Kearny’s Nuclear War Survival Skills Thursday, May 14 2009
Nine or so months ago, I was working with Tom McCabe on a Palo Alto-based SIAI-funded research project that covered topics such as catastrophic risk, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and intelligence enhancement. A segment of the research involved looking for quantitative estimates of the probability of general nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. It was very difficult to find any (why aren’t experts ever forced to at least come up with quantitative guesses?), but we had a few — JFK famously estimated the likelihood of general nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis at between 33% and 50%.
To explore the topic further, Tom met with Professor Emeritus Martin Hellman. Hellman has studied nuclear risk for decades and gave the present risk of nuclear war as 1% annually. In a 2008 paper, he outlined nuclear near misses and compiled estimates others had given.
Eventually we moved on to other topics, but Tom mentioned a book to me: Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny, an infantry reserve lieutenant and scientist who apparently spent a fair amount of time in the jungles of Central America with a machete in hand. Kearny was a pioneer in improving the strategies and equipment for the US Army operating in jungles, and was awarded the Legion of Merit for his work.
It wasn’t until a few months later that I read Nuclear War Survival Skills, and I was extremely impressed by the book. I would say it had the most surprises out of any book I’ve read in the last year. It turns out that the vast majority of bomb shelters built around the world during the Cold War would have been completely ineffective if there actually were a danger of fallout, due to inadequate ventilation:
Because of the worldwide extreme fear of radiation, civil defense specialists who prepare official self-help instructions for building shelters have made radiation protection their overriding objective. Apparently the men in Moscow and Washington who decide what shelter-building and shelter-ventilating instructions their fellow citizens receive – especially instructions for building and improving expedient shelters-do not understand the ventilation requirements for maintaining endurable temperature/humidity conditions in crowded shelters. It must be remembered that shelters may have to be occupied continuously for days in warm or hot weather.
Russian small expedient shelters are even more dangerously under-ventilated than are most of their American counterparts, and can serve to illustrate similar ventilation deficiencies of American shelters. Figure 6.5 is a Russian drawing (with its caption translated) of a “Wood – Earth Shelter” in a Soviet self-help civil defense booklet, “Anti-Radiation Shelters in Rural Areas.” This booklet, published in a 200,000- copy edition, includes illustrated instructions for building 20 different types of expedient shelters. All 20 of these shelters have dangerously inadequate natural ventilation, and none of them have air pumps. Note that this high-protection-factor, covered-trench shelter depends on air flowing down through its “Dust Filter with Straw Packing (hay)” and out through its small “Exhaust Duct with Damper.”
As part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s participation in Defense Nuclear Agency’s “Dice Throw” 1978 blast test, I built two Russian Pole- Covered Trench Shelters. These were like the shelter shown in Fig. 6.5, except that each lacked a trapdoor and filter. As anticipated, so little air flowed through these essentially dead-ended test shelters that temperatures soon became unbearable.
The issue of ventilation of shelters has been so poorly addressed in official documents that the author had to invent an expedient air pump, the Kearny Air Pump, to fill the need. Official attention to this crucial detail has been all but absent for the last 50 or more years.
Because of the apparent lack of attention to the crucial issue of ventilation, hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives could be lost in the aftermath of a general nuclear war because of people being forced to leave their shelters due to unbearable heat. If we bothered to spend billions of dollars to build fallout shelters, why did we neglect the issue of ventilation? Because of irrational fear over radiation from fallout. As Kearny points out in the book, fallout particles are mostly dangerous if they get into your food or water — in most cases, tiny fallout particles will not have enough radioactive material to radiate very intensely or for long. Even in areas with the heaviest fallout, leaving the shelter for a 20-30 seconds to check a water supply should not be too dangerous. There is a myth that any degree of radiation can kill instantaneously. Like AI, most people’s knowledge about the physics of nuclear weapons and radiation comes from Hollywood science fiction.
