Other nonmilitary attacks are certainly conceivable. We have no difficulty in imagining attacks on industrial facilities, on the Nation's stock of wealth in general, and so forth; but these resources are highly correlated with population in their locations, and so the regional allocation of bombs resulting from attacking such targets would not be much different.

MILITARY TARGETS IN UNITED STATES

If we are to find some sizable set of targets that might attract the Soviets and is distributed very differently from the general population, presumably it will have to consist predominantly of military installations.

Let us consider, for a moment, the locational pattern of our more vital installations: those capable of playing critically important roles in a nuclear exchange. Under this heading I include not only the principal headquarters and operating bases, but also such ancillary facilities as weapons storage sites and key communications links. Obviously, many of these are Air Force installations. Substantial numbers, however, come under the cognizance of other agencies. The list is long, and becoming longer. It presently includes several hundred distinct candidates for a Soviet target list, and the number will more than double during the next half decade.

As of now, this list, this class of installations is distributed fairly uniformly across the Nation. This is notably the case with respect to our offensive capability. But even our area defense units are much more uniformly distributed than is the general population. Here then is a plausible target system whose geographic distribution is quite different from that of the populace.

Even now, however, we are on the threshold of a major change. Our ZI-based ICBM's are being sited almost wholly west of the Mississippi, most of them between the Mississippi and the Rockies. As these missile sites are activated, they will join other prime retaliatory installations as candidates for Soviet target lists.

They would presumably be targeted-at least in connection with a Soviet first strike.

Because missile sites are to be so numerous (there are to be some hundreds of separate installations) and because they are to be highly blast resistant (therefore, possibly vulnerable only to heavy attack) they promise to be a strong influence shifting the center of gravity of any Soviet attack away from the densely populated East.

Thus we have identified several rather distinctive geographic distributions of targets, distributions which would imply even more distinctive allocations of weapons.

Let us turn now to considering some specific attacks.

CASUALTIES FROM CITY AND MILITARY TARGETING

As indicated by the title of this talk, my concern here today is with the amount of damage that the U.S. civilian sector can be expected to suffer if attacks are delivered against the continental United States.

I shall use a simple (but, of course, incomplete) measure of this damage: numbers of dead. While I want to focus on fallout's con

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tribution to damage, fallout is a residual hazard, a hazard affecting only those persons surviving the prompt effects of nuclear detonations; and it is important then to note what prompt effects might do.

So far as the initial impact of any attack is concerned, the level of fatalities is extremely sensitive to attack design. The damaging agents that are effective immediately-blast and the prompt radiations— are potent only within a few miles of even megaton-yield weapons. In the presence of a population distribution which, far from being uniform, is characterized rather by very localized clustering, this gives rise to the possibility that even small variations in targeting can produce significantly different casualty levels. Even the yields of individual weapons are important in this context. Taken together, these two factors (yields and targeting) might make the difference between there being a very few million dead or some tens of millions of dead. The variation in outcome is substantial even if we restrict ourselves to attacks against U.S. retaliatory forces.

Let me illustrate. Consider an attack using megaton-yield weapons, specifically weapons yielding between 1 megaton and 10 megatons each, delivered against 100 to 500 bases of U.S. retaliatory forces. If a total of 1,000 megatons were delivered in such an attack, the number of dead might be anywhere within the range from 2 to 8 million persons. If the attack were 3 times heavier (3,000 megatons in total), the fatalities would double; the range then being 4 to 16 million dead. These examples indicate that the range of fatalities is quite large. Still they, by no means, suggest how large the range could be if the attacker felt free to strike population centers. Then we might expect that the larger attack we have been considering-3,000 megatonscould kill as many as 120 million people.

These results are displayed together on my next chart. (See fig. NH-2.)

10,000

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.