You have a job to do in defending your home, your home town, your country against an A-bomb attack, when and if it comes. Whether it be a full-time paid job, a volunteer job or just the things you must know how to do on your own, is not important. What is important is in knowing what to do and, then, doing it.
Strangely enough, for every citizen to know what to do is in itself a form of civil defense. It is the helpless, the people who do not feel needed who are the causes of panic. And panic is one of the big dangers in an A-bomb attack or in any kind of a disaster.
What is your job?
That depends on the kind of person you are, where you work, what you like to do ordinarily.
First, there are the special agencies found in every city and town. These, and the people who work for them will be of vital importance in any A-bomb attack.
If you work for the telephone company, for the electric company, for a street car or bus line, for the water system, the gas company, a radio station, the railroad, the city government, or even the zoo, you will probably have an important job to do.
If and when an A-bomb falls on your city, the water pressure must be kept up; the fire equipment must be mobilized, communication must be maintained -- there are a myriad of important functions which must be kept going.
Right now, in many American cities, the public utilities have completed plans for what they will do in case of an A-bomb attack. Water companies know what valves to turn so precious water will not drain away through broken and twisted pipes. You, if you work for the water company, might already be assigned a valve to turn if the bomb should happen to fall in a particular area.
In all the public utilities there will be specific jobs to do to keep things running where possible, to provide substitutes where that isn't possible.
Telephones, where the lines stay intact, will be vital for communication between important offices in the target city and to other cities which can provide relief and places where refugees can stay. If you work for the telephone company, yours will be an important job when and if an A-bomb comes.
But radio engineers -- hams and professionals -- will probably be the persons upon whom your home town must rely to keep communications open to the rest of the world. Emergency wave-lengths are being set aside for communications in case of disruption of regular channels. Radio hams will be vital links in the emergency radio networks.
You will notice that the transmitters of your home town radio stations are not usually where the downtown offices are, they are on the outskirts of town. Most of them have their own stand-by power units, to be used if the regular sources of supply are put out of commission. This is a most fortunate thing, and the men who work there will be essential cogs in our defense effort if and when an attack comes.
Keeping the gas and electricity going, or shutting it off where necessary will be important too. If you work for the gas or light company, you will have a big responsibility to your home town. The enemy will be wanting to kill people only as a secondary matter. What he is really after is to knock out your home town as a going concern -- if he knocks out the sources of power he will be doing a good job.
CIVIL DEFENSE
This is what civil defense is aimed at -- keeping your home town a going concern -- keeping it providing the regular needs of the people who live there -- keeping it providing the tools of war and the necessities of life which it is expected to produce.
Therefore, not only in the water, gas and electricity plants, but also in the factories, in the offices, in the government bureaus in your home town, there will be civil defense organizations. It's this simple -- keep things running so far as you can.
This means that you -- where you work -- will be assigned to some job to do in case of an A-bomb attack. You may be assigned to go up to the roof immediately after some kinds of attacks, armed with bucket of sand and shovel or with a chemical fire extinguisher to see that a fire does not get started and put your building out of commission. You may be assigned to the first aid station to take care of people cut with flying glass or knocked in the head by falling masonry. But in all the tasks for which you will be trained, the objective is the same -- keep the country running, fade with the knockout punch the enemy was expecting to deliver to us.
VOLUNTEER JOBS IN CIVIL DEFENSE
Outside of your jobs, your places of work, there will be, of course, many tasks to perform. Volunteer jobs in civil defense may be expected to be broken down in much the same manner they are broken down by the British. They are, after all, old hands at the game.
You will probably find many jobs to do, many jobs for which to be trained, in your local civil defense headquarters. Communications must be kept open so civil defense workers may be deployed to the areas of greatest need, so supplies medical and food, may be sent where they will do the most good. This means volunteer work on switchboards, with raido transmitters, as couriers in cars, on motorcycles and on foot.
Where communications are down, or are scanty, there will be need for special reconnaissance work, for people who will go out to find out the extent of the damage from any attack, to determine its boundaries, its seriousness and to make estimates of what is needed from that information.
No new agency can be set up, whether voluntary or permanent, city, state or federal without its "bureaucracy," its administrative workers. Typists, teletypewriters, file clerks, secretaries -- and supervisors for those people -- they will be needed, both as part time volunteers and as full time workers.
The public must be kept informed and there are two phases to this job. The first phase is the preparatory one -- telling the public what they can do, what they can expect, giving people the maximum amount of information before an attack occurs. This is the way democracy works. In the second phase, put into operation only if and when an A-bomb falls, public information will be the vital and specific job of directing the public so they do the things which will save their lives and keep them out of the way of life-saving efforts on the part of others.
Volunteers will have to know how to identify the different kinds of radioactivity and their extent. They will be attached to civil defense headquarters so the public, the rescue workers and the firemen will not have to risk their lives needlessly. Here we are ahead of Great Britain -- this is natural because we have the A-bomb and thousands of our people have already worked with radioactive materials in Oak Ridge, Hanford and other places, including almost every university.
Thousands are already trained in the use of detection instruments, and they are trained to teach others. This is a job you might well be doing for your local civil defense office.
THE WARDEN'S JOB
We will have air raid wardens again -- but if you are a warden your job will be more complex. The wardens will, once more, be responsible for the organization of people in blocks, in apartment houses in neighborhoods. The wardens will be responsible for knowing how many people are in his area, where they are -- so that an estimate can be made, in the event of an A-bomb attack, of who are safe in shelters, who are away from the area, and who remain to be rescued from the rubble.
The wardens will see to it that the air raid warnings have been heard and have been heeded, that everybody will know where to go when a warning is sounded, or, if they have specific jobs, will know what to do.
The British have a polite word for one of the most important of a warden's jobs -- "incident control." The warden will be the man in charge if any "incident" occurs in connection with an A-bomb attack. He will be trained in what to do, whether to call on outside help, whether to enlist volunteers from the neighborhood, or whether to ignore the whole thing.
An "incident" can be the falling of rubble across the entrance to a family air raid shelter, or it can be the panicking of the residents of a large apartment house. It will be up to the warden to know how to handle any kind of an incident.
The warden will be concerned, too, with the movement of refugees -- a horrible word for Americans to get used to. But, if and when an A-bomb comes near your home, there are two alternatives -- either people in your area will need to move on to find shelter, or people who have lost their homes will be moving in with you. These people are refugees.
The warden will have to know, if an A-bomb has destroyed parts of his area, how many refugees will be leaving. And he will have to know, if his area is not destroyed, how many refugees it can take.
RESCUE WORKERS
Rescue workers might well be called the skilled workers of civil defense. It is not a matter of just clawing away at falling rubble until you get to a trapped person. Rescue work calls for high discipline and technique. It is obvious, for instance, that clumsy clawing away at rubble might bring more rubble down upon the rescue worker and further block the avenues of escape for the trapped victims.
If and when an A-bomb comes, thousands of trained and skilled rescue workers will be needed. You will have the opportunity to train for this difficult but rewarding assignment.
The government is hoping that at least 20,000,000 of us will take first aid courses. Except for the minority of casualties who will have radiation sickness, the larger number will be injured in familiar ways -- burned, hit by falling masonry, in shock. Elementary treatment of these everyone should know.
Rescue workers particularly will have to know first aid and stretcher bearing. Another job for you in which first aid will be particularly important is driving an ambulance.
The British have the appropriate word for everything. One section of their civil defense corps organization is called "pioneers." In a sense on which the British probably never figured, the word is apt.