It gets worse: according to Kearny, many civil fallout meters can only measure levels of radiation far too low for practical use in a post-attack situation. Here was his experience with some commercial fallout meters:
Used and surplus dose rate meters and dosimeters are likely to be inaccurate or otherwise unreliable. Very few buyers have access to a radiation source powerful enough to check instruments for accuracy over their full ranges of measurements. My education regarding bargain fallout meters began in 1961, after I bought two dosimeters of a model then being produced by a leading manufacturing company and purchased in quantity by the Office of Civil Defense. Within a week after receiving these instruments, one of them could not be charged. The other was found to be inaccurate. Later I learned that the manufacturing company sold to the public its instruments that did not pass Government quality tests.
As Kearny explains, having an accurate fallout meter in the aftermath of a nuclear attack is pretty much a necessity. But so few of them exist and those that do may be unreliable. He comes to the rescue again, however, with plans for an ingeniously designed expedient fallout meter.
The book has many other extremely valuable suggestions for use during a post-attack situation. After having read the book, I’ve started to think that the chance of survival with this knowledge would be much, much higher than without it. Especially in the most hard-hit areas, where large ground-level explosions throw up a lot of fallout.
Besides being useful in the aftermath of a potential nuclear war, the book lets us know what to expect in the opening moments of an attack, as well as common myths about nuclear weapons and radiation. Here’s a portion about what to expect in an initial attack:
The great majority of Americans would not be injured by the first explosions of a nuclear attack. In an all-out attack, the early explosions would give sufficient warning for most people to reach nearby shelter in time. Fifteen minutes or more before big intercontinental ballistic missiles (lCBMs) blasted our cities, missile sites, and other extensive areas, most citizens would see the sky lit up to an astounding brightness, would hear the thunderous sounds of distant explosions, or would note the sudden outage of electric power and most communications. These reliable attack warnings would result from the explosion of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). These are smaller than many ICBMs. The SLBM warheads would explode on Strategic Air Command bases and on many civilian airport runways that are long enough to be used by our big bombers. Some naval bases and high-priority military command and communication centers would also be targeted.
The vast majority of Americans do not know how to use these warnings from explosions to help them save their lives. Neither are they informed about the probable strategies of an enemy nuclear attack.
Nuclear bombs only vaporize a relatively small area. Like Indiana Jones, who survives a nuclear explosion in the most recent movie by jumping into a refrigerator (that part could actually be realistic!), people outside ground zero might survive a nuclear blast if they are not directly exposed to the thermal pulse and are not in front of a window or hit by flying debris. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there were home-made, soil-based blast shelters near ground zero that survived completely intact, but they were mostly unused. (The authorities and citizens did not know that a single incoming Allied plane posed such a profound threat.) Kearny points out that many casualties in a nuclear attack might be due to people running to windows in major cities, looking at the sky lit up by SLBMs, only to be killed by blades of glass when otherwise-survivable ICBMs explode.
I don’t think that general nuclear war is a hugely probable risk: I’d give it a 20% probability of occurring over the next 40 years, taking into account the probability of accidents where China/Russia/France/Britain/USA think one of the others is attacking them and retaliate too hastily. What I do think is interesting, however, is how woefully unprepared we would be if a nuclear war did occur. The difference between 50 million casualties and 100 million casualties could be simply a matter of knowing simple facts like 1) fallout shelters are necessary, 2) ventilation is necessary, 3) have a small store of water and food ready, 4) avoiding radiation poisoning is more important than having more than a small meal a day, 5) a fallout meter is a necessity, 6) treat injuries with “benign neglect”, 7) there is enough grain storage to feed the whole country for two years even if all crops are ruined, etc.
This is good information and specifics. I think also that making housing and office buildings more robust with hurriquake nails and blast resistant wall paper would greatly reduce casualties. This avoids the time pressure to get to fallout shelters for initial blast protection. More robust buildings would also lessen fire risks (collapsed buildings can have gas leaks that catch fire).
Working out the ventilation issue is important, but could be lessened if in many less than full scale exchanges, there are effective evacuation plans and systems in place.
There are much more effective anti-radiation medication in development (carbon nanotube based).
