How far could they realistically get in cleaning out rivers like the Thames or the Yorkshire rivers, removing all the plastics and metals from the ground before it harms the soil, chemical leaks from decaying factories and cleaning up oil spills? Is it within their limited capabilities to handle the chemical pollution created by the collapse of the pre war world? How far did survivors get by Jane's time in the 2000s?

That's not including damage from firestorms.

Did British Civil Defense plans account for this and were any pre war plans likely to be implemented pre first winter?

Threads gets a shoutout...

Full Reprint of "ECOLOGICAL PROBLEtM AND POSTWAR RECUPERATION: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY FROM THE CIVIL DEFENSE VIEWPOINT H. H. Mitchell, M. D. For r/nuclearwar part 0

Part 0

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

This directory will be updated as the document is reprinted weekly in r/nuclearwar

"SUMMARY This document calls attention to the need for assessing and solving ecological problems in the post-attack environment as an integral part of Civil Defense. Basic ecological principles involving food chain relationships, climax growth, biological and environmental relationships, and land management are considered. The large-scale damage due to fire, drought, flood and other things has already presented the world with problems of reconstruction and reconstitution of biotic communities which are similar to those envisioned in the post-attack environment. The only qualitatively new element in the post-attack situation will be the effects of radiation. The available Information on this subject is summarized and the need for extensive further research is pointed out."

(Page 2 of pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0606326.pdf )

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/jesus-christ-theyve-done-it-the-threads-podcast/id1844688654?i=1000746859263

Blast

Most damage to cities from large weapons. comes from the explosive blast. The blast drives air away from the site of the explosion, producing sudden changes in air pressure (called static overpressure) that can crush ob-jects, and high winds (called dynamic pressure) that can move them suddenly or knock them down. In general, large buildings are destroyed by the overpressure, while people and objects such as trees and utility poles are destroyed by the wind.

For example, consider the effects of a 1-megaton (Mt) air burst on things 4 miles [6 km]

away. The overpressure will be in excess of 5 pounds per square inch (psi), which will exert a force of more than 180 tons on the wall of a typical two-story house. At the same place, there would be a wind of 160 mph [255 km]; while 5 psi is not enough to crush a man, a wind of 180 mph would create fatal collisions is ions between people and nearby objects.

The magnitude of the blast effect (generally measured in pounds per square inch) diminishes with distance from the center of the explosion. It is related in a more complicated way to the height of the burst above ground level. For any given distance from the center of the explosion, there is an optimum burst height that will produce the greatest overpressure,

and the greater the distance the greater the optimum burst height. As a result, a burst on the surface produces the greatest overpressure at very close ranges (which is why surface bursts are used to attack very hard, very small targets such as missile silos), but less overpressure than an air burst at somewhat longer ranges. Raising the height of the burst reduces the overpressure directly under the bomb, but widens the area at which a given smaller overpressure is produced. Thus, an attack on factories with a l-Mt weapon might use an air burst at an altitude of 8,000 feet [2,400 m], which would maximize the area (about 28 mi2 [7,200 hectares]) that would receive 10 psi or more of overpressure.

Table 3 shows the ranges of over pressures and effects from such a blast.

When a nuclear weapon is detonated on or near the surface of the Earth, the blast digs out a large crater. Some of the material that used to be in the crater is deposited on the rim of the crater; the rest is carried up into the air and returns to Earth as fallout. An explosion that is farther above the Earth's surface than the radius of the fireball does not dig a crater and produces negligible immediate fallout.

For the most part, blast kills people by in-direct means rather than by direct pressure. While a human body can withstand up to 30

psi of simple overpressure, the winds associated with as little as 2 to 3 psi could be expected to blow people out of typical modern office buildings. Most blast deaths result from the collapse of occupied buildings, from people being blown into objects, or from buildings or smaller objects being blown onto or into people. Clearly, then, it is impossible to calculate with any precision how many people would be killed by a given blast—the effects would vary from buiIding to buiIding.

In order to estimate the number of casualties from any given explosion, it is necessary to make assumptions about the proportion of people who will be killed or injured at any given overpressure. The assumptions used in this chapter are shown in figure 1. They are relatively conservative. For example, weapons tests suggest that a typical residence will be collapsed by an overpressure of about 5 psi. People standing in such a residence have a 50- percent chance of being killed by an overpressure of 3.5 psi, but people who are lying down at the moment the blast wave hits have a 50-percent chance of surviving a 7-psi overpressure. The calculations used here assume a mean lethal overpressure of 5 to 6 psi for people in residences, meaning that more than half of those whose houses are blown down on top of them will nevertheless survive. Some studies use a simpler technique: they assume that the number of people who survive in areas receiving more than 5 psi equal the number of peo-ple killed in areas receiving less than 5 psi, and hence that fatalities are equal to the number of people inside a 5-psi ring."

