The Goderich Signal-Star, 1969-07-24, Page 16r
6A CiCiDERICkI SlGNA4STAR, THURSDAY, JULY 24, 1969
E 5LUETUJ.II
•
e H-Bombi;Cro'ssroads for mankind
BY G: MacLEOD ROSS
In the previous article in this
column: "Test Tube Babies",
the bomb was -presented as a
threat .to the continuance of
mankind. Rifling through the
archives' the other day, I came
across an address given 13 years
ago by a senior science adviser *
to a Military Industrial
Conference in Chicago. Though I
heard it, delivered, I had
forgotten the dramatic way in
which the story was told and
-since it- is -as-up-to-the `to -the -minute _
today as it was in 1956, perhaps
a few of its ideas will be helpful
to a better understanding of the
true message of the hydrogen
bomb„
THE "SPECIAL
INTFIODUCTORY.OFFEB"
— THE A-BOMB
How to stop war has seldom
been a problem because the
answers are too difficult, and as
with everything else we want
and need, the puzzle is always
one of price. How much are you
willing and able to pay'? These
are the numbers which change.
The special introductory
offer was the A-bomb and no
one will ever forget the day
when President Truman
announced that the bombs had
been dropped on Hiroshima arid
Nagasaki. The dictionaries were
literally combed for superlatives
to describe the explosion. But
the trouble is that words ddnot
mean much by themselves. To
an 'astronomer 100,000,000
years is a short' time; to a nuclear
physicist a'millionth of a second
is a long time, and both; may be
speaking ,about the same
mathematical problem; 'the one
in solar space, the other in
.atoms.
What were the numbers like
fo* 'the 'A-bomb? .The _Chicago
area is roughly 30 miles long by
10 miles wide; 300 square miles.
For an A-bomb dropped at
random, .your chance of being in
the zone of complete mortality,
or complete destruction of
property, would be one in 300.
Even by Japanese experience,
your chance of being in a zone
- with any appreciable mortality
was like one in 60. This'is not
really much of a chance. You
-take a bigger risk driving to work
every, day over a period of 10
years; certainly in�a'lifetime.
;ntil
about7'1g52
.1852 tiie
government tried not to frighten
people into panic. 'An excellent
example occured at" the time.
The Coconut Grove fire in
•
Boston. Several hundred people
were btirned to death: Here was
a modern city with the best
facilities for treating a disaster,
yet in something like 20
minutes, the city was tied up
with people looking for relatives,
or people just wishing to gawk.
Had such a nominal A-bomb
been dropped without warning
on New York or Chicago, it
would not have been nearly as
serious; by Hiroshima or
Nagasaki standards, because well.
over .90- per__cent.-of--the---eityzs- -
facilities for medicine, fire, and
disaster would be outside this
zone. Perhaps 50,000 people
might have been killed directly,
perhaps as low as 10,000. But
ten times as many might have
been killed inthe rush for the
subway with the wrong warning
signal.
This- was the period . during
which civil defence against
nuclear attack was born. The
direction it should have taken
was to provide a mechanism for
orderly evacuation without
panic. Think of it soberly. If
such a bomb had been dropped
on Chicago there is • a good
chance . that you would not have
known personally a single person
in the area destroyed.
There are other comparisons.
A nominal bomb has the energy
approximately equal to that of
condensation of one inch of rain
water over one square mile of
surface. Just a local
thunderstorm. This then, was
the state of affairs on October
31, 1952, the day before Mike.
shot: a day which could be the
most important day in the
history 'of the world.
MIKE, THE LARGE ECONOMY
SIZE: THE H-BOMB
What was it like? There is a
simple scientific Law which is
going to play an important part
in your life: The Scaling Law for
Blast. Take the convenient
example of a bomb which is a
thousand ` times larger m that
another. The Law requires that
.. the same pressures and yolocities
would occur at distances which.
are 10 times greater than on the
smaller one. To a blast expert
this was the most fascinating
thing about Mike and the most
terrifying, because' when it
happened, it was essentially asit
should be with a grim warning of
how inexorable the laws of
Nature are. •
During the countdown you
hope that no one gets hurt
because you slipped a decimal
.point in the predictions. You
worry about "unseen giants"
which never got into the
calculations,
The growth of the fireball on
ordinary bombs is, a thing you
know from fastmotion picture
films. By the time yQu are aware
the bomb has_ ,detonated, the
growth has stopped and there is
no fear. Mike was a different
world. It was slowed down to let
you see for the first time what
was happening. It was a short
but harrowing period of waiting
-for----the- -fireball-- -to—reach—its..
maximum, knowing that if it did
not stop growing very soon, it
would be too late to jump. One
wondered had time run out?
The explosion was 35 miles
away and many seconds later, the
cloud covered the entire sky; a
hundred miles across and
200,000 feet into the
stratosphere into Which, only
now, man is beginning to probe.
When the shock wave came it
• was not too different from a
-rifle crack. Mike's basic note was
many, seconds long; went round
the earth a couple of times and
was hardly . heard. One felt the
pressure pulse. Not like a flick of
the finger, but like a great hand
which held down and pressed.
The negative pressure was long
drawn out and pulled on the
ear--dru`ms. The whole
atmosphere heaved with the
shock wave, as if all Nature
sighed in a long drawn out sob,
like Rachel weeping for her
children.
