The Effects of Nuclear War by Office of Technology Assessment (U.S. Congress) - 1980

Washington, DC: Office of Technology Assessment - Congress of the United States. Very Good. 1980. 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Paperback. B&W Illustrations; Ex-Library copy -from the Palo Alto City Library. This is an oversized paperback book. The book is in Very Good condition and was issued without a dust jacket. The only library markins are three ink stamped notes on the front cover of the book (Palo Alto City Library, Oct 21, 1982, Pamphlet File -- likely for use of Stanford University and local NASA employees). The book and its contents are in mostly clean, bright condition. The covers of the book have the noted library stamps along with one rectangular patch of tape residue and some light ground-in dirt. The text pages are clean and bright. "This assessment was made in response to a request from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to examine the effects of nuclear war on the populations and economies of the United States and the Soviet Union. It is intended, in the terms of the Committee's request, to put what have been abstract measures of strategic power into more comprehensible terms." "In the immediate vicinity of a nuclear explosion, most casualties result from blast, heat and fallout during the first few days. The blast or heat from a one megatonne bomb - about 75 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, and a size often found in nuclear arsenals - would kill almost all people, even those in shelters, out to a distance of two kilometres. Beyond ten kilometres the chance of death even for people without special protection would be very small. If the bomb is exploded at an altitude higher than the radius of the fireball from the explosion, as happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, local fallout is minimal. If exploded at or near the earth's surface, fallout lethal to unprotected people will be deposited downwind - most often to the east toward which prevailing upper atmospheric winds blow - for a distance of up to hundreds of kilometres. After a fortnight the radiation levels will have dropped to about one thousandth of what they were one hour after the blast." .