ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (02/05/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, February 5, 1986 9:47AM
Volume 6, Issue 43
Today's Topics:
any women here?
SDI
Plutonium in the air: how dangerous?
A hard rain is gonna fall.
[Ayers.PA: RISKS-2.5 & "Some simple calculations"]
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Date: Tue 4 Feb 86 17:53:43-PST
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: any women here?
Yes, I am a woman. Lynn Gazis sappho@sri-nic
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Date: 5 February 86 09:22-EDT
From: ATSWAF%UOFT01.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: BITNET mail follows
From: Wendy Fraker (419) 537-2832 ATSWAF at UOFT01
To: Arms-Digest
Subject: Reply to Bruce Nevin's Query
Yes there are Bruce...at least one.
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Date: Fri, 31 Jan 86 14:34:49 pst
From: sun!fluke.uucp!tikal!sigma!bill@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Bill Swan)
re: SDI
In article <8601280534.AA28403@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> somebody wrote:
>Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, January 28, 1986 12:03AM
>Volume 6, Issue 36
>
>>Re: A Scenario on the Attack Capabilities of SDI
>>Consider this Star Wars Scenario: [...]
>>So, the power which launches the first complete SDI under these
>>presumptions would have a good start on being able to rule the world [...]
>
>On Sunday, ABC aired a program [...] in which the point was made that the
>US was the first world power that never wanted to be a world power, that
>in fact if world domination was our plan, we could have accomplished it
>after WWII. Instead [...] we instituted the Marshall Plan.
>
>If SDI ever shows signs of being viable and we actually launched such a
>system [...] would we really care about being able to rule the world?
>Or would we be interested in maintaining the status quo or to paraphrase
>Reagan, "live and let live" philosophy? [...] hofmann
I also watched that program. One point I think you missed is that by the
end of WWII the American citizen was sick and tired of war.
The USA _might_ have been able to achieve world domination through military
might, at a terrible cost to itself. Instead it become a world power,
_willingly_, by the economic means already at hand (the largest surviving
significant industrial base).
The Marshall Plan was merely enacted as a cheaper way to provide a reliable
buffer against the Red Menace, by building Western Europe up as a dependent
(and hopefully grateful) ally. The stuff we were taught about how we
instituted the Marshall Plan out of the goodness of our red-blooded American
hearts is just propaganda.
There are different ways to rule the world, and just because we didn't take
it by military force doesn't mean that we don't want have a desire to rule
(i.e. control) the world.
--
William Swan {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!bill
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Date: Tue 4 Feb 1986 21:32:07 EST
From: Paul Dietz <dietz%slb-doll.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Plutonium in the air: how dangerous?
SDI would distribute a lot of Pu in the air, but the lethality of
plutonium is greatly exagerated. Measuring the radioactivity (in
disintegrations per second) of the Pu against that of naturally
occuring airborne alpha emitters (polonium is the main one, I believe)
it turns out the plutonium adds a small fraction to the natural
background of airborne alpha-emitting particulates. In other words,
Raymond Harwell is talking nonsense.
I think the Pu-238 sources used in spacecraft are designed to withstand
booster explosions, reentry into the atmosphere and impacts with the
ground. The Pu-238 source from the Apollo-13 LEM is somewhere on the
floor of the Pacific, I think.
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Date: Tue, 4 Feb 86 23:37:23 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: A hard rain is gonna fall.
From: Marc Vilain <MVILAIN at G.BBN.COM>
This brings up a similar issue with the Strategic Defense
Initiative.
If that radioactive debris were distributed
uniformly, there would be one lethal dose for every 25 square metres
of the
northern hemisphere.
Bad assumption. Most of boost-phase intercept occurs over the Soviet Union.
The regrettable lesson, is that success of an engineering
application, if defined overly narrowly, may not be success at all.
This general point is well-taken, despite my comments above. As they
say, "The operation was a success but the patient died."
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Date: 4 Feb 86 09:05:41 PST (Tuesday)
From: Ayers.PA at Xerox.COM
To: RISKS-LIST:, RISKS at SRI-CSL.ARPA
cc: Ayers.PA at Xerox.COM
Re: RISKS-2.5 & "Some simple calculations"
If we're going to talk about SDI and WWIII rather than computers,
please, let us at least use responsible analysis. Vilain quotes
Some simple calculations indicate the likely consequences of SDI
interceptions of Soviet ICBMs. A Soviet first strike could involve the
simultaneous launching of some 5000 nuclear warheads at targets in the US.
If only 20 percent of these warheads, each containing 10 kg of plutonium
239, are disintegrated (without a nuclear explosion) in the northern
hemisphere, about 10^13 lethal doses (if inhaled or ingested) of
alpha-emitting plutonium would be released -- about 5,000 doses per person
in the northern hemisphere. If that radioactive debris were distributed
uniformly, there would be one lethal dose for every 25 square metres of the
northern hemisphere. Not all the radioactive material will have immediate
effects on Earth but, however delayed the fallout of stratospheric plutonium
might be, its long half-life (24,000 years) would ensure its eventual
arrival at altitudes likely to be occupied by human beings, other animals
and plants.
This arithmetic [of?] "simple calculations" is irrelevant. The "if"s are
totally bogus.
Every year, the US spreads about one fatal-dose per person of Arsenic
Trioxide onto food-plants via crop-dusters. And how many fatal doses of
salt does Connecticut spread on the roads every winter?
If you believe the quote, everyone in the northern hemisphere is already
dead (more than one fatal dose per person) from the atmospheric bomb
tests of the '50s and 60's.
Bob
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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