Assignment before next class Read this handout If not already done finish reading handout 1 s section on The Physics of Nuclear Weapons which starts on page 13 Watch a short video of an above ground nuclear test and another about duck and cover Note how the film tries to normalize a nuclear attack by likening the damage to sunburn fires etc While duck and cover may sound like a joke I was shown that film in elementary school and we practiced duck and cover on a regular basis just like fire drills Optional reading Prof Hecker s 2008 and 2010 papers quoted later in this handout How destructive are nuclear weapons An online tool allows you to assess the damage that would occur for different size detonations at different locations I used this to produce the second map shown below reproduced from Handout 1 The two maps contrast the damage caused by the 9 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center the small black area under the E of New York near the tip of Manhattan on the first map with a 10 kiloton nuclear terrorist attack centered at the same location Terrorists probably would attack a more central location wreaking even more havoc The weapon used on Hiroshima had a yield of approximately 15 kilotons in the same ballpark as the nuclear terrorist attack depicted above The next page has three pictures showing the physical and human devastation wreaked by that one relatively primitive weapon Col Paul Tibbetts whose name appears on the first photo piloted the plane that dropped the bomb It was named the Enola Gay after his mother Prof Hellman Nuclear Weapons Risk and Hope Handout 2 10 JAN 2011 Page 1 of 23 Prof Hellman Nuclear Weapons Risk and Hope Handout 2 10 JAN 2011 Page 2 of 23 While as shown in the figure on page 20 of Handout 1 the Hiroshima bomb was much larger over time we learned how to miniaturize warheads to the point that by the late 1950 s they were suitcase size as shown in this picture of the Davy Crockett nuclear gun The nuclear weapon is the bulbous device at the end of the tube To make this a bit more personal the next page shows the blast circles for an attack centered on San Francisco s financial district The first map is for a 10 kiloton weapon the same as shown earlier for an attack on New York and typical of what terrorists might mount The second map is for a strategic warhead with a yield of 1 megaton typical of what might be expected in a nuclear war In both maps the innermost circle shows 15 psi overpressure causing complete destruction even of reinforced concrete structures such as skyscrapers The second circle shows 5 psi overpressure causing complete destruction of ordinary houses The third circle shows 2 psi overpressure enough to cause severe damage to ordinary houses and light to moderate damage to reinforced concrete structures The fourth circle which extends almost to the limits of the second map so look carefully shows 1 psi overpressure which will cause light damage to all structures and light to moderate damage to ordinary houses To put light damage in context only 0 25 psi overpressure one quarter that shown in the last blast circle is required to shatter most glass surfaces such as windows some with enough force to cause serious injury Prof Hellman Nuclear Weapons Risk and Hope Handout 2 10 JAN 2011 Page 3 of 23 Prof Hellman Nuclear Weapons Risk and Hope Handout 2 10 JAN 2011 Page 4 of 23 All of the above was focused on a single nuclear detonation as in a terrorist attack or an accidental launch of a single missile If India and Pakistan were to use their arsenals about 150 weapons in total in a war recent research has indicated the possibility of a nuclear autumn in which the firestorms caused in those nations megacities would put massive amounts of smoke into the stratosphere where it would remain for years More normal fires don t reach that altitude and their smoke dissipates much more rapidly when rain washes out their smoke Computer modeling estimated a billion deaths worldwide due to starvation as agriculture collapsed due to the reduced sunlight reaching the earth While this was a model and may have overlooked factors that would change the results prudence would seem to dictate paying more attention to this threat and trying to reduce its risk With the United States and Russia each having on the order of 10 000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal roughly 70 times what India or Pakistan has a full scale nuclear war is almost beyond imagination and conjures up images of mythic proportions In a 1961 speech to a Joint Session of the Philippine Congress General Douglas MacArthur stated Global war has become a Frankenstein to destroy both sides If you lose you are annihilated If you win you stand only to lose No longer does it possess even the chance of the winner of a duel It contains now only the germs of double suicide In 1986 former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara expressed a similar view If deterrence fails and conflict develops the present U S and NATO strategy carries with it a high risk that Western civilization will be destroyed 1 In January 2007 George Shultz William Perry Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn echoed those concerns when they quoted President Reagan s belief that nuclear weapons were totally irrational totally inhumane good for nothing but killing possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization DoD and related studies while couched in less emotional terms still convey the horrendous toll that a full scale nuclear war would exact The resulting deaths would be far beyond any precedent Executive branch calculations show a range of U S deaths from 35 to 77 percent i e from 79 million to 160 million dead a change in targeting could kill somewhere between 20 million and 30 million additional people on each side These calculations reflect only deaths during the first 30 days Additional millions would be injured and many would eventually die from lack of adequate medical care millions of people might starve or freeze during the 1 Robert S McNamara Blundering Into Disaster Pantheon Books New York 1986 page 6 Prof Hellman Nuclear Weapons Risk and Hope Handout 2 10 JAN 2011 Page 5 of 23 following winter but it is not possible to estimate how many further millions might eventually die of latent radiation effects 2 On page 9 that same 1979 OTA report also noted the possibility of serious ecological damage a concern that assumed a new potentiality when the TTAPS Report 3 noted that the ash and dust from so many nearly simultaneous