Category: Atomic and Nuclear weapons

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2401

[Original document available from the blog’s bookstore.]

The spoiler answer to this:  make sure to account for the nukes dropped on you  when figuring out what you’ve got left to work with.

ITEM:  The Bomb Damage Problem, AFAPA-4-4, published in 1954 by the Directorate of Management Analysis (DCS/Comptroller at the  Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force).  11×8 inches.  GVC binding. 22pp.  Very good condition. RARE.  No copies located in WorldCat.  $175.

This seems a tautologically  tongue-twisting, not-quite-right title for this post, and indeed it might be.  But that’s the way the pamphlet I’m reporting on read, a sometimes resilient-to- inspection rubberie beastie whose basis for being written was to report on an great oversight that doesn’t really want to be recognized, even if it is the title of the work.

The Bomb Damage Problem, AFAPA-4-4, published in 1954 by the Directorate of Management Analysis (DCS/Comptroller at the  Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force) is a pamphlet of discovery–or rather, the discovery of the lack of discovery.

The work is an introduction to some aspects of  nuclear exchange post-attack predictive capacity–particularly with the ability of American industry “to support a war plan”.  

The anonymous pamphlet gets straight away to the discovery part–that previous predictions of post-attack capacity were “probably completely unrealistic” because “[they] did not take account of the likely bomb damage to the U.S. production facilities”.  

I would think that even at this relatively early point of planning for possible Soviet nuclear attack that war game scenarios would have taken bomb damage to industry a”and accompanying manpower losses” into account of how the war machine would react after the bombs began to explode.  Though it seems not. I’ve looked to see how I could be misreading this thing because it seems like too monumental an oversight to make. But I can’t find where I’m making my interpretative mistake.  

Ultimately the authors focuses on saving the corpus of the overall works, saying that this oversight does not damage the “important thinking” that had gone on it spite of this error. 

The word “error: is not used in the text of course.  This is how it is described: “In connection with this critical new obstacle to intelligent military planning, it is essential that speculation be minimized.” The error is actually redefined as a “critical new obstacle” the effect of which heightens “speculation”.   Which is all true.

I suppose what is really going on his the formation of some bedrock stuff formulating information gathering for creating a computer program for deeper analytical study of the effects of nuke warfare on post-attack industry.  1954 is about right for the time for this to happen, and the DMA–as the home for the creation of linear programming among countless other things–would’ve been the place for this work to happen.  

But I keep coming back to what seem to be enormous understatements–even giving plenty of allowance for the time–that keep cropping up in the pamphlet.  Perhaps it is just stating the obvious for te first time that makes all of these seem so potentially underwhelming, like this nugget:   “numerous measures of the importance of each target may eventually be needed….” (Page 7).  

There’s plenty of more detail though that occurs in the pamphlet, as in figuring out damage to structures by the yield of the explosion and distance from the target and the composition of the target’s structure, and so on. 

And then we get back to the obvious: “the principal effect of a fire storm following an attack would be to enlarge the area of destruction and to alter the shape of the various damage zones, changing them from concentric rings to irregular patterns. “.  As I said, maybe it is just a case of a “Call me Ishmael”, or stating that lines and points in space exist for the purpose of geometry.  Still, it rubs me the wrong way, all over.

And just to make this point perfectly clear:  the “bomb damage” problem is to take into account bomb damage to U.S. war-making, bomb-producing capacity, in a sort of BIBO (bomb in, bomb out)  version of a SISO (shit in, shit out).

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2398 

Describing computer programs “Picnic” for biological/chem weapons damage,  and “Dusty” , for radioactive casualties

This was an interesting read, though it took a little while to actually understand what it was I was reading.  Mathematics and Computation Laboratory, National Resource Evaluation Center, Analytical Program Compendium NREC Technical Manual No. 119 (Revised) was pritned on December 1964, housed in the covers of the  Executive Office of the President NREC/Office of Emergency Planning. The prose is mostly congestive, but after a bit you can pick up the rhythm and it becomes more user-friendly.  

Preface signed by Joseph D. Coker, Chief, National resource Evaluation Center, who writes: “The Analytical Program Compendium gives a brief description of the National Resource Evaluation Center’s current general purpose analytical programs and replaces earlier editions of the NREC Glossary of Damage Assessment Programs. It is intended as a guide for users and potential users of these programs to indicate the various programs that are presently available and those that are being produced. Separate Technical Reports or Technical Manuals are available for the standard operating programs and for a number of those which are in preparation. Reference to these manuals and reports can be obtained in the Bibliography of Publications (Technical Manual No. 121) published by the NREC. The Compendium contains descriptions of the computer programs of a substantive nature.”  

