The Effects of Nuclear War

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

Recovery

What course would Soviet recovery take? Economic viability would not be at issue following this attack, and the Government could be expected to remain firmly in control because of the limited scale of this attack. Assuming that there are no further attacks, most of the deaths would occur within 30 days of the attack. While the course of economic recovery cannot be predicted in detail, it is clear that:

• The attack would hurt. The recovery period would be marked by shortage and sacrifice, with particular problems stemming from agricultural shortfalls.
• Nevertheless, the Soviet economy and political system would survive, and would do so with less drastic changes than the United States would probably experience.
• The asymmetries between the two nations in effects for a given attack are greater for this case than for a very large attack.

The political and economic structure of the U.S.S.R. appears designed to cope with drastic emergencies like this attack. While almost all economic assets would be unscathed, resources would need to be shifted rapidly to produce a different mix of outputs. The attack would totally disrupt existing economic plans. The economic planning apparatus and Government control methods in place in the U.S.S.R. would permit the Government to shift plans and resources, but the speed with which such changes could be made is uncertain. To the extent that revisions in the economic plan were not made or were delayed, people and equipment would sit idle or would be producing according to less-efficient priorities, draining scarce resources from higher priority tasks and hindering recovery. Workers would be shifted to different industries as plants closed; some would be forced to move, share apartments with strangers, or work at new jobs (including manual labor in farms or factories).

Some insight into the economic consequences can be obtained by looking at four sectors of the economy— military, agriculture, transportation, and industry. Each of these sectors would have a strong claim on available petroleum, but their total demand would exceed the supply.

The military would have first call on fuel, especially if the war continued. It has adequate stocks to prosecute a war for several weeks. However, unless this attack led to a decisive Soviet victory or to a major relaxation of tensions, the military would need refined petroleum to rebuild its stocks and to carry out normal training.

Soviet agriculture is precarious even in peacetime because of its inefficiency. Agriculture engages about a third of the work force and consumes a third of Soviet gasoline and diesel fuel. (U.S. agriculture, in contrast, uses 2.7 percent of the work force (in 1978) and a small fraction of U.S. refined petroleum .)⁴ The Soviet Union imports grain in most years. Nevertheless, the U.S.S.R. has maintained a large cattle industry at considerable expense to provide a consumer good much in demand. Farms use petroleum for tractors and trucks; petroleum and natural gas are feedstocks for fertilizer and pesticides. Agricultural use of petroleum is increasing. One small example is the Soviet use of light aircraft to spread fertilizer; while this task could be done by tractors or by hand, it is much more efficiently done by aircraft.

Cutbacks in petroleum would magnify agricultural inefficiency. Even if the Soviet Union allocated all the petroleum it produced to agriculture, it would not produce enough to sustain agriculture’s prewar consumption, and other critical sectors would compete for petroleum. Drawing on inventory would sacrifice later agricultural production for earlier production. Following the attack, the main concern of agriculture would be planting, growing, or harvesting the year’s crop; sacrifices and substitutions would be required in other agricultural subsectors to meet this goal with available petroleum. The U.S.S.R. would be likely to divert people from schools, factories, and (depending on the international situation) the military to work the fields, as it does in peacetime, but to a greater extent. The substitution of human labor for mechanical energy would be a poor but perhaps unavoidable trade. The most obvious cutback would be livestock; meat is a luxury, livestock consume much food that could otherwise be used for human consumption, and cattle raising, slaughter, and distribution require much energy. The Soviet Union might slaughter much of its livestock after the attack to free farmers, fields, trucks, and petroleum to produce crops. Russians might have a 3-month orgy of meat followed by two decades without.

Soviet transportation would be pinched. A few top leaders would still have cars; other cars would sit idle for years, monuments to the prewar standard of living. Air transportation would be sharply curtailed, and Soviet supersonic transports would be grounded. Truck transportation would be curtailed, with trucks used almost exclusively for intracity transportation and hauling goods between railroads and loading docks. By elimination, the transportation burden would fall to railroads because of their energy efficiency. Key trunklines are electrified, and might obtain electricity from sources other than petroleum. The Soviets have stored a number of steam locomotives, which would be hauled out, refurbished, and put to use.

The tempo of industrial production would slow. Even as it stands now, the Soviets have barely enough energy and occasional shortages. Electric power would continue, but would probably be cut back 10 to 15 percent, forcing some industries to close and reducing heat and light at other industries and apartments. With transportation cut back, factories would have to wait longer for inputs, lowering productivity.

Some less-essential industries, especially energy or petroleum-intensive ones, might shut down. Plastics use petroleum derivatives as feedstocks. Aluminum production uses great amounts of energy, though some Soviet aluminum plants, such as at Bratsk in Siberia, use hydroelectric power. Truck production would stop for lack of fuel for existing vehicles, idling the huge Kama River truck plant.

Construction consumes much petroleum, so it would be curtailed except for essential industries, hydroelectric powerplant construction, refining construction, and minimal housing for workers in those occupations.

These changes would disrupt workers’ lives. Closing of some plants would idle many workers, forcing them to work in other industries; many could be moved long distances to other plants. Workers would not necessarily be forced to work long hours. While some plants would operate around the clock, others would be closed or cut back to enable the energy they consume to be diverted. At the same time, however, and within limits of substitutability, workers could likewise be diverted from closed to open plants, providing extra labor for factories that remained open extra time.

In sum, the reduction in the standard of living and the amount of disruption would probably be less than in the United States but there might well be more hardship and misery. Russians would have less food, especially protein, than they did before the attack, while American agriculture consumes so little petroleum that its output could probably be maintained, though some variety might be sacrificed. There would be less heat in both nations, but winters are shorter and milder in the United States, and U.S. indoor temperatures in winter could be reduced 50 or 10° F without ill effect. Therefore, heating could probably not be cut as much in the U.S.S.R. as in the United States without jeopardizing health. Cars would be sacrificed at least temporarily in both nations. Soviet industries producing consumer goods would be cut back more sharply than their U, S. counterparts after the attack, and would regain productivity more slowly.

4. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1978 (Washington, D.C. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1978), lists 91,846,000 employed persons age 16 and over in the United States, of whom 2,469,000 were listed as farmworkers, for January-April 1978 (p. 418). The Statistical Abstract does not present the amount of petroleum consumed by American agriculture. Several statistics, however, indicate this number to be a small fraction of total U.S.petroleum consumption Preliminary 1977 data showed all U.S.prime movers (automotive and nonautomotive) had 26,469,000,000 horsepower, while farms accounted for 328,000,000 horsepower, or 12 percent (p. 604) In 1976, industrial consumption of petroleum accounted for 18 percent of total U.S.petroleum consumption (p 764) And a National Academy of Sciences study found that agriculture accounted for 3.5 percent of total national energy consumption In 1968 Agricultural Production Efficiency (Washington, D.C. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council Committee on Agricultural Production Efficiency, 1975), p 119)

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