- Sharfman, Peter et al.
The Effects of Nuclear War.
Washington: Office of Technology Assessment, 1979.
LCCN 79-600080.
-
This book-length (154 page) report by the U.S. Office of
Technology Assessment was commissioned by the U.S. Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations and delivered in May, 1979. It
should not be confused with the similarly-titled
The Effects
of Nuclear Weapons, an entirely different technical
treatment of the physical effects of nuclear detonations. The
present work undertakes “to describe the effects of a
nuclear war on the civilian populations, economies, and
societies of the United States and the Soviet Union.”
Four scenarios are explored: an attack on a single city, using
Detroit and Leningrad as examples; an attack on oil refineries
using ten missiles; a counterforce attack, including one limited
to ICBM silos; and a broad-based attack on military and economic
targets using a large fraction of the existing arsenal of the
attacking power. For each, the immediate, medium-, and
long-term effects are assessed, including the utility of civil
defense preparations and the prospects for recovery from the
damage. The death toll from the best to worst case scenarios
ranges from 200,000 to 160 million. Appendix C presents a
fictional account of the consequences of a large nuclear
exchange on a city, Charlottesville, Virginia, which was not
directly hit in the attack.
A scanned PDF
edition of this report has been published by Princeton University.
May 2020 