The Effects of Nuclear War

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

Immediate Effects: The First Hour

The attack destroys 73 percent of Soviet refining capacity and 16 percent of Soviet storage capacity, as table 10 shows. Collateral economic damage could not be calculated or collateral damage to a large Soviet city assessed because sufficient unclassified data could not be found.

Table 10. -Summary of U.S. Attack on U.S.S.R.

Footprint number	Geographic area (approx. center)	EMTa	Percent national refining capacity	Percent national storage capacity	Air burst prompt fatalities (x 1,000)
					SSb	MSc
1	Moscow	1.2	10.5	2.1	62	41
2	Baku	1.0	9.8	1 5	224	152
3	Ishimbai	1.2	8.7	2.8	25	12
4	Polotsk	0.9	7.5	0.3	52	32
5	Kuibuyshev	1.2	7.4	3.1	127	83
6	Angarsk	0.9	6.9	0.4	130	54
7	Grozny	1.0	6.7	1.6	56	37
8	Kirishi	0.9	6.2	0.3	493	230
9	Gorki	1.2	5.6	1.5	228	153
10	Perm	1.0	3.6	2.1	61	42
	Totals	10.4	72.9	15.7	1,458	836

If all weapons are air burst, the attack kills 1,458,000 people assuming everyone to be in single-story buildings, and 836,000 assuming everyone in multistory buildings; the latter assumption comes closer to reality. If all weapons were ground burst, the attack would kill 1,019,000 people, 722,000 promptly and 297,000 by fallout, assuming the worst case, everyone living in single-story buildings.

The estimated injuries from the attack are substantial under all conditions. Under the single-story assumption on housing, the air-burst attack would produce 3.6 million injuries and a surface-burst attack about a million less. If in multistory buildings, the population would suffer 3.8 million injured from an airburst attack and 2.5 million for the surface burst. (A protection factor of 5 was assumed against fallout from the surface bursts. )

The attack kills fewer Russians than Americans. The differences in fatalities do not mean that the United States is necessarily more vulnerable than the Soviet Union to nuclear attack; rather, the asymmetries occur from the design of the attack. Soviet refineries are farther from cities than are U.S. refineries: and U.S. weapons are smaller, so fewer Russians are within the lethal radii of U.S. weapons. Sensitivity of fatalities and injuries to distance from ground zero is shown in table 11, Had either nation sought to kill people, it would have used different weapons and targeted them differently.

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

	Effect	Weapon yield
		1 Mt	170 kt	40 kt
Overpressure (crushing)	Lethality —
	Threshold	0.25	0.15	0.1
	Lung damage —
	Threshold	2.1	1.1	0.7
	Severe	0.8	0.5	0.3
	Broken eardrums —
	Threshold	3.5	2.0	1.2
	50%	1.0	0.6	0.4
Translation	Personnel in the open —1%	3.3	1.6	0.9
	Personnel near structures —
	1%	3.8	1.9	1.0
	50%	2.1	1.0	0.6
Thermal	Third-degree burn -100%	5.2	2.6	1.5
	No burns—100%	8.7	4.8	2.8
	Flashblindness*	10	9	8
	Retinal burn*	25	23	20
Radiation	Lethal dose (1,000 rads)	0.9	0.8	0.7
	No immediate harm (100 rads)	1.2	1.1	1.0

* Daytime safe distance.

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