Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 (Denver Mods 4/2/84) 6/24/83; site drutx.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!drutx!butch
From: butch@drutx.UUCP (FreemanS)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: The real issue about nuclear weapons-Reply to Robin Roberts
Message-ID: <1617@drutx.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 13:56:39 EST
Article-I.D.: drutx.1617
Posted: Thu Dec 13 13:56:39 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Dec-84 07:01:18 EST
References: <29200165@uiucdcs.UUCP> <333@ut-sally.UUCP>  <> <223@ttidcb.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 62

Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would
be a human catastrophe unknown in the entire hisory of mankind.  The
main problem with this issue is that no one understands the
seriousness of it.  In a 2-megaton explosion over a fairly large
city buildingswould be vaporized, people vaporized, outlying
structures blown away, to say nothing of the fires that would spread
uncontrolled.  If a bomb was exploded on the ground, an enormous
crater like those on the moon would be seen.  There are more than
50,000 nuclear weapons with a 13,000 megaton yield in the arsenals
of the U.S.A and the U.S.S.R, no to mention other nuclear powers. 
There are enough weapons to oblitheate a million hiroshimas.  With
only 3000 cities on earth with a population of 100,000 or more this
is a tremendous overkill.  Even if all the missles do not get off
the ground, just 20% would be enough to destroy every major city.
Some people think that a nuclear war could be contained, but a
number of detailed war games run by the D.O.D and the Soviets
indicate that a containment is more than could be hoped for.

The world health organization in a recent study run by Sune K.
Bergstrom (1982 Nobel Laureate) concludes that 1.1 billion people
would be killed outright in such a nuclear war, mainly in the
U.S.,U.S.S.R, Europe, China, and Japan.  An additional 1.1 billion
people would suffer serious injuries and radiation sickness, for
which medical help would be unavailable.  So it is possible that 2
billion people would be killed  immeadiately following a nuclear
war.
In the bravo test in March 1954 a 15-megaton explosion over bikini
atoll had double the yield expected and with a last minuste shift in
wind radioactive fallout fell over Ronegelap mre than 200 miles
away.  Almost all the children developed longterm medical problems
such as thyroid nodules and lesions due to radioactive fallout.  In
1973 it was discovered that high yield  air bursts will chemically
burn the nitrogen in the upper air, converting it into oxides of nitrogen
wich will destroy the protective ozone layer.  This layer protects
the earth from deadly UV radiation. The Mariner 9 spacecarft which
orbited Mars in 1971 arrived when the planet was enveloped in a
global dust storm and the temperature changes were recorded.  What
was analyzed was that the Mars temperature recorded was actuallyonly
a few percent of normal.  Studies made of an allout nuclear war
indicated that except for narrow strips of coastline temperatures
dropped to minus 25 degrees celsius (minus 13 fahrenheit) and stayed
that way for months.  The oceans a tremendous heat resevoir would'nt
freeze and a ice age woudn't be triggered, but virtually all crops
and farm animals would die.  Also varieties of unculivated and
undomesticated food supplies would be wiped out and the human
survivors would starve.  This would make the starvation in Ethiopia
look like a picnic. If the subsequnet radiation fallout didn't kill
you then the the solar ultraviolet flux due to the
greatly reduced ozone layer might get you.  Immunity to
disease would decline.  Epidemics and pandemics would be rampant,
especially after a billion or so unburied bodies began to thaw.   
This would make the plague look like the flu.  

So you can see that nuclear war is a horror that only fools think
can be survived by alarge proportion of mankind.  Many scientists
think that a such a srain on the environment would cause mankind to
cease to exist and become just a dim dim memory.

                             S. Freeman

    "Into the eternal darkness, into fire, into ice."
                                                 -Dante, The Inferno