The Effects of Nuclear War

CASE 3: A COUNTERFORCE ATTACK AGAINST THE UNITED STATES

Recuperation

Economic viability would not be at issue following a counterforce attack. Because the attack seeks no economic damage, it would be far less likely than a deliberate strike on economic targets to create any bottlenecks that would greatly hinder recovery. The Nation would be able to restore production and maintain self-sufficiency. The attack would cause enormous economic loss, but the Nation’s capacity for growth would be at worst only slightly impaired. The major task would be ending disruption and disorganization rather than rebuilding the economy — putting the pieces back together. Most likely these tasks would be accomplished by a mixture of individual, local, State, and Federal initiatives, with Federal intervention used as a last resort.

The main problem areas would be:

1. Agriculture. The attack could be expected to destroy a tiny fraction of farmland with blast and fire; of much greater significance, fallout would contaminate a substantial fraction of cropland because many ICBMs are in or near the Great Plains. Other cropland would escape with little or no fallout. It is unlikely that more than a fraction of the livestock in nearby fallout areas would be adequately protected. Fallout would affect agriculture in two ways: by killing livestock and crops, and by preventing farmers from working in the fields.

   Damage from fallout contamination of crops would depend on the time of year. Most crops take up relatively little fallout and external irradiation does not contaminate them. Moreover, it is easy enough to remove fallout particles from food. However, the vulnerability of crops to fallout varies significantly with the type of crop and the stage of its growth. For example, yield of various crops can be reduced 50 percent by the following doses, in roentgens (R): peas, less than 1,000 R; rye, 1,000 to 2,000 R; wheat, corn, cucumber, 2,000 to 4,000 R; cotton, melons, 6,000 to 8,000 R; soybeans, beets, 800 to 12,000 R; rice, strawberries, 12,000 to 16,000 R; and squash, 16,000 to 24,000 R. At the same time, young plants are most vulnerable to radiation, while those near maturity are least vulnerable.

   Knowledge about radiation effects on crops is, however, limited because much more is known about how gamma radiation affects crops than about beta radiation effects. Since fallout emits both types, and since beta doses to plants could be from 1 to 20 times the gamma dose, this is a major uncertainty.

   Fallout would prevent farmers from working in fields for a time. Fallout does decay, and weathering would further reduce its effects on people. By a year after the attack, fallout would no longer be of consequence to farmworkers in most areas. How soon after the attack they could begin work would depend on the amount of fallout deposited on a field.

   The effects would thus depend significantly on time of year. An attack between October and January would have little effect, as fallout would have decayed enough by planting time to permit farmers to work the fields and to avoid serious damage to crops. Radiation on fields could be substantially reduced by plowing the fallout under or by scraping off the top layer of dirt. An attack in February or March would delay planting, reducing crop yields or making it necessary to shift to crops that mature more quickly. An attack between April and June could kill the entire crop. An attack in July or August could conceivably have little effect, if the plants were undamaged by radiation. But the resulting crop should be safe for human consumption in an emergency. An attack during or just before the harvest could result in the loss of the whole crop, not by damaging the plants, but by preventing farmers from harvesting.

   Fallout would be more damaging to livestock than to plants. Animals are only slightly more resistant to radiation than are people; for sheep, cattle, and pigs in barns, where they are protected from direct contact with the ingestion of fallout, a dose of 400, 500, and 600 R, respectively, will kill half these animals. The median lethal dose is considerably lower for animals in pastures, where they can eat fallout along with grass. Poultry are considered more resistant; a dose of 850 R will halve the poultry in a barn. Many animals in heavy fallout areas would probably be killed, as farmers generally have no fallout shelters for animals. Moreover, depending on the damage the attack wreaks on human food crops, it might be necessary to use animal feed as human food. The consequence could be that it would take many years to rebuild the national livestock supply, and until then meat would become a scarce luxury.

2. Decontamination. Cities, farms, and factories in contaminated areas would require decontamination in order to reopen for human use. Decontamination involves moving fallout to areas where it can do less harm in order to reduce the dose rate to people in certain places. It can be done with bulldozers, street sweepers, firehoses, brooms, etc. It does, however, require people to place themselves at risk. Would enough people be willing to run these risks? Training is required for people to know that certain doses are tolerable and other doses are not; this training would make people less unwilling to face these risks, but will enough people have received this training?

3. Public health standards would have to be lowered following the attack. in peacetime, standards are often set cautiously; when acceptable exposure risk is unknown, it is preferable to err on the side of safety. Following the attack, that luxury would not be possible. Fields would be farmed while low-level radioactivity persisted; the risks, quite unacceptable in peacetime, would be preferable to starvation. The cost-benefit ratio would change: the benefits of individual safety would need to be weighed against the costs of foregoing critical production. Moreover, how applicable would our knowledge be for setting standards for the entire population after an attack? Could enough instruments be made available to enable everyone to know what dose they were receiving? And what role would politics play in setting standards when “acceptable risk” rather than “negligible risk” was at issue? Society would be running greater risks without knowing just how great the risks were; so doing would increase low-level radiation sickness, cancers, genetic damage, and so on.

4. Burdens on society would increase, removing people from production while increasing demand on production. Many people would suffer long-lasting, permanent, or debilitating injuries. Demands for more military force could well increase. Inefficiencies stemming from economic dislocation would reduce the outputs from any given set of inputs. Decontamination and civil defense would draw resources.

5. Economic disorganization would be a problem, possibly a severe one. Once people were confident that the war had ended, money would retain its value, and so would property in uncontaminated areas. But the marketplace that organizes the American economy would be severely disrupted by abrupt shifts in demand, abrupt changes in supply, questions about the validity of contracts involving people or things in contaminated areas, etc. In addition, a major question would develop over how to share the losses from the attack in an equitable way.

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