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OCR for page 207
The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, Stir of
Medicine. ~ 1986 by the National Academy of Sciences.
National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and
Radioactive Fallout from Various
Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the
United States
WILLIAM DAUGHERTY, B^B^A LEVI, PH.D., ~d
FRANK VON HIPPEL, PH.D.
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
OVERVIEW
We have developed the tools for calculating the deaths and injuries due
to blast, thermal effects, and local fallout from hypothetical nuclear attacks
on the United States. This is the first time that We capability to do such
consequence calculations has existed outside the (mostly classified) gov-
ernment domain.
We have used this capability to explore the sensitivities of the conse-
quences of a nuclear attack to various assumptions. The first was the
sensitivity to the types of targets involved. We examined three different
hypothetical "limited" nuclear attacks on the United States, each involv-
ing a 1-megaton (Mt) airburst over aDDroximatelv inn throats ^F to-do
different types:
,, , ~ ~ tempo vat "" ~
· The city centers of the 100 largest U.S. urban areas
· 101 industries rated as the highest-priority targets for an attack on
U.S. military-industrial capability
· 99 key strategic nuclear targets.
The calculated ranges of fatalities and casualties (deaths plus severe
injuries and illnesses) from blast, burns, and radioactive fallout for these
This paper is based on a much longer technical report that is available from Princeton
University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies as Report #PU/CEES 198.
207
OCR for page 208
208
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF NUCLEAR WAR
"100-Megaton" attacks are shown in Table 1. This table indicates that
more than 10 million deaths could result from these "limited" attacks,
even if the targets were industrial or military and not population per se.
The results also indicate that even a strategic defense system that was 99
percent effective might not protect the United States against potential
catastrophe in a nuclear war with the USSR.
We also explored the sensitivity of these calculations to different models
for predicting casualties. Lower numbers result if we use the predictions
of the traditional "overpressure" model, which assumes that the same
casualty rates will occur as those that occurred at Hiroshima at given levels
of peak blast overpressure. Higher numbers result when we use a new
"conflagration" model (Postol, 1986), which postulates that much higher
fatality rates might be expected in the large "burnout" areas that would
be caused by modern weapons than occurred in the burnout area of the
much lower yield Hiroshima bomb.
We find, for 1-Mt airbursts, that the numbers of fatalities predicted by
the conflagration model are 1.5 to 4 times higher than those predicted by
the overpressure model, with the exact factor depending on He population
distribution and the assumed scaling of the burnout area with yield. The
predicted numbers of injured are significantly smaller for the conflagration
model because many of the people injured in the overpressure model die
from fire effects in the conflagration model. In view of the plausibility of
the conflagration model, we believe that previous estimates of the deaths
due to the blast and burn effects of nuclear attacks are very uncertain and
probably low by a large factor.
Next, we calculated the consequences from a major "counterforce"
attack on U.S. strategic-nuclear forces. We assumed an attack on more
than 1,200 targets with almost 3,000 attacking warheads. Because such
TABLE 1 Estimated Deaths and Total Casualties from the "100
Megaton" Attacks
Deaths (millions)
Overpressure Conflagration
Attack Model Model*
Total Casualties (millions)
Overpressure Conflagration
Model Model*
City-centers 14 23, 42, 56 32 40, 51, 61
Military
industrial 11 17, 29, 38 23 27, 35, 41
Strategic
nuclear 3 6, 11, 19 10 13, 16, 21
*The three estimates were obtained using three possible radii (8, 12, and 15 km) for the
conflagrations that might be started by a 1-megaton airburst.
OCR for page 209
CASUALTIES DUE TO BUST, HEAT, kD ~IOACT~E FALLOUT 209
an attack would result in a great amount of local fallout from many ground
bursts, our casualty models in this case included the effects of radioactive
fallout as well as blast and thermal radiation. The estimated number of
deaths ranged from 13 to 34 million people. The range reflects the varying
predictions associated with different possible winds, the different models
for blast and burns, and different assumptions about the susceptibility of
the population to death from radiation. The corresponding final estimates
made by the Department of Defense (DOD) in 1975 for a similar attack
ranged from 3 million to 16 million deaths (U.S. Congress, Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, 1975; pp. 12-24~.
Our casualty estimates should still be considered as only a partial ac-
counting of the potential human toll due to the attacks discussed here.
