Surviving a nuclear attack Irwin Redlener
so a big question that we’re facing now
and have been for quite a number of
years now are we at risk of a nuclear
attack now there’s a bigger question
that’s probably actually more important
than that is the notion of permanently
eliminating the possibility of a nuclear
attack eliminating the threat altogether
and I would like to make a case to you
that over the years since we first
develop atomic weaponry until this very
moment we’ve actually lived in a
dangerous nuclear world that’s
characterized by two phases which I’m
going to go through with you right now
first of all we started off the nuclear
age in 1945 the United States had
developed a couple of atomic weapons
through the Manhattan Project and the
idea was very straightforward we would
use the power of the atom to end the
atrocities in the horror of this
unending world war two that we’ve been
involved in in Europe and in the Pacific
and 1945 we were the only nuclear power
we had a few nuclear weapons two of
which we dropped on Japan and Hiroshima
few days later in Nagasaki in August in
1945 killing about 250,000 people
between those two and for a few years we
were the only nuclear power on earth but
by 1949 the Soviet Union had decided it
was unacceptable to have us as the only
nuclear power and they began to match
what the United States had developed and
from 1949 to 1985 was an extraordinary
time of a buildup of a nuclear arsenal
that no one could possibly have imagined
back in the 1940s
so by 1985 each of those red bombs up
here is equivalent of a thousand
warheads the world had 65,000 nuclear
warheads and seven members of something
that came to be known as the nuclear
Club and it was an extraordinary time
and I’m going to go through some of the
mentality that we that Americans and the
rest of the world were experiencing but
I want to just point out to you that 95%
of
nuclear weapons at any particular time
since 1985 going forward of course were
a part of the Arsenal’s of the United
States and the Soviet Union after 1985
and before the breakup of the Soviet
Union we began to disarm from a nuclear
point of view we began to counter
proliferate and we dropped the number of
nuclear warheads in the world to about a
total of 21,000 it’s a very difficult
number to deal with because what we’ve
done is we Quantico decommissioned some
of the warheads they’re still probably
usable they could be recommissioned but
the way they count things which is very
complicated we think that we think we
have about a third of the nuclear
weapons we had before but we also in
that period of time added two more
members to the nuclear club Pakistan and
North Korea so we stand today when they
still fully armed nuclear arsenal among
many countries around the world but a
very different set of circumstances so
I’m going to talk about a nuclear threat
story in two chapters chapter one is
1949 to 1991 when the Soviet Union broke
up and what we were dealing with at that
point through those years was a
superpowers nuclear arms race it was
characterized by a nation versus nation
very fragile standoff and basically we
lived for all those years and some might
argue that we still do in a situation of
being on the brink literally of an
apocalyptic planetary calamity
it’s incredible that we actually lived
through all that we were totally
dependent during those years on this
amazing acronym which is mad stands for
mutually assured destruction so it meant
if you if you attacked us we would
attack you virtually simultaneously and
the end result would be a destruction of
your country and mine so the threat of
my own destruction kept me from
launching a nuclear attack on you that’s
the way we live and the danger that of
course is that a misreading of a radar
screen could actually cause a counter
launch even though the first country had
not actually launched anything during
this chapter one there was a high level
of public awareness of
out the potential of nuclear catastrophe
and an indelible image was implanted in
our collective minds that in fact
nuclear holocaust would be absolutely
globally destructive and could in some
ways mean the end of civilization as we
know it so this was chapter 1 now the
odd thing is that even though we knew
that there would be that kind of
civilization obliteration we engaged in
America in a series in fact in the
Soviet Union in a series of response
planning it was it was absolutely
incredible
so premise one is we’d be destroying the
world and then premise 2 is why don’t we
get prepared for it so what we what we
offered ourselves was a collection of
things I’m just going to go skim through
a few things just to the jogger members
if you were born after 1950 this is just
considered this entertainment otherwise
its memory lane this was these children
are practicing to Duck and Cover just as
you do in your school this was basically
an attempt to teach our school children
that if we did get engaged in a nuclear
confrontation and atomic war then we
wanted our school children to kind of
basically Duck and Cover that was the
principle you you there would be a
nuclear conflagration about to hit us
and if you get under your desk things
would be okay
I didn’t do all that well in psychiatry
and medical school but I was interested
in I think this was seriously delusional
secondly we told people to go down in
their basements and build a fallout
shelter maybe it’d be a study when we
weren’t having an atomic war or you
could use it at the TV room or as many
teenagers found at a very very safe
place for a little privacy with your
girlfriend and and actually so there are
multiple uses of the bomb shelters or
you could buy a prefabricated bomb
shelter you can simply bury in the
ground now
the bomb shelters at that point let’s
say you bought a prefab one every a few
hundred dollars maybe up to five hundred
