arms-d@ucbvax.ARPA (12/29/84)
From: Moderator <ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 2 : Issue 84
Today's Topics:
If it's unthinkable ..
Soviet threats of nuclear use
test for the readership
economic freedom
Beynd War Awards
How to end a nuclear winter
Optical flashes from exoatmospheric bombs
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Date: 21 Dec 84 15:16 PST
From: Rem@IMSSS.ARPA
Subject: If it's unthinkable then nobody will do it - FALSE
To: ARMS-D%MIT-MC@SU-SCORE.ARPA
The following two quotes should be read in sequence:
Use of nuclear weapons must remain such an unacceptable thing that
no one will do it.
The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe something
because one wishes it to be true - Louis Pastuer
I.e. if you think we're going to avoid nuclear war by making it more
and more horrible so that as we become numb to its horror it becomes
more horrible than we can accept and so we avoid it still, you're
omitting Murphy's law. It would be nice to believe that just because
something is unacceptaby horrible it won't be allowed to happen, but
during World War 2 something unacceptably horrible happened in
Germany. I for one don't believe that making something unacceptably
horrible will prevent it from happening. It WILL happen someday, and
the consequences WILL be unacceptably horrible, the extinction of the
human species and a majority of other species on this planet, unless
we find some prevention route other than the fantasy of making it too
horrible to happen.
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From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@UCB-VAX.ARPA
Date: 21 Dec 84 21:39:17 CST (Fri)
To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Soviet threats of nuclear use
> While the US has considered the use of nuclear weapons in every major
> conflict since WWII, I can't think of any occasion on which any real threat
> was made that we would use them. I assume the same holds true for the
> Soviets (I haven't heard of any direct threat from the Soviets of this
> nature).
Check out the history of the Suez crisis. I'm told (I am not an expert
on the episode) that the specific and direct cause of the abandonment of
the invasion was a Soviet threat of nuclear attack against Britain and
France. Note that the U.S. was outraged at the Europeans having the
temerity to take military action without asking its permission, and was
not in a mood to back them up. Note also that France was not a nuclear
power at the time, and Britain's nuclear capability was only theoretical
(bombs exploded, but no operational warheads or delivery systems). So the
Europeans did the only thing they could do: they backed down. Maybe the
Soviets were bluffing, but the Europeans couldn't risk calling them on it.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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Date: 22 Dec 84 07:18 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: test for the readership; you might find it amusing
To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA
Here are several quotes, somewhat paraphrased to remove dead
giveaways. From their content, please send me your guess as to their
origins (US or Soviet). Answers will follow in a few weeks. I will
tabulate, and summarize for arms-d.
1. Our military doctrine is purely defensive. The
character of our armed forces, the principles of
their formation, and their strategy and tactics have
been and continue to be based on the idea of repulsing
aggression and threats directed at ourselves and our
friends.
2. The power of nuclear weapons will be concentrated
above all toward destruction of the military and economic
potential, defeat of the armed forces,
and undermining the morale of the population. Very
important strategic missions can be the destruction of
the largest industrial, administrative or political
centers, power centers, and stocks of strategic raw
materials; disorganization of the system of state and
military control; destruction of the main transport
centers; and destruction of primary units of the armed
forces, especially the means of nuclear attack.
3. The nuclear forces of the XXX (US or SU) target [are aimed at]
the nuclear forces (of the US or SU), conventional military
forces, command posts, communications facilities, war
supporting industry, and industry that contribute to
economic recovery.
4. Our strategy is defensive. Our strategy excludes the
possibility that the XXX would initiate war. The XXX
would use its military strength only in response to
aggression, not to pre-empt it. Once an aggressor has
initiated an attack, however, the principle of
non-aggression would not impose a purely defensive
strategy in fighting back.
5. The introduction of nuclear weapons onto the
battlefield neither negates the principles of war, nor
causes the development of new ones. The intensity of
nuclear conflict emphasizes these fundamental truths,
and demands the competent application of these
principles by those who would succeed in battle.
6. It is well known that the essential nature of war as a
continuation of politics does not change with changing
technology and armament.
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Date: 25 Dec 84 17:50 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: economic freedom. (though this excerpt probably belongs on poli-sci)
To: jlg@LANL.ARPA
From: Lin
> The Chinese have
> a system in which political rights are suppressed but in which
> economic rights are supported. Thus, people *do* get food, medical
> care, and so on to a much larger extent than they got it before the
> Revolution.
From: jlg at LANL (Jim Giles)
Certain MINIMAL economic rights are supported. However, they have no right
to own and dispose of property as they see fit, they have no right to
change profession or residence as the see fit and can afford, and if they
become ill and have a little extra saved - they would find it difficult to
buy additional medical help with their extra money (actually, probably
impossible).
Considering that medical care is essentially free, I agree with you.
As for the other rights, your first claim is false, unless you insert
the ever-present qualifier which you insist (properly) that others
insert, namely that *some types of property* are constrained. The
second is true.
> They have paid a high price, one that I'm not sure I
> would be willing to pay, but my perspective is that of a person with
> an upper middle class background, and I've never had to struggle for
> food. A single mother in the South Bronx with no job skills might
> have a different perspective on the equity of the American system vs
> the Chinese system.
There are no single mothers in China (not officially anyway).
False again. Even the PRC government realizes that sometimes mothers
can be widowed.
The Chinese
also don't permit ANYONE to have more than one child, even if their own
economic circumstances could support more. [NOVA programme on population
control in China - last year, I don't remember the title.]