Nuclear weapons are powerful enough to destroy both our social and
environmental support systems, and the numbers of casualties from sec-
ond-order effects such as exposure, starvation, or disease could be as great
as or greater than the numbers presented in this paper for direct casualties.
INTRODUCTION
An all-out nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union
would destroy the urban areas of both countries and thereby the infra-
structure that makes them modern industrial states. This fact makes the
deliberate launching of such a war the ultimate act of folly. Nevertheless,
military planners have felt that the United States should have "credible
strategic nuclear options," and have worried about those credible nuclear
options that the Soviets might devise. This concern led to debates in the
1970s over the possibility of "limited" nuclear wars that might produce
significant military results but minimal civilian casualties. During this
same period, according to Ball (1983; p. 19), U.S. policy was changed
to exclude targeting "population per se" presumably because "collat-
eral" civilian casualties from the targeting of economic or military facil-
ities were expected to be much lower than those from direct attacks on
population centers. And recently, the Strategic Defense Initiative has pro-
voked debates over whether strategic defenses could reduce U.S. casualties
from an all-out nuclear attack to less than catastrophic levels.
How much would these options and policies actually buy in reduced
casualties! Unfortunately, quantitative estimates or these reductions are
hardly ever offered. Yet such estimates of casualties-and, just as im-
portant, the public disclosure of the assumptions behind them are es-
sential to the evaluation of these concepts.
In this paper, we describe the results of an exploration of the sensitivities
of the estimates of direct casualties from limited nuclear attacks on the
OCR for page 210
210
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF NUCLEAR WAR
United States to various assumptions concerning the targets and the cas-
ualty models used. We have estimated the casualties from four different
types of attacks: three involving approximately 100 targets each and the
fourth a major counterforce attack on U.S. strategic-nuclear facilities.
CASUALTIES FROM "100 MEGATON" ATTACKS
Blast and Burn Casualb Models
The primary basis for models of the blast and burn effects of nuclear
explosions is the casualty data from Hiroshima. The nuclear weapon used
on Hiroshima, however, had a yield of only 15 kilotons (kt) (Loewe and
Mendelsohn, 1982) much less than most warheads in the current stra-
tegic arsenals of the superpowers. Therefore, casualty models must contain
rules for extrapolating the number of casualties at Hiroshima to those
caused by explosions of higher yields.
Overpressure Model
The standard method for extrapolation that is, to our knowledge, used
in virtually all government calculations is to assume that casualty prob-
abilities are a function of peak blast overpressure. Given the weapon yield
and height of burst, the peak overpressure is calculated as a function of
the distance from ground zero, and the Hiroshima blast and burn casualty
rates for that overpressure are applied to the population at that distance
(e.g., U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1979; p. 191.
Figure 1 shows the casualties at Hiroshima as a function of distance from
ground zero. Figure 2 shows the same data replotted as a function of the
peak blast overpressure.
For obvious reasons, we call the standard casualty model the "over-
pressure" model. The use of blast overpressure as the explanatory variable
does not mean that burns are ignored. At Hiroshima, the probability of
blast injuries and burn injuries fell off with distance from ground zero in
about the same manner (Oughterson and Warren, 1956; p. 43), and the
cause of death was not generally known. Under these circumstances, it
was natural to choose overpressure as a basis for scaling especially since
the distance corresponding to a given level of overpressure can easily be
calculated, given the weapon's yield and height-of-burst.
Postol has recently challenged this "overpressure casualty model." He
points out that the fires simultaneously ignited by a megaton-sized explo-
sion over an urban area would merge into a "superD~re" of such large
extent and intensity, with asphyxiating gases and gale-force winds, that
OCR for page 211
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CASUALTIES DUE TO BEST, HEAT, ED ~IOACTWE FALLOUT 211
100
° 80
O J
- ' 60
Z o
tat ~ 40
~ In
g
lL
20
212
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF NUCLEAR WAR
20 minutes after the explosion and ultimately consumed essentially all
combustible materials in an area with a radius of about 2 km (see Figure
3~. The growth of the area of the conflagration with weapon yield is
difficult to predict because a nuclear explosion would cause fires through
two mechanisms: (1) direct ignition by heat radiated from the fireball and
(2) indirect ignition by blast-caused electrical short circuits, gas line breaks,
ruptured fuel tanks, and other sources.
