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Re: Consequences of nuclear explosions



I thought this exchange might interest a wider audience:

Egoitein@aol.com wrote:

> Dear Dr. Seiler,
>
> I read your post regarding your experience in analyzing consequences of a
> nuclear war.
> My opinion is that most analyses are anthropocentric and do not consider the
> effect on other life forms.  Will the trout in the streams of the Swiss Alps
> survive, what about the birds, the worms, the insects?  What effects will the
> radiation being bio concentrated have on consumers ofmushrooms, potatoes,
> fish, animals?  My feeling is that these military studies show a great deal of
> hubris.  I would be interested to learn if the effects suggested here were
> considered by the Swiss army study.
>
> Cordially,  Ernest Goitein, egoitein@aol.com

Dear Ernest,

You are right, at least in part.  By necessity such studies are anthropocentric at
first because as an NBC officer, the survival of the people in the area entrusted
to you is your first concern.   But even while - in a serious scenario - most of
the population are still in their shelters, some have to leave theirs to take care
of their animals.  Cows, for instance, need daily feed and have to be milked
daily, otherwise they die.  This is where the care for animals and the environment
starts, and it goes as far as the our knowledge and the interest of your sponsor
will take you.  I had an independent command and could do essentially as I saw
fit, after proposing a scope of work to my superior in the Swiss Pentagon.  So we
conducted studies into issues other than human health.  Soon we realized that even
though we knew a lot about the behavior of fallout in the environment, we would in
a concrete case have to go and find the relevant correlations in the existing
fallout environment and build them into our risk assessment.  The key here was to
be flexible and ferret out the accumulations important in the food chain. We did
check the LD50s of all species for which they were available and found nothing to
call attention to a particular species outside the food chain for man.  Chernobyl
provided my successor in command with a test case.  As you would expect, we had
our successes and confirmations but also our failures.  We had egg on our faces
when goats and chamois in the mountains had ten times the body burdens of the cows
in the valleys.  We never had an expert on hand to tell us (mostly city or town
dwellers) the difference in their grazing habits!  We should have done a lot more
but I had all these specialists available for only 3 1/2 weeks per year and,
although a lot of work was done during the year, you can only do so much.

Cordially
Fritz
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Fritz A. Seiler, Ph.D.
Principal
Sigma Five Associates
P.O. Box 14006
Albuquerque, NM 87191-4006

Tel. 505-323-7848
Fax. 505-293-3911
e-mail: faseiler@nmia.com

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