From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #109 Article-I.D.: ucb.1113 Posted: Wed May 19 02:24:04 1982 Received: Thu May 20 01:31:47 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Wed May 19 02:21:39 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 109 Today's Topics: And you thought nukes were bad... Civil Defense Countermeasures ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 May 1982 1003-PDT From: Paul DietzSubject: And you thought nukes were bad... Did anyone see the piece on NBC about how the allies almost used half a million anthrax bombs on Nazi Germany? Casualties among the germans would have run around 3 million dead. And much of germany would still be contaminated today. Luckily, Germany surrendered before they could be used. ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 1982 1411-PDT From: Paul Dietz Subject: Civil Defense Countermeasures It seems to me that there are plenty of countermeasures against civil defense: (1) Strike before the civilians are evacuated, or while they are in the open. People in the open will be very vulnerable to flash burns out to a considerable distance from the hypocenter. (2) Retarget surplus warheads at likely relocation centers. (3) Target warheads to drop fallout on relocation centers. Presumably there won't be any industry or other hard targets at the refugee camps, just people. Fallout will kill them effectively. (4) Replace large silo busting warheads with many smaller (100 KT? 10 KT?) warheads to destroy 'soft' targets. (5) Develope lower yield, high fallout bombs. A small warhead detonated near ground level will inject little fallout into the stratosphere. A bomb based on the neutron warhead coupled with, say, a cobalt casing could contaminate the enemy's country with little risk to the attacker. (6) Drop nuclear mines near coastal cities, or into uninhabited areas upwind of cities. These could be timed to detonate for up to several years in the future, rendering the cities unusable. (7) Use biological weapons (anthrax, plague, plant diseases). The possibilities are endless. The civil defense program will protect to some extent against *current* threats to the population, not against weapons specifically designed for its weak points. All civil defense will do is spur the superpowers to develope even more gruesome terror weapons. ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************