The Medical Implications of Nuclear War (1986) / Chapter Skim
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9 Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and Radioactive Fallout from Various Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the United States
9 Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and Radioactive Fallout from Various Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the United States
Pages 207-232
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From page 207... ...
National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and Radioactive Fallout from Various Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the United States WILLIAM DAUGHERTY, B^B^A LEVI, PH.D., ~d FRANK VON HIPPEL, PH.D.
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From page 208... ...
The predicted numbers of injured are significantly smaller for the conflagration model because many of the people injured in the overpressure model die from fire effects in the conflagration model. In view of the plausibility of the conflagration model, we believe that previous estimates of the deaths due to the blast and burn effects of nuclear attacks are very uncertain and probably low by a large factor.
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From page 209... ...
in 1975 for a similar attack ranged from 3 million to 16 million deaths (U.S. Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1975; pp.
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From page 210... ...
Overpressure Model The standard method for extrapolation that is, to our knowledge, used in virtually all government calculations is to assume that casualty probabilities are a function of peak blast overpressure. Given the weapon yield and height of burst, the peak overpressure is calculated as a function of the distance from ground zero, and the Hiroshima blast and burn casualty rates for that overpressure are applied to the population at that distance (e.g., U.S.
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2 1 FIGURE 2 Hiroshima casualty rates as a function of peak blast overpressure.
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Given this range of conflagration radii, we have constructed a conflagration casualty model by dividing the distance from ground zero into three zones (see Figure 4~: · An inner conflagration zone- the area further in than 2 km from the edge of the conflagration zone. Here we assume that there would be 100 percent fatalities because the population would not have time to escape before individual fires would merge into a single inferno.
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city Centers, Milita~y-Supporting Industry, or Strategic Nuclear Targets The calculated results of an all-out attack on the U.S. population or economic targets involving thousands of megatons would be relatively insensitive to the casualty model used.
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Much of the rural population would die of falloutcaused radiation illness, and most of the remainder would die of starvation and disease (e.g., Haaland etal., 1976; Harwell, 19841. Therefore, in order to explore the sensitivity of blast and burn casualty estimates to the choice of casualty model and types of targets involved, we have considered much more limited hypothetical attacks on three different classes of targets in the United States each containing approximately 100 ground zeros: · The city centers of the 100 largest U.S.
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· The Pentagon and the White House in the Washington, D.C., urban area and the Strategic Air Command headquarters outside Omaha are among the most important strategic nuclear weapons command posts. And a number of other major urban areas are the sites of key radio transmitters for communicating with ballistic missile submarines, bombers, and mil
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From page 217... ...
. / /' l 10 15 ~20 KILOMETERS FROM GROUND- ZERO CITY CENTERS MILITARY- INDUSTRIAL SITES 5 20 / STRATEGIC NUCLEAR SITES COMMAND, COMMUNICATION AND EARLY WARNING SITES NUCLEAR-WEAPONS STORAGE SITES NUCLEAR NAVAL BASES STRATEGIC AIR BASES FIGURE 6 A: Cumulative population around ground zeros for 100-Mt attacks.
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From page 218... ...
Figure 7 shows the results from the overpressure and medium-radius conflagration models. The conflagration model predicts 1.5 to 4.1 times as many deaths as the overpressure model up to 56 million depending on the conflagration radius that is assumed.
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From page 219... ...
During 1974-1975, a series of hearings held by a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee focused on the potential U.S.
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From page 220... ...
deaths that he believed would result from an all-out Soviet nuclear attack on the United States. In response to a request from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment organized a panel of experts, chaired by Jerome Wiesner, then President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to review the DOD casualty estimates.
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From page 221... ...
strategic bomber and aerial refueling tanker bases, we have assumed "pattern attacks" with a number of nuclear warheads exploding in the air around the base in an effort to destroy any aircraft that have just taken off (Quanbeck and Wood, 1976; U.S. Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1975; p.
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strategic nuclear forces only 40 additional key command, communication, and early-warning targets: · Seven major headquarter and alternate headquarter installations; · Five early-warning radar installations; · Ten key naval radio transmitters for communicating to submarines; · Nine key Strategic Air Command (SAC) transmitters for communicating to bombers; · Nine key terminals for communication with and control of satellites.
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From page 223... ...
Protection factors of more than 100 are often discussed by those who argue that the USSR (or the United States) could effectively shelter its populations from radioactive fallout in improvised shelters (e.g., Nitze,
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If no biological repair were assumed, the total absorbed dose out to 6 months would be 30-60 percent higher than the peak residual dose calculated by the WSEG-10 model, depending on the fallout arrival time. Since the end of World War II, the standard assumption used in official U.S.
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From page 225... ...
Rotblat's lower value for the people of Hiroshima may reflect synergistic effects of radiation dosage with the traumatic effects of the explosion and its aftermath. The population surviving the immediate effects of a largescale nuclear attack on the United States would certainly also find itself under multiple stresses, including emotional shock, hunger, unsanitary conditions, and possibly exposure to cold weather.
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Strategic Nuclear Targets We have calculated the fallout patterns for the attack on U.S. strategic nuclear forces described in Table 3, assuming typical February, May, August, and October winds.
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Table 4 shows our estimated ranges of deaths and total casualties due to blast, fire, radiation sickness, and cancer. Shown explicitly is the sensitivity of these results to the choice of blast-burn casualty model, radiation sickness LDso, and cancer-risk coefficient.
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Blast Radiation Illness and L~Dso (reds) Cancer Riska Fire 450 350 250 Low High Totalb Deaths Overpressure Model 7 5-6 7-8 9-14 1-3 4-8 13-28 Conflagration Model 16 4-5 6-7 8-12 1-3 3-7 20-34 Total Casualties Overpressure Model 14 7-9 11-16 17-29 3-6 10-20 25-63 Conflagration Model 19 7-8 10-15 15-27 2-6 9-19 28-64 aFor the survivors of the short-term effects of blast, fire, and radiation sickness, assuming an LD50 for radiation sickness of 350 reds.
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From page 229... ...
Using a less optimistic sheltering posture, somewhat like that used in this paper, and assuming a 550-kiloton airburst and groundburst over each silo, the DOD analysts estimated 5.6 million deaths resulting from an attack on U.S. missile silos alone (assuming March winds)
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From page 230... ...
As may be seen from Table 5, these target sets account for a large fraction of the total number of deaths calculated for our counterforce attack. As has already been noted, our own range of 13-34 million deaths and 25-64 million total casualties would be higher if we included other likely targets, such as potential bomber dispersal bases.
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From page 231... ...
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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From page 232... ...
Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Analyses of Effects of Limited Nuclear Warfare. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
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