If the radius of the conflagration area were scaled with peak overpres-
sure, then the Hiroshima conflagration area would scale up to have a
radius of ~ km for a 1-Mt airburst. There are at least two reasons why
the conflagration radius could grow more rapidly than this: (1) the blast
effects at a given peak overpressure could be much more damaging at
higher weapon yields because the associated winds would last much longer
(Wilson et al., 1981~; and (2) given a relatively clear atmosphere, the
radius of incendiary effects by direct ignition might reach out well beyond
lo.
B rode and Small (1983; Figure 27 therein) have estimated that the
conflagration caused by a 1-Mt airburst over an urban area could have a
radius anywhere from 4 to 14 km, depending on the atmospheric conditions
and the types of buildings involved. The lower end of the range is not
relevant to considerations of conflagrations in ordinary urban areas, since
it is associated with extremely blast-resistant, reinforced concrete build-
ings, while the upper end involves blast-caused fires in building types that
are quite common in U.S. cities. Therefore, we have considered confla-
grations with radii ranging from a minimum of 8 km to a maximum of
15 km, i.e., from the radius that would be predicted if the conflagration
radius occurred at a fixed peak overpressure to a radius almost twice as
large. Our medium-radius conflagration mode} has a fire radius of 12 km.
Given this range of conflagration radii, we have constructed a confla-
gration casualty model by dividing the distance from ground zero into
three zones (see Figure 4~:
· An inner conflagration zone- the area further in than 2 km from the
edge of the conflagration zone. Here we assume that there would be 100
percent fatalities because the population would not have time to escape
before individual fires would merge into a single inferno.
· An outer conflagration zone the outer 2 km of the conflagration
zone. Here we assume that there would be 50 percent fatalities and 33
percent severe injuries. These are approximately the average values ob-
served within the 2-km radius Hiroshima burnout zone.
· An overpressure injury zone the area outside of the conflagration
zone, where there would be blast effects and scattered fires. Here we
assume that the fatality and injury rates are the same functions of peak
CASUALTIES DUE TO BUST, HEAT, ED ~IOACT~E FALLOUT 213
it_
\~
~\~
at\
'A
O 1 2 3 4km
. . . . . . . . .
1~9 TOTALLY BURNED aND DEMOLISHED
F///~ TOTALLY DEMOLI SHED
=\~ HALF- DEMOLISHED
FIGURE 3 Map of Hiroshima damage areas. (From Committee for the Com-
pilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, 1981; pp. 58-59. Reprinted with permission from Basic Books, Inc.)
blast overpressure as were observed outside the conflagration zone at
Hiroshima.
In Figures Sa and Sb, we compare the probabilities of death and injuries
as a function of distance from ground zero predicted by the overpressure
and conflagration models for a 1-Mt airburst at a 2-km altitude. A mid-
range conflagration radius of 12 km has been assumed.
Ranges of Casualties Calculated for lOO-Mt Attacks on
U.S. city Centers, Milita~y-Supporting Industry,
or Strategic Nuclear Targets
The calculated results of an all-out attack on the U.S. population or
economic targets involving thousands of megatons would be relatively
insensitive to the casualty model used. The degree of overkill would be
214
/
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF NUCLEAR WAR
-
.'
/
-
_
// / ~
:> ,
\
\
1~1 VER
CONFLAGRATION ZONE
<1m % MATHS)
~ ,
1
i
v/l
~ /> ~ . ~ ~ ~ //
OUTER CONFLAGRATION ZONE
(50% DEATHS 33-/0 INJURIES)
'. at//
\ BLAST AND SCATTERED flRE ZONE
\ (INJURIES AS PREDICTED BY O\tERPRESSURE MoC)EL) /
-
-
-
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FIGURE 4 Conflagration model.
\
/
_
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\
so high that, regardless of the casualty model assumed, the calculations
would find that virtually the entire U.S. urban population would be killed
by blast and burns. Much of the rural population would die of fallout-
caused radiation illness, and most of the remainder would die of starvation
and disease (e.g., Haaland etal., 1976; Harwell, 19841.
Therefore, in order to explore the sensitivity of blast and burn casualty
estimates to the choice of casualty model and types of targets involved,
we have considered much more limited hypothetical attacks on three dif-
ferent classes of targets in the United States each containing approxi-
mately 100 ground zeros:
· The city centers of the 100 largest U.S. urban areas;
· 101 final-assembly factories selected by a Department of Defense
