‘Mankind would survive nuclear war’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33966, 6 October 1975, Page 15

‘Mankind would survive nuclear war’

(By

WILLIAM STOCKTON

of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

WASHINGTON, October 3.

A full-scale nuclear war would devastate the warring nations, but distant, uninvolved countries might survive and most of the ill-effects would be gone a quarter century later, a panel of scientists has found. Nuclear weapons experts have a thorough knowledge of what would happen to a country hit by nuclear weapons in a large-scale war. But there is little knowledge about world-wide, long-term effects upon mankind’s survival and life in general. Scientists attempted to assess the world-wide effects in a National Academy of Sciences report released late yesterday. They studied what would happen to distant countries — particularly those in the Southern Hemisphere, where nuclear weapons probably would not strike if the United States, the Soviet Union and China some day became involved lin nuclear war.

They assumed nuclear detonations equivalent to 10,000 million tons of T.N.T. would be set off. By comparison. the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima had the force of 20,000 tons of T.N.T.

The final report predicted immediate ill-effects in distant countries but said that they would not be permanent. However, the scientists repeatedly stressed the uncertainty of many of the conclusions and the need for further study in many areas. They found that in uninvolved countries:

Natural ecological systems would suffer significant ill-effects but this damage would be minor compared to the possibility of total disruption of biological systems. Because of the “resiliency of natural ecosystems,” recovery within 25 years would be nearly complete. The upper atmosphere ozone shield over the area south of the Equator would be reduced 20 per cent to 40 per cent, but it would be largely restored in about four years. The decline in ozone and dust injected into the atmosphere could lead to climate changes, but present knowledge about what causes such changes is “insufficient to predict these effects.” The possibility of serious climatic changes was not ruled out. Decline in ozone would cause more ultraviolet radiation from the sun to strike the earth, pos-

sibly damaging crops, causing immediate cases of incapacitating sunburn and increased skin cancer. Knowledge of widescale effects upon plant and animal life from greatly-increased ultraviolet radiation is meagre, however. The next generation would experience about a 2 per cent increase in genetic disease caused by radiation but by four generations later the effects would be declined by half.

“The report indicates that, if all relevant factors have indeed been adequately considered, when these interim effects subside, much of the planet will appear to have recovered,” wrote the National Academy of Sciences president, Mr Philip Handler, in an introductory letter with the report. Mr Handler said that this meant mankind would survive a nuclear war.

This interpretation was attacked by the Federation of American Scientists, an independent group active in issues surrounding nuclear arms control. It said: “The state of science being what it is, the conclusion proves little ... a single scientist, tomorrow or next year, may suggest a mechanism by which the academy would be flatly wrong in even its extreme formulation of the problem.”