The
Soviet Union has 9,000 nuclear warheads targetted on Britain, Western
Europe and North America In their turn
NATO and the US have over 15,000
bombs ranged against the Warsaw Pact countries. If a nuclear war
happened, not all these bombs would be used Some would be held back
for strategic
reasons, some would malfunction and some would be stopped in flight
by defensive action. But just one ten megaton bomb exploding over
the average city hall would:
Flash
quicker than the eye can blink, burning out the irises of people
over 200 miles away who were looking in that direction.
Leave
a crater one and a half miles wide and deeper than London's deepest
underground rail¬way.
Smash
all houses, shops, offices, factories, bridges and railways within
a seven mile radius; and cause severe damage and make
buildings unsafe for a further eight to ten miles.
Burn
or melt most things including cars, houses, trees and people up to
20 miles away. Only those living on the sides
of valleys
in the lee of the atomic storm would be shielded from some
of the flash
and
blast effects.
Create
a firestorm, through the coalescence of numerous blazes to form a
flaming pillar sucking in winds of up to
150 miles
an hour.
A fallout shelter would allow those inside to survive the
first few minutes of the blast and flash, as long as they
lived well
beyond
the crater. But within 25 miles of the city hall, the firestorm
would suffocate
and coast everyone in shelters, as their oxygen was used
up. The inferno would continue until everything was burnt
out.
Dump
lethal radioactive dust and rubble downwind from the explosion. Well
beyond the regular commuting distance
from
the suburbs to
city centre, in a corridor 20 to 30 miles wide and 100
miles long, everyone
not in a well¬equipped shelter would be killed by
radioactivity.
But
in a nuclear war it is unlikely that only one bomb would be dropped.
All
Japanese photographs courtesy of HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI A Pictorial
Record of the Atomic Destruction.
new
internationalist 97