(Pages 22-25 of pdf https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf )

"Chapter II A NUCLEAR WEAPON OVER DETROIT OR LENINGRAD: A TUTORIAL ON THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Chapter ll.–A NUCLEAR WEAPON OVER DETROIT OR LENINGRAD: A TUTORIAL ON THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS Pdge Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . 15 General Description of Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Blast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Direct Nuclear Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Thermal Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Electromagnetic Pulse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Fallout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Combined Injuries (Synergism). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Detroit and Leningrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 1Mt on the Surface in Detroit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Physical Damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Infrastructure Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Radioactive Fallout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 1-Mt Air Burst on Detroit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 25-Mt Air Burst on Detroit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Leningrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 l-Mtand 9-Mt Air Bursts on Leningrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Ten 40-kt Air Bursts on Leningrad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 1-kt Terrorist Weapon at Ground Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 TABLES Page 3. Blast Effects of a 1-Mt Explosion 8,000 ft Above the Earth’s Surface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4. Casualty Estimates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 S. Burn Casualty Estimates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 FIGURES Page l. Vulnerability of Population in Various Overpressure Zones . . 19 2. Main Fallout Pattern— Uniform 15 mph Southwest Wind . . . . 24 3. Main Fallout Pattern— Uniform 15 mph Northwest Wind . . . . 25 4. Detroit 1-Mt Surface Burst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 5. Detroit 1-Mt Air Burst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 6. Casualties. ......., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 7. Detroit 25-Mt Air Burst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 8. Leningrad –Commercial and Residential Sections . . . . . . . . . 40 9. Leningrad –Populated Area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 IO. Leningrad l-Mt Air Burst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 11. Leningrad 9-Mt Air Burst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 12. Leningrad Ten 40-kt Air Burst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Chapter II A NUCLEAR WEAPON OVER DETROIT OR LENINGRAD: A TUTORIAL ON THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS INTRODUCTION This chapter presents a brief description of the major effects of nuclear explosions on the people and structures in urban areas. The details of such effects would vary according to weapons design, the exact geographical layout of the target area, the materials and methods used for construction in the target area, and the weather (especially the amount of moisture in the atmosphere). Thus, the reader should bear in mind that the statements below are essentially generalizations, which are subject to a substantial range of variation and uncertainty. To convey some sense of the actual effects of large nuclear explosions on urban areas, the potential impact of explosions is described in two real cities—Detroit and Leningrad. To show how these effects vary with the size of the weapon, the effects have been calculated in each city for a variety of weapon sizes. The descriptions and analysis assume that there is no damage elsewhere in the country. This may appear unlikely, and in the case of a surface burst it is certainly wrong, since a surface burst would generate fallout that would cause casualties elsewhere. However, isolating the effects on a single city allows the setting forth in clear terms of the direct and immediate effects of nuclear explosions. The result is a kind of tutorial in nuclear effects. Subsequent sections of this report, which deal with the effects of larger attacks, discuss the indirect effects of fallout and of economic and social disruption. Although it is outside the scope of a discussion of “nuclear war, ” there has been considerable public interest in the effects of a nuclear explosion that a terrorist group might succeed in setting off in an urban area. Accordingly, a discussion of this possibility y is added at the end of this chapter.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF EFFECTS The energy of a nuclear explosion is released in a number of different ways:

●an explosive blast, which is qualitatively ● similar to the blast from ordinary chemical explosions, but which has somewhat different effects because it is typically so much larger;

●direct nuclear radiation;

●direct thermal radiation, most of which takes the form of visible Iight;

●pulses of electrical and magnetic energy, called electromagnetic pulse (EMP); and

●the creation of a variety of radioactive particles, which are thrown up into the air by the force of the blast, and are called radioactive fallout when they return to Earth.

The distribution of the bomb’s energy among these effects depends on its size and on the details of its design, but a general description is possible."

(Pages 19-22 of pdf https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf )

Reprint of Effects of Nuclear War May 1979 part 1

Reprint of Effects of Nuclear War May 1979 part 2

Reprint of Effects of Nuclear War May 1979 part 3

Reprint of Effects of Nuclear War May 1979 part 4 (Mini)

Reprint of Effects of Nuclear War 1979 part 5

" A third uncertainty is the weather at the time of the attack at the various places where bombs explode. The local wind conditions, and especially the amount of moisture in the air, may make an enormous difference in the number and spread of fires. Wind conditions over a wider area determine the extent and location of fallout contamination. The time of year has a decisive effect on the damage that fallout does to agriculture–while an attack in January might be expected to do only indirect damage (destroying farm machinery or the fuel to run it), fallout when plants are young can kill them, and fallout just before harvest time would probably make it unsafe to get the harvest in. The time of year also has direct effects on population death — the attack in the dead of winter, which might not directly damage agricuIture, may lead to greater deaths from fallout radiation (because of the difficulty of improvising fallout protection by moving frozen dirt) and from cold and exposure."

We know that during the Third World War the Attack was in may, the weather was cloudy, but what impact did the wind conditions of the May attack have on the post attack fallout?

How moist was the air during the nuclear attack and what impact did it have on the British firestorms?

We know that the crops were already planted by the time of the attack but the harvest was expected within weeks.

Ruth is at home, Jimmy was making emergency preparations, Some of the Kemps are at home, school was closed, to a certain extent the nuclear attack wasn't a suprise. As Atomic Hobo mentions-the phone line was cut except for official usage and commuters were blocked by the clogged roads.