you got a fancy one yet what percentage
of Americans do you think ever had a
bomb shelter in their house what
percentage lived in a house with a bomb
shelter less than 2% about 1.4 percent
of the population as far as anyone knows
did anything either making a space in
their basement or actually building a
bomb shelter many buildings public
buildings around the country this is New
York City had these little civil defense
signs and the idea was that you would
run into one of these shelters and be
safe from the nuclear weaponry and one
of the greatest governmental delusions
of all time was something that happened
in the early days of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency FEMA as we
now know and are well aware of their
behaviors from Katrina here is their
first big public announcement they would
propose and they actually there were
about six volumes written on this a
crisis relocation plan that was
dependent upon the United States having
three to four days warning that the
Soviets were going to attack us so the
goal was to evacuate the target cities
we would move people out of the target
cities into the countryside and I’m
telling you I actually testified at the
Senate about the absolute ludicrous idea
that we would actually evacuate and
actually have three or four days warning
which is completely off the wall turns
out that they had another idea behind it
even though this is they’ve telling the
public is to save us the idea was that
we would force the Soviets to retarget
their nuclear weapons very expensive and
potentially double their arsenal Dena
only take out the original site but take
out sites where people were going this
was this is what currently as it turns
out was behind all this was just really
really frightening the main point here
is we were dealing with a complete
disconnect from reality the civil
defense programs were disconnected from
the reality of what we’d see in an
all-out nuclear war so organizations
like physicians for social social
responsibility around 1979 started
saying this a lot publicly they would do
a bombing run they’d go to your city and
they’d say here’s a map of your city
here’s what’s going to happen if we get
a nuclear hit so no possibility of
medical response to or meaningful
preparedness for all-out nuclear war so
we had to prevent nuclear war if we
expected to survive this disconnect was
never actually resolved and what
happened was when we get into chapter 2
of the nuclear threat era which started
back in 1945 chapter 2 starts in 1991
when the Soviet Union broke up we
effectively lost that adversary as a
potential attacker of the United States
for the most part it’s not completely
gone I’m going to come back to that but
from 1991 through the present time
emphasized by the attacks of 2001 the
idea of a all-out nuclear war has
diminished and the idea of a single
event active nuclear terrorism is what
we have instead although the scenario
has changed very considerably the fact
is that we haven’t changed our mental
image of what a nuclear war means I’m
going to tell you what the implications
that are just a second so what is a
nuclear terror threat and there’s four
key ingredients to describing it first
thing is that the global nuclear weapons
in the stockpiles that I showed you in
those original maps happens to be not
uniformly secured and it’s particularly
not secure in the former Soviet Union
now in Russia there are many many sites
where warheads are stored and in fact
lots of sites were fissionable materials
like highly enriched uranium and
plutonium are absolutely not safe they
are available to be bought stolen
whatever they are acquirable let me put
it that way from 1993 to 2006 the
National Atomic Energy Agency documented
175 cases of nuclear theft 18 of which
involved highly enriched uranium or
plutonium the key ingredients to make a
nuclear weapon the global stockpile of
highly enriched uranium is about 1,300
at the low end to about 2100 metric tons
more than 100 megatons of this is stored
in particularly insecure Russian
facilities how much of that do you think
it would take to actually build a pen
kiloton bomb well you need about 75
pounds of it so what I’d like to show
you is what it would take to hold 75
pounds of highly enriched uranium this
is not a product placement it’s just
fact if I was going to call I’d be
pretty distressed about this but but but
basically this is it this is what you
would need to steal or buy out of that
100 metric tonne stockpile that’s
relatively insecure to create the type
of bomb that was used in Hiroshima now
you might want to look at plutonium as
another fishable material that you might
use in a bomb that you’d need 10 to 13
pounds of plutonium
now plutonium 10 to 13 pounds this this
is enough plutonium to create a Nagasaki
size atomic weapon now this situation
already I you know I don’t really like
thinking about this although somehow got
myself a job where I have to think about
it so the point is that we’re very very
insecure in terms of developing this
material the second thing is what about
the know-how and there’s a lot of
controversy about whether terror
organizations have the know-how to
actually make a nuclear weapon
well there’s a lot of know-how out there
there’s an unbelievable amount of
know-how out there there’s detailed
information how to assemble a nuclear
weapon from parts there’s books about
how to build a nuclear bomb there are
plans for how to create a terror farm
where you could actually man you
a cure and develop all the components
and assemble it all of this information
is relatively available if you have an
undergraduate degree in physics I would
suggest although I don’t so maybe it’s
not even true but something close to
that would allow you with the
information that’s currently available
to actually build a nuclear weapon
