DANGER OF VAST FIRE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 15

DANGER OF VAST FIRE

IH2. Press Assn.—Copyright)

NEW YORK. October 2. The 108-megatan bomb that the Soviet Union was reported building roeld possibly be need to start a “fire storm" that could sweep ■mao ttone *nds of sqaare mffea, the “New York Times" said today. The newspaper, in a Washington dispatch, said the potential use of the weapon as a super “fire bomb” was pointed up in estimates made available by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. The commission’s data covered the thermal, radiation and blast effects that could be expected from such

a weapon with a force equal to 100 million tons at T.N.T. The Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Khrushchev) had said that the Soviet Union was building such a super weapon. The A.EC. estimated that the intense heat generated by such a bomb exploded in the air would ignite fires over a 60-mile radius, covering a 11400 square mile area The incendiary effects would far exceed the destructive blast effects which would range from around 18 miles from “ground zero" and the killing burst of radiation which would travel out only a little more than three miles. A commission spokesman

said the estimates, based on past tests, were “subject to uncertainties.”

The newspaper said the commission's estimates cast a new light on the bomb’s potential usefulness. There had been a tendency in the United States Government to dismiss it primarily as a psychological terror weapon. Planners had said that five 20-megaton weapons spaced around a target would be far more destructive than one 100-megaton bomb. However, as the enmmisrion’s estimates showed, the 100 megaton bomb could have a definite military application for starting a huge fire storm, the newspaper said.