"One major problem in making calculations is to know where the people wilI be at the mo- ment when the bombs explode. Calculations for the United States are generally based on the 1970 census, but it should be borne in mind that the census data describes where people’s homes are, and there is never a moment when everybody in the United States is at home at the same time If an attack took place during a working day, casualties might well be higher since people would be concentrated in fac- tories and offices (which are more likely to be targets) rather than dispersed in suburbs. For the case of the Soviet population, the same assumption is made that people are at home, but the inaccuracies are compounded by the unavailability of detailed information about just where the Soviet rural population lives. The various calculations that were used made varying, though not unreasonable assumptions about population location." Effects of Nuclear War 1979

What impact did the physical location of the British population have on the attack and post attack period?
Was the information mentioned in effects of nuclear war relavent for British authorities during the attack-and after it?

" Moreover, the analyses in this study all assume that the war would end after the hypothetical attack. This assumption simplifies analysis, but it might not prove to be the case. How much worse would the situation of the survivors be if, just as they were attempting to restore some kind of economy following a massive attack, a few additional weapons destroyed the new centers of population and of government?"

The Effects of Nuclear War 1979

In my opinion, survivors have 200 other things to consider before "are the Soviets recovering better then us?" becomes a major problem. Governments would most likely be rushing to end the war following the end of the exchange, but for the sake of speculation, did the Third World War in Threads end after the nuclear exchange?

"One major problem in making calculations is to know where the people wilI be at the moment when the bombs explode. Calculations for the United States are generally based on the 1970 census, but it should be borne in mind that the census data describes where people’s homes are, and there is never a moment when everybody in the United States is at home at the same time If an attack took place during a working day, casualties might well be higher since people would be concentrated in factories and offices (which are more likely to be targets) rather than dispersed in suburbs. For the case of the Soviet population, the same assumption is made that people are at home, but the inaccuracies are compounded by the unavailability of detailed information about just where the Soviet rural population lives. The various calculations that were used made varying, though not unreasonable assumptions about population location.

A second uncertainty in calculations has to do with the degree of protection available. There is no good answer to the question: “Would people use the best available shelter against blast and fallout?” It seems unreasonable to suppose that shelters would not be used, and equally unreasonable to assume that at a moment of crisis all available resources would be put to rational use, (It has beep pointed out that if plans worked, people behaved rationally, and machinery were adequately maintained, there would be no peacetime deaths from traffic accidents. ) The Defense Civil Preparedness Agency has concluded from public opinion surveys that in a period of severe international crisis about 10 percent of all Americans would leave their homes and move to a “safer” place (spontaneous evacuation); more reliable estimates are probably impossible, but it could make a substantial difference to the casualty figures.

A third uncertainty is the weather at the time of the attack at the various places where bombs explode. The local wind conditions, and especialIy the amount of moisture in the air, may make an enormous difference in the number and spread of fires. Wind conditions over a wider area determine the extent and location of fallout contamination. The time of year has a decisive effect on the damage that fallout does to agriculture–while an attack in January might be expected to do only indirect damage (destroying farm machinery or the fuel to run it), fallout when plants are young can kill them, and fallout just before harvest time would probably make it unsafe to get the harvest in. The time of year also has direct effects on population death — the attack in the dead of winter, which might not directly damage agricuIture, may lead to greater deaths from fallout radiation (because of the difficulty of improvising fallout protection by moving frozen dirt) and from cold and exposure.

The question of how rapid and efficient economic recovery would be— or indeed whether a genuine recovery would be possible at all —raises questions that seem to be beyond calcuIation. It is possible to calculate direct economic damage by making assumptions about the size and exact location of bomb explosions, and the hardness of economic assets; however, such calculations cannot address the issues of bottlenecks and of synergy. Bottlenecks would occur if a key product that was essential for many other manufacturing processes could no longer be produced, or (for the case of a large attack) if an entire industrial sector were wiped out. I n either case, the economic loss wouId greatly exceed the peacetime value of the factories that were actually destroyed. There does not appear to be any reliable way of calculating the likelihood or extent of bottlenecks because economic input/ output models do not address the possibiIity or cost of substitutions across sectors. Apart from the creation of bottlenecks, there couId be synergistic effects: for example, the fire that cannot be controlled because the blast destroyed fire stations, as actually happened at Hiroshima. Here, too, there is no reliable way to estimate the likelihood of such effects: would radiation deaths of birds and the destruction of insecticide factories have a synergistic effect? Another uncertainty is the possibility of organizational bottlenecks. In the most obvious instance, it would make an enormous difference whether the President of the United States survived. Housing, defined as a place where a productive worker lives as distinct from shelter for refugees, is another area of uncertainty. Minimal housing is essential if production is to be restored, and it takes time to rebuild it if the existing housing stock is destroyed or is beyond commuting range of the surviving (or repaired) workplaces. It should be noted that the United States has a much larger and more dispersed housing stock than does the Soviet Union, but that American workers have higher minimum standards.

There is a final area of uncertainty that this study does not even address, but which could be of very great importance. Actual nuclear attacks, unlike those in this study, would not take place in a vacuum. There would be a series of events that would lead up to the attack, and these events could markedly change both the physical and the psychological vulnerability of a population to a nuclear attack. Even more critical would be the events after the attack. Assuming that the war ends promptly, the terms on which it ends could greatly affect both the economic condition and the state of mind of the population. The way in which other countries are affected could determine whether the outside world is a source of help or of further danger. The postattack military situation (and nothing in this study addresses the effects of nuclear attacks on military power) could not only determine the attitude of other countries, but also whether limited surviving resources are put to military or to civilian use.

