ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (02/17/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Monday, February 17, 1986 1:07PM
Volume 6, Issue 48
Today's Topics:
Prisoner's dilemma
A Hard Rain Is Going To Fall on Luddites
Re: ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 Feb 86 18:43:00 PST
From: MEGIDDO@IBM-SJ.ARPA
re: Prisoner's dilemma tournament
Prisoner's dilemma tournament mailing list;
Please send back a note if you wish to receive future announcements.
------------------------------
Date: Saturday, 15 February 1986 03:50-EST
From: Dave Benson <benson%wsu.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
To: arms-d-request%xx.lcs.mit.edu at csnet-relay.arpa
Full-Name: Dave Benson
re: A Hard Rain Is Going To Fall on Luddites
|
| From: Dave Benson <benson%wsu.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
| I recall that irrespective of its radioactive properties, Pu is a
| highly toxic chemical poison. If right, large quantities of
| Pu in the high atmosphere seems rather poor planning.
|
|Not to jump on you in particular Dave, but doesn't anyone see the
|humor in all these worries about PU and SDI? Talk about relative
|risks!!! I would much prefer any amount of PU pollution caused by a
|functioning SDI system to the actual explosion of the "polluting"
|warheads!!!
|
|Besides, if my memory serves correctly, arsenic is a much more
|dangerous poison. Yet I don't see people trying to ban transporting
|arsenic by air due to the possibility of a plane crash (analogy drawn
|to the recent discussions concerning the space shuttle). Radiation
|just seems to be a button that, when pushed, turns otherwise
|reasonable people into unreasoning Ludites (sic).
|
|
|Jim
|
|-------
|
Come, come, Jim. I'm sorry you can't recognize (my) gallows humor.
So I suppose that I'll have to take your comments seriously:
(1) ANY amount of Pu pollution? Suppose it IS enough to kill off everybody?
Is it, in that case, actually preferable to nuclear explosions?
(2) arsenic is a more dangerous poison...
I will estimate as follows:
average 4kg of Pu per warhead
average 5 warheads per missile
about 2000 missles
That's 40 long tons (tonnes) of Pu. Do people transport that mush arsenic
by air? But of course arsenic transported by air is in clumps, or lumps
or crates or whatever... The current mental exercise ASSUMES that the
SDI system vaporizes all 40 tonnes of Pu in the stratosphere and troposphere,
producing a fine, inhalible form of Pu. Now under these assumptions,
what are the biological effects of Pu, both chemical and radiological?
I have been able to convince Malcolm Campbell, atmospheric physicist
here at Washington State University to carry out this mental exercise
with me, and I will report the conclusion to arms-d in a week or two --
obviously not a deep study, but enough to suggest whether this is something
worth considering further.
In the mean time, or unless someone else has something of actual
scientific or public policy merit to contribute, I will delay any further
comment on "A Hard Rain Is Going To Fall".
(3) Radiation is a button... I agree that this happens to some people,
primarily because the technologists (scientists and engineers) have not
provided a sufficiently broad education about the relative hazards of
radioactive materials. Please do note that Pullman, Washington, is downwind
from Hanford. Yet the sum of all envirnomental heath hazards are
surely higher in Cambridge than in Pullman.
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************