How can one drive home the
fact that the kind of bomb I am
talking about is, a thousand
nominal bombs all in one?
Hiroshima. to Mike took seven
• years, with vacations. I hve been
speaking to you, for roughly an.
hour, call it, 4,000 "seconds. I
could have made a simple
statement of four words in four
seconds: "War MUST stop
NOW!", and curiously enough,
those four seconds are to the
4,000 seconds of this talk as the
difference between the
Hiroshima bomb and Mike, the
H-bomb. ' ' •
Suppose we guess that a B-17
bomber cin carry 10 tons of
TNT. bombs.__A hundred planes'
would carry 'a thousand tons — a
kiloton. A hundred planes a'day
could deliver to Chicago, or any
other target, one kiloton of
explosive a day. 2.0,000 kilotons
" would require 20,000 days. A
hundred planes a day for seventy
years would add up to 'the
energy of one nominal H-bomb.
Dl. Look both "ways be-
fore you c r o s s the
street.
2. Keep from between
parked cars.
3. Ride your bike safely
and obey all signs and
signals:
4. Play your games ,.in a
safe place away from
the street."
5. Walk when you leave
the curb.
6 Where there a r e no
sidewalks walk on the -
left side o f the road
facing traf fic.
It is partly an exaggeration to
use energy , as i'bhe basis of
comparison. You will know
enough about it if you multiply
the mortality and damage at
Hiroshima or Nagasaki by at
least 100 times, until you run
out of people and things;
complete damage 100 square
miles; • moderate damage 500
square miles and light damage
100 square miles. Suppose we
, say 130 blocksto the square
mile at a value of $130 million to
--the-square- >nile. -In 1O0 -"square
miles, call it a $13 billion loss,
within the radius of
'obliteration alone. Perhaps the
way to generate positive thought
is to tell the real estate men: At
the time the shock wave is racing
across the city at a thousand
miles an ' hour, property values
are falling` at rates like a billion
dollars a second. A metropolitan
area of six million people, which
took a hundred years to build,
and in less than a minute, most
of it would be gone.
There are only three
discovery steps' in the whole
sequence: Gunpowder — Fission
bombs — Fusion bombs. You
know about Super Novae? From
time to time an ,otherwise
obscure 'star achieves a state of
fusion. It increases in brilliance
by thousands and millions of
times and for a while it is the
brightest star in the sky. If I
wished to be facetious I might
say: I can hear the astronomers
speculating as they find a new
super Nova and saying: "I see
they have finally learned flow to
doit in Cassiopeia."
We spent three times 10 to
the .power of 11 dollars in World
War II for at most three times 10
to the ° power of six casualties;
say $100,000' per head. But the
terrible difference Mike made
was that it was the Crossroads of
History.
From the time the caveman
first threw a rock, men have
hoped to create the ultimate
weapon to end war. Bravery was
the commonsense •of military
experience, because the statistics
of the conventional weapons was
their fantastic inefficiency.
•When a chance is small, only a
coward cares whether the risk is
one in a million or one in a
thousand. But there , comes a
time, and it is with ''us now,
when we push the statistics one
order- af=rriagnitude_.tiao far,,,and
courage is no longer enough.
THE PRICE
We are now ready° to discuss
Elmer says:
EiNP THE
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the Price, the aspects of which
are: Technology, Shelters,
Evacuation and Dispersion, and,
because I have children, it makes
sense to look also in the
"bargain basements."
Technologically we can keep
the ' offensive use of ,a
thermo-nuclear or atomic
weapon an insane act, as long as
we and Russia' maintain • the
capacity for instantaneous
retaliation. Meantime, while we
talk peace we must prepare for
-'war: �_ 1111. 1111.., .-_1111 .-_ W
Evacuation is like insurance.
You cannot afford to be without
it. You could turn a liability into
an asset here, and use emergency
to straighten out a traffic system
which is best described as
"pitifully inadequate for normal
traffic." '`
• Shelters make a lot of sense —
on blockbusters and A-bombs.
Big bombs or little bombs; the
damage over the greatest area is
always marginal and this is
where you can do the greatest
.good with shelters. But, there is
no price "you would have paid";
when the need arises.
Diversion is real protection
— for a time, but social and
„economic forces drive millions
of people and you will not turn
•
11
WE USED TO WORK HARD
TO °ET AHEAD,
NOW -A -DAYS
WE WORK HARD
ro STAY EVEN!
JOE'S BP
Service Station
and
Coffee ,Shop
411 Huron Rd., Goderich
24-6871
.tf
them back from their cities and
ghettoes without comparable
effort. it is a sad commentary if
our civilization pattern is to be
set by the Bomb.
Evacuation, shelters,
dispersion. Which? All are not
enough! They are but stop gaps..
The Russians have scientists too,
and gif their hearts are not in the
right place, what difference will
it make then, to either of us,
who fired first? ,,Look into the
face of Mike! It is not honour,
.nor -pride nzsY,_the: Cbtil;tit`iltion
186'', nor the Communist
Manifesto which looks back; but
only .the economy of nature and
the good old Scaling Law. There
will be no conferences with the
H-bomb, for this is a different,
world than the one into which
we wera bo n.
[Next week we will' discuss
the "Bargain Basement" and the
Plan.]
* Francis B. Porzel. Senior
Science Advisor to Armour
Research Foundation of Illinois
Institute of Technology.
Chicago, Illinois.
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