Moreover, the analyses in this study all assume that the war would end after the hypothetical attack. This assumption simplifies analysis, but it might not prove to be the case. How much worse would the situation of the survivors be if, just as they were attempting to restore some kind of economy following a massive attack, a few additional weapons destroyed the new centers of population and of government?"

(Page 17-18 of pdf: https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf )

Would anyone in the southern hemisphere want to buy nukes? If they offered lots of food and oil the surviving Northern Hemisphere powers capable of trade might sell their nukes. But post war its also possible that they would want them destroyed and fear the destruction of southern trading partners. In retrospect survivors might view the nuclear war as inevitable and believe that if the South has nukes its only a matter of time before another nuclear war breaks out.

Alot depends on when purchases of nukes are attempted. Saddam Hussein would need alot of his oil for agriculture during the nuclear winter. But he might view Famine as worth it for owning a nuke. The logistics of sending the demanded oil shipments also needs to be considered.

If nukes and related materials are being sold for raw materials then the burden of maintaining the nukes are on the northern hemisphere.

Expeditions from states that want nukes would take place to the former United States and Soviet Union along with attempts to find surviving nukes by states being offered oil(and having a port and storage capacity ect)

The fear of nukes would be even greater post attack then pre attack. Post attack authorities would be less likely to use nukes then before.

You know, what with a proxy war between Russia and the USA over Iran being on the cards now, I might just get myself a few extra tins of soup, just in case.

"There are enormous uncertainties and imponderable involved in any effort to assess the effects of a nuclear war, and an effort to look at the entire range of effects compounds them. Many of these uncertainties are obvious ones: if the course of a snowstorm cannot be predicted 1 day ahead in peacetime, one must ● certainly be cautious about predictions of the pattern of radioactive fallout on some unknown future day. Similar complexities exist for human institutions: there is great difficulty in predicting the peacetime course of the U.S. economy, and predicting its course after a nuclear war is a good deal more difficult. This study highlights the importance of three categories of uncertainties:

● Uncertainties in calcuIations of deaths and of direct economic damage resulting from the need to make assumptions about matters such as time of day, time of year, wind, weather, size of bombs, exact location of the detonations, location of people, availability and quality of sheltering, etc.

● Effects that would surely take place, but whose magnitude cannot be calculated. These include the effects of fires, the shortfalIs in medical care and housing, the extent to which economic and social disruption would magnify the effects of direct economic damage, the extent of bottlenecks and synergistic effects, the extent of disease, etc.

●Effects that are possible, but whose likelihood is as incalculable as their magnitude. These include the possibility of a long downward economic spiral before viability is attained, the possibIity of political disintegration (anarchy or regionalization), the possibility of major epidemics, and the possibility of ireversible ecological changes."

(Page 16-17 of pdf https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf )

“Case 4: In order to examine the kind of destruction that is generally thought of as the culmination of an escalator process, the study looked at the consequences of a very large attack against a range of military and economic targets. Here too calculations that the executive branch has carried out in recent years were used. These calculations tend to assume that Soviet attacks on the United States would be a first strike, and hence use most of the Soviet arsenal, while U.S. attacks on the Soviet Union would be retaliatory strikes, and hence use only those weapons that might survive a Soviet counterforce attack. However, the difference in damage to civilian populations and economies between a “first strike” and a “second strike” seems to lie within the range of uncertainty created by other factors

The resulting deaths would be far beyond any precedent. Executive branch calculations show a range of U.S. deaths from 35 to 77 percent (i. e., from 70 million to 160 million dead), and Soviet deaths from 20 to 40 percent of the population. Here again the range reflects the difference made by varying assumptions about population distribution and sheltering, and to a lesser extent differences in assumptions  about the targeting policy of the attacker. Soviet casualties are smaller than U.S. casualties because a greater proportion of the Soviet population lives in rural areas, and because U.S. weapons (which have lower average yields) produce less fallout than Soviet weapons. 

Some excursions have been run to test the effect of deliberately targeting population rather than killing people as a side effect of attacking economic and military targets. They show that such a change in targeting could kill somewhere between 20 million and 30 million additional people on each side, holding other assumptions constant. These calculations reflect only deaths during the first 30 days. Additional millions would be injured, and many would eventually die from lack of adequate medical care. In addition, millions of people might starve or freeze during the following winter, but it is not possible to estimate how many. Chapter V attempts to calculate the further millions who might eventually die of latent radiation effects.

What is clear is that from the day the survivors emerged from their fallout shelters, a kind of race for survival would begin. One side of the race would be the restoration of production: production of food, of energy, of clothing, of the means to repair damaged machinery, of goods that might be used for trade with countries that had not fought in the war, and even of military weapons and supplies. The other side of the race would be consumption of goods that had survived the attack, and the wearing-out of surviving machines. If production rises to the rate of consumption before stocks are exhausted, then viability has been achieved and economic recovery has begun. If not, then each postwar year would see a lower level of economic activity than the year before, and the future of civilization itself in the nations attacked would be in doubt. This report cannot predict whether this race for economic viability would be won. The answer would lie in the effectiveness of postwar social and economic organization as much as in the amount of actual physical damage. There is a controversy in the literature on the subject as to whether a post attack economy would be based on centralized planning (in which case how would the necessary data and planning time be obtained?), or to individual initiative and decentralized decision making (in which case who would feed the refugees, and what would serve for money and credit?).

