The Effects of Nuclear War

CASE 3: A COUNTERFORCE ATTACK AGAINST THE UNITED STATES

The case of a Soviet attack on U.S. strategic forces has received extensive public attention in recent years, since some observers believe it is the least irrational way of waging strategic war. For the purposes of this study, the military success of such an attack (i. e., how many U.S. forces would be destroyed) and the resulting U.S. responses are not important. It is sufficient to assume that such an attack is launched, and to examine the consequences for the civilian population, economy, and society. For this purpose, small variations in the attack design (e. g., whether control centers as well as silos are targeted) are immaterial. While there are many possible variations in the design of a counterforce attack, a question of particular interest is whether the attack would be delivered only against ICBM silos, or whether bomber bases and missile submarine bases would also be attacked. Some of the public discussion of such an attack suggests that an attack on ICBM silos alone could cause much less civilian damage than a full-scale counterforce attack because the silos are more isolated from population centers than are bomber bases. It is certainly true that, holding al I the other possible variables constant, an attack that included bomber bases and missile submarine bases would cause more civilian damage than one that did not. Nevertheless, the difference between the ICBM-only attack and a comprehensive counterforce attack was found to be no greater than the difference made by other variables, such as the size of weapons used, the proportion of surface bursts used, and the weather. Both cases are considered in this section; the countersilo attack is a subset of the counterforce attack, and available data is too coarse to support a believable differentiation between the civilian effects of each attack.

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