Pioneer workers will be the first to clear the way for the new beginning of living after an A-bomb attack. Whatever we call them, they will be one of the most important parts of our American volunteer civil defense effort.
Pioneers will clear away the debris and rubble left by an attack; they will plant the explosives which destroy unsafe buildings. They will be in charge of the early decontamination of roads and highways so people may move about without fear. Decontamination of vehicles and clothing will be in their hands. They will see to it that uninjured persons who may have come in contact with radioactive materials thoroughly scrub themselves -- one of the most effective first steps in decontamination.
They will go into blasted buildings to salvage what can still be used. Pioneers will make emergency repairs to houses and to fallen wires and broken gas and water mains. They will clear roads so refugees can be evacuated and the injured moved quickly to places of treatment.
CARING FOR THE HOMELESS
By size, the greatest human problem after an A-bomb attack will not be the injured, but the homeless. Your talents may be useful in one of the many tasks to be done in helping them.
You may be needed to escort the homeless men, women and children to places of safety, to places where they can lie down for rest. You may be able to give them advice about what to do -- where to get supplies of clothing, where to get food, where to contact relatives, where to find a temporary home.
There will be rest centers for refugees -- you may be needed to plan meals, to cook them, to oversee the sleeping quarters, to run the linen laundry, to register your guests.
Large public air raid shelters become, during alerts, communities with unique problems. You may be the right person to supervise an air raid shelter; to prevent, tactfully, quarrels about occupancy of the same space; to see to it that the shelter is kept clean; to make sure that the young and the old and the sick get the special attention they need. If you are that person, it is likely that you will be elected by the fellow residents of your "community" air raid shelter.
Do you cook for a large family? Then you may be the volunteer answer to the question of where the other volunteer workers will get something to eat or a hot cup of coffee. There will be mobile kitchens to man for the purpose.
Along with the citizens who should learn first aid, there will be a great need of voluntary corps of hospital workers. Perhaps you were a nurse's aide, or a Red Cross grey lady during the last war. They will need you again and many more like you. In addition to training for work in the hospitals, persons will have to be trained to man emergency treatment centers, to take the place of, and supplement, hospitals which might be overcrowded or destroyed in an attack.
FIRE AND POLICE AID
An A-bomb sets fires immediately. The terrific heat blast instantaneously scorches everything within range that is inflammable. Then these fires begin to spread and other little fires, coming from gas tanks, stove burners left on in damaged houses, and from many other causes, start up.
Your fire department will need volunteers, many of them, trained to help them keep this danger under control.
The police, too, will need an auxiliary force. There will be a need to direct and control traffic, to maintain order, perhaps beyond the ability of the regular force to handle it. The precinct house communications will need extra manning.
Then there will be jobs connected with what the military call the "positive defenses" of your town. These are the measures of the army and air force to make it extremely hard for an enemy plane to get through and to drop an A-bomb.
DEFENSE WITHIN THE HOME
Whether or not you can volunteer for any of these duties, your first responsibility will be your own home and those in it. A man's home is his castle, and it is his responsibility to make it as impregnable to attack as he can.
You may consider building a small shelter, if you are a home owner. It is estimated that many lives would have been saved at Hiroshima if the Japanese had taken to their very flimsy shelters when our B-29 was first reported overhead.
You should see that the proper first aid equipment is on hand. Your children should be taught where to go when the air raid warning is sounded. You see that everyone in your home understands instructions and follows orders in case of attack.
You have a final responsibility. If you take part in one of these many voluntary civil defense activities that final responsibility will be easy. It is to realize that there are many things that can be done to mitigate the effects of an A-bomb attack on your city -- and to do your share of them efficiently.
If we all do that, we will do a great deal to keep down the effects of an A-bomb attack and to maintain the operation of our cities and our factories.
Out of the sun a black, cigar-shaped object falls toward the earth. At the edge of town a filling station attendant sees it cross the slice of sky between the car above him and the edge of his grease pit. The center fielder of the visiting baseball team sees the moving spot, then looks back toward the batter, impatient for the third out. A woman in the park hears a strange, thin whistle and looks up, shading her eyes.
At a point 2,000 feet above the ground, the first atomic rocket of World War III explodes over your city. In one vast flash of light, equal to 100 suns, the buildings are etched against a sky of fire. A blinding ball of flame leaps from the point where the rocket exploded.
There, in a millionth of a second, a lump of plutonium or uranium, perhaps the size of a basketball, disappears. As it vanishes, the temperature at that point jumps to 1,000,000 degrees Centigrade. The air around it is pushed outward by a pressure hundreds of thousands times that of the normal pressure of the atmosphere.
A thousandth of a second later, the ball of fire is 45 feet across. Its temperature has dropped to 300,000 degrees.
After a full second, there is a globe of flaming air 450 feet wide, the size of a city block.
The shadows cast by this ball of fire are etched permanently into concrete sidewalks and granite buildings. Directly beneath the burst, in the split second before the blast wave arrives, pedestrians simply vanish into smoke and ash. This is the point which atomic scientists call "ground zero." Here the sidewalk temperature is between 3,000 and 4,000 degrees.
With the sheer flash heat comes another form of radiating energy, the only one which a conventional high-explosives bomb cannot match on its smaller scale: Nuclear radiation, X-rays of the A-bomb, invisible yet striking through concrete and steel to destroy the single human cells in bone marrow, blood and living tissues.
Then the blast hits. A moving wall of shock crushes the city under a giant hand, wrenches it from its foundations, levels a mile-wide area into rubble. Small masonry buildings are engulfed by a pressure wave and collapse completely. Light buildings and homes are totally demolished by the blast. Factories of steel are stripped of roofing and siding. Only twisted skeletons remain, leaning away from ground zero as though struck by a hurricane of stupendous proportions.
When the shock and blinding heat have gone, fire springs up in the wreckage. And billowing out in great clouds of dust, falling back to earth from the towering mushroom of smoke, there is the hidden terror which scientists call residual radioactivity.
What are these massive forces which an atomic explosion turns loose? How will they affect you?
ATOMIC FORCES
When energy is released suddenly by any sort of bomb, the rise in temperature of the exploding material causes complete vaporization of the bomb, casing and all. Solid matter suddenly turns to gas.
This gas is in a restricted space, pushing outward with huge pressure on the air around it. So great is this push that it can move air, water or earth, whatever is around the bomb when it goes off. The series of events which follow constitute the destructive blast of the bomb. In TNT and atomic bomb alike, blast does nearly all the physical damage by brute force. The tremendous heat generated by the explosion sends forth energy in a second way, which the scientists call thermal radiation. This is heat traveling with the speed of light, heat exactly like that given off by the sun. The rays are not penetrating. They are stopped by any object which stops light.
Alone in the atomic bomb, rays of nuclear fission channel a third explosion of energy. When the radioactive material of the bomb disintegrates, it releases various particles of electricity: beta particles, the atom's electrons; alpha particles, which are combinations of neutrons and protons; neutrons alone, the particles from the center of atoms; and finally gamma rays, which are high-energy rays very similar to X-rays.
The cumulative effect of these sources of energy is the measure of the atomic bomb, or of any other explosion of nuclear force, whether it be in the fission of uranium or the fusion of hydrogen in the "Hell-bomb."
The Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Defense have released a comprehensive handbook entitled "The Effects of Atomic Weapons," half a decade after the world's first atomic bomb was exploded. It tells the technical story of what will happen to any city under an attack similar to that on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
AEC scientists at Los Alamos who wrote the report describe a "nominal atomic bomb." This they use as the basis for their calculations in damage and death. The bomb is the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. Expressed in electrical energy, it is roughly equal to the daily output of the generators at Hoover Dam. Yet this tremendous force is only equal, they say, to the energy which would be released should 2.2 pounds of uranium 235 fission completely.
The explosion of the nominal bomb takes place in the first millionth of a second after two lumps of uranium or plutonium are brought together into one lump. The shock wave, the heat rays, the radiation leap outward.
The shock wave moves with the speed of sound. In a sense it is a moving wall of air, water or earth under tremendous pressure. When this wall hits a resistant surface, it hits with a punch multiplied by the size of the surface in its path. Thus a large building is struck by a greater force than a small structure, and often suffers greater damage.
In an atomic bomb exploded in the air, the front of this shock wave is vertical. The high pressure hits as a giant blow. Behind the shock front, high pressure reaches back for a considerable distance on the wave. Behind that is a region where the pressure drops to less than normal, a region of suction.
DESTRUCTION FROM THE BOMB
When a building is struck by the blast wave, it is first punched on one side by the wall shock. Then, as pressure moves on with the speed of sound, it envelops the entire building, squeezing down from all sides. This pressure decreases rapidly, and is succeeded by suction which pulls wind, debris and people back toward the point of the explosion. With shock and suction comes wind of great speed, first away from the bomb, then toward it, adding to the havoc.
The great power of the atomic bomb produces so-called "mass distortion" of buildings. It engulfs and flattens whole buildings. The area of virtually complete destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the bombs were approximately the size of the "nominal bomb," was about 2,600 feet in radius. Inside a circle swung on a line half a mile long, the area of almost total havoc covered three-quarters of a square mile.
The circle of severe damage, where buildings are wrecked to the point of near collapse, will reach out a mile, covering four square miles. From this point, damage will diminish with distance, depending to a great extent upon the weather and hills and valleys of the city. Even as far as eight miles from the blast, windows will break and plaster will fall. The overall area of damage will be about 200 square miles.
Buildings designed to be earthquake-resistant were found in Japan to have suffered remarkably light damage, even when relatively close to ground zero. Smoke stacks, tall and thin, were often by-passed by the blast. On the other hand, quirks of pressure produced by the atmosphere produced havoc far beyond the circle where it was expected. At Nagasaki, barracks nearly five miles from ground zero collapsed to ground level.
In the strongest buildings of reinforced concrete, pressure on the outside walls may cause the roof or floors to buckle. The walls facing the blast may be dished inward. There will be uniformly heavy damage to false ceilings, partitions and plaster. Brick facings and cornices will be blown off into the streets, striking down the people caught outdoors.
Shed-type steel factory buildings will be bent over and blown apart, even when more than a mile from ground zero. Brick buildings, whose walls carry the entire load of construction, are among the most easily damaged. At distances up to 6,200 feet, they probably will collapse completely, taking with them everyone inside. Houses of wood at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrecked as far as 7,500 feet from the ground zero. The splintered wreckage kindled fires which followed.
Small steel-frame bridges were found to be quite resistant to blast, as were underground water mains, electrical conduits and gas lines. But damage to the water system through the breakage of pipes in houses and offices buildings will be one of the most serious effects of an atomic explosion. Overhead utility lines may be heavily damaged up to two miles from ground zero. Automobiles, buses and streetcars will be hit hard by blast and fire at distances up to a mile. In this country, atomic scientists believe, reinforced concrete buildings will be generally less resistant to blast than Japan's earthquake-proof buildings. But tall buildings having heavy steel frames such as office buildings and hospitals, should withstand the effect of blast quite well. For American-built frame houses, it is believed that the radius of structural blast damage would not exceed 7,500 feet -- a mile and a half from ground zero -- whereas at Nagasaki severe damage to houses extended out 8,500 feet. We build our homes better.
For an air burst over water rather than land, the shock wave is much the same. At Able Day at Bikini, ships suffered severe damage or were sunk 3,000 feet from the point directly beneath the blast. Minor damage occurred out more than a mile.
UNDERWATER OR UNDERGROUND EXPLOSION
In an underwater or underground atomic explosion, however, the action of the shock wave is entirely different. "There are no actual experiences upon which to base conclusions (about an underground burst)," the AEC reports, disregarding Soviet Russia's claim that it set off an atom bomb and moved a mountain.
Blast damage from an underground or underwater atomic explosion is expected to be less than that from an air burst. If a nominal atomic bomb were exploded 50 feet down in ordinary soil, a crater 800 feet across and 100 feet deep would be blown open. A bomb such as the Baker Day explosion, at Bikini, detonated underwater at shallow depths, would throw tremendous quantities of water into the air.
Both the soil and the water from such bursts would be intensely radioactive. In these two cases, danger from longlasting radiation is expected to be greater than from any other source. The explosion's heat will be absorbed entirely by the material around it. And while blast damage will be done, the scientists have calculated the greatest blast damage is produced by a bomb exploded about 2,000 feet in the air.
EFFECT OF AIR BURST
At that height, chances of any one surviving within 2,600 feet -- half a mile -- are very poor, the scientists say bluntly. Persons within that circle will either be killed by the blast wave, crushed by falling buildings, burned to death or given a greater-than-lethal dose of radiation.
While the blast wave will take about 10 seconds to travel the two miles in which it does damage, the heat wave of an atomic blast lasts only three seconds. It will set flash fires and char combustible materials. Human beings exposed to it will receive more or less serious skin burns if within two miles of ground zero. At 4,000 feet, roof tiles will bubble and blister.
The heat will roughen polished granite, set fire to dark clothing and burn rubber tires a mile from the blast.
This radiant heat travels only in a straight line. Protection from it is afforded by almost any object. Clothing shields the body. The shadow of a tree trunk will be untouched by the heat. It is this phenomenon which produced the "profile burns" on buildings or human beings. It sears only where a surface is within line-of-sight from the explosion.
Burns from flash heat and the fires produced by the heat caused more than half the deaths and three-quarters the injuries at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were no fire departments after the explosions. Water pressure in the city mains was practically zero. Twenty minutes after the blast came the "fire storm," wind blowing into the holocaust from all directions, blowing 30 to 40 miles an hour at its height.
This is not all. The atomic scientists estimate that at 3,000 feet from the bomb's burst, there is better than 50 percent chance you will be killed by nuclear radiation, even if you are shielded by 12 inches of concrete. This is the effect of the deadly rays you cannot see. Neutrons and gamma rays are the dangerous particles of energy in this wave.
Gamma radiation (X-rays) from a nominal atomic bomb will kill at 4,200 feet from the burst. Neutrons are not quite so far-reaching, but they will deliver a lethal dose as far as half a mile from ground zero. Shielding from either of these particles is a matter of reinforced concrete by the foot, or solid lead inches thick.
RADIATION SICKNESS
A lethal dose of radiation from the immediate blast will have these effects: Varying degrees of shock, possibly within a few hours; nausea, vomiting and diarrhea in the following day or two; then fever. Often there will be no pain in the first few days, but merely discomfort, depression and fatigue.
The early stages of radiation sickness may be followed by two or three days when the patient is free from all symptoms, although profound changes are taking place meanwhile in his body. Then the earlier symptoms reappear. Active illness is soon followed by delirium, coma and finally death, which comes within two to three weeks. Infection, internal bleeding, swelling of the throat glands, loss of hair and degeneration of the sex organs are all apt to occur.
AEC scientists and genetics experts are extremely cautious in discussing one vital question: Will the children and grandchildren of atomic victims be human monsters? Chromosomes and genes, biological factors which control heredity, are changed by radiation. But how much are they changed? Is there serious danger that these changes can be passed along to the next generation, or those which come after that?