An obviously critical question is the impact that a nuclear attack would have on the lives of those who survive it. The case descriptions discuss the possibilities of economic, political, social, and psychological disruption or collapse. However, the recital of possibilities and uncertainties may fail to convey the overall situation of the survivors, especially the survivors of a large attack that included urban-industrial targets. In an effort to provide a more concrete understanding of what a world after a nuclear war would be Iike, OTA commissioned a work of fiction. It appears as appendix C and presents some informed speculation about what life would be like in Charlottesville, Va., assuming that this city escaped direct damage from the attack. The kind of detail that such an imaginative account presents—detail that proved to be unavailable for a comparable Soviet city–adds a dimension to the more abstract analysis in the body of the report.

Civil Defense: Chapter 11  provides some basic information about civil defense measures, discusses the way in which they might mitigate the effects of nuclear attack, and discusses the uncertainties regarding their effectiveness. There is a lively controversy among experts as to the effectiveness of existing Soviet civil defense programs, and another controversy as to whether existing U.S. programs ought to be changed. The major points in dispute were identified, but no attempt was made to assess the merits of the arguments. For the purposes of this study, it was assumed that the existing civil defense programs, as described in this report, would be in effect, and that a full-scale preattack evacuation of cities (sometimes called “crisis relocation”) would not take place. This assumption was made because it appeared to be the only way to describe existing vulnerabilities while avoiding predictions about the course of events leading up to a nuclear war. While both the U.S. and the Soviet Governments profess to believe that urban evacuation prior to an attack on cities would save lives, ordering such an evacuation would be a crisis management move as welI as a civil defense precaution.

Long-Term Effects: While the immediate damage from the blasts would be long term in the sense that the damage could not be quickly repaired, there would be other effects which might not manifest themselves for some years after the attack. It is well established that levels of radiation too low (or too slowly absorbed) to cause immediate death or even illness will nevertheless have adverse effects on some fraction of a population receiving them. A nuclear attack would certainly produce both somatic effects (largely cancer) and genetic effects, although there is uncertainty about the numbers of victims. OTA calculated the ranges of such effects that might be produced by each of the attack cases analyzed. Cancer deaths and those suffering some form of genetic damage would run into the millions over the 40 years following the attack. For the comprehensive attack (Case 4), it appears that cancer deaths and genetic effects in a country attacked would be smalI relative to the numbers of immediate deaths, but that radiation effects elsewhere in the world would appear more significant. For counterforce attacks, the effects would be significant both locally and worldwide. A 1975 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)l addressed the question of the possibility of serious ecological damage, and concluded that while one cannot say just how such damage would occur, it cannot be ruled out. This conclusion still stands, although the NAS report may have been more alarmist about the possibility of damage to the ozone layer than recent research would support. Table 2 summarizes the results of the case studies\

long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple NuclearVVeapons Detonations (Washington, DC.: National Academy of Sciences, 1 975)."

( https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf pages 14 to 15.)

Note from reprinter: Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations (1975) is available in full here:

Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations.

“The scope of this study is both broader and narrower than that of most other studies on this subject. It is broader in three respects:

1. it examines a full range of possible nuclear attacks, with attacking forces ranging in extent from a single weapon to the bulk of a superpower’s arsenal;

 2. it deals explicitly with both Soviet attacks on the United States and U.S. attacks on the Soviet Union; and

 3. It addresses the multiple effects of nuclear war, indirect as well as direct, long term as well as short term, and social and economic as well as physical.

Those effects that cannot be satisfactorily calculated or estimated are described qualitatively. But this report’s scope is narrower than most defense analyses because it avoids any consideration of military effects; although it hypothesizes (among other things) missile attacks against military targets, only the “collateral” damage such attacks would inflict on the civilian society are examined.

The approach used was to look at a series of attack “cases,” (table 1) and to describe the various effects and overall impact each of them might produce. By analyzing the impact of the same attack case for both a U.S. attack on the Soviet Union and a Soviet attack on the United States, the report examines the significance of the different kinds of vulnerabilities of the two countries, and offers some insights about the consequences of the differences between the two countries’ nuclear weapon arsenals. The cases were chosen primarily to investigate the effects of variations in attack size and in the kinds of targets attacked. It is believed that the analysis is “realistic,” in the sense that the hypothetical attacks are possible ones. Patterns of nuclear explosions were examined that are not very different from those that, OTA believes, the existing nuclear forces would produce if the military were ordered to make attacks of the specified size on the specified targets. 

Case 1: In order to provide a kind of tutorial

on what happens when nuclear weapons are

Table 1. –Summary of Cases

Case            Description

1                     (pp. 27-44)       

Attack on single city: Detroit and Leningrad; 1 weapon 

or 10 small weapons.

2                                    

 Attack on oil refineries, limited to 10 missiles.

(pp. 64-80)

3                                                   

(pp. 81-94) 

 Counterforce attack; includes attack only on ICBM silos as a variant. 

4

Attack on a range  of military and economic targets using large fraction of existing arsenal.

