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From: medin@ucbvax.ARPA (Milo Medin)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re:Expertise:Nuclear War Casualties
Message-ID: <3601@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 2-Dec-84 14:48:02 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.3601
Posted: Sun Dec  2 14:48:02 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 07:39:42 EST
References: <328@whuxl.UUCP> <5000116@uokvax.UUCP> <372@whuxl.UUCP> <148@talcott.UUCP>
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 19

> That's a pretty liberal estimate (in more than one sense).  First, most of
> our bombs are merely three to ten times as large as the Hiroshima bombs
> (ex:  Pershing II's are 150 kilotons).  Second, in any nuclear scenario,
> at most a quarter of our nuclear stockpile would be used (because the more
> missiles we send, the more get destroyed in the silos, and also because
> missiles in general have a high failure rate).  Thus only half the world
> will get destroyed instead of all of it.  That's still nothing to cheer
> about, though...
> ---
> 			Greg Kuperberg
> 		     harvard!talcott!gjk
> 
> "Eureka!" -Archimedes

Pershing II's are equipped with the WD-70 (I believe) warhead.  This
is equipped with dial-a-yield, and can be adjusted from what I
thought was 5 to 70 kilotons.  Where did you get the 150 kt figure?

						Milo