The Environmental Medical Aspects of Nuclear Blast

Abstract

FOREWORDThis study -describing the critical nature of selected blast-produced injuries, the development of tentative biological criteria for different levels of blast and other hazards, and the application of these criteria to nuclear explosions -stemmed from prior research in two broad areas; namely, investigations concerning the Biological Effects of Blast from Bombs carried out for the Defense Atomic Support Agency of the Department of Defense and work dealing with Selected Aspects of Weapons Effects pursued for the Civil Effects Branch of the Division of Biology and Medicine of the Atomic Energy Commission. The material was presented before the National Preparedness Symposium sponsored by the National Institute of Disaster Mobilization held November 13-15, 1962 at the International Inn in Washington, D. C.The data, incorporating a comparative assessment of the range-yield relationship for selected "immediate" hazards due to blast phenomena as well as those due to nuclear and thermal radiation, are useful to personsmilitary and civilians alike -who would develop a balanced understanding of all the environmental variations which follow low-and high-yield nuclear detonations. Since the range of each major biological effect scales differently with yield and depends greatly upon the conditions of exposure, the relative quantitation of casualty potential is far from a straightforward matter. Too, because the biological criteria developed and employed were in many instances the result of extrapolations of interspecies mammalian studies, they must be used cautiously, regarded as tentative and subject to future refinement. Finally, the material presented should be viewed as a "sample" of the analytical fabric now available to help tie the source of nuclear-induced environmental variations quantitatively together with various biological responses upon which the assessment of different levels of hazard depends. ABSTRACTThe nature of certain critical lesions seen after exposure to air blast was described and the early lethality characterizing primary and tertiary blast damage was emphasized along with the seriousness of injuries caused by blast-energized debris. Tentative criteria were developed to the end that different levels of environmental variations caused by blast phenomena could be quantitatively related to various levels of biological response. Using the "free-field" scaling laws and a mathematical model whereby translational velocities could be computed for animate and inanimate objects, the criteria were applied to nuclear explosions ranging in yield from 1 kt to 100 Mt. Thus, it was possible to specify, as a function of yield, the hazard ranges inside which various blast injuries might occur. At these ranges the associated levels of initial nuclear and thermal radiation were computed to allow at least some assessment of the relative importance of all the major hazards from nuclear detonations.