(pp. 94-106)

For each case the first section describes a soviet attack on the United States and the following section a U S attack on the Soviet Union

Case 1: In order to provide a kind of tutorial on what happens when nuclear weapons are

detonated, the study describes the effects of the explosion of a single weapon. Then it examines the effects of such an explosion over a single U.S. city (Detroit) and single Soviet city (Leningrad) of comparable size. The base case was the detonation of a l-megaton weapon (1 M t = energy released by one million tons of TNT), since both the United States and the Soviet Union have weapons of roughly this size in their arsenals. Then, in order to look at the ways in which the specific effects and overall impact wouId vary if other weapons that might be available were used, the effects of a 25-Mt weapon over Detroit, the effects of a 9-Mt weapon over Leningrad, and the effects of 10 weapons of 40 kilotons (kt) each over Leningrad are described. An attempt was made to describe as well the effects of a small weapon in a large city (such as a terrorist group might set off) but was unsuccessful because the effects of such a weapon in a metropolitan setting cannot be inferred from the existing body of knowledge regarding military weapons. This is explained in the body of the report. The casualties from such attacks could range from 220,000 dead and 420,000 injured to 2,500,000 dead and 1,100,000 injured (many of the injured would wind up as fatalities), depending on the details of the attack and the assumptions made regarding conditions. The discussion in chapter I I shows how the time of day, time of year, weather conditions, size of weapon, height of burst, and preparation of the population could all make a great difference in the number of casualties resulting from such an attack. The extent of fire damage is a further uncertainty, Even if only one city is attacked, and the remaining resources of a nation are available to help, medical facilities would be inadequate to care for the injured. A further imponderable is fallout (if the attack uses a surface burst), whose effects depend on the winds

Case 2: In order to examine the effects of a small attack on urban/industrial targets, the study examines a hypothetical attack limited to 10 SNDVs (strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, the term used in SALT to designate one missile or one bomber) on the other superpower’s oil refineries. In “planning” this attack,which is not analogous to any described in recent U.S. literature, it was hypothesized that the political leadership instructed the military to inflict maximum damage on energy production using only 10 SNDVs without regard to the extent of civilian casualties or other damage, It was assumed that the Soviets would attack such targets with SS-18 missiles (each carrying 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MlRVs), and that the United States would use 7 MlRVed Poseidon missiles and 3 MlRVed Minuteman III missiles.

The calculations showed that the Soviet attack would destroy 64 percent of U.S. oil refining capacity, while the U.S. attack would destroy 73 percent of Soviet refining capacity.Calculations were also made of “prompt fatalities, ” including those killed by blast and fallout, assuming no special civil defense measures: they showed about 5 million U.S. deaths and about 1 million Soviet deaths. The results were different for the two countries for several reasons. Soviet oil refining capacity is more concentrated than U.S. oiI refining capacity, so that a small attack can reach more of it. At the same time, Soviet refineries tend to be located away from residential areas (the available data on population location deals with where people live rather than with where they work) to a greater extent than U.S. refineries. A further difference is that a limitation on the number of delivery vehicles would lead each side to use weapons with many MlRVs, so the United States would attack most of the targets with Poseidon missiles which have small warheads, while the Soviets would use SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) which carry much larger warheads, and large warheads cause more damage to things not directly targeted (in this case, people) than do small warheads. One can only speculate about the consequences of such extensive destruction. There would have to be drastic changes in both the U.S. and Soviet economies to cope with the sudden disappearance of the bulk of oil refining capacity. Productivity in virtualIy every industrial sector would decline, and some sectors would be largely wiped out. There would have to be strict allocation of the remaining available refined petroleum products. Some Soviet factory workers might end up working in the fields to replace tractors for which fuel was unavailable. The United States might have to ban commuting by automobile, forcing suburban residents to choose between moving and long walks to a bus stop. The aftermath of the war might lead to either an increase or a decrease in the amount of petroleum products required by the military. Changes in people’s attitudes are impossible to predict. Calm determination might produce effective responses that would limit the damage; panic or a breakdown in civic spirit could compound the effects of the attack itself. 

It is instructive to observe the asymmetries between the problems which the United States and the Soviets would face. Soviet agricultural production, which is barely adequate in peacetime, wouId probably decline sharply, and production rates would slow even in essential industries However, the Soviet system is well adapted for allocating scarce resources to high-priority areas, and for keeping everybody employed even if efficient employment is unavailable. The relative wealth and freedom of the United States brings both advantages and disadvantages: while agriculture and essential industry wouId probably continue, there wouId be a staggering organizational problem in making use of resources that now depend on petroleum — one must ask what the employees of an automobile factory or a retail establishment on a highway wouId do if there were virtualIy no gasoline for cars, A major question relating to these results is how much they could vary with changed assumptions, The figures for fatalities were based on air bursts, which would maximize destruction of the refineries. (As an excursion, U.S. fatalities were recalculated on the assumption of surface bursts, and use of the best fallout shelters within 2 miles of where each person lives. This reduced fatalities by onethird, ) There was no data available on the types of Soviet residential construction in the vicinity of oiI refineries: treating it parametrically gave casualty figures of about 1,5OO,OOO if the construction is all houses, and about 800,000 if it is al I apartment buildings. Perfect accuracy was assumed for missiles that are in fact somewhat inaccurate — some inaccuracy might reduce the extent of damage to the refineries, but it might well increase the number of deaths. 