 

[Can’t live without this Cold War document? See out blog bookstore to purchase the original.]

The list of the contents of the 92-page work is pretty interesting, the book presented in eight sections (or “casualty classes programs”):  (I) Attack Analysis Programs; (II) Vulnerability Analysis Programs; (III) Damage Assessment Programs (Direct Effects, sections dedicated to nuclear shots Dusty III, Flame I, Jumbo III, Streak IV, Dart II, Dart III, Picnic, Ready I.(IV) Resource Evaluation Programs; (V) Economic Analysis Programs ; (VI) Resource Management Programs; (VII) Mapping and Display; (VIII) Manual Procedures for Damage Assessment and Resource Evaluation.  The last section describes programs of manual damage assessment (“developed by agency representatives for use when computer estimates are not available”).

 

Under section III are described the various other programs computing availability of surviving resources and damages to the rest, and to assess capability and loss. For example:  Weapons Edit III (working on an 1103 AS or 1105 computer) calculates missile availability; Dusty III (fallout intensity “…at weapon oriented points”; Flame I (“computes an estimate of the extent of the spread of uncontrolled fire”) and can compute fire maps; Jumbo III (a casualty assessment program); Attack Environment III (“determines the blast effect from the dominant weapon and combines the separate effects of fallout and from from all weapons that affect each resource point”); Facility Assessment (Namepoint) III ( for physical damage to facilities); Time-Phased Accessibility  (“listing of accessibility of resources in various conditions of damage after an attack”); Population III (summing up casualties in populations after attack; Manpower III (translating population losses into labor losses and how it would affect x,y, and z); Livestock III (keeping tabs on livestock “and livestock products”); Streak IV (‘high speed estimate of blast and fallout casualties, estimates of damage and denial of facilities…”); Picnic (!, estimating casualties from biological or chemical weapons), and a number of other programs. 

There are some other interesting programs for end game times: Net Inventory (“(a) routine (that) is a balance sheet between supply (inventory and production) and demands (requirements)” and Amounts of Production (“a routine (showing) the production based in facility damage and labor casualties; and of course Survival II, which computes “the total requirements…for regions”.

Of course it was necessary to figure all of this stuff out so that in the event of The Big One there is a certain control over what is where and what is left and what is needed and so on.  

There is no mention made to where these computers are housed. 

It certainly seems that if there was to be a nuclear holocaust, it would be well-enumerated.  

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2405

‘Russia reveals Cobalt Bomb; Total World Destruction Ahead”, ending of Philip K. Dick’s “Exhibit Piece”, 1952

I never really thought that much about what Dr. Strangelove was fiddling with to calculate the “half life of cobalt thorium-G” in Stanley Kubrick’s mega-dystopian steam-nuke 1962 film, Dr. Strangelove. (We’ve looked at this film a number of times on this blog–just search the title in the Google search box to see the others.) So I went to some clips online and found a still showing him putting away his circular slide, which turns out to be the 1962 version of the “Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer” that was published and issued along with Sam Glasstone’s The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (published by the Department of the Army as No 39-3, one edition n a continuing series.

My calculator is actually from the 1964 edition of the work–there seems to be no difference from computer to computer, but there are differences in the text of the book, one of which relates directly to Dr. Strangelove.  There is a very brief, barely-two-page section called “Radiological Warfare” in the chapter dealing with radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons. there is nothing overtly technical in it, though the writers seem not to like the idea, given the inherent difficulties in producing and storing such advanced gamma radiation weapons, saying too the the use of such beasts would be either “impossible of very hazardous”. The author also makes the point that the high fission energy yields of the new bombs, which make them “in effect, weapons of radiological warfare”.¹

Here’s the reverse of the computer, rendered in black and white:

So, that’s it. Dr. Strangelove though wasn’t the first to discus a cobalt-laced dirty dirty dirty bomb, with the idea managing to surface several times in the ’50’s (as with the PKD example, above, and Fritz Lieber’s Moon is Green, 1952, where there are cobalt bombs galore, then things happen, and then everything goes badly). The ideas of total destruction+total destruction=total destruction seems to have originated with Leo Szillard in a radio broadcast from the University of Chicago in February 1950 with the introduction of the cobalt-based bomb, which produces a far more intense radiation than U-238. Szillard presented his case as a what-we-will-soon-be-capable-of argument, putting not the destruction of entire cities into question, but the entire planet.  

This is about the final minute of the movie, when Dr. Strangelove  finds himself rising and walking by a secret Fuhrer-based miracle, his little computer still in his hand.  And then seconds later the really bad stuff happens.  

