Note that here fatalities, exclusive of those due to fallout, are shown as a percentage of the national population along the vertical axis; yield varying along the horizontal axis (the total delivered yield, that is).

Now, in all of these cases, it is assumed that there will be no evacuation. Evacuation has simply been neglected. People, by assumption, benefit only from the protection of their dwellings.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Would you please refresh my mind, did you say this was a 3,000 megaton attack?

Mr. HANUNIAN. A 3,000 megaton attack is included here. A 3,000 megaton attack is included at this point along the axis; a 1,000 megaton attack here. The attack weight is varying along this axis from something less than 100 megatons, total yield delivered, to nearly 10,000 megatons, so that the 1,000 megaton attack against military installations results in 2 to 8 million dead, as represented by these lower broken curves.

Here that implies 1 to 4 percent of the national population (which is approaching 200 million).

Mr. HOLIFIELD. What is the difference in the two top lines, "the 10 megaton" and the "1 megaton?"

Mr. HANUNIAN. This shows simply the difference that an attacker achieves with a given weight of attack, depending upon what the yield of his individual weapon is.

The one-megaton attack here gives the higher fatality level because by using 1-megaton weapons and delivering the same total yield, he has available many more weapons; he could, therefore, allocate these weapons more efficiently, and kill more people than he could with the larger weapon.

Notice that in the case of the military attack it is the reverse, the larger weapon

ASSUMED CEP

Mr. HOLIFIELD. How have you computed the range of possible error in delivery there? Has that been factored in?

Mr. HANUNIAN. Yes, it has. Here I use a modest error, nominally a 1-mile CEP; that is to say, it is assumed that the distribution of bomb impacts is a normal one, a circular normal distribution, and that half of all bomb falls would fall within 1 mile of the aiming point.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Does that take into consideration missile delivery as well as airplane delivery?

Mr. HANUNIAN. I used this figure in the interests of simplicity. This may be better than Soviet missiles will be able to do in the near future; I do not know. I think the figure is fairly-is in the right ball park for either inaccurate delivery by bomber

Mr. HOLIFIELD. On the other hand, if they can put a 5,000-pound object into orbit with a man in it, and bring him back safely, why, it is reasonable to suppose that their electronic guidance system is fairly efficient.

Mr. HANUNIAN. I do not know what their capability is.

CASUALTIES FROM “RONUS” ATTACKS ON CITIES

Well, to resume my statement, let me point out with the aid of this chart (see fig. NH-2) that very heavy casualties could be produced without delivering anything like 3,000 megatons to our population centers. By diverting only a few hundred megatons to what was otherwise an attack on military installations, the Soviets could produce 20 or 30 percent fatalities here at 300 megatons, where we find 19 percent to just about 30 percent fatalities, depending upon which yield weapons are used.

Twenty to thirty percent fatalities—well, that is 40 to 60 million dead. Evidently city bombing provides the attacker with an easy way to kill enormous numbers of people. It would seem he need place little reliance on the residual effects left by fallout if his object is to kill Americans.

However, our interest in evaluating the fallout hazard would disappear would not disappear I mean to say-even if we knew that the Soviets would attempt massive city attacks.

The ultimate survival of the United States as a nation might then depend on the extent of this residual hazard. Anyway, it is not at all certain that the Soviets would elect to attack cities as such.

EFFECTS OF FALLOUT AND SHELTER ON CASUALTY RATES

There is, then, good reason for considering how fallout is capable of increasing the number of deaths that can be expected from nuclear attacks.

Let us begin by reconsidering some particular attacks. The outcomes, the attack outcomes, displayed on this next chart will help to quantify the notion, our notion, of fallout's significance. (See fig. NH-3.)

FIGURE NH-3.-PROMPT AND TOTAL DEATHS FROM HYPOTHETICAL ATTACKS

Fatalities are shown here, again as percentages of the national population (percentages along the vertical axis here) for four variants of a very small attack delivering 300 megatons, delivering them either to cities exclusively or to military installations exclusively, and in either case using alternatively 1 and 10 megaton weapons. The height of the solid bars, the gray areas arising from the base line, here indicates the level of the fatalities resulting from the prompt effects (blast and prompt radiations). (These have simply been reproduced from the preceding chart, which included the same attacks.)

I should say that the larger attack here delivers 3,000 megatons, and the subsidiary considerations are the same.

The overall fatalities, inclusive of fallout effects, are indicated by the floating bar segments above, that is to say, by the red and yellow segments that you see there on my colored briefing chart. The seg

ment next above each bar delimits the range within which total fatalities would fall if the entire population found shelter in dwelling basements (or a good substitute). The top segment is similar, the yellow one, but reflects failure of the population to improve on the fallout shielding that would have resulted had peacetime behavior patterns been continued.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. As I understand it, the red part of the bar there shows the amount of protection you would get from basement-type protection; is that right?

Mr. HANUNIAN. The what kind of protection? Basement?
Mr. HOLIFIELD. Basement-type protection.

Mr. HANUNIAN. Yes, that is quite correct. It is assumed in the case of the red bars, the red segments, that the people go into their dwelling basements and stay there until the hazard has subsided enough so they can go outside and be safe enough, either immediately or by conducting decontamination operations or by evacuating the hottest, most dangerous areas.

Mr. ROBACK. The premises of the recently proposed shelter program are within the limits of your red area.

Mr. HANUNIAN. These charts were made up before I had a notion that the President's shelter program would be undertaken-so soon, at least. They have no direct relationship to that program. They were devised independently.

What I am trying to do here is to indicate sensitivity of results to different kinds of civil defense programs, not to design or reflect the designs of, actual civil defense programs.

REASONS FOR RANGE OF RESULTS

Mr. HOLIFIELD. What is the white area beneath the red bar? Mr. HANUNIAN. The white areas have no significance here. One should, perhaps, treat this as if it were a high-low thermometer with different colors of mercury rising in it, and the possibility that deaths might fall somewhere within the region tinted yellow here; that is to say, a column of mercury rising from the base line, including all weapons effects, might end somewhere in the yellow region (the uppermost segment) if people had very poor fallout protection, if they behaved foolishly or without information.

Alternatively, if we assume that we might go into basements and stay there long enough for the hazard to subside, then the mercury would stop somewhere within this red region (the lower segment).

The reason that there is a range here rather than a single line indicating the level to which the mercury might rise, is that there are some uncertainties with weapon characteristics.

I mentioned one earlier, the uncertainty about the activity level, that is to say, the number of roentgens per hour a weapon is nominally capable of generating, whether it is 1,200 or 2,600.

Also reflected in this range is another weapon characteristic, and that is the fraction of the yield due to fission.

I have combined these two effects because they affect the casualties in the same way, and the range of uncertainty here relates only to those two factors.