fall down you prod them, and what I am suggesting is that you continue to prod them.

Mr. HOLIFIELID. We are going to have to adjourn pretty soon. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. HOLIFIELD. We will start promptly at 10 a.m. in this room, and go into the question with these other witnesses.

(Whereupon, at 12 noon, the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Tuesday, August 8, 1961.)

CIVIL DEFENSE-1961

TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1961

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY OPERATIONS

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:05 a.m., in room 1302, New House Office Building, Hon. Chet Holifield (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Chet Holifield, Martha W. Griffiths, R. Walter Riehlman, and F. Bradford Morse.

Also present: Herbert Roback, staff administrator; Earl J. Morgan, chief investigator; Paul Ridgley, and Robert McElroy, investigators; and Douglas Dahlin, staff attorney.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. The subcommittee will be in order.

The subcommittee will continue its hearings this morning. Our first witness is Mr. Norman Hanunian, economist for the RAND Corp.

Mr. Hanunian.

STATEMENT OF NORMAN A. HANUNIAN, ECONOMIST, RAND CORP.

Mr. HANUNIAN. My discussion today is based on work I have been doing for the RAND Corp. However, the views I shall express are personal ones, not necessarily those of the corporation.

Some years ago, when I first began making estimates of the damage that might result from nuclear attacks, residual radiation-that is, fallout radiation-was no more than a worrisome side effect.

It was, to be sure, even then a proper subject for concern in connection with weapons testing.

By peacetime standards, even the small amounts of activity gen erated when kiloton yield weapons are tested are of enough moment to justify the imposition of careful controls.

But in the context of full-scale warfare, fallout from the weapons of that time was relatively insignificant.

FALLOUT IS A MAJOR THREAT

With the development of the H-bomb, however, it became clear that fallout had the potential of becoming the principal hazard from nuclear attacks. Not only did the H-bomb vastly increase the abso

lute level of the fallout hazard, but it increased that hazard relative to the one from blast.

Increasing stockpiles over the years have contributed to the evolution of the threat. The growth of the Soviet stockpile underscores the need for us to be concerned.

Finally, if anything more was needed to impress us with the gravity of the threat, it came in the last year or two when new estimates were made of the amount of residual radioactivity generated by nuclear weapons. These new estimates are substantially higher than the old. Weapons were formerly believed to generate enough residual radioactivity so that if the fallout from each kiloton of fission yield were spread uniformly over a square mile, we should find the radiation rate to be 1,200 roentgens per hour an hour after detonation.

The estimate presented to your committee a year and a half ago was more than twice as high, 2,600 roentgens per hour instead of 1,200. There has been some reaction since, and the quantity is still uncertain. But the consensus seems to be that the truth is nearer the new estimate than the old.

In sum, the fallout hazard now looms much larger than it formerly did. It is a major threat.

Still there is no settled, widely accepted appreciation of just how much effect fallout should be expected to have on attack outcomes. In these circumstances, fallout may not receive appropirate consideration when strategic plans are being laid.

Yet it is most important that fallout should. Fallout is a potent enough hazard so that key decisions ought to be influenced by it: decisions affecting the course of warhead development, of weapons systems procurement, basing posture, civil defense preparation, and even of operational plans.

The lack of a common understanding of fallout's significance seems to stem from the unusual variability of this hazard: from its dependence on a multiplicity of factors, some of which are beyond the control of either combatant, and all of which are hard to describe in any definitive way.

But the difficulty of achieving a common understanding is compounded because estimators of the hazard often fail to take account of the options that are available to the prospective combatants, options that importantly affect the damage levels to be expected; and it is further compounded because estimators do not attempt to achieve comparability with one another's results.

My purpose today is to present a well-quantified appraisal of the nationwide fallout_hazard, dealing with a sufficient variety of cases to reflect the actual range of possibilities, and treating all cases on a comparable basis.

I will shortly begin introducing a series of hypothetical attacks. These attacks have been designed to serve as a basis for assessing the principal factors influencing the severity of the fallout hazard. They will reveal what dramatically different outcomes could result, depending on the kind of war that we and the Soviets prepare to fight. The bulk of my talk will be devoted to describing those attacks and to analyzing their outcomes.

First, however, I will say a few words about targets.

NONMILITARY TARGETS IN UNITED STATES

The overall lethality of whatever fallout is produced by any attack on the United States will depend on how the weight of that attack is distributed among our various regions. There are several reasons why this is so, but the main one is obvious enough: Population densities differ markedly from region to region-from several hundred persons per square mile in the densely populated Northeast, to approximately 10 in the sparsely populated Mountain States. This map indicates by the intensity of shading how population densities vary from State to State, typically becoming lower as we look to the South and West. California provides the only important exception.

How might a Soviet attack be distributed among these regions? The answer, of course, depends on what it is the Soviets would want to destroy. Whether or not we know what that would be in any 1961 war, we can certainly do no more than guess with respect to a war in 1964 or 1967 or 1970. Good sense requires that we consider the alternatives available to the Soviets.

One conceivable target system is certainly the population itself. If the object is to maximize casualties, the regional allocation of bomb deliveries will in some measure reflect population densities. Some feeling for what this implies can be gotten simply by inspecting this chart. (See fig. NH-1.)