the third element of the nuclear terror
threat is that who would actually do
such a thing
well what we’re seeing now is a level of
terrorism that involves individuals who
are highly organized they are very
dedicated and committed they are
stateless somebody once said al Qaeda
does not have a return address so if
they attacked us with a nuclear weapon
what’s the response and to whom is the
response and their retaliation proof
since there is no real retribution
possible that would make any difference
since there are people willing to
actually give up their lives in order to
do a lot of damage to us it becomes
apparent that the whole notion of this
mutually assured destruction would not
work here is Sulaiman Abu Ghaith and
soon lead was a key lieutenant of Osama
bin Laden he wrote many many times
statements of this effect we have the
right to kill four million Americans two
million of whom should be children and
we don’t have to go overseas to find
people willing to do harm for whatever
their reasons McVeigh and Nichols and
the Oklahoma City attack in the 1990s
was a good example of homegrown
terrorists what if they had gotten their
hands on a nuclear weapon the fourth
element is that the high-value US
targets are accessible soft and
plentiful this would be a talk for
another day but the level of
preparedness that the United States has
achieved since 9/11 of oh one is
unbelievably inadequate what you saw
after Katrina is a very good indicator
of how little prepared the United States
is for any kind of major attack 7
million ship cargo containers come in to
the United States every year five to
seven percent only are inspected five to
seven percent this is Alexander Lebed
who was a general that worked with
Yeltsin who talked about and presented
to Congress this idea that the Russian
had developed these suitcase bombs they
are very low yield 0.12 1 kiloton
hiroshima was around 13 kilotons but
enough to do an unbelievable amount of
damage and Leavitt came to the United
States and told us that many many more
than 80 of the suitcase bombs were
actually not accountable and they look
like this they’re basically very simple
arrangements you put the elements into a
suitcase
it becomes very portable the suitcase
could be conveniently dropped in your
trunk of your car you take it wherever
you want to take it and you can detonate
it you don’t want to build a suitcase
bomb and you happen to get one of those
insecure nuclear warheads that exists
this is the size of the little boy bomb
that was dropped on Hiroshima
it was 9.8 feet long weight 80 800
pounds you go down to your local rent
the truck and for 50 bucks or so you
rent the truck that’s got the right
capacity and you take your bomb you put
it in the truck and you’re ready to go
it could happen but what it would mean
and who would survive you can’t get an
exact number for that kind of
probability but what I’m trying to say
is that we have all the elements of that
happening anybody who dismisses the
thought of a nuclear weapon being used
by a terrorist is kidding themselves I
think there’s a lot of people in the
intelligence community a lot of people
will deal with this work in general
think it’s almost inevitable unless we
do certain things to really to really
try to defuse the risk like better
interdiction better prevention better
fixing in a better screening of cargo
containers that are coming into the
country and so forth there’s a lot that
can be done to make us a lot safer at
this particular moment we actually could
end up seeing a nuclear detonation in
one of our cities I don’t think we would
see an all-out nuclear war anytime soon
although even that is not completely off
the table there’s still enough nuclear
weapons in the Arsenal’s of the
superpowers to destroy the earth many
many times over there are flashpoints in
India and Pakistan in the Middle East in
North Korea other places where the use
of nuclear weapons while initially
locally could very rapidly go into a
situation we would be facing all-out
down nuclear
or war it’s very unsettling here we go
okay I’m back in my truck and we drove
over the Brooklyn Bridge we’re coming
down and we bring that truck that you
just saw somewhere in here in the
financial district
this is a ten kiloton bomb slightly
smaller than was used in Hiroshima and I
want to just conclude this by just
giving you some information I think news
you can use kind of concept here so
first of all this would be horrific
beyond anything we can possibly imagine
this is the ultimate and if you’re in
the half mile radius of where this bomb
went off you have a 90% chance of not
making it if you’re right where the bomb
went off you will be vaporized and
that’s I’m just telling you this is this
is not good you assume that two mile
radius you have a 50% chance of being
killed and up to about eight miles away
that putting that killed instantly
somewhere between a 10 and 20 percent
chance of getting killed the thing about
this is that the experience of the
nuclear detonation is first of all tens
of millions of degrees Fahrenheit at the
core here where it goes off and an
extraordinary amount of energy in form
of heat acute radiation and blast
effects an enormous hurricane like wind
and destruction of buildings almost
totally within this yellow circle here
and what I’m going to focus on it as I
come to conclusion here is that what
happens to you if you’re in here well if
we’re talking about the old days of an
all-out nuclear attack you up here are
as dead as the people here so it was a
moot point my point now though is that
there’s a lot that we could do for you
who are in here if you’ve survived the
initial blast you have when the blast
goes off and by the way if it ever comes
up don’t look at it if you look at it
you’re going to be blind either
temporarily or permanently so if there’s
any way to avoid avert your eyes that
