recognise that its defense budget, its size, and its health and survival depend not merely on fighting fanatical enemies abroad successfully, but also upon those at home who squander money running up a crippling national debt. The Wall Street crash of 1929 contributed to 1930s British and French disarmament which allowed despots in several countries (Germany, Italy, Japan) to start WWII (not to mention the civil war started by General Franco in Spain in the 1930s): there is a proven linkage between the power of despots, the popularity of vulnerability and paper peace agreements (disarmament as security), and financial bubble bursts. This is not party politics anymore. Any objective criticism of a politician is conveniently ignored as if it is just a political bias one way or another. This problem is rampant in the science of nuclear weapons effects and civil defense. Prime Minister Tony Blair's exaggeration of weapons of mass destruction with his Government report, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which simply omits any mention of British civil defense countermeasures or their cost in money and lives risked, relative to the costs of military intervention. The British press ignored this at the time. At the time of my doorstep chat on nuclear weapons effects with Philip Hammond, I had just had the experience of having the nuclear effects debate closed in my face by the editor of a national newspaper. This was when the nuclear threat from Iraq was being reported widely; newspapers were censoring out any publication of the efficiency of countermeasures at Hiroshima and nuclear weapons tests. Bill Massey, a reporter on a Sunday tabloid, wrote up a piece using declassified documents but his editor simply spiked it.



The "error" in Tony Blair's report was not whether Saddam had weapons of "mass destruction" or missiles that could be launched on 45 minutes notice, it was whether Britain had any wooden cities crammed with charcoal braziers which could burn like Hiroshima, or whether the city centre modern buildings are concrete which survived in Hiroshima with a 50% survival rate at just 0.12 mile from ground zero (see diagram above). This is the problem. What Tony Blair did was basically a repeat of Churchill's mistake of exaggerating incendiary bombs as "the most dangerous form of attack" in November 1934. (Source: Carlo D'Este, Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945, page 313.) Liberal Party leader Sir Herbert Samuel dismissed Churchill's warning as "blind and needless panic", as indeed it was. (Everyone was taught to put out incendiary bombs in WWII, and staying indoors under a table during bombing allowed the fast detection and extinguishing of fires, unlike the silly situation when people went to communal shelters down the road while easy-to-extinguish fires spread through their homes, needlessly. This was Anderson's shelter folly.)

Above, some recently declassified and recently de-limited documents concerning the nuclear deterrent were discussed, particularly nuclear flash burns, blast and fallout exaggerations and lies by those who ignorantly think that conventional warfare was less destructive than nuclear weapons in WWI and WWII:

(1) The 2/3-power of yield area and casualty rate "equivalent megatonnage" scaling law proves that a million individual, separate TNT bombs devastate 1,000,000/(1,000,000)2/3 = 100 times the area and cause 100 times the casualties of a single 1 megaton (million tons of TNT) bomb. Therefore, the 1.3 megatons of TNT dropped on Germany in individual bombs during WWII would be equivalant to over 100 nuclear weapons of 1 megaton blast yield each, assuming the WWII conventional bombs had a mean yield of 1 ton of TNT.

(2) However, the blast arrival time at any given peak overpressure increases in proportion to the 1/3-power of bomb yield: 1 psi peak overpressure arrives at a time of 0.4 second after a 1 ton of TNT explosion (about 500 feet radius), giving little time for evasive action on seeing the explosion. But for a nuclear 1 kt bomb, 1 psi peak overpressure (shattering windows) arrives 4 seconds after the explosion (about 1 mile radius), and for 1 megaton it arrives at 40 seconds (10 miles). So for most of the area of devastation in a nuclear explosion, people have enough time to duck and escape the flying glass fragments which are blown in a radial line from shattered windows, by the blast winds. This was not the case with WWI V2 missiles, where people behind windows didn't have time to duck and cover.

The same points about having time to take cheap and easy protection if knowledgable on seeing the painfully bright flash of nuclear explosions alsoiesapply to the other effects like the increasing thermal radiation pulse duration from larger weapons, and the lethal fallout over larger areas from high-yield weapons (there is a relatively long arrival time in which to take emergency countermeasures against fallout radiation over most of the massive area, e.g. 4-6 hours for the Marshallese 110 miles downwind from the 15 megaton test in 1954).



