Much research has been devoted to the effects of nuclear weapons. But
studies have been concerned for the most part with those immediate
consequences which would be suffered by a country that was the direct
target of nuclear attack. Relatively few studies have examined the
worldwide, long term effects.
Realistic and responsible arms control policy calls for our knowing
more about these wider effects and for making this knowledge available
to the public. To learn more about them, the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency (ACDA) has initiated a number of projects, including
a National Academy of Sciences study, requested in April 1974. The
Academy's study, Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear
Weapons Detonations, a highly technical document of more than 200
pages, is now available. The present brief publication seeks to
include its essential findings, along with the results of related
studies of this Agency, and to provide as well the basic background
facts necessary for informed perspectives on the issue.
New discoveries have been made, yet much uncertainty inevitably
persists. Our knowledge of nuclear warfare rests largely on theory and
hypothesis, fortunately untested by the usual processes of trial and
error; the paramount goal of statesmanship is that we should never
learn from the experience of nuclear war.
The uncertainties that remain are of such magnitude that of themselves
they must serve as a further deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons.
At the same time, knowledge, even fragmentary knowledge, of the broader
effects of nuclear weapons underlines the extreme difficulty that
strategic planners of any nation would face in attempting to predict
the results of a nuclear war. Uncertainty is one of the major
conclusions in our studies, as the haphazard and unpredicted derivation
of many of our discoveries emphasizes. Moreover, it now appears that a
massive attack with many large-scale nuclear detonations could cause
such widespread and long-lasting environmental damage that the
aggressor country might suffer serious physiological, economic, and
environmental effects even without a nuclear response by the country
attacked.
An effort has been made to present this paper in language that does not
require a scientific background on the part of the reader.
Nevertheless it must deal in schematized processes, abstractions, and
statistical generalizations. Hence one supremely important perspective
must be largely supplied by the reader: the human perspective--the
meaning of these physical effects for individual human beings and for
the fabric of civilized life.
Fred C. Ikle
Director
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency