Because Peter Zimmerman has an impressive record of publications and achievements, his words carry considerable weight, and so his characterization of Lynn Eden’s work and objectives will not be ignored.
I cannot pose as a disinterested bystander, since Eden makes liberal use of my work, but I do wish to establish my support for what I view as a thoroughly documented and carefully researched book.
Many academics suspect that science done under military sponsorship is less than pure, and I encountered that thinking in my early dealings with Eden. But to her credit, she listened to my explanations, studied my work with care, and went on to research her subject extensively over many years. Her characterization of the government’s efforts to deal—or not deal—with fire from nuclear weapons is more complete than any other source I am aware of. For that alone her book deserves careful reading and a place on library shelves.
Zimmerman’s description of weapons of different yields as radiation, blast, or thermal weapons is an oversimplification if not misleading. Even subkiloton weapons carry an impressive blast wallop and create an intense but brief thermal pulse. Megaton weapons also generate vast amounts of nuclear radiation and an impressive blast wave as well as a long if less intense thermal pulse.
Eden’s example of a burst at 1500 feet over the Pentagon is not so unreasonable as Zimmerman asserts. It would indeed put about 10 atmospheres or 140 psi on the Pentagon, which has multiple levels below ground that house vital functions. That yield and burst height would go a long way toward collapsing and blowing away the entire structure. At the same time, the blast and the thermal radiation across the rest of Washington, DC, would be devastating, even if a higher burst height might cause damage to urban structures and civil facilities over a larger area.
Zimmerman gives the impression that blast does not lead to fires, that only thermal ignitions do. Of course that is not the case. There is ample evidence that disruption fires, which are caused by blast interference with flammable or ignitable systems, are inevitable in any city bombing. The British learned this the hard way in early World War II, when the Germans bombed their cities and the damage was spread by fires; damage from spreading fires could be far greater than the direct damage from high-explosive bombs.
A recent review of the damage done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki confirmed the prevalence of fire damage. In several instances the authors of the US Strategic Bombing Survey reports on the atomic bombings expressed annoyance that fire damage hindered their assessment of blast damage to structures. It is clear that the survey instructions were to correlate and quantify the blast damage from the bombs. The reports, however, did document in detail the damage done by fire, and that damage is in agreement with the modern predictions Eden frequently mentions.
The early analysts who planned the use of atom bombs faced many difficulties and uncertainties. Largely because of the emphasis on physical or blast damage, I spent the first few decades of my professional life defining and refining our understanding of the blast from nuclear explosions.
I believe Eden is correct in pointing out that, had the same effort to understand blast damage been applied earlier to fire damage, the initial attempts to plan targeting for atom bombs might have been different.
In her book, Eden seems to have grasped many of the factors that influenced or guided the evolution of the US planning doctrine and the computational tools that dictated the use of what grew to be a vastly expensive and potentially devastating nuclear force. She alludes to the fact that civil engineers with experience in structural dynamics played important roles in the early development of the targeting methodology, but that no comparable experts in fire damage were included. Intentional? The result of a conspiracy? I doubt it. I would like to think that I was too much a part of the process to have missed a conspiracy.
Eden has acknowledged the progression toward more comprehensive planning for the use of nuclear weapons, and in the process has highlighted several important aspects of the functioning and potentials for failure in organizations, bureaucracies, and large-scale systems. Her account contains many useful lessons, even if one discounts the importance of fire damage in nuclear planning.
I reviewed with care Eden’s use of my material, so I feel qualified to assert that she has produced a carefully and fully researched and referenced work whose findings, although arguable, are difficult to refute.
