Ralph Brandt. Common Sense in York, PA

Just before dawn on that August morning an intense light called flashed across the desert. It was bright in the pre-dawn darkness, but had it been high noon on a clear day, the flash of light would have eclipsed the sun. With that flash, atomic explosions moved from theory to reality. And like the burst of energy called the big bang, in that flash, the nuclear age was born. I realize I am in the minority, but I personally believe the World War II attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary. The destruction of those two cities brought on thinking that pervaded the minds of the decision makers in 50's and 60's, possibly into the 70's. If you have seen the short segments that show the civil defense "duck and cover" public service announcements of the 50's on TV Land showing children in schools ducking under their desks, you have probably laughed. But you would not if you were there. To get a better perspective look at the various pages of a document that was printed and circulated by our government. It was to provide the family with information that would help them survive a nuclear attack. Some of the information is almost ludicrous, some is very practical for any family facing any disaster, man made or natural. It includes a message from President Eisenhower. Take a tour of the document. It will give you a flavor of the thinking about this time. Click on the approprite spots to view a page - use your browser's back button to return to this page.

The back of the cover Page2 contains several messages, one from President Eisenhower. The other two writers were not significant enought that I remember either of them. The theme is that the new H-bombs are much more powerful, we must be prepared. The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 20 Kilotons, the equivalent of exploding 20,000 tons of TNT. The bombs of the middle fifties were as much as 100 Megatons or Million tons of TNT. A 20 MT bomb would be one thousand times as powerful as a 20 KT. In two decades the destructive power of a single bomber, carrying one bomb went from 2 tons (the biggest pre-World War conventional bomb to 20 KT, to 20 MT. This was mind boggling to say the least.

If you read between the lines in the document, it is obvious that the government EXPECTED heavy casualties from an attack, no matter what was done. But the plan was to get people out of the cities because the concentration makes a fine target and because a hit or near miss creates many casualties. The joke that almost only counts in horseshoes, grenades and nuclear warfare lost its luster. The Interstate highway system (incidentally called the Eisenhour System) was started about in the middle 50's, about the time this document was printed. The thrusts of the interstate highway system was to allow large amounts of troups and supplies to move within the country and to allow us to evacuate the cities if we had a couple of hours before an attack. Anyone who has tried to get out of a major city at rush hour knows the futility of this plan. In addition, the decision to put the population on the road placed them in great jeopardy because an automobile affords little protection. Although some would die in the city, if they were only partly out of the city and in automobiles the death toll could be higher. I think we can use a corrolary here, it is generally better to be in a permanent structure than a motor vehicle in a storm.

Many of the futile attempts at atomic security look funny now. But let's put this into a different perspective. The USSR had several thousand bombs, many in the 50 to 100 Megaton range, compared to the 20 Kiloton range for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. They could target the area surrounding the city as well as the center. A 20KT bomb has a near 100% kill zone of about 1 mile radius. Of course a 20MT does not have a kill area of 1000 times that distance.

As already stated, a characteristic feature of the atomic bomb, which is quite foreign to ordinary explosives, is that a very appreciable fraction of the energy liberated becomes into radiant heat and light. With TNT or Plastic explosive the largest component is the blast. Before the first atomic explosions we had no idea what the effect would be. For a sufficiently large explosion, the flash burn produced by this radiated energy will become the dominant cause of damage, since the area of burn damage will increase roughly in proportion to the energy released, whereas the area of blast damage increases only with the two-thirds power of the energy. Although the mechanism of damage was more evenly balanced at 20 KT the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, the effects of the flash were, however, very evident, and many casualties resulted from flash burns. A discussion of the casualties caused by flash burns will be given later; in this section will be described the other flash effects which were observed in the two cities. From THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI by The Manhattan Engineer District, June 29, 1946.

Note: This document is available on the internet in several forms and is no longer covered by copyright. I am placing it on my site in Microsoft .doc form for anyone to read in case they cannot find it elsewhere.

The thrust of this whole HPE document is simple, have enough of our society survive to continue it. We apparently concede that there will be losses. We have a corrollary today with the declining of the ABM. In the 80's we felt a system to ward off the thousands of USSR warheads was totally impractical. We would have had to knock out nearly one unndred percent of the warheads, something considered impractical. If five percent got through, it was unacceptable. We signed a treaty with the Soviet Union to not pursue ABM and worked to reduce the chance of a launch. But a system that will knock out a few warheads, even if multiple targeting of the warheads is needed is a viable system now. The third world countries that are now joining the nuclear club have only a few warheads and a few launch vehicles. Let's say we build 2000 AMB misssiles. The Soviets could have overpowered them by launching more than 1500 vehicles, assuming some of the ABM units miss. But if we had an attack with 10 missiles, five percent of the 2000 could be fired to target each missile with 10 ABM's. No matter how good or bad, the system has a better chance of success.

Page2

Page3 discusses a Family Action Plan to make the whole family a part of the plan to survive. It is interesting that it discusses that what is appropriate for nuclear defense is also valid for storms, floods, fires, earthquakes and tornados. Althought some of theses disasters require different actions, the basics are the same.

Page4 covers the basics. The major theme of this document runs counter to the Liberal theme. Here we are to care for ourselves. The Liberal theme is the government will care for us. One of the stinging rebukes of the Japanese people in Hiroshima came from EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT Hiroshima -- August 6th, 1945 by Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosphy at Tokyo's Catholic University

Among the passersby, there are many who are uninjured. In a purposeless, insensate manner, distraught by the magnitude of the disaster most of them rush by and none conceives the thought of organizing help on his own initiative. They are concerned only with the welfare of their own families. It became clear to us during these days that the Japanese displayed little initiative, preparedness, and organizational skill in preparation for catastrophes. They failed to carry out any rescue work when something could have been saved by a cooperative effort, and fatalistically let the catastrophe take its course. When we urged them to take part in the rescue work, they did everything willingly, but on their own initiative they did very little.

I do not think Father Siemes was being crass, he and the others of his party, although themselves more than slightly injured, had just undertaken two rescue missions to help others of their order and neighbors who were more serioiusly injured. They had no way of knowing that they could forfeit their lives by doing so. Additional bombs could have fallen. They were foreigners, they could have been mistaken for American spies. Without that initiative, more would have died.

The level of preparation spelled out by Page4 would have helped at Hiroshima based on this account by having some supplies in houses outside the destruction zone and by having people who had "pre-thought" how they would use them. One may say, "how do you store supplies outside the destruction zone?" Easy. Disperse them so that only some are destroyed.

Page5 tells what to do when the signal sounds. One of the things I hear consistently about nuclear warfare is that the person hopes they go quickly if it happens. I can't say that I agree with them. The reason is simple, I have a faith in God that like the Apostle Paul, I am content in whatever state I am in. If a bomb falls and my life is spared, then God has some reason and I am to be here. I have no right to short circuit that.

At the time this document was printed the only delivery method for a nuclear weapon was a long range bomber. They flew subsonic, in fact they were generally below 600 miles an hour. At that speed we had hours if we got early detection. There may have been time to evacuate cities, if the planning was good. But one thing I wondered, where are you going to put the residents of Washington DC? How do you feed them once they evacuate? Page5

Page6 is a description of what to do. And pages 5 and 6 mention CONELRAD. Few today remember the little two triangle-shaped marks that were printed on every radio dial in those days. At that time, there were few FM receivers. The marks were at 640 and 1240 kc (Note this document is not the more recent unit, KHZ). If an attack came, we were to tune the radio to one of these points on the dial for emergency information. During WWII the bombers on both sides used standard broadcast and short wave stations to find their targets. It was simple. Every plane had a radio with a directional antenna, like the TV antennas that must be turned to get the best signal. If the town they were attacking had a radio station, they would be given its frequency. They would use it as a point to keep them on track. Because the route they flew was not straight it was not that simple, but the existance of the station and its location was still a help. The Germans countered by shutting down stations if they thought the raid was headed toward them.

But the station need not be in the city being bombed to be useful. If two stations of known location were available, triangulation to them would accurately fix the plane's location.

CONELRAD was built on that premise. An attacking bomber fleet must be denied this resource. The answer was simple. The emergency programming was sent by land line to many transmitters, generally regular commercial stations that were able to move frequency and drop power. The reduced power made the signal more difficult to use for triangulation. It is easy to DF a strong signal and get an accurate fix. Make the signal weaker and the fix is more fuzzy. Then to make it more difficult all stations were on one two frequencies, you couldn't identify the station by either its frequency or its program. And the stations switched off and on. For the American citizen listening for information, this only meant the signal got weaker and stronger. To the bomber navigator, this meant the fixes were worhtless. Page6

Page7 and Page8 are only more information on how to do it.

Copyright Ralph Brandt, 2001

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Common Sense in York PA, Copyright 1995 Ralph E. Brandt, York PA