Risk of passing on any changes in the chromosomes can be reduced if atomic victims "refrain from begetting offspring for a period of two or three months following exposure," the reports states. However, this precaution probably would not lessen the chances, if they exist at all, of passing on changes in the genes. Until large gaps in man's knowledge of radiation and its genetic effects can be closed, admit the scientists, estimates of what can or may happen in this field from atomic explosions will be little better than guesses.
AFTER-EFFECTS OF BOMBING
Will the bombed city be left an echoing ghost town, too "hot" with radioactivity to be entered? If the bomb explodes high in the air, the AEC report says, this hazard will be very small. The radioactive residue of the bomb itself will fall to earth, but the small amounts of these fission products and the wide area over which they will be dispersed lead military men to discount almost completely any real danger from them.
Some dirt and dust will be sucked up into the boiling cloud of an atomic explosion, but this too will travel far and come back to earth spread over many miles. However, the "base surge" of water from an underwater explosion, or the great clouds of dirt thrown by a bomb exploded at street level or beneath the surface, will be intensely radioactive. Lethal levels of radiation in the wake of such bombs are possible and must be guarded against, the scientists warn.
If an atomic bomb were a fizzle, unexploded radioactive material might settle over a limited area in high enough concentrations to be dangerous. Such fizzles are possible. If the two lumps of fissionable material do not come together just right, the bomb might explode only partially, breaking apart and scattering its substance into the air.
Radioactive materials might be deliberately sown without an explosive taking place, as a new weapon of war. Such materials can and are being made constantly in the normal operation of atomic piles. Small amounts of certain elements can be made to give off tremendous amounts of radiation when so treated. If these were to be spread uniformly over a limited area, that area might be denied for human habitation for a considerable period of time. Those who remained within the area would be poisoned in much the same way that nuclear radiation from an exploding bomb strikes the human body. Even if great numbers of people are not directly killed, even if large areas are not laid waste as by direct atomic explosion, the panic-inspiring potential of radiological warfare as a "mystery weapon" makes it a grim possibility which must be taken into account in civilian defense planning.
The blast of an atomic bomb is more violent, but methods of dealing with explosion damage, fire and rescue of the injured were developed long ago, and are not changed by the mere fact that an atomic blast is stronger than ordinary TNT explosions.
But in combating the radioactivity that comes with atomic bombing, new hazards and new ways to meet them must be planned for. Rescue crews and monitoring teams must have instruments to show them where dangerous levels of radioactivity have been left. They must know the length of time a human being can remain in buildings and rubble-strewn areas left radioactive. They must know new techniques of decontamination.
They must know how to deal with panic, for scientists are agreed that panic is the major danger of atomic bombing. "Mass hysteria could convert a minor incident into a major disaster," they say.
The first atomic bomb at Hiroshima killed 78,150 people. This is far from a "minor incident." But if an American community -- anywhere -- were atom-bombed, panic would strike 80 out of 100 of the physically unharmed survivors. Tens of thousands of thousands of Americans might be struck down by sheer terror, making vastly more difficult the job of meeting atomic attack. The great industrial centers of the nation might suddenly become empty shells as the people fled from A-bombs yet to come.
I'm not much into a lot of high tech or 'new fangled' kitchen ware, preferring instead cast iron skillets on a wood cook stove. I resisted owning a microwave for years, and only got hooked when I got a small one several years ago for Christmas. I still have it, and yes, I use it to thaw meat and heat an occasional cup of water... a fairly expensive solution if you include the cost.
On the other hand, a blender and/or food processor can pay for its cost and the electricity it uses very quickly. It's a tool for the frugal, busy person that pays its way many times over.
With it, you can stir, grind, mix, puree and pulverize almost anything in seconds, from creating a cooling drink to making your own powdered sugar. A blender is a handy dandy gadget for sure!
One of my favorite uses is making sandwich spreads from leftover meat. Anything from chicken to roast to hotdogs is fair game. Just cut the meat into manageable sized pieces and add mayonnaise or salad dressing, pickles, onions, cheese, olives, boiled eggs... whatever you prefer, and whirl it until it's finely diced.
It's a good way to stretch a little meat to go a long way.
Ever get a hankering for an ice cream malted? It's a lot cheaper to make your own! You should find malt in the baking section of your grocery store (if you don't find it, ask!). That, along with some vanilla ice cream and a little milk is all it takes.
For one malt, put two or three hefty scoops of ice cream in the blender, add about 1/4 cup of milk and a couple of heaping tablespoons of malt. Blend until it's smooth, but don't overdo it. You can add whatever you like for flavoring too. Try real bananas, cocoa mix, frozen strawberries, flavored syrups, jellies... let your imagination go wild for this one.
Use your blender to make your own powdered sugar by adding a teaspoon of cornstarch to a cup of granulated sugar and blending until it's fine. You'll never have to buy powdered sugar again, and you'll always have it fresh, not to mention that granulated sugar is cheaper.
Need onion powder or garlic powder? Put dehydrated onions or garlic in the blender and turn it on! Need ground oregano when all you have are oregano leaves? Same thing.
Use your blender to chop nuts for toppings or breads, make cracker and bread crumbs, make salsas when the peppers are too hot to handle, puree real pumpkin for real pumpkin pies... the list goes on.
They're inexpensive and even the cheaply made ones usually last a few years. That means you can save a lot of money, with just the uses listed here.
Of all things this modern world has provided, the blender could very well be the busy and frugal cook's best friend.
Having a big long story floating around in your mind, but not knowing exactly how to get it onto paper, or express it. It has fighting, love, explosions, grits, intrigue, suspense, Natalie Portman, danger, romance, First Posting, beauty, evil, and a gaping wide anus.*
I think I'm going to call my story Slashdot Wars: Episode IV - A New Goatsex. What do you all think?
<Straight-Man> It must be difficult to walk if you have three legs.
P.S. Generally when I want to make my penis 12" long, I wash it in hot water then dry it in high heat. That shrinks it right back down to a more "comfortable" size.
By the way, how did the replacement of your leg go? I hear that with that procedure, you are now almost 90% cybernetic. If that's true, congratulations on that.
I could pee on your face. That would probably be new to you. However, I doubt you'd like it.
I could stick your hand in a blender set to "puree". That would probably be new to you. However, I doubt you'd like it.
Another thing, most people don't want to hear anything new not because they "risk their cozy bland existence," but simply because they've probably already heard the "new" before and like it about as much as nails grating on a chalkboard. This "industrial" crap you speak of is about as musical as a pair of fighting cats in a garbage can.
Get off your high podium jackass. You do not hold the moral high-ground here.
Oh, I'm sorry, you're a unique rebellious individual, just like every other unique rebellious individual. Fight the power, don't conform (Except to do the things all the people you want to be like do), be yourself (except when that doesn't allow you to fit in to your "unique" culture).
Slashdot Mirror
Did someone mention me?
Do you know me you AC piece of dung? If it weren't for Taco's 2 post limit for me, I'd be waffle-stomping your face into a curb right now!
You and your kind make me sick. Curl up and die!
Thank you.
If this test goes as planned, I will not be able to say anything else until July 16, 2002.
That being said, visit http://www.sporks-r-us.com or http://www.crapfest.org for more -1 antics.
This is post one of two for July 15, 2002.
Mad propz to CmdrTaco for running a website where anyone can talk, unless they're out of line, in which case they can't.
Still, everyone can talk!
Mad propz to TrollBridge for founding such a great organization.
A lot of previously famous crapflooders have reformed their accounts. Why do you think so many of the current crapflooders have high UIDs?
Liberals really piss me off.
2. WHAT YOU CAN DO IN CIVIL DEFENSE
You have a job to do in defending your home, your home town, your country against an A-bomb attack, when and if it comes. Whether it be a full-time paid job, a volunteer job or just the things you must know how to do on your own, is not important. What is important is in knowing what to do and, then, doing it.
Strangely enough, for every citizen to know what to do is in itself a form of civil defense. It is the helpless, the people who do not feel needed who are the causes of panic. And panic is one of the big dangers in an A-bomb attack or in any kind of a disaster.
What is your job?
That depends on the kind of person you are, where you work, what you like to do ordinarily.
First, there are the special agencies found in every city and town. These, and the people who work for them will be of vital importance in any A-bomb attack.
If you work for the telephone company, for the electric company, for a street car or bus line, for the water system, the gas company, a radio station, the railroad, the city government, or even the zoo, you will probably have an important job to do.
If and when an A-bomb falls on your city, the water pressure must be kept up; the fire equipment must be mobilized, communication must be maintained -- there are a myriad of important functions which must be kept going.
Right now, in many American cities, the public utilities have completed plans for what they will do in case of an A-bomb attack. Water companies know what valves to turn so precious water will not drain away through broken and twisted pipes. You, if you work for the water company, might already be assigned a valve to turn if the bomb should happen to fall in a particular area.
In all the public utilities there will be specific jobs to do to keep things running where possible, to provide substitutes where that isn't possible.
Telephones, where the lines stay intact, will be vital for communication between important offices in the target city and to other cities which can provide relief and places where refugees can stay. If you work for the telephone company, yours will be an important job when and if an A-bomb comes.
But radio engineers -- hams and professionals -- will probably be the persons upon whom your home town must rely to keep communications open to the rest of the world. Emergency wave-lengths are being set aside for communications in case of disruption of regular channels. Radio hams will be vital links in the emergency radio networks.
You will notice that the transmitters of your home town radio stations are not usually where the downtown offices are, they are on the outskirts of town. Most of them have their own stand-by power units, to be used if the regular sources of supply are put out of commission. This is a most fortunate thing, and the men who work there will be essential cogs in our defense effort if and when an attack comes.
Keeping the gas and electricity going, or shutting it off where necessary will be important too. If you work for the gas or light company, you will have a big responsibility to your home town. The enemy will be wanting to kill people only as a secondary matter. What he is really after is to knock out your home town as a going concern -- if he knocks out the sources of power he will be doing a good job.
CIVIL DEFENSE
This is what civil defense is aimed at -- keeping your home town a going concern -- keeping it providing the regular needs of the people who live there -- keeping it providing the tools of war and the necessities of life which it is expected to produce.
Therefore, not only in the water, gas and electricity plants, but also in the factories, in the offices, in the government bureaus in your home town, there will be civil defense organizations. It's this simple -- keep things running so far as you can.
This means that you -- where you work -- will be assigned to some job to do in case of an A-bomb attack. You may be assigned to go up to the roof immediately after some kinds of attacks, armed with bucket of sand and shovel or with a chemical fire extinguisher to see that a fire does not get started and put your building out of commission. You may be assigned to the first aid station to take care of people cut with flying glass or knocked in the head by falling masonry. But in all the tasks for which you will be trained, the objective is the same -- keep the country running, fade with the knockout punch the enemy was expecting to deliver to us.
VOLUNTEER JOBS IN CIVIL DEFENSE
Outside of your jobs, your places of work, there will be, of course, many tasks to perform. Volunteer jobs in civil defense may be expected to be broken down in much the same manner they are broken down by the British. They are, after all, old hands at the game.
You will probably find many jobs to do, many jobs for which to be trained, in your local civil defense headquarters. Communications must be kept open so civil defense workers may be deployed to the areas of greatest need, so supplies medical and food, may be sent where they will do the most good. This means volunteer work on switchboards, with raido transmitters, as couriers in cars, on motorcycles and on foot.
Where communications are down, or are scanty, there will be need for special reconnaissance work, for people who will go out to find out the extent of the damage from any attack, to determine its boundaries, its seriousness and to make estimates of what is needed from that information.
No new agency can be set up, whether voluntary or permanent, city, state or federal without its "bureaucracy," its administrative workers. Typists, teletypewriters, file clerks, secretaries -- and supervisors for those people -- they will be needed, both as part time volunteers and as full time workers.
The public must be kept informed and there are two phases to this job. The first phase is the preparatory one -- telling the public what they can do, what they can expect, giving people the maximum amount of information before an attack occurs. This is the way democracy works. In the second phase, put into operation only if and when an A-bomb falls, public information will be the vital and specific job of directing the public so they do the things which will save their lives and keep them out of the way of life-saving efforts on the part of others.
Volunteers will have to know how to identify the different kinds of radioactivity and their extent. They will be attached to civil defense headquarters so the public, the rescue workers and the firemen will not have to risk their lives needlessly. Here we are ahead of Great Britain -- this is natural because we have the A-bomb and thousands of our people have already worked with radioactive materials in Oak Ridge, Hanford and other places, including almost every university.
Thousands are already trained in the use of detection instruments, and they are trained to teach others. This is a job you might well be doing for your local civil defense office.
THE WARDEN'S JOB
We will have air raid wardens again -- but if you are a warden your job will be more complex. The wardens will, once more, be responsible for the organization of people in blocks, in apartment houses in neighborhoods. The wardens will be responsible for knowing how many people are in his area, where they are -- so that an estimate can be made, in the event of an A-bomb attack, of who are safe in shelters, who are away from the area, and who remain to be rescued from the rubble.
The wardens will see to it that the air raid warnings have been heard and have been heeded, that everybody will know where to go when a warning is sounded, or, if they have specific jobs, will know what to do.
The British have a polite word for one of the most important of a warden's jobs -- "incident control." The warden will be the man in charge if any "incident" occurs in connection with an A-bomb attack. He will be trained in what to do, whether to call on outside help, whether to enlist volunteers from the neighborhood, or whether to ignore the whole thing.
An "incident" can be the falling of rubble across the entrance to a family air raid shelter, or it can be the panicking of the residents of a large apartment house. It will be up to the warden to know how to handle any kind of an incident.
The warden will be concerned, too, with the movement of refugees -- a horrible word for Americans to get used to. But, if and when an A-bomb comes near your home, there are two alternatives -- either people in your area will need to move on to find shelter, or people who have lost their homes will be moving in with you. These people are refugees.
The warden will have to know, if an A-bomb has destroyed parts of his area, how many refugees will be leaving. And he will have to know, if his area is not destroyed, how many refugees it can take.
RESCUE WORKERS
Rescue workers might well be called the skilled workers of civil defense. It is not a matter of just clawing away at falling rubble until you get to a trapped person. Rescue work calls for high discipline and technique. It is obvious, for instance, that clumsy clawing away at rubble might bring more rubble down upon the rescue worker and further block the avenues of escape for the trapped victims.
If and when an A-bomb comes, thousands of trained and skilled rescue workers will be needed. You will have the opportunity to train for this difficult but rewarding assignment.
The government is hoping that at least 20,000,000 of us will take first aid courses. Except for the minority of casualties who will have radiation sickness, the larger number will be injured in familiar ways -- burned, hit by falling masonry, in shock. Elementary treatment of these everyone should know.
Rescue workers particularly will have to know first aid and stretcher bearing. Another job for you in which first aid will be particularly important is driving an ambulance.
The British have the appropriate word for everything. One section of their civil defense corps organization is called "pioneers." In a sense on which the British probably never figured, the word is apt.
Pioneer workers will be the first to clear the way for the new beginning of living after an A-bomb attack. Whatever we call them, they will be one of the most important parts of our American volunteer civil defense effort.
Pioneers will clear away the debris and rubble left by an attack; they will plant the explosives which destroy unsafe buildings. They will be in charge of the early decontamination of roads and highways so people may move about without fear. Decontamination of vehicles and clothing will be in their hands. They will see to it that uninjured persons who may have come in contact with radioactive materials thoroughly scrub themselves -- one of the most effective first steps in decontamination.
They will go into blasted buildings to salvage what can still be used. Pioneers will make emergency repairs to houses and to fallen wires and broken gas and water mains. They will clear roads so refugees can be evacuated and the injured moved quickly to places of treatment.
CARING FOR THE HOMELESS
By size, the greatest human problem after an A-bomb attack will not be the injured, but the homeless. Your talents may be useful in one of the many tasks to be done in helping them.
You may be needed to escort the homeless men, women and children to places of safety, to places where they can lie down for rest. You may be able to give them advice about what to do -- where to get supplies of clothing, where to get food, where to contact relatives, where to find a temporary home.
There will be rest centers for refugees -- you may be needed to plan meals, to cook them, to oversee the sleeping quarters, to run the linen laundry, to register your guests.
Large public air raid shelters become, during alerts, communities with unique problems. You may be the right person to supervise an air raid shelter; to prevent, tactfully, quarrels about occupancy of the same space; to see to it that the shelter is kept clean; to make sure that the young and the old and the sick get the special attention they need. If you are that person, it is likely that you will be elected by the fellow residents of your "community" air raid shelter.
Do you cook for a large family? Then you may be the volunteer answer to the question of where the other volunteer workers will get something to eat or a hot cup of coffee. There will be mobile kitchens to man for the purpose.
Along with the citizens who should learn first aid, there will be a great need of voluntary corps of hospital workers. Perhaps you were a nurse's aide, or a Red Cross grey lady during the last war. They will need you again and many more like you. In addition to training for work in the hospitals, persons will have to be trained to man emergency treatment centers, to take the place of, and supplement, hospitals which might be overcrowded or destroyed in an attack.
FIRE AND POLICE AID
An A-bomb sets fires immediately. The terrific heat blast instantaneously scorches everything within range that is inflammable. Then these fires begin to spread and other little fires, coming from gas tanks, stove burners left on in damaged houses, and from many other causes, start up.
Your fire department will need volunteers, many of them, trained to help them keep this danger under control.
The police, too, will need an auxiliary force. There will be a need to direct and control traffic, to maintain order, perhaps beyond the ability of the regular force to handle it. The precinct house communications will need extra manning.
Then there will be jobs connected with what the military call the "positive defenses" of your town. These are the measures of the army and air force to make it extremely hard for an enemy plane to get through and to drop an A-bomb.
DEFENSE WITHIN THE HOME
Whether or not you can volunteer for any of these duties, your first responsibility will be your own home and those in it. A man's home is his castle, and it is his responsibility to make it as impregnable to attack as he can.
You may consider building a small shelter, if you are a home owner. It is estimated that many lives would have been saved at Hiroshima if the Japanese had taken to their very flimsy shelters when our B-29 was first reported overhead.
You should see that the proper first aid equipment is on hand. Your children should be taught where to go when the air raid warning is sounded. You see that everyone in your home understands instructions and follows orders in case of attack.
You have a final responsibility. If you take part in one of these many voluntary civil defense activities that final responsibility will be easy. It is to realize that there are many things that can be done to mitigate the effects of an A-bomb attack on your city -- and to do your share of them efficiently.
If we all do that, we will do a great deal to keep down the effects of an A-bomb attack and to maintain the operation of our cities and our factories.
He must come from a broken home.
1. WHAT AN A-BOMB WILL DO
Out of the sun a black, cigar-shaped object falls toward the earth. At the edge of town a filling station attendant sees it cross the slice of sky between the car above him and the edge of his grease pit. The center fielder of the visiting baseball team sees the moving spot, then looks back toward the batter, impatient for the third out. A woman in the park hears a strange, thin whistle and looks up, shading her eyes.
At a point 2,000 feet above the ground, the first atomic rocket of World War III explodes over your city. In one vast flash of light, equal to 100 suns, the buildings are etched against a sky of fire. A blinding ball of flame leaps from the point where the rocket exploded.
There, in a millionth of a second, a lump of plutonium or uranium, perhaps the size of a basketball, disappears. As it vanishes, the temperature at that point jumps to 1,000,000 degrees Centigrade. The air around it is pushed outward by a pressure hundreds of thousands times that of the normal pressure of the atmosphere.
A thousandth of a second later, the ball of fire is 45 feet across. Its temperature has dropped to 300,000 degrees.
After a full second, there is a globe of flaming air 450 feet wide, the size of a city block.
The shadows cast by this ball of fire are etched permanently into concrete sidewalks and granite buildings. Directly beneath the burst, in the split second before the blast wave arrives, pedestrians simply vanish into smoke and ash. This is the point which atomic scientists call "ground zero." Here the sidewalk temperature is between 3,000 and 4,000 degrees.
With the sheer flash heat comes another form of radiating energy, the only one which a conventional high-explosives bomb cannot match on its smaller scale: Nuclear radiation, X-rays of the A-bomb, invisible yet striking through concrete and steel to destroy the single human cells in bone marrow, blood and living tissues.
Then the blast hits. A moving wall of shock crushes the city under a giant hand, wrenches it from its foundations, levels a mile-wide area into rubble. Small masonry buildings are engulfed by a pressure wave and collapse completely. Light buildings and homes are totally demolished by the blast. Factories of steel are stripped of roofing and siding. Only twisted skeletons remain, leaning away from ground zero as though struck by a hurricane of stupendous proportions.
When the shock and blinding heat have gone, fire springs up in the wreckage. And billowing out in great clouds of dust, falling back to earth from the towering mushroom of smoke, there is the hidden terror which scientists call residual radioactivity.
What are these massive forces which an atomic explosion turns loose? How will they affect you?
ATOMIC FORCES
When energy is released suddenly by any sort of bomb, the rise in temperature of the exploding material causes complete vaporization of the bomb, casing and all. Solid matter suddenly turns to gas.
This gas is in a restricted space, pushing outward with huge pressure on the air around it. So great is this push that it can move air, water or earth, whatever is around the bomb when it goes off. The series of events which follow constitute the destructive blast of the bomb. In TNT and atomic bomb alike, blast does nearly all the physical damage by brute force. The tremendous heat generated by the explosion sends forth energy in a second way, which the scientists call thermal radiation. This is heat traveling with the speed of light, heat exactly like that given off by the sun. The rays are not penetrating. They are stopped by any object which stops light.
Alone in the atomic bomb, rays of nuclear fission channel a third explosion of energy. When the radioactive material of the bomb disintegrates, it releases various particles of electricity: beta particles, the atom's electrons; alpha particles, which are combinations of neutrons and protons; neutrons alone, the particles from the center of atoms; and finally gamma rays, which are high-energy rays very similar to X-rays.
The cumulative effect of these sources of energy is the measure of the atomic bomb, or of any other explosion of nuclear force, whether it be in the fission of uranium or the fusion of hydrogen in the "Hell-bomb."
The Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Defense have released a comprehensive handbook entitled "The Effects of Atomic Weapons," half a decade after the world's first atomic bomb was exploded. It tells the technical story of what will happen to any city under an attack similar to that on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
AEC scientists at Los Alamos who wrote the report describe a "nominal atomic bomb." This they use as the basis for their calculations in damage and death. The bomb is the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. Expressed in electrical energy, it is roughly equal to the daily output of the generators at Hoover Dam. Yet this tremendous force is only equal, they say, to the energy which would be released should 2.2 pounds of uranium 235 fission completely.
The explosion of the nominal bomb takes place in the first millionth of a second after two lumps of uranium or plutonium are brought together into one lump. The shock wave, the heat rays, the radiation leap outward.
The shock wave moves with the speed of sound. In a sense it is a moving wall of air, water or earth under tremendous pressure. When this wall hits a resistant surface, it hits with a punch multiplied by the size of the surface in its path. Thus a large building is struck by a greater force than a small structure, and often suffers greater damage.
In an atomic bomb exploded in the air, the front of this shock wave is vertical. The high pressure hits as a giant blow. Behind the shock front, high pressure reaches back for a considerable distance on the wave. Behind that is a region where the pressure drops to less than normal, a region of suction.
DESTRUCTION FROM THE BOMB
When a building is struck by the blast wave, it is first punched on one side by the wall shock. Then, as pressure moves on with the speed of sound, it envelops the entire building, squeezing down from all sides. This pressure decreases rapidly, and is succeeded by suction which pulls wind, debris and people back toward the point of the explosion. With shock and suction comes wind of great speed, first away from the bomb, then toward it, adding to the havoc.
The great power of the atomic bomb produces so-called "mass distortion" of buildings. It engulfs and flattens whole buildings. The area of virtually complete destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the bombs were approximately the size of the "nominal bomb," was about 2,600 feet in radius. Inside a circle swung on a line half a mile long, the area of almost total havoc covered three-quarters of a square mile.
The circle of severe damage, where buildings are wrecked to the point of near collapse, will reach out a mile, covering four square miles. From this point, damage will diminish with distance, depending to a great extent upon the weather and hills and valleys of the city. Even as far as eight miles from the blast, windows will break and plaster will fall. The overall area of damage will be about 200 square miles.
Buildings designed to be earthquake-resistant were found in Japan to have suffered remarkably light damage, even when relatively close to ground zero. Smoke stacks, tall and thin, were often by-passed by the blast. On the other hand, quirks of pressure produced by the atmosphere produced havoc far beyond the circle where it was expected. At Nagasaki, barracks nearly five miles from ground zero collapsed to ground level.
In the strongest buildings of reinforced concrete, pressure on the outside walls may cause the roof or floors to buckle. The walls facing the blast may be dished inward. There will be uniformly heavy damage to false ceilings, partitions and plaster. Brick facings and cornices will be blown off into the streets, striking down the people caught outdoors.
Shed-type steel factory buildings will be bent over and blown apart, even when more than a mile from ground zero. Brick buildings, whose walls carry the entire load of construction, are among the most easily damaged. At distances up to 6,200 feet, they probably will collapse completely, taking with them everyone inside. Houses of wood at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrecked as far as 7,500 feet from the ground zero. The splintered wreckage kindled fires which followed.
Small steel-frame bridges were found to be quite resistant to blast, as were underground water mains, electrical conduits and gas lines. But damage to the water system through the breakage of pipes in houses and offices buildings will be one of the most serious effects of an atomic explosion. Overhead utility lines may be heavily damaged up to two miles from ground zero. Automobiles, buses and streetcars will be hit hard by blast and fire at distances up to a mile. In this country, atomic scientists believe, reinforced concrete buildings will be generally less resistant to blast than Japan's earthquake-proof buildings. But tall buildings having heavy steel frames such as office buildings and hospitals, should withstand the effect of blast quite well. For American-built frame houses, it is believed that the radius of structural blast damage would not exceed 7,500 feet -- a mile and a half from ground zero -- whereas at Nagasaki severe damage to houses extended out 8,500 feet. We build our homes better.
For an air burst over water rather than land, the shock wave is much the same. At Able Day at Bikini, ships suffered severe damage or were sunk 3,000 feet from the point directly beneath the blast. Minor damage occurred out more than a mile.
UNDERWATER OR UNDERGROUND EXPLOSION
In an underwater or underground atomic explosion, however, the action of the shock wave is entirely different. "There are no actual experiences upon which to base conclusions (about an underground burst)," the AEC reports, disregarding Soviet Russia's claim that it set off an atom bomb and moved a mountain.
Blast damage from an underground or underwater atomic explosion is expected to be less than that from an air burst. If a nominal atomic bomb were exploded 50 feet down in ordinary soil, a crater 800 feet across and 100 feet deep would be blown open. A bomb such as the Baker Day explosion, at Bikini, detonated underwater at shallow depths, would throw tremendous quantities of water into the air.
Both the soil and the water from such bursts would be intensely radioactive. In these two cases, danger from longlasting radiation is expected to be greater than from any other source. The explosion's heat will be absorbed entirely by the material around it. And while blast damage will be done, the scientists have calculated the greatest blast damage is produced by a bomb exploded about 2,000 feet in the air.
EFFECT OF AIR BURST
At that height, chances of any one surviving within 2,600 feet -- half a mile -- are very poor, the scientists say bluntly. Persons within that circle will either be killed by the blast wave, crushed by falling buildings, burned to death or given a greater-than-lethal dose of radiation.
While the blast wave will take about 10 seconds to travel the two miles in which it does damage, the heat wave of an atomic blast lasts only three seconds. It will set flash fires and char combustible materials. Human beings exposed to it will receive more or less serious skin burns if within two miles of ground zero. At 4,000 feet, roof tiles will bubble and blister.
The heat will roughen polished granite, set fire to dark clothing and burn rubber tires a mile from the blast.
This radiant heat travels only in a straight line. Protection from it is afforded by almost any object. Clothing shields the body. The shadow of a tree trunk will be untouched by the heat. It is this phenomenon which produced the "profile burns" on buildings or human beings. It sears only where a surface is within line-of-sight from the explosion.
Burns from flash heat and the fires produced by the heat caused more than half the deaths and three-quarters the injuries at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were no fire departments after the explosions. Water pressure in the city mains was practically zero. Twenty minutes after the blast came the "fire storm," wind blowing into the holocaust from all directions, blowing 30 to 40 miles an hour at its height.
This is not all. The atomic scientists estimate that at 3,000 feet from the bomb's burst, there is better than 50 percent chance you will be killed by nuclear radiation, even if you are shielded by 12 inches of concrete. This is the effect of the deadly rays you cannot see. Neutrons and gamma rays are the dangerous particles of energy in this wave.
Gamma radiation (X-rays) from a nominal atomic bomb will kill at 4,200 feet from the burst. Neutrons are not quite so far-reaching, but they will deliver a lethal dose as far as half a mile from ground zero. Shielding from either of these particles is a matter of reinforced concrete by the foot, or solid lead inches thick.
RADIATION SICKNESS
A lethal dose of radiation from the immediate blast will have these effects: Varying degrees of shock, possibly within a few hours; nausea, vomiting and diarrhea in the following day or two; then fever. Often there will be no pain in the first few days, but merely discomfort, depression and fatigue.
The early stages of radiation sickness may be followed by two or three days when the patient is free from all symptoms, although profound changes are taking place meanwhile in his body. Then the earlier symptoms reappear. Active illness is soon followed by delirium, coma and finally death, which comes within two to three weeks. Infection, internal bleeding, swelling of the throat glands, loss of hair and degeneration of the sex organs are all apt to occur.