JF Ptak Sciene Books   Post 2382

This is a duplicate of a carbon copy document by I.I. Rabi, and is one of 35 documents¹ relating to the development of U.S. atomic policy, October 1945-January 1946, that comes from the library of Caryl Haskins², a close and long-time friend of Vannevar Bush, who worked with Bush throughout World War II at the OSRD, and was executive assistant to Bush at NSRD 1941-1945. Vannevar Bush, one of the most important scientist-advisers of World War II, foresaw the development of the atomic arms race in 1943, and by 1945 became a fundamental thinker and advocate of addressing the problem of atomic information control.  The 35 documents in this collection are–almost without exception–by aides and close colleagues of Bush  who assisted him in formulating the positions and issues, dating from October 1945 through January 1946.   They consist of background papers, drafts of proposals, informal studies, as well as mature statements of thought that would become implemented in the core of U.S. policy regarding the spread and control of atomic weapons.  They are generally carbon typescripts and necessarily of extremely limited distribution, generally have no letterheads, occasionally carry the authors’ full names (although sometimes only initials are used), and 18 are stamped or typed “Secret”.

The sheet by Rabi (1898-1988) is simple but interesting, and in 53 words outlines the issues of the atomic bomb–it is dated November 21, 1945.  IT was typed for Rabi by an assistant (“rb”), and at the bottom as being by Rabi.  Rabi of course played key roles in the development of the bomb, as well as playing a very crucial and critical role in the discussion of the future of atomic weapons. 

[These are the two copies of the Rabi outline–the second was Irving Langmuir’s copy. There couldn’t’ve been too many of these made–there would be the original, then perhaps six carbon copies. I any event, it is a rare thing. The original is for sale here at our blog bookstore.]

JF Ptak Science Books     Part of a long series on Atomic and Nuclear Weapons History

The sotto voce singing of the oblivious obvious/mundane is slung throughout the nearly 200pp-work “Mass Casualties, Principles Involved in Management”,  which were papers delivered at the 62nd annual convention of the Association of Military Surgeons, published in 1956 in Military Medicine.  

For example:

 

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I kept this book mainly for the cover art, though the writer–William L. Laurence–did a commendable job of looking at the Hell Bomb (the hydrogen bomb) and provided a useful chronology at the end of the book for attempts at nuclear control.  Laurence was a science writer for the New York Times and was also the official historian of the Manhattan Project–he was also about the first person to write for a mass audience on the coming of what he would eventually coin “the atomic age” in a 1940 NYT article¹.  

The book is agile but also a very slight read with not much detail, published without a single footnote, and without a bibliography, sort of like a long newspaper article.  One thing is for sure though–he was right about the “hell” part. 

Notes: 

1. “Vast Power Source in Atomic Energy”. New York Times. May 5, 1940

Here’s an interesting article on the popular reception of the possibilities of atomic power if not an atomic weapon, found in the NY Times, 1938-1940:  http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/11/26/excitement-about-u-235-as-coal-competitor-circa-1939-1940/

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2336

[The preparation of the bomb, at center, before being quite armed and hoisted–(AP Photo/File)]

The “Princess and the Pea” comes to mind with this story, except that the pea was located above the mattresses, suspended from cable above them. It was the ultimate pea.

That “pea” was an atomic bomb. It was suspended in inside a 100-foot tall metal tower in the desert of Alamagordo, in the Jornado del Muerto, the test shot to see if the bomb worked, the near-culmination of the work of 100,000 people and billions of dollars, and the great potential decision-maker on the outcome of WWII

This was the Trinity Test–July 16, 1945. 

The bomb was hauled up to its position in the tower, dangling there, not much protected from the elements which that night of the test threatened lightning and wind.  What of the cables failed? And the bomb fell?  

The last-minute fail safe was a large pile of mattresses.  They would cushion the fall.  The bomb would not explode, but it could be heavily damaged. And in this makeshift way the enormous investment was protected.

The bomb was detonated at 5:29 that morning, creating at 1100′-wide crater, causing the atmosphere around the explosion to turn blue from heavy radiation, and raising a 40,000′-tall mountain of smoke, a result of its 15kt yield.

The tower of course was vaporized.

I assumed too so were the mattresses–even if they were Army-issue.  

It is a secret irony of some sort that while pre-detonation betting was going on by the scientists about the yield of the device with a side wager on whether or not the atmosphere would be set on fire, that the stop gap measure preotecting the bomb if it fell was a pile of mattresses.  

[Oppenheimer and General Groves–standing too close for comfort–at the footings of the dissolved tower, afterwards, their whie footies in place for radiation protection.]

But it all worked out.  

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Below are 66 examples of Cold War era stuff and consumer bits relating to atomic/nuclear weapons.  All are found in my pinterest page, here.  

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post  

From the Department of Vast Understatement:

Source: the National Archives.