Above: dirt-cheap soil covered WWII Anderson shelter after a direct hit, London 1940. It was designed originally for indoor use against house collapse in 1939 but political propaganda about the incendiary fire risk (disproved in the Blitz on homes, which were much less likely to burn than publishers book filled warehouses and fuel depots in London docks; people could extinguish fires easily before they took hold) forced them to be located outdoors. The shelter was practically blown to pieces, losing its earth cover in absorbing the energy of the blast and shrapnel of the explosion. All the people inside it survived, remaining well and happy without psychological trauma. They were happy to survive a direct hitand "did not envy the dead" (Khrushchev propaganda). When biased anti-civil defense people look at these photos they frequently claim: "the shelter was no good because it absorbed blast energy and was destroyed". Of course the shelter was destroyed. The important thing is that it was destroyed, not the people inside it! More important, cheap indoor table "Morrison" shelters were designed by Baker and Leader-Williams of the UK Home Office to deliberately crumple like car bumpers or "impact zones", absorbing energy and saving lives without bankrupting the country or removing resources from the war effort:



The indoor table shelter (Morrison shelter) is designed deliberately to dent a safe amount in order to absorb the kinetic energy of the weight of the collapsing house, a strange fact that even Winston Churchill simply could not grasp at first:

"A ... difficulty was experienced by Prof. (now Sir John) Baker and his colleagues in gaining acceptance of the idea that a shelter should be designed to absorb some part of the applied energy in its own partial collapse; complete resistance was far too costly and even unnecessary. The Morrison table shelter was an excellent example of this [500,000 shelters Morrison had been distributed by November 1941 and proved vital against the V1 subsonic cruise missiles - which were relatively slow compared to the supersonic V2 rockets, allowing people enough time to dive under them when the throbbing pulse engine cut out]. It was designed to withstand the debris load of a house by its own partial collapse, whilst still giving adequate protection to the occupants. Sir John recalls with relish the long argument he had with the PM [Prime Minister Winston Churchill] before the latter was convinced about this ...”

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

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! This is deliberately ignored by anti-civil defense propagandarists who point to pictures of blown up cheap Anderson or Morrison shelters and manage to somehow pass off the deception that the damage to them proves them to be useless or at least of "doubtful" validity! This is standard political bigotry and smear tactics, not science.

The success of cheap WWII British shelters was reported at the time in newspapers and civil defence handbooks, but historians and even historians of science with PhD's in research manage to brainwash themselves into ignoring this factual evidence in preference to their "gut instinct" or "intuition" (pure guessword) which tells them that - contrary to all the evidence reported of survival in completely flattened houses under tables - nobody can survive in house blown up by a bomb! The secrecy laws are part of the cause. For instance, in 1945, the unclassified prewar British ARP Handbook on bomb shelters, Structural Defence was rewritten by the structural engineer Dr (later professor) D. G. Christopherson, including a summary of all actual WWII bombing experience, under the new title Structural Defence, 1945 and was published in 1946 under the secrecy classification "Confidential" by the Research and Experimental Department of the Ministry of Home Security.

So the evidence was now covered by the Official Secrets Act, explaining why cheap and simple duck and cover civil defense is not taken seriously. Nobody could scientifically defend civil defence in public for fear of being imprisoned for giving national secrets to the Russians. Precisely the same civil defence data cover-up occurred with the Secret-classified 1946 British report, The Effects of The Atomic Bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima on Reinforced Concrete Structures by P. A. Badland of the Chief Scientific Adviser's Division of the Ministry of Works (and other secret reports of the British Mission to Japan on shelter effectiveness in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the secret full three volume USSBS report on the cause of the non-thermal radiation blast-on-charcoal-stoves cause of the firestorm in Hiroshima (the Japanese were officially banned from taking photos or publishing on the subject during the US occupation of Japan after the war, while the city was being rebuilt), and the successful testing of fifteen WWII Anderson shelters at Britain's first nuclear weapon test in 1952: nobody could hand out that data without going to prison for giving civil defence data to the Russians.

The “Shelter at Home” (1941) Morrison table shelter handbook (which mentions that most people who sheltered under the stairs or a strong table survived safely when their houses were otherwise flattened; note that the thin 3 mm mild steel plate top of the Morrison table shelter is not magically strong and a normal decent wooden table is so much thicker than 3 mm of steel that the wood can be as strong or even stronger than the thin steel, provided that the table legs are "trestled" together to prevent them from easily buckling outward under an impulsive force loading due to house collapse) is based on National Archives reference HO 197/24, 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.” (See also A. R. Astbury, History of the Research and Experiments Department Ministry of Home Security, Division of the Chief Scientific Advisor, Ministry of Works.)

Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (1960):

“The outdoor Anderson shelter ... was liable to flood during the winter months. The wide desire for an indoor shelter which provided some degree of comfort and also assisted people to get a night’s rest in warmth and dryness did not take into account the fact that there was some fire risk involved. I decided that the risk was worth taking. Experience proved me justified.”

