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Foreword Introduction The Mechanics of Nuclear Explosions Radioactive Fallout A. Local Fallout B. Worldwide Effects of Fallout Alterations of the Global Environment A. High Altitude Dust B. Ozone Some Conclusions Note 1: Nuclear Weapons Yield Note 2: Nuclear Weapons Design Note 3: Radioactivity Note 4: Nuclear Half-Life Note 5: Oxygen, Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation
Much research has been devoted to the effects of nuclear weapons. Butstudies have been concerned for the most part with those immediateconsequences which would be suffered by a country that was the directtarget of nuclear attack. Relatively few studies have examined theworldwide, long term effects.
Realistic and responsible arms control policy calls for our knowingmore about these wider effects and for making this knowledge availableto the public. To learn more about them, the Arms Control andDisarmament Agency (ACDA) has initiated a number of projects, includinga National Academy of Sciences study, requested in April 1974. TheAcademy's study, Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple NuclearWeapons Detonations, a highly technical document of more than 200pages, is now available. The present brief publication seeks toinclude its essential findings, along with the results of relatedstudies of this Agency, and to provide as well the basic backgroundfacts necessary for informed perspectives on the issue.
New discoveries have been made, yet much uncertainty inevitablypersists. Our knowledge of nuclear warfare rests largely on theory andhypothesis, fortunately untested by the usual processes of trial anderror; the paramount goal of statesmanship is that we should neverlearn from the experience of nuclear war.
The uncertainties that remain are of such magnitude that of themselvesthey must serve as a further deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons.At the same time, knowledge, even fragmentary knowledge, of the broadereffects of nuclear weapons underlines the extreme difficulty thatstrategic planners of any nation would face in attempting to predictthe results of a nuclear war. Uncertainty is one of the majorconclusions in our studies, as the haphazard and unpredicted derivationof many of our discoveries emphasizes. Moreover, it now appears that amassive attack with many large-scale nuclear detonations could causesuch widespread and long-lasting