If NOVA said this, NOVA is also wrong. However, I don't think they
said this. They probably said that couples are strongly discouraged
form having more than one child. Financial benefits are taken away
when you have a second child, for example. There is no government
approval of policies that *kill* second children, though infanticide
is a problem.
In addition,
there are no people without job skills in China, anyone who cannot - or
will not - learn to work in a factory, store, or other urban job will be
sent to one of the collective farms to do manual labor.
Is this criticism or praise? I can see good arguments for it.
In the US, the poor can actually receive better medical and food assistance
than the Chinese.
Can? Certainly. Will? Doubtful.
Unfortunately we don't have the manpower to go out
and investigate all welfare claims directly, so inequities exist.
This is precisely the point; inequities here are far more disparate
than they are there.
Our system may be inefficient, and it has inequities (many welfare cheaters
are on the rolls, and many others don't get what they need), but in general
it provides better care than the average Chinese citizen gets.
Probably so, on the average. But the Chinese approach is essentially
one of raising the level of the bottom, not raising the average. I
think that the US system is preferable, but their approach is a
rational one, and simply starts from different assumptions than does
ours.
Source for all these claims? Me. I have many relatives in China, and
I have visited. Furthermore, I get information from the Chinese
newspapers in New York.
I suggest that this discussion be continued in private; I just did not
want JLG's statement on the matter to be the last public word on the
issue.
herb lin
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Date: Wed, 26 Dec 84 08:12:26 PST
From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Beynd War Awards
The responses to my messge on the Beyond War Awards wherin I said they should
be required viewing, promps me to respond. I guess I was too strong in my
statements. I don't want to restrict anyones participation in discussions.
I do believe however that manyt of us take our views of the USSR from sources
which are not necessarily as objective as they might be. I feel that seeing a
s large public gathering on in Moscow life on TV perhaps gives one a little
better insight into the
Soviet psyche than does the network news compressed into a half hour.
Richard Foy
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Date: 26 Dec 84 13:32:32 EST
From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA
Subject: How to end a nuclear winter
To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA
After my last message on active countermeasures against nuclear winter,
a truly simple countermeasure occured to me.
The problem with nuclear winter is soot in the stratosphere -- particularly
small particles (.1 to 1 micron). This soot is primarily carbon with
absrobed organic compounds. The important thing about this soot is that
it burns, if you heat it enough.
How much heat is needed? Assume there is 20 million tonnes (2E13 grams) of
soot, and assume it is primarily graphite, with a specific heat of .712 joules
per gram per degree C. To raise all the soot by 500 degrees C (at which point
the small particles will presumably burn) requries 7.12E15 joules of energy,
ignoring energy lost to the atmosphere and any energy added by the combustion
process.
That may seem like a lot of energy, but it's only about 1.8 megatons worth.
The way to deliver this energy to the soot is obvious: use the optical
flash from a number of orbiting nuclear bombs. The soot has significant
optical thickness, remember, so a significant amount of energy from the flashes
will be absorbed. The orbital bombs should be tailored to emit their
flash as fast as possible at short wavelengths (but not at x-ray or vacuum UV
wavelengths absorbed by the atmosphere). This can be done by tailoring the
fireball temperature by adding mass around the warhead.
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Date: 27 Dec 84 13:44:13 EST
From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA
Subject: Optical flashes from exoatmospheric bombs
To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA
Some more thoughts on using exoatmospheric nuclear explosions to
end nuclear winter...
I originally feared small soot particles could cool themselves too
efficiently by radiation or convection, since they have very high
surface area/volume ratios. However, this also makes them heat up very
rapidly, since they can't conduct away much heat to their insides. Indeed,
a cloud of soot particles will have at most twice the radiating capacity
of a large solid object intersecting the same amount of light, and will
heat up much more rapidly.
The fact you need megatons of explosive power to burn megatons of soot
should come as no suprise, since the explosion of TNT and the burning of
carbon are both chemical processes.
Some engineering considerations: to get a high power/short duration
light burst, we don't want to surround the bomb with too much matter,
since the radiated power from the bomb fireball is proportional to the
fourth power of temperature. At 1E7 degrees K (a conservative figure),
a fireball with a surface area of 1 square meter radiates with a power
of 6E20 watts (!), so most of the energy from a 1 megaton (4.2E15 joule)
explosion would radiate away in ~1E-5 seconds, as X-rays. (With
endoatmospheric explosions the energy is recaptured until the fireball
radiates at optical wavelengths where the atmosphere is transparent.)
The X-rays emitted by the explosion should directed downwards by a high-Z
shield behind the bomb. When the X-rays hit the atmosphere they will deposit
their energy in a footprint 100's of km across. This footprint has a much
larger area than the fireball could have, so it radiates its energy at optical
wavelengths in a short time. The radiation from this footprint is probably
not thermal but rather from deexcitation of excited atoms and recombination
of ions and electrons. The length of the optical pulse will be determined
by the kinetics of electron/air molecule collisions, the rate at which
excited atoms radiate and the ion/electron recombination time, but probably
isn't much longer than the X-ray pulse length.
The energy abrobed by soot particles will be lost to radiation (at longer
wavelengths) and by heating the surrounding air. Reradiated energy can be
absorbed by other soot particles (unless its wavelength is too long). In
addition, burning soot will add additional energy.
Interestingly, there is already a project at one of the national labs (Sandia?)
for using small soot particles in a solar thermal energy collector of the
power-tower type. Focused sunlight is abrobed in the working fluid (air) by
being aborbed by small suspended carbon particles (which are destroyed in
the process).
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[End of ARMS-D Digest]