[fa.arms-d] Arms-Discussion Digest V1 #57

daemon@ucbvax.UUCP (09/26/83)

From @MIT-MC:JLarson.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA  Sun Sep 25 17:35:15 1983
Arms-Discussion Digest                            Volume 1 : Issue 57

Today's Topics:

		Administrivia
		Who are Kosta Tsipis and Samantha Smith ?
		The Massacre
		"The World After Nuclear War"
		Game theory and nuclear war - who will inherit the galaxy?
		
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From: The Moderator
Subject: Administrivia

Well, I am back after a much needed vacation. Future digests will go out 
at least bi-weekly depending on the number of submissions. Most of us 
should be back from our vacations by now, so hopefully we will see a bit
more discussion.

There is good news on the issue of an Arms-D host. We have tentative 
consent to continue using MC, so we anticipate no change in operations.

John Larson

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Date: 9 September 1983 22:51 EDT
From: Steven A. Swernofsky <SASW @ MIT-MC>
Subject:  will the real Kosta Tsipis please stand up?
To: LIN @ MIT-MC
cc: ARMS-D @ MIT-MC

Just who is Samantha Smith?

-- Steve

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Date: 9 September 1983 21:02 EDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN @ MIT-MC>
Subject:  smith and tsipis
To: BANDY @ MIT-ML
cc: ARMS-D @ MIT-MC

    Date: 9 September 1983 18:47 EDT
    From: Andrew Scott Beals <BANDY at MIT-ML>
    To:   lin
    Re:   smith and tsipis

    who are they?

Smith is the 11 year old Samantha Smith who wrote to Andropov asking
him to prevent nuclear war, and who received an invitation from
Andropov to visit the USSR.  Tsipis is a defense analyst at MIT who
specializes in technical criticism of weapons systems.  He is commonly
regarded as having left-of-center tendencies, and is often regarded as
a pain in the ass by the program managers of the weapons systems which
he criticizes.

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Date:  12 September 1983 10:03 edt
From:  Jong.RELBULDOC at M.BILLERICA.HONEYWELL
Subject:  The Massacre

Alright, I'm totally confused.  The Soviet account of what
happened reveals the paranoia of their thinking ("Russian soil is
sacred") and the incomptetence of their air defense system
(Flight 007 crosses the Kamchitka Penninsula, then flies off;
scrambling Soviet fighters are airborne 30 minutes later).  But
the U.S. account seems fantastic:

1) What was that aircraft doing so far off course?

2) This morning (9/12/83) we hear that a "new translation" of the
tapes tells of warning shots being fired.  Why didn't the pilot
report that he was being followed?

3) Do the Koreans indulge in espionage using commercial aircraft?

4) If this was a spy flight, was the pilot under orders not to
land under any circumstances?  In 1978, a Korean plane
strayed/intruded into Soviet airspace and was shot down; given
that, wouldn't it be suicidal to try the same subterfuge again?

Any accurate information about U.S. or Korean spy flights would
be most illuminating.  Right now, one gets the feeling that the
Soviets are indeed barbarians, but that the U.S. is doing the
lying.

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Date: 14 Sep 83 11:59:08 PDT
From: Horning.pa@PARC-MAXC
Subject: "The World After Nuclear War"

[Excerpts from an Action Report by Anna Nord in the September 1983 issue
of SIERRA.]

The greatest environmental threat facing the world today is nuclear war.
Despite its gravity, relatively little is known about the possible
consequences of nuclear war. And compared to the enormous sums spent on
nuclear weapons, very little money has been devoted to scientific
studies of their environmental and biological effects. (For some
informed speculation on the subject, see "Darkness at Noon: The
Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War," May/June, 1983.)

The Sierra Club is one of more than 20 groups taking steps to remedy
this lack of knowledge. These groups are cosponsoring a conference that
will address the question of what could happen to the earth's
life-support systems in the weeks, months, and years following a major
nuclear war. The conference, "The World After Nuclear War," to be held
in Washington, D.C., on October 31 and November 1, 1983, will be
attended by government officials, scientists, leaders of citizens'
organizations, and concerned individuals. (To register, contact:
Conference on The World After Nuclear War, 1735 New York Ave., N.W.,
Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006.) Sponsors include the Smithsonian
Institution, Common Cause, the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature, the National Science Teachers Association, and the Federation
of American Scientists.
. . .

