C70:arms-d (05/19/82)
>From HGA@MIT-MC Wed May 19 02:21:39 1982
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 109
Today's Topics:
And you thought nukes were bad...
Civil Defense Countermeasures
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Date: 17 May 1982 1003-PDT
From: Paul Dietz <DIETZ at USC-ECL>
Subject: And you thought nukes were bad...
Did anyone see the piece on NBC about how the allies almost used half
a million anthrax bombs on Nazi Germany? Casualties among the germans
would have run around 3 million dead. And much of germany would still
be contaminated today. Luckily, Germany surrendered before they could
be used.
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Date: 17 May 1982 1411-PDT
From: Paul Dietz <DIETZ at USC-ECL>
Subject: Civil Defense Countermeasures
It seems to me that there are plenty of countermeasures against civil
defense:
(1) Strike before the civilians are evacuated, or while they are in
the open. People in the open will be very vulnerable to flash burns
out to a considerable distance from the hypocenter.
(2) Retarget surplus warheads at likely relocation centers.
(3) Target warheads to drop fallout on relocation centers. Presumably
there won't be any industry or other hard targets at the refugee
camps, just people. Fallout will kill them effectively.
(4) Replace large silo busting warheads with many smaller (100 KT? 10
KT?) warheads to destroy 'soft' targets.
(5) Develope lower yield, high fallout bombs. A small warhead
detonated near ground level will inject little fallout into the
stratosphere. A bomb based on the neutron warhead coupled with, say,
a cobalt casing could contaminate the enemy's country with little risk
to the attacker.
(6) Drop nuclear mines near coastal cities, or into uninhabited areas
upwind of cities. These could be timed to detonate for up to several
years in the future, rendering the cities unusable.
(7) Use biological weapons (anthrax, plague, plant diseases).
The possibilities are endless. The civil defense program will protect
to some extent against *current* threats to the population, not
against weapons specifically designed for its weak points. All civil
defense will do is spur the superpowers to develope even more gruesome
terror weapons.
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End of Arms-D Digest
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