Evening star., 1955-07-10
1O-Yeor Co-Existence
With the Atom Finds
World on 7 enterhooks

weapons Is so great that 1t may be-
come self controlling. Who will
want to start the kind of war in
which there will be no Hctor-only
vanquished?"
Gosh! II Worked!
DR.. Graves recalls that as the
explosion came he thought, Gosh!
It workedl
mo. I didn't really expect it not
to work, but :"
The scientists not only expected
the thing to work, but foresaw with
slide-rllle precision many Of the
characteristics Of the first explosion
caused by the fission Of atoms.
It was q blast for which there
were no precedents. Until that hour
in the desert. all man-made ex-
plosions had traced from the an
cient feat Of the Chinese in pro-
ducing detonation by molecular
rearrangement.
Although the scientists foresaw
the fall-out peril and other char
acteriStics of the explosion, they
appear to have been deeply con-
servative in their estimates of the
energy to be released. Their speci-
f1cationS called originally for an
explosion equivalent to about 1000
tons Of TINT. The physicists scaled
this up little in their computa-
tions. But they apparently did not
reach the 20,000-ton figure which
the bomb actually attained.
The Bikini Error
Not for another nine years were
the weaponeers to err so widely
in computing explosive power. The
1854 test explosion of q thermo-
nuclear device at Bikini was report
ed to have been about double the
power expected by the designers.
For several years after Alamo
gordo's Trinity" test. the use Of
two bombs on Japanese targets and
the 1916 tests against naval ships
at Bikini there was belief that the
minimum size of an atomic bomb
had to be 20,000-ton go kiloton)
energy, with doubt about building
up beyond that range.
That is forgotten now. Nuclear
ission explosions ranging from a
single kiloton to 100 kilotons have
oeen detonated at the Nevada
Proving Ground. In the remote Pa
cif1c Proving Ground at Eniwetok,
tests running up to half a million
kilotons presumably have been
carried out.
These, of course, are the mere.
conventional flssion explosions -
little things when measured against
he H-bomb.
The H-bomb is miscalled. Ac-
sually, hydrogen is only one Of the
clements that appear in the pro-
duction of atomic fission, thermo-
1uclear explosions.
Two Glasses Of Weapons
The atomic weapons-hssion and
fusion which exist or are close to
perfection today fall into two
classes:
/. Tactical bombs, missiles, rock
cts and cannon projectiles, for use
against troops on the battlefield.
ships at sea. enemy plane forma-
tions or specific military targets
such as supply dumps, Transports
ton centers or naval or air bases.
2. The weapons Of strategic de-
struction, capable Of wiping out
vast areas.
There is no practical limit to the
power Of thermonuclear bomb
except the dimensions of its casing
and its transportability.
In q preliminary test of thermo-
nuclear explosion in 1852, using a
device much smaller than the 1854
weapons, an island Of the Bikini
aton was wiped out, leaving a
crater q mile wide and ITS feet
deep in the ocean floor
It was the 1854 test which To-
cused new and worried attention
to the radioactivity aspects of
atomic explosions. Unexpected wind
direction, together with apparently
unexpected force Of explosion, sent
radioactive clouds drifting beyond
predicted limits. Japanese fisher
men were contaminated. There
were protests from abroad and
growing concern at home.
The Atomic Energy Commission
eventually admitted that about
1000 square miles Of territory
downwind from the explosion was
so contaminated that survival of
any persons who might have been
in the area-all had been removed
would have depended on whether
the people were removed promptly
or could have taken cover against
the fall-out.
Fall-out is byproduct of the
major mission of atomic explosion,
blast effect.
The greatest danger from this
byproduct, fallout, is the persist
ence of some of the radioactive
elements produced in a blast. Some
Of them. like one form of the ele-
ment strontium, have long half
lives" and are readily taken into
the human system where they do
great and lasting damage. In such
cases. radioactivity is largely un-
controllable.
Rodiooctivity
But the major atomic nations
have adapted radioactivity as a
separate weapon, applied directly
and without the sid Of atomic
detonation.
Pathological warfare is now a
division in itself. akin to chemical
and germ warfare and capable of
delivery in somewhat the same
manner. Radioactive materials
can be packaged in artillery shells.
guided missiles or rockets and fired
like any chemical shell. Upon i'm
pact or midair detonation, a con-
ventional explosive charge spreads
the deadly product. Pathological