Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site whuxl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!amd!dual!zehntel!ihnp4!houxm!whuxl!orb From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Politics, morals and nukes Message-ID: <291@whuxl.UUCP> Date: Wed, 17-Oct-84 12:53:13 EDT Article-I.D.: whuxl.291 Posted: Wed Oct 17 12:53:13 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 19-Oct-84 05:47:39 EDT References: <394@wucs.UUCP> <90@whuxk.UUCP> <2730@ucbcad.UUCP> <284@whuxl.UUCP> <2522@ucbvax.ARPA> Organization: Bell Labs Lines: 48 > Ok Tim, I have just about had it. All this talk that a nuclear war > would not leave survivors is pure BS! You talk about Reagan stating > thatover 50% of Soviet population would survive and you say this > is ludicrous. You are dead wrong. > Milo Unfortunately you are *dead* wrong. Here is description of the effects of the Hiroshima bomb of "only" 13 kilotons, earlier replies have said that our submarine launched warheads at "only" 40 kilotons, would hardly dent Soviet society or cities: (from "Fate of the Earth" by Schell): ************************************************************************* "It is no exaggeration," the authors of "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" tell us, "to say that the whole city was ruined instantaneously." In that instant, tens of thousands of people were burned, blasted, and crushed to death. Other tens of thousands suffered injuries of every description or were doomed to die of radiation sickness. The center of the city was flattened, and every part of the city was damaged. The trunks of bamboo trees as far away as five miles from ground zero--were charred. Almost half the trees within a mile and a quarter were knocked down. Windows nearly seventeen miles away were broken. Half an hour after the blast, fires set by the thermal pulse and by the collapse of the buildings began to coalesce into a firestorm, which lasted for six hours. Starting about 9AM and lasting until late afternoon, a "black rain" generated by the bomb( otherwise the day was fair) fell on the western portions of the city, carrying radioactive fallout from the blast to the ground. For four hours at midday, a violent whirlwind, born of the strange meteorological conditions produced by the explosion, further devastated the city. The number of people who were killed outright or who died of their injuries over the next three months is estimated to be one hundred and thirty thousand. Sixty-eight percent of the buildings in the city were either completely destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and the center of the city was turned into a flat, rubble-strewn plain dotted with the ruins of a few of the sturdier buildings. ...Those within a mile and a quarter of ground zero had also been subjected to intense nuclear radiation, often in lethal doses. *************************************************************************** The world now has one million, six hundred thousand times this destructive power. Can we survive its use? Who will come to aid the cities destroyed as they aided Hiroshima's victims when all cities to the level of 15,000 people are destroyed? What will happen to those cities which very likely will have their nuclear power plants bombed and spewing forth plutonium and other deadly radioactive isotopes? Face the facts, we CAN blow up the world. What do we do about it? Continue to produce nuclear arms until we have one BILLION times the destructive power of Hiroshima? Extend nuclear conflict into space? continue to make the nuclear fuse shorter and shorter, until machines are the only thing quick enough to spark a quick nuclear retaliation? Think about it ........tim sevener whuxl!orb