Public health aspects of nuclear war.

Abstract

Although the destructive power of conventional weapons has greatly increased, the advent of the first atomic bombs heralded the introduction of a huge increase in destructive capability, a jump from tons to kilotons, expressed as equivalent weight of TNT (dynamite) . The advent of the hydrogen bomb increased the energy yield by another three orders of magnitude, to megatons of TNT. The total of all explosives used in the Vietnam War is estimated at some four megatons. A single hydrogen bomb can exceed this many-fold, and many of the hydrogen bombs existing in today's arsenals individually exceed the total of all explosives used in wars since the discovery of gun powder . The total nuclear weapons in today's arsenals include more than 12,000 megatons (Mt) of explosives . This amounts to three tons of dynamite for every man, woman, and child on earth! The compactness of nuclear bombs is another important feature. The weight, for example, of the materials needed for a 20-megaton bomb is some ten tons (52) . If the same explosive yield was produced by dynamite, the weight of the dynamite would exceed that of any man-made structure, even the great Pyramid of Cheops (70) . This feature allows the enormous explosive power of a hydrogen bomb, or bombs, to be carried distances of 10,000 kilometers or more by intercontinental missiles, which can now be targeted with great accuracy . Nuclear weapons are qualitatively similar to conventional weapons' blast and thermal effects, although orders of magnitude larger . They differ quali-