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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 9, 1985
PAGE 11
the heart of any citizen of their lands toward the people of the
United States; that he and his people are prepared to wage glori
ous war to the death only against the evil and ruthless policies
of the United States government."
"There you have it: a personal message from Adolf Hitler to the
people of the United States. I know every American will want to
come to his own conclusions about its meaning, and to tussle with
it in his own way."
In a far more serious vein, the editors of the BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIEN
TISTS devoted its entire August issue to an analysis of the 40 years of the
nuclear weapons age. The editor-in-chief of the BULLETIN (the magazine
with the famous "atomic clock" on the cover--now standing at three minutes
to midnight) is Harrison Brown. Dr. Brown is a veteran of the $2 billion
Manhattan Project which produced the 1945 bombs, initially as a crash pro
gram to beat Hitler's scientists to the punch. He and other great figures
of the project have since become crusaders for international control of
atomic and thermonuclear weapons. In his editorial titled "Linking Past
and Future," Dr. Brown wrote:
There are more than 50,000 nuclear weapons--representing a total
yield of about 13,000 megatons--deployed by the United States and
the Soviet Union.
Remembering that the bomb that obliterated
Hiroshima was but 0.01 megaton, we begin to appreciate the
enormity of the overkill potential in the hands - of the super
powers. [One new Trident submarine, it is estimated, will carry
as much destructive power as 25 World War IIs!]
Were one of these nations to launch a preemptive strike against
the other, we might expect that the combination of all warheads
used might amount to perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. megatons. A 1983
study by the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that about
� billion persons would be killed outright, while an additional
billion would suffer injuries from blast, fire, and radiation and
could die because most medical personnel would be killedc:ir
1ncapac1tated.
These estimates are based upon the conventional theoretical
knowledge of the detonation effects of large numbers of megaton
sized nuclear explosives. New calculations suggest, however,
that several other effects could increase these numbers substan
tially. The earlier calculations did not take into account the
results of the considerable disruption of the infrastructure,
including communications, or the depletion of the ozone layer.
But far more important is the recent estimate that nuclear explo
sions on the scale visualized would have a profound effect upon
the opacity of the atmosphere.
Surface explosions would push large quantities of dust into the
atmosphere and to this would be added smoke from forest fires and
urban conflagrations. The dust and smoke would greatly decrease
the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface, particularly
in the Northern Hemisphere, where presumably most of the explo
sions would take place. This would produce dramatic reductions