We have considered the problems of large-scale nuclear war from the
standpoint of the countries not under direct attack, and the
difficulties they might encounter in postwar recovery. It is true that
most of the horror and tragedy of nuclear war would be visited on the
populations subject to direct attack, who would doubtless have to cope
with extreme and perhaps insuperable obstacles in seeking to
reestablish their own societies. It is no less apparent, however, that
other nations, including those remote from the combat, could suffer
heavily because of damage to the global environment.
Finally, at least brief mention should be made of the global effects
resulting from disruption of economic activities and communications.
Since 1970, an increasing fraction of the human race has been losing
the battle for self-sufficiency in food, and must rely on heavy
imports. A major disruption of agriculture and transportation in the
grain-exporting and manufacturing countries could thus prove disastrous
to countries importing food, farm machinery, and
fertilizers--especially those which are already struggling with the
threat of widespread starvation. Moreover, virtually every economic
area, from food and medicines to fuel and growth engendering
industries, the less-developed countries would find they could not rely
on the "undamaged" remainder of the developed world for trade
essentials: in the wake of a nuclear war the industrial powers directly
involved would themselves have to compete for resources with those
countries that today are described as "less-developed."
Similarly, the disruption of international communications--satellites,
cables, and even high frequency radio links--could be a major obstacle
to international recovery efforts.
In attempting to project the after-effects of a major nuclear war, we
have considered separately the various kinds of damage that could
occur. It is also quite possible, however, that interactions might
take place among these effects, so that one type of damage would couple
with another to produce new and unexpected hazards. For example, we
can assess individually the consequences of heavy worldwide radiation
fallout and increased solar ultraviolet, but we do not know whether the
two acting together might significantly increase human, animal, or
plant susceptibility to disease. We can conclude that massive dust
injection into the stratosphere, even greater in scale than Krakatoa,
is unlikely by itself to produce significant climatic and environmental
change, but we cannot rule out interactions with other phenomena, such
as ozone depletion, which might produce utterly unexpected results.
We have come to realize that nuclear weapons can be as unpredictable as
they are deadly in their effects. Despite some 30 years of development
and study, there is still much that we do not know. This is
particularly true when we consider the global effects of a large-scale
nuclear war.