Michael: You’ve tackled a difficult subject and may be the only writer in the country to take this on. There have been writers in the past as well as commentary but it’s getting a generation old.
You pointed out key elements in Nuclear War Survival skills, ventilation being one of the most important. People think they need to be a mile underground with lead lined walls and forget simple things like fresh air.
If we don’t have a nuclear war first you could end up as a spokesman for your generation in this field. I was about your age when I started back in the ’70s. I graduated from a Quaker college and am very much a pacifist. But in regards to disarmament I say yes only after we have a national blast shelter system that can absorb an all-out nuclear attack. Blast shelters are true defense. To advocate nuclear disamament when Americans are unprepared and clueless what to do in a nuclear war only invites attack.
Nuclear War Survival Skills is better described as a “manual” rather than a book. It’s a complilation of life-saving information for an unprepared America and more of an encylcopedia or referance guide. Most people need only read a small part of it to get the life-saving information they need. They are generally overwhelmed at the thought of doing anything about nuclear let alone read a 250-page “book.”
99.99% of Americans are mentally incapable of thinking rationally about nuclear weapons and their effects, let alone have the ability to write about it.
Keep this up and your name will go down in history if anyone is left to write it.
It strikes me that a world post major nuclear war would not really be worth living in. A stash of good quality recreational drugs may make better preperation than a home-made radiation meter and a shelter…
Roko, I think you’re overestimating the damage of even a major nuclear war, possibly due to exposure to post-apocalyptic fiction.. Most of the radioactivity from the fallout would be gone in a few weeks. No more than a third of the populations of the US/Russia would be likely to die, possibly much less if these ideas are spread. (Terrible, but hardly enough to make life not worth living for the rest of us.) Both countries have years of grain stores to feed everyone while mechanized farming is rebooted, if it was even disrupted to begin with. Nuclear “winter” would be temporary (only lowering temperature by a few degrees), and pretty much dissipate as soon as most of the dust falls to the ground.
Evidence from the Toba eruption scene shows that substantial around there lived right through the explosion.
It seems to be a persistent point of contention: just how bad would an all-out nuclear war be?
You should look at this executive summary
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.”
It does seem that there has been some emotionally motivated overestimation of the magnitude of the disastrous effects of nuclear war, particularly emanating from Carl Sangan.
Since the risk from nukes is low at the moment, I won’t be spending any time digging a hole in the garden.
Yes, Carl Sagan vastly overexaggerated the risks of nuclear war, as Kearny points out in his book.
The risk of nukes is not that low. You should keep in mind that Israel is constantly aching to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and military generals in Russia have solemnly threatened against any such action. Plus, Pakistan is falling apart as we speak.
It seems to me that the vast majority of people will never adequately inform themselves about what they should do in the event of a nuclear war. So, even though the survival skills are known, they would not be known by most people when they are most needed.
So, I am wondering if the government (or somebody) could produce some very brief, efficient, effective PSAs and be prepared to broadcast them at the time when people would be at full attention. For example, I am guessing that even in a surprise attack, the first nukes would target enemy nuclear facilities and not cities. So, when such an attack is reasonably verified the government could broadcast continuous messages, “If you see a flash or hear a boom, don’t go near a window!”. How many lives would that save?
The TV program “The Day After” I think was a fairly accurate description of what it would be like. The fallout stopped being radioactive after two weeks. People could actually drive away from targeted areas. Although the destruction was miserable, there were survivors.
Michael,
On this topic, you might find the Dean Ing novel Pulling Through both enjoyable and instructive. I don’t have a copy of Kearny’s book to check for similarities (yet), but I think you will find the novel’s discussion of the shelter ventilation problem and engineer Ing’s solution to be … well, novel. You should consider adding the title to your site store.
I believe that the best invention in nuclear war survivalism remains Cresson Kearny’s Fallout Meter. This thing, is simple, accurate (beats some electronic meters) and damn cheap to make. Come and visit my blog where I discuss further on the subject…
Global Warming or Nuclear War?