The Effects of Nuclear War

CASE 4: A LARGE U.S. ATTACK ON SOVIET MILITARY AND ECONOMIC TARGETS

The First Few Hours

As chapter III notes, Soviet civil defense can have substantial impact on the full range of effects. Fallout shelters, blast shelters, and industrial hardening can reduce the overall damage from nuclear attack. First aid and civil defense training can ameliorate health problems. Storing supplies in shelters lengthens shelter stay time. Thus, the issue is how well Soviet civil defense would in fact work. Many unknowns— numbers of shelters, amount of food and medicine stock piIes, small er amounts of surplus resources than the United States–prevent a judgment in detail. It seems safe to assume, however, that Soviet civil defense measures would be at least as effective as U.S. measures and probably better.

Preattack preparations would have a decided influence on damage caused. Since a U.S. retaliatory attack is by definition preceded by a Soviet first strike, it would seem logical that some evacuation would have occurred. However, there are reasons why evacuation might not have taken place. These include the following Soviet concerns: an evacuation could increase the risk of a U.S. attack; the U.S. attack might be so close at hand that an evacuation could increase casualties; a prolonged evacuation might be such an economic disruption that it would be better to wait until war appeared certain; or war through miscalculation. In any event, a Soviet decision to strike first would allow the Soviets to make preparations—distribute supplies, improve and stock shelters, increase production of essential goods, harvest grain, protect livestock, conduct civil defense training, harden industrial facilities, and so on. These actions would also make Soviet citizens more responsive to civil defense instructions, especially to a warning that an attack was underway. While these actions would be observed by the United States, they would be more ambiguous than an evacuation, so the United States could see them as safeguarding against an attack rather than preparing for one.

The effects of evacuation in reducing casualties could be diluted to some extent by varying U.S. attack strategy. Spreading the attack over a period of time could extend shelter periods, enhance economic disruption, and delay rescue and emergency operations.

The Soviet Union, despite its vast geographical size, is vulnerable to an urban/industrial attack in many of the same ways as the United States. Although there has been extensive publicity on their reported dispersal of industry, indications are that population and industry are becoming more and more concentrated. While some industries may have been moved away from cities, many others have been built near cities. Indeed, some of the industries recently built away from cities are themselves so concentrated that they form new targets of their own. Hedrick Smith describes the Kama River Truck Plant as an archetype of the gigantomania of Soviet planners, as a symbol of the Soviet faith that bigger means better and the Soviet determination to have the biggest at any cost.

Kama is the kind of massive crash project that appeals to Russians. It emanates brute strength. In 1971, Soviet construction brigades started from scratch to build the world’s largest truck plant in the open, rolling, windswept plains about 600 miles east of Moscow, Kama was not just one factory but six, all huge The production complex, costing in the billions, occupies 23 square miles, an area larger than the entire island of Manhattan. At full capacity, Kama is slated to produce 150,000 heavy trucks and 250,000 diesel engines a year, dwarfing anything in Detroit or the German Ruhr⁶

The attack could cause “derussification.” The U.S.S.R. is a nation of nationalities, of which Great Russians — who dominate politics, industry, and much else— comprise about 48.5 percent of the population. Most Great Russians live in cities, so an attack would reduce their numbers and influence. Derussification could weaken Great Russians’ control of the U.S.S.R., with unforeseeable consequences.

Timing makes a critical difference in destruction. An attack at night would have people with their families and more dispersed; they would seek shelter in apartment buildings. An attack during the day would strike people at factories and offices; to the extent they left to find family members, chaos would result as in the United States, but to the extent they sought shelter at work, they would be organized by economic task. Such organization would be useful for postattack recovery.

An attack in winter would expose more people to bitter cold and impede evacuation; an attack in spring or fall, when many roads are made impassable by mud, would hinder evacuation by motor vehicle. An attack near harvest time could result in the loss of an entire year’s crop, thus leaving food reserves at a low point. This effect could be magnified if the United States attacked agricultural targets, such as storage silos, dams, and drainage facilities.

Even time of month makes a difference because of the Soviet practice of “storming.” The Soviet factory month in practice divides into three periods: “sleeping,” the first 10 days; “hot” work, the second 10; and “feverish” work, the third. This division occurs because the economic plan calls for a specified output from each plant by the end of the month, but the inputs needed often arrive only after the 15th or 20th of the month. Thus, perhaps 80 percent of a factory’s output is produced in the last 10 or 15 days of the month. (This 80 percent is typically of such reduced quality that Soviet consumers often refuse to buy merchandise made after the 20th of a month. ) Hypothetically, an attack around the 15th or 20th of a month would cause the loss of most of a month’s production, and would destroy the large inventory in factories of partially completed goods and of inputs that cannot be used until other inputs arrive.

On the other hand, the U.S.S.R. has several strengths. Cities are in general less flammable than U.S. cities, as there are more large apartment buildings and fewer wood frame houses. These buildings would also provide better shelter, especially those that have shelters built in. People would expect to follow instructions and would be less likely to evacuate spontaneously. The Party apparatus would probably survive with a far lower casualty rate than the population at large because it is well distributed and because blast shelters have been constructed for party members. Russians are likely to be less traumatized by shelter conditions, as they are more accustomed to austerity and crowding. The nation is larger, which in theory provides more land area over which people could relocate, but much of the area is mountain, desert, or arctic.

6. Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York: Ballantine Books, 1977), p. 241.

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