The studies presented at the conference are expected to show that
conditions following even a "limited" nuclear war would include effects
of unforeseen nature and magnitude. The result would clearly be
extremely severe disruption of the ecosphere. Factors to be examined
will include major changes in climate resulting from fire, dust, and
soot, and the impact of radioactive fallout even far from target areas.
. . .

Two other recent studies have contributed greatly to our general
knowledge of some of the probable effects of nuclear war. A World Health
Organization (WHO) report entitled Effects of Nuclear War on Health and
Health Services examines three nuclear-war senarios:

* Detonation of a single 1-megaton bomb over London, resulting in the
deaths of more than 1.5 million people, with an equal number of serious
injuries.

* A "limited" exchange of nuclear weapons totaling 20 megatons aimed at
military targets. This exchange would result in about 9 million dead
and/or seriously injured.

* An all-out nuclear war involving 10,000 megatons--an amount
equivaltent to half the current nuclear arsenal. Such a war would cause
1 billion deaths and another billion serious injuries. The combined
population of Europe, North America, the Soviet Union, and Japan is
slightly greater than 1 billion people.

The consequences of any of the three scenarios would be severe. The
blast, heat, and radiation from even a single 1-megaton bomb could
overwhelm a nation's medical services. The consequences of the second
and third scenarios would be so great that "whatever remained of medical
services in the world could not alleviate the disaster in any
significant way," according to the WHO study.

The Aftermath--Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War
(Pantheon Press) was published on Hiroshima Day (August 6), 1983. Its
contents originally appeared as a special issue of Ambio, the
international environmental journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences. This study postulates a nuclear war in which about 5,750
megatons are exploded. The targets are predominantly in the Northern
Hemisphere and include populations centers of 100,000 or more, military
installations, and industrial/economic centers. The war would cause
about 750,000 early deaths and 340,000 serious injuries in the targeted
population centers alone. The most drastic environmental effect
described in The Aftermath would be a pervasive darkness in the Northern
Hemisphere. Vast fires would sweep through forests and fields; oil and
gas fields would be set ablaze, as would be cities and industrial areas.
Huge clouds of smoke, ash and soot would blanket the earth for weeks,
perhaps months, cutting off sunlight and drastically reducing the amount
of sunlight reaching the earth's surface. Agricultural production would
probably be totally eliminated for some time in the Northern Hemisphere.
Significant reductions in the ozone layer and the persistence of thick
photochemical ssmog would further reduce the chances of human survival.
. . .

The advisory group connected with this study concludes that the
industrialized societies of the North would be completely destroyed;
Third World nations would be completely cut off from international
sources of food, fertilizers, technology, and funds. The outlook:
"Societies as we know them now will most certainly cease to exist."

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Date: 22 September 1983 03:44 EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
Subject: game theory and nuclear war - who will inherit the galaxy?
To: ARMS-D @ MIT-MC, SPACE @ MIT-MC
cc: cunningh @ NOSC-CC

Assuming full MIRVs such as MX on both sides...

As a two person game, with payoffs sort of like the "prisoner's
dilemma", the optimal strategy will be to strike first in any crisis,
any time we lose trust of the other side.

But in the overall context of which civilization survives to inhabit
the galaxy, it may be something like the round-robin, where the
overall winner may lose every one of his one-on-won battles but
because he gets in fights less he survives overall better than the
winners do.

Suppose that lots of different technological lifeforms evolve around
the galaxy, each with different ways of looking at the Universe and
what to do in it. On each planet two superpowers are in control at the
critical time when nuclear weapons have been invented but space hasn't
yet been habitated. If both of those superpowers are "winners",
they'll have a crisis and anihilate each other. If both are "losers",
they'll survive. I don't think the case of one "winner" and one
"loser" would produce the balance of terror that we're considering. In
any case the one "loser" would go away and the one "winner" would
fragment and result in two "winners" at the critical stage.

Now imagine this experiment all over the galaxy. Most planets have the
two "winners", and they promptly go away. Those rare planets with two
"losers" would end up populating the galaxy.

Is Earth a 2-winner dinosaur, or a 2-loser rare gem?
I don't know. When the inevitable crisis occurs, we'll find out.

(Thanks for Hofstadter's article a few months ago in Sci.Am. for
getting the basic idea in my brain churning around until now.)

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[End of ARMS-D Digest]