AEC scientists and genetics experts are extremely cautious in discussing one vital question: Will the children and grandchildren of atomic victims be human monsters? Chromosomes and genes, biological factors which control heredity, are changed by radiation. But how much are they changed? Is there serious danger that these changes can be passed along to the next generation, or those which come after that?
Risk of passing on any changes in the chromosomes can be reduced if atomic victims "refrain from begetting offspring for a period of two or three months following exposure," the reports states. However, this precaution probably would not lessen the chances, if they exist at all, of passing on changes in the genes. Until large gaps in man's knowledge of radiation and its genetic effects can be closed, admit the scientists, estimates of what can or may happen in this field from atomic explosions will be little better than guesses.
AFTER-EFFECTS OF BOMBING
Will the bombed city be left an echoing ghost town, too "hot" with radioactivity to be entered? If the bomb explodes high in the air, the AEC report says, this hazard will be very small. The radioactive residue of the bomb itself will fall to earth, but the small amounts of these fission products and the wide area over which they will be dispersed lead military men to discount almost completely any real danger from them.
Some dirt and dust will be sucked up into the boiling cloud of an atomic explosion, but this too will travel far and come back to earth spread over many miles. However, the "base surge" of water from an underwater explosion, or the great clouds of dirt thrown by a bomb exploded at street level or beneath the surface, will be intensely radioactive. Lethal levels of radiation in the wake of such bombs are possible and must be guarded against, the scientists warn.
If an atomic bomb were a fizzle, unexploded radioactive material might settle over a limited area in high enough concentrations to be dangerous. Such fizzles are possible. If the two lumps of fissionable material do not come together just right, the bomb might explode only partially, breaking apart and scattering its substance into the air.
Radioactive materials might be deliberately sown without an explosive taking place, as a new weapon of war. Such materials can and are being made constantly in the normal operation of atomic piles. Small amounts of certain elements can be made to give off tremendous amounts of radiation when so treated. If these were to be spread uniformly over a limited area, that area might be denied for human habitation for a considerable period of time. Those who remained within the area would be poisoned in much the same way that nuclear radiation from an exploding bomb strikes the human body. Even if great numbers of people are not directly killed, even if large areas are not laid waste as by direct atomic explosion, the panic-inspiring potential of radiological warfare as a "mystery weapon" makes it a grim possibility which must be taken into account in civilian defense planning.
The blast of an atomic bomb is more violent, but methods of dealing with explosion damage, fire and rescue of the injured were developed long ago, and are not changed by the mere fact that an atomic blast is stronger than ordinary TNT explosions.
But in combating the radioactivity that comes with atomic bombing, new hazards and new ways to meet them must be planned for. Rescue crews and monitoring teams must have instruments to show them where dangerous levels of radioactivity have been left. They must know the length of time a human being can remain in buildings and rubble-strewn areas left radioactive. They must know new techniques of decontamination.
They must know how to deal with panic, for scientists are agreed that panic is the major danger of atomic bombing. "Mass hysteria could convert a minor incident into a major disaster," they say.
The first atomic bomb at Hiroshima killed 78,150 people. This is far from a "minor incident." But if an American community -- anywhere -- were atom-bombed, panic would strike 80 out of 100 of the physically unharmed survivors. Tens of thousands of thousands of Americans might be struck down by sheer terror, making vastly more difficult the job of meeting atomic attack. The great industrial centers of the nation might suddenly become empty shells as the people fled from A-bombs yet to come.
I'm not much into a lot of high tech or 'new fangled' kitchen ware, preferring instead cast iron skillets on a wood cook stove. I resisted owning a microwave for years, and only got hooked when I got a small one several years ago for Christmas. I still have it, and yes, I use it to thaw meat and heat an occasional cup of water... a fairly expensive solution if you include the cost.
On the other hand, a blender and/or food processor can pay for its cost and the electricity it uses very quickly. It's a tool for the frugal, busy person that pays its way many times over.
With it, you can stir, grind, mix, puree and pulverize almost anything in seconds, from creating a cooling drink to making your own powdered sugar. A blender is a handy dandy gadget for sure!
One of my favorite uses is making sandwich spreads from leftover meat. Anything from chicken to roast to hotdogs is fair game. Just cut the meat into manageable sized pieces and add mayonnaise or salad dressing, pickles, onions, cheese, olives, boiled eggs... whatever you prefer, and whirl it until it's finely diced.
It's a good way to stretch a little meat to go a long way.
Ever get a hankering for an ice cream malted? It's a lot cheaper to make your own! You should find malt in the baking section of your grocery store (if you don't find it, ask!). That, along with some vanilla ice cream and a little milk is all it takes.
For one malt, put two or three hefty scoops of ice cream in the blender, add about 1/4 cup of milk and a couple of heaping tablespoons of malt. Blend until it's smooth, but don't overdo it. You can add whatever you like for flavoring too. Try real bananas, cocoa mix, frozen strawberries, flavored syrups, jellies... let your imagination go wild for this one.
Use your blender to make your own powdered sugar by adding a teaspoon of cornstarch to a cup of granulated sugar and blending until it's fine. You'll never have to buy powdered sugar again, and you'll always have it fresh, not to mention that granulated sugar is cheaper.
Need onion powder or garlic powder? Put dehydrated onions or garlic in the blender and turn it on! Need ground oregano when all you have are oregano leaves? Same thing.
Use your blender to chop nuts for toppings or breads, make cracker and bread crumbs, make salsas when the peppers are too hot to handle, puree real pumpkin for real pumpkin pies... the list goes on.
They're inexpensive and even the cheaply made ones usually last a few years. That means you can save a lot of money, with just the uses listed here.
Of all things this modern world has provided, the blender could very well be the busy and frugal cook's best friend.
'Make Your Own' Recipes - Lots of opportunity here to use that blender!
Baby Food - Make it naturally, safely - with a blender.
Instant Gourmet Coffee - Make it in your blender; give it for a gift or indulge yourself.
Fun Fruit Shakes - Quick, cheap and nutritious blender-made shakes.
Having a big long story floating around in your mind, but not knowing exactly how to get it onto paper, or express it. It has fighting, love, explosions, grits, intrigue, suspense, Natalie Portman, danger, romance, First Posting, beauty, evil, and a gaping wide anus.*
I think I'm going to call my story Slashdot Wars: Episode IV - A New Goatsex. What do you all think?
* - May contain nuts
Until then, I will continue to dream.
As such, I salute you. Continue your meta-trolling activities.
And he's not wearing any pants!
P.S. Generally when I want to make my penis 12" long, I wash it in hot water then dry it in high heat. That shrinks it right back down to a more "comfortable" size.
By the way, how did the replacement of your leg go? I hear that with that procedure, you are now almost 90% cybernetic. If that's true, congratulations on that.
I could pee on your face. That would probably be new to you. However, I doubt you'd like it.
I could stick your hand in a blender set to "puree". That would probably be new to you. However, I doubt you'd like it.
Another thing, most people don't want to hear anything new not because they "risk their cozy bland existence," but simply because they've probably already heard the "new" before and like it about as much as nails grating on a chalkboard. This "industrial" crap you speak of is about as musical as a pair of fighting cats in a garbage can.
Get off your high podium jackass. You do not hold the moral high-ground here.
Oh, I'm sorry, you're a unique rebellious individual, just like every other unique rebellious individual. Fight the power, don't conform (Except to do the things all the people you want to be like do), be yourself (except when that doesn't allow you to fit in to your "unique" culture).
I have heard rumors that you are actually a radiator for a 1963 Cadillac El Dorado.
Is this true?
Thank you.
, . ' - ?
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H. Ro-sen is three
Smi-les is another two
Three plus two is five.