would be a good thing if you find
yourself alive but you’re in the
vicinity of a nuclear weapon you have
that’s gone off you have 10 to 20
minutes depending on the size and
exactly where it went off to get out of
the way before a lethal amount of
radiation comes straight down from the
from the mushroom cloud that goes up in
that 10 to 15 minutes all you have to do
and I mean that seriously is go about a
my
away from the blast and what happens is
this is I’m going to show you now some
fallout plumes within 20 minutes come
straight down within 24 hours lethal
radiation is going out with prevailing
winds and it’s mostly in this particular
direction it’s going northeast and if
you’re in this vicinity
you’ve got to get away so you’re feeling
the wind and there’s tremendous wind now
that you’re going to be feeling and you
want to go perpendicular to the wind or
down wind if you are in fact able to see
where the blast was in front of you
you’ve got to get out of there if you
don’t get out of there you’re going to
be exposed to lethal radiation in very
short order if you can’t get out of
there we want you to go into a shelter
and stay there now in a shelter in an
urban area means you you have to be
either in a basement as deep as possible
or you have to be on a floor on a high
floor if it’s a ground burst explosion
which it would be higher than the ninth
floor so you have to be 10th floor or
higher or in the basement but basically
you got to get out of town as quickly as
possible and if you do that you actually
can survive a nuclear blast over the
next few days to a week there will be a
radiation cloud again going with the
wind and settling down for another 15 or
20 miles out in this case over Long
Island and if you’re in the direct
fallout zone here you really have to
either be sheltered or you have to get
out of there and that’s that’s clear but
if you are sheltered you can actually
survive the difference between knowing
information of what you’re going to do
personally and not knowing information
can save your life and it can mean the
difference between 150 to 200 thousand
fatalities from something like this and
half-a-million to 700 thousand
fatalities so response planning in the
21st century is both possible and is
essential but in 2008 there isn’t one
single American city that has done
effective plans to deal with a nuclear
detonation disaster part of the problem
is that the emergency planners
themselves personally are overwhelmed
psychologically by the thought of
nuclear catastrophe they are paralyzed
you say nuclear to them and they’re
thicken oh my god we’re all gone what’s
the point it’s futile
and we’re trying to tell them it’s not
futile we can change the survival rates
by doing some common sensical things so
the goal here is to minimize fatalities
and I just want to leave you with the
personal points I think you might be
interested in the key to surviving a
nuclear blast is getting out and not
going into harm’s way
that’s basically all we’re going to be
talking about here and the farther you
are away in distance the longer it is in
time from the initial blast and the more
separation between you and the outside
atmosphere the better so separation
hopefully the dirt or concrete or being
in a basement distance in time is what
will save you so here’s what you do
first of all and they said don’t stare
at the light flash if you get behind it
on how you could possibly resist doing
that but let’s assume theoretically you
want to do that you want to keep your
mouth open so your eardrums don’t burst
from the from the pressures if you’re
very close to what happened you actually
do have to Duck and Cover like Bert told
you Bert the turtle and you want to get
under something so that you’re not
injured or killed by objects if that’s
at all possible you want to get away
from the initial fallout mushroom cloud
I said in just a few minutes and shelter
in place you want to move down wind or
crosswind for 1.2 miles you know if you
if you’re out there you see buildings
horribly destroyed and down in that
direction let’s destroy here then you
know that it was over there the blast
and you’re going this way as long as
you’re going across crosswise to the
wind once you’re out and evacuating you
want to keep as much of your skin your
mouth and nose covered as long as that
covering doesn’t impede you moving and
getting out of there and finally you
want to get decontaminated as soon as
possible and if you’re wearing clothing
you take it off your clothing you’re
going to get showered down someplace and
remove the radiation that would be the
radioactive material that might be on
you and then you want to stay in shelter
for 48 to 72 hours minimum
but you’re going to wait hopefully
you’ll have your little wind-up
battery-less radio and you’ll be waiting
for people to tell you when it’s safe to
go outside that’s what you need to do in
conclusion nuclear war is less likely
than before but by no means out of the
question and it’s not survivable nuclear
terrorism is possible maybe probable but
is survivable and this is Jack Geiger
was one of the heroes
US public health community and Jack said
the only way to deal with nuclear
anything whether it’s war or terrorism
is abolition of nuclear weapons you want
something to work on once you fix global
warming I urge you to think about the
fact that we have to do something about
this unacceptable
inhumane reality of nuclear weapons in
our world now this is my favorite civil
defense slide and I don’t want to be
indelicate but this is no longer in
office we don’t really care of it this
was sent to me by somebody who is at a
fixie annatto of the civil defense
procedures but the fact that matter is
that America has gone through a very
hard time we’ve not been focused we’ve
not done we had to do and now we’re
facing the potential of bad hell on
earth thank you