The Effects of Nuclear War
Chapter IV
CASE 4: A LARGE SOVIET ATTACK ON U.S. MILITARY AND ECONOMIC TARGETS
The Recuperation Period
Whether economic recovery would take place, and if so what form it would take, would depend both on the physical survival of enough people and resources to sustain recovery, and on the question of whether these survivors could adequately organize themselves.
Physical survival of some people is quite probable, and even a population of a few million can sustain a reasonably modern economy under favorable circumstances. The survivors would not be a cross-section of prewar America, since people who had lived in rural areas would be more likely to survive than the inhabitants of cities and suburbs. The surviving population would lack some key industrial and technical skills; on the other hand, rural people and those urban people who would survive are generally hardier than the American average.
While the absolute level of surviving stocks of materials and products would seem low by prewar standards, there would be a much smaller population to use these stocks. Apart from medicines (which tend to have a short shelf life and which are manufactured exclusively in urban areas), there would probably not be any essential commodity of which supplies were desperately short at first. A lack of medicines would accentuate the smallness and hardiness of the surviving population.
Restoring production would be a much more difficult task than finding interim stockpiles. Production in the United States is extremely complex, involving many intermediate stages. New patterns of production, which did not rely on facilities that have been destroyed, would have to be established.
It cannot be said whether the productive facilities that physically survived (undamaged or repairable with available supplies and skills) would be adequate to sustain recovery. It seems probable that there would be enough equipment and that scavenging among the ruins could provide adequate “raw materials” where natural resources were no longer accessible with surviving technology.
The most serious problems would be organizational. Industrial society depends on the division of labor, and the division of labor depends on certain governmental functions. Physical security comes first—a person is reluctant to leave home to go to work without some assurance that the home will not be looted. While some degree of law and order could probably be maintained in localities where a fairly dense population survived, the remaining highways might become quite unsafe, which would reduce trade over substantial distances. The second requirement is some form of payment for work. Barter is notoriously inefficient. Payment by fiat (for example, those who work get Government ration cards) is inefficient as well, and requires a Government stronger than a postwar United States would be Iikely to inherit. A strong Government might grow up, but most surviving citizens would be reluctant to support a dictatorship by whatever name. The best solution is a viable monetary system, but it would not be easy to establish. Regions or localities might develop their own monies, with “foreign” trade among regions.
The surviving resources might not be used very efficiently. Ideally one would want to conduct a national survey of surviving assets, but the surviving Government would probably not be capable of doing so, especially since people would fear that to acknowledge a surviving stock was to invite its confiscation. To make use of surviving factories, workers would have to live nearby, and they might be unwilling to do so in the absence of minimally adequate housing for their families. Ownership of some assets would be hopelessly confused, which would diminish the incentives for investment or even temporary repairs.
There is a possibility that the country might break up into several regional entities. If these came into conflict with each other there would be further waste and destruction.
In effect, the country would enter a race, with economic viability as the prize. The country would try to restore production to the point where consumption of stocks and the wearing out of surviving goods and tools was matched by new production. If this was achieved before stocks ran out, then viability would be attained. Otherwise, consumption would necessarily sink to the level of new production and in so doing would probably depress production further, creating a downward spiral. At some point this spiral would stop, but by the time it did so the United States might have returned to the economic equivalent of the Middle Ages.
The effect of an all-out attack would be equally devastating to the U.S. social structure. Heavy fatalities in the major urban areas would deprive the country of a high percentage of its top business executives, Government officials, medical specialists, scientists, educators, and performers. There is no measure for estimating the impact of such lasting losses on our society. In addition to the irreplaceable loss of genius and talents, the destruction of their associated institutions is still another compounding of effects that is overlooked by some recovery estimates. Who could calculate how long to get over the loss of Wall Street, an MIT, a Mayo Clinic, and the Smithsonian?
The American way of life is characterized by material possessions, with private ownership of items representing substantial long-term investments (such as homes, businesses, and automobiles) being the rule rather than exception. Widespread loss of individual assets such as these could have a strong, lasting effect on our social structure. Similarly, the question of whether individual right to ownership of surviving assets would remain unchanged in a postattack environment would arise. For example, the Government might find it necessary to force persons having homes to house families who had lost their homes.
The family group would be particularly hard hit by the effects of general nuclear war. Deaths, severe injuries, forced separation, and loss of contact could place inordinate strains on the family structure.
Finally, major changes should be anticipated in the societal structure, as survivors attempt to adapt to a severe and desponding environment never before experienced. The loss of a hundred million people, mostly in the larger cities, could raise a question on the advisability of rebuilding the cities. (Why reconstruct obvious targets for a nuclear Armageddon of the future?) The surviving population could seek to alter the social and geopolitical structure of the rebuilding nation in hopes of minimizing the effects of any future conflicts.
How well the U.S. political structure might recover from a large-scale nuclear attack depends on a number of uncertainties. First, with warning, national level officials are presumed to evacuate to outlying shelter areas; State and local authorities will take similar precautions, but probably with less success, especially at the lower levels. The confidence and credibility of the system will come under severe strains as relief and recovery programs are implemented. Changes in an already weakened structure are sure to result as many normal practices and routines are set aside to facilitate recovery. Survivors may demand more immediate expressions of their likes, dislikes, and needs. Widespread dissatisfaction could result in a weakening of the Federal process, leading to a new emphasis on local government. An alternative possibility is martial law, which might be controlled in theory but decentralized in practice.
All of this assumes that there would be no significant ecological damage, a possibility discussed in chapter V. Chapter V also discusses long-term health hazards.