Norman Longmate, How we Lived Then - A history of everyday life during the Second World War (1971):

“At first nearly everyone sought shelter after dark, but by early November [1940] an official census showed that only 40 per cent of the population slept in a shelter, 9 per cent using a public shelter, 4 per cent the tubes, and 27 per cent a domestic shelter. The public outcry about conditions in the largest public shelters, often without sanitation or even lighting, and the appalling inadequacy of the over-loaded and ill-equipped rest centres for the bombed-out led to immediate improvements, but cost Sir John Anderson his job. ... His successor as Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, the son of a Lambeth policeman, was a far more accomplished Parliamentarian than Anderson and far better able to understand what life under bombing really meant to the poor. ... The growing reluctance of many people to go out of doors led the new Home Secretary to look again at the need for an indoor shelter ... The first were delivered in March 1941 and by the end of the war about 1,100,000 were in use, including a few two-tier models for larger families. Morrisons were supplied free to people earning up to £350 a year and were on sale at about £7 to people earning more.”

Above: the expensive shelter delusion was debunked in WWII where the November 1940 shelter census showed that most people were simply going under the kitchen table indoors during air raids rather than using cold, damp outdoor shelters, yet left-wing Marxist propaganda continued to tell lies and demand a Maginot Line of expensive and useless shelters (this shelter propaganda article is from the Daily Worker of 17 September 1940; this "deep shelter" propaganda delusion originated with speculations made by the Cambridge Scientist's Anti-War group report of 1937 - which gives an experiment in an appendix showing how an incendiary bomb failed to ignite "effectively" a piece of wood but obfuscated this result and simply claimed without experimental proof in the text that incendiary bombs would cause mass fires - and J. B. S. Haldane's 1938 ARP Maginot Line book, both linked here). The fact is, outdoor shelters survived but were useless in Hiroshima, because almost nobody was inside them (photos below). No enemy is likely to choose to use nuclear weapons when people are in shelters; if shelters exist a surprise attack is more likely. So improvised, cheap duck and cover protection is required, and expensive shelter programmes are proved by Hiroshima to be money wasting delusion:



Above: a U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey photo of a useless bomb shelter which survived Hiroshima's firestorm intact. Nobody was inside it, so it saved nobody. What is fascinating is that such photos are often used to "defend" expensive civil defense programmes. There is no warning to get into shelter if a terrorist launches a surprise attack by detonating a nuclear bomb offshore. They are of some use against fallout if people can get to them having survived the initial effects (blast, thermal flash, initial radiation), if the roads are not blocked by debris. But in that case why not simply move upwind, decontaminate and wait for the fallout to decay while staying in the upwind area, since fallout is easy to predict (contrary to propaganda dating back to a 1954 test!).

The [cheap indoor improvised countermeasure] fallout radiation advice in Protect and Survive was based on 1960s fallout shelter experiments[2] summarized by Daniel T. Jones of the Home Office Scientific Advisory Branch[3] in his report, The Protection Against Fallout Radiation Afforded by Core Shelters in a Typical British House which was published in Protective Structures for Civilian Populations, Proceedings of the Symposium held at Washington, D.C., April 19–23, 1965, by the Subcommittee on Protective Structures, Advisory Committee on Civil Defense, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council.[4][5] The fallout radiation was represented by measurements of the penetration of cobalt-60 gamma radiation, which has a high mean energy of 1.25 MeV (two gamma rays, 1.17 and 1.33 MeV). This is considerably more penetrating than the mean 0.7 MeV of fallout gamma rays.[6] Therefore, the actual protection given against real nuclear weapon fallout would be far greater than that afforded in the peacetime cobalt-60 shielding measurements.




Above: 14 Nov 2012. Finally, some good news: Israel is now justly eliminating murderers (Hamas terrorist leaders) in retaliation for the murder of Israeli civilians, without hitting any kids in collateral damage. Additionally, it is issuing posters like this, which make the reasons for its actions crystal clear for everybody to understand without any confusion. This will make it very hard for Hamas murderers to make effective propaganda out of the justifiable strike. (It is vital to eliminate terrorist leaders, and spare innocent kids.) The next step after the terrorist leaders have been eliminated is for Israel to negotiate from a position of moral and military strength. Good civil defense is also important to reduce casualties from Palestinian rocket attacks. Israel remains in the middle of a largely hostile Moslem area and so must issue good rocket attack warning detection systems and Morrison-type table shelters where needed (proved in Britain in WWII), with duck and cover advice to minimize casualties and mitigate the human effects of enemy attacks. The best possible civil defense knowledge is vital to reduce innocent human casualties in war.

Update (14 Nov 2012): More civil defense data from WWII British and Japanese conventional and nuclear bombing experience (including photos of survival in Anderson and Morrison table shelters, their blueprints, nuclear tests on civil defense improvised countermeasures, etc.) is linked in my compendium "Civil Defense Evidence", on the internet archive: http://archive.org/details/CivilDefenseEvidence

posted by Nuclear Weapons Effects 7:21 pm

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

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."