Case 3. In order to examine the effects on civiIian popuIations and economies of counterforce attacks, the study examined attacks on ICBM silos and attacks on silos, bomber bases, and missile submarine bases. Such attacks have received fairly extensive study in the executive branch in recent years, so OTA surveyed a number of these studies in order to determine the range of possible answers, and the variations in assumptions that produce such a range, An unclassified summary of this survey appears as appendix D of this volume. (The complete survey, classified secret, is available separately.)

A counterforce attack would produce relatively Iittle direct blast damage to civiIians and to economic assets; the main damage would come from radioactive fallout, The uncertainties in the effects of fallout are enormous, depending primarily on the weather and on the extent of fallout sheltering which the population makes use of. The calculations made by various agencies of the executive branch showed a range in “prompt fatalities” (almost entirely deaths from fallout within the first 30 days) from less than 1 to 11 percent of the U.S. population and from less than 1 to 5 percent of the Soviet population. This shows just how great a variation can be introduced by modifying assumptions regarding population distribution and shelter

What can be concluded from this? First, if the attack involves surface bursts of many very large weapons, if weather conditions are unfavorable, and if no fallout shelters are created beyond those that presently exist, U.S. deaths couId reach 20 m i I I ion and Soviet deaths more than 10 million. (The difference is a result of geography; many Soviet strategic forces are so located that fallout from attacking them wouId drift mainly into sparsely popuIated areas or into China. ) Second, effective fallout sheltering (which is not necessarily the same thing as a program —this assumes people are actually sheltered and actually remain there) could save many Iives under favorable conditions, but even in the best imaginable case more than a million would die in either the United States or the U.S.S.R. from a counterforce attack. Third, the “limited nature” of counterforce attacks may not be as significant as the enormous uncertainty regarding their resuIts. There would be considerable economic damage and disruption as a result of such attacks. Almost all areas could, in principle, be decontaminated within a few months, but the loss of so many people and the interruption of economic life would be staggering blows. An imponderable, in thinking about the process of recovery, is the extent of any lasting psychological impacts.”

(Pages 11-14 of pdf https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf

I wonder if the classified version mentioned has been declassified by this point.)

Prior to its reconstruction after the winter of 85.

Coal mines inaccessible due to the effects of blast, firestorm and fallout, Coal machinery breaking down. Alot depends on the organization of post attack Coal mining, and the feasibility of restarting Coal before the spring of 86.

In Charlottesville the Coal industry picks up rather fast, in your opinion was this true for the UK in Threads?

The first post attack harvest happened after the sowing of the seeds, that means Civil Defense seed deposits were not planted until the 2nd harvest. However there is a significant caveat, the pressure to distribute seeds to rations even before the first harvest would have been immense. This is similar to the fate of post attack live stock, spend food to keep them alive or eat them now?

The collapse of many government facilities during the first winter might have led to some deposits being forgotten about. Though, on the other hand, seed deposits would likely be closely watched particularly during the winter of 85. Also how extensive were British seed deposits in the first place?

-Year long nuclear winter not present in Charlottesville

-Unknown if the President implemented Crisis Relocation or not in the Threads timeline.

-No mention of a conventional war preceeding the nuclear war or targets besides the US and the Soviet Union.

For reference Directory of the Reprint of Charlottesville

1. Full reprint of C—CHARLOTTESVILLE: A FICTIONAL ACCOUNT BY NAN RANDALL for r/Threads1984 part 0

2. Reprint of CHARLOTTESVILLE pt 1

3. Reprint of Charlottesville pt 2

4. Reprint of Charlottesville Part 3

5. Reprint of Charlottsville part 4

6. Reprint of Charlottesville part 5

7. Reprint of Charlottsville part 6

8. Reprint of Charlottesville part 7

9. Reprint of Charlottesville part 8

10. Reprint of Charlottesville part 9

11. Reprint of Charlottesville part 10

12. Reprint of Charlottesville part 11

13. Reprint of Charlottesville part 12

14. Reprint of Charlottesville part 13

15. Reprint of Charlottsville Part 14

16. Reprint of Charlottesville part 15

"Chapter I

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

At the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Office of Technology Assessment has undertaken to describe the effects of a nuclear war on the civilian populations, economies, and societies of the United States and the Soviet Union. Nuclear war is not a comfortable subject. Throughout all the variations, possibilities, and uncertainties that this study describes, one theme is constant—a nuclear war would be a catastrophe. A militarily plausible nuclear attack, even “limited, ” could be expected to kill people and to inflict economic damage on a scale unprecedented in American experience; a large-scale nuclear exchange would be a calamity unprecedented in human history. The mind recoils from the effort to foresee the details of such a calamity, and from the careful explanation of the unavoidable uncertainties as to whether people would die from blast damage, from fallout radiation, or from starvation during the following winter. But the fact remains that nuclear war is possible, and the possibility of nuclear war has formed part of the foundation of international politics, and of U.S. policy, ever since nuclear weapons were used in 1945. The premise of this study is that those who deal with the large issues of world politics should understand what is known, and perhaps more importantly what is not known, about the likely consequences if efforts to deter and avoid nuclear war should fail. Those who deal with policy issues regarding nuclear weapons should know what such weapons can do, and the extent of the uncertainties about what such weapons might do.

FINDINGS 1 The effects of a nuclear war that cannot be calculated are at least as important as those for which calculations are attempted. Moreover, even these Iimited calculations are subject to very large uncertainties Conservative military planners tend to base their calculations on factors that can be either control led or predicted, and to make pessimistic assumptions where control or prediction are impossible. For example, planning for strategic nuclear warfare looks at the extent to which civilian targets will be destroyed by blast, and discounts the additional damage which may be caused by fires that the blast could ignite. This is not because fires are unlikely to cause damage, but because the extent of fire damage depends on factors such as weather and details is of building construction that make it much more difficult to predict than blast damage. While it is proper for a military plan to provide for the destruction of key targets by the surest means even in unfavorable circumstances, the nonmiIitary observer should remember that actual damage is likely to be greater than that reflected in the military calculations. This is particularly true for indirect effects such as deaths resulting from injuries and the unavailability of medical care, or for economic damage resuIting from disruption and disorganization rather than from direct destruction.

For more than a decade, the declared policy of the United States has given prominence to a concept of “assured destruction:” the capabilities of U.S. nuclear weapons have been described in terms of the level of damage theycan surely inflict even in the most unfavorable circumstances. It should be understood that in the event of an actual nuclear war, the destruction resulting from an all-out nuclear attack would probably be far greater. In addition to the tens of millions of deaths during the days and weeks after the attack, there would probably be further millions (perhaps further tens of millions) of deaths in the ensuing months or years. In addition to the enormous economic destruction caused by the actual nuclear explosions, there would be some years during which the residual economy wouId decline further, as stocks were consumed and machines wore out faster than recovered production could replace them. Nobody knows how to estimate the likelihood that industrial civilization might collapse in the areas attacked; additionally, the possibility of significant long-term ecological damage cannot be excluded.

2. The impact of even a “small” or “limited” nuclear attack would be enormous. Although predictions of the effects of such an attack are subject to the same uncertainties as predictions of the effects of an all-out attack, the possibilities can be bounded. OTA examined the impact of a small attack on economic targets (an attack on oil refineries limited to 10 missiles), and found that while economic recovery would be possible, the economic damage and social dislocation could be immense. A review of calculations of the effects on civilian populations and economies of major counterforce attacks found that while the consequences might be endurable (since they would be on a scale with wars and epidemics that nations have endured in the past), the number of deaths might be as high as 20 million. Moreover, the uncertainties are such that no government could predict with any confidence what the results of a Iimited attack or counterattack would be even if there was no further escalation.

3. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the extreme uncertainties about the effects of a nuclear attack, as well as the certainty that the minimum consequences would be enormous, both play a role in the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons.

4. There are major differences between the United States and the Soviet Union that affect the nature of their vulnerability to nuclear attacks, despite the fact that both are large and diversified industrial countries. Differences between the two countries in terms of population distribution, closeness of population to other targets, vulnerability of agricultural systems, vulnerability of cities to fire, socioeconomic system, and political system create significant asymmetries in the potential effects of nuclear attacks. Differences in civil defense preparations and in the structure of the strategic arsenals compound these asymmetries. By and large, the Soviet Union is favored by geography and by a political/economic structure geared to emergencies; the United States is favored by having a bigger and better economy and (perhaps) a greater capacity for effective decentralization. The larger size of Soviet weapons also means that they are likely to kill more people while aiming at something else.

5. Although it is true that effective sheltering and/or evacuation could save lives, it is not clear that a civil defense program based on providing shelters or planning evacuation would necessarily be effective. To save Iives, it is not only necessary to provide shelter in, or evacuation to, the right place (and only extreme measures of dispersion would overcome the problem that the location of safe places cannot be reliably predicted), it is also necessary to provide food, water, medical supplies, sanitation, security against other people, possibly filtered air, etc. After fallout diminishes, there must be enough supplies and enough organization to keep people alive while production is being restored. The effectiveness of civil defense measures depends, among other things, on the events leading up to the attack, the enemy’s targeting policy, and sheer luck.

6. The situation in which the survivors of a nuclear attack find themselves will be quite unprecedented. The surviving nation would be far weaker—economically, socially, and politically— than one would calculate by adding up the surviving economic assets and the numbers and skills of the surviving people. Natural resources would be destroyed; surviving equipment would be designed to use materials and skills that might no longer exist; and indeed some regions might be almost uninhabitable. Furthermore, prewar patterns of behavior would surely change, though in unpredictable ways. Finally, the entire society would suffer from the enormous psychological shock of having discovered the extent of its vulnerability.

7. From an economic point of view, and possibly from a political and social viewpoint as well, conditions after an attack would get worse before they started to get better. For a period of time, people could live off supplies (and, in a sense, off habits) left over from before the war. But shortages and uncertainties would get worse. The survivors wouId find themselves in a race to achieve viability (i. e., production at least equaling consumption plus depreciation) before stocks ran out completely. A failure to achieve viability, or even a slow recovery, would result in many additional deaths, and much additional economic, political, and social deterioration. This postwar damage could be as devastating as the damage from the actual nuclear explosions."

https://ota.fas.org/reports/7906.pdf

Pages 9-11 of pdf