The big chill

...Another 250 "beds" for casualties, two operating rooms, a large decontamination area into which vehicles could be driven and unloaded, showers and new clothes for the entering victims of fallout, water reserves, auxiliary power " - - - - - - _ . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . , _ . + . 4i . . . . i / A t " ( g ~ z ~ ' and heating equipment, large storerooms for surgical supplies and food, kitchens, bathrooms, and decontamination devices to purify the air...

...Now numbering more than twenty thousand members in the United States, it has become a crucial unit in an umbrella group, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War which includes PSR and PSR-like groups throughout the world, East and West...

...Nothing could be better proof of what President Eisenhower, a man not unfamiliar with the art of warfare, wrote in 1956 to a friend, that one day both sides would have to "meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended, and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die...

...Or did i detect a sour note in that brief letter...

...In fact, I left Switzerland with the belief that with sufficient advance warning of attack, significant numbers of Swiss might be spared immediate destruction but it was not clear what their ultimate fate might be when supplies run out and they find their neighbors in other countries similarly distressed...

...Plans called for the evacuation from the above-ground portion of the hospital of all reasonably transportable patients who presumably would be transferred to their local shelters...

...The American representatives were Sagan, Ehrlich, Lewis Thomas, and Jack Geiger...

...In a commodious staff room were rows of tables facing expansive wall maps showing, in numbered sectors, all the homes and buildings of the town...

...There was agreement among all the panelists that the conference's conclusions were sound...

...Subsequently Senators Kennedy and Hatfield organized a morning symposium in the Senate caucus room in which the issues were discussed by a panel of four Soviet scientists and four U.S...

...The obstruction of sunlight would result in a drop in surface temperatures to -30~ Wind currents aloft would extend the pall over the entire northern half of the globe and eventually, to a lesser degree, over the Southern Hemisphere...

...Most of the letters expressed approval or amazement -- many asked for permiswere disturbing...

...Pollock, and Sagan) and the ecological implications for animal, plant, and aquatic life were presented by Erhlich in the fall of 1983 in a two-day open conference, "The World After Nuclear War...

...For some five-hundred years the Swiss have avoided significant bloodshed by intrusion from without...

...The base study was that of a scenario in which a 5,000megaton all-out nuclear attack on the United States would, through a combination of ground and air bursts, produce so much air-borne dirt from ground bursts and soot from fires, rural and especially urban, as to cause after a period of a couple of weeks, a reduction of ninety-five percent of sunlight throughout the Northern hemisphere...

...Another shelter, with bunks in tiers, provided underground quarters for 110 emergency workers...

...Ackerman, J.P...

...The country is small, well disciplined, and avoids argument with potential adversaries...

...Alexander S. Pavlov, academician and director of the Moscow Scientific Institute on Roentgenology and Radiology...

...The 110 bunks would be occupied by trained individuals, many of them army reservists, with special skills and subject to call for service with the pioneer unit...

...JOSEPH P. EVANS (Joseph P. Evans, M.D., a widely honored neurological surgeon, is Washington, D.C., area representative for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War...

...Computer analyses were made of the probable effects of various paradigms of nuclear explosions in varying sizes, some bursts at ground level, others at selected altitudes above ground...

...Supplies were calculated to last for two weeks...

...The garage space, which opened out on a flat area under the hill, was filled by small trailers loaded with fire-fighting and rescue equipment...

...A year ago the studies were critically reviewed at a meeting in Cambridge with more than forty physical scientists...

...Catherine's...

...Did she really want to know, I wondered...

...If the "nuclear winter" scenario is as likely as the current scientific discussion suggests, then much of what these planners support is in fact a suicide machine that, if used, would rebound on us -- and the rest of the worltl -- quite regardless of what our adversaries did...

...On my return home I discovered new evidence postulating the long-term effects, physical and biological, of multiple nuclear explosions...

...The complications of such an event for food supply locally and also for countries other than the superpowers would be profound, for many of them are dependent for many of their staples on U.S...

...Vladimir V. Aleksandrov, head of the Laboratory of Climate Modeling at the Computer Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and Serguei Kapitza, professor of physics at the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute and senior research fellow at the Institute for Physical Problems, Soviet Academy of Sciences...

...and Canadian production...

...Carl Sagan was stimulated by his earlier work on the chilling temperature effects of dust storms on Mars, observed by Mariner iX's recording apparatus, to draw analogies...

...Toon, T.P...

...representatives...

...The thirty-seven affiliated groups include over seventy-five thousand individuals...

...I I _9 sion to reproduce the column -- but a few the highest number of women achievers seem to come from the women's colleges and that an unusual number of those elected to high office seemed to come from the Catholic women's colleges...

...Although the TTAPS projections, under the expressive label "nuclear winter," have gained a good amount of publicity, it is hard to know whether the public (or political leaders, for that matter) will recognize the scientific basis of these calculations _9 . . Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy _ _ _ I l VALIANT WOMEN WHAT ONE COLLEGE VALUED A LL THROUGH last summer and into the fall the mail brought reactions to my June column...

...But although I am inordinately proud of my alma mater -- one of the largest women' s colleges in the country and the first Catholic institution of any kind to be awarded a Phi Beta Kappa chapter - - we do not yet have a Commonweal: 232...

...Its means of ventilation was a hand-driven pump provided with an air filter...

...Inducted into the army at age twenty for eight months of basic training, virtually every male Swiss citizen serves in the reserves until the age of fifty...

...What was novel to me lay beneath the surface...

...The biological effects would be devastating, as set out by Ehrlich...

...Each bore a sector number, and contained detailed plans of all recent construction and estimates of the numbers of individuals housed or working in the structures...

...Even more impressive was the hospital I visited on the west side of Geneva: 250 beds, glass-enclosed, beautifully situated on the side of a hill...

...I noted that research indicates that - - or whether "nuclear winter" will be lumped with a long line of end-of-the-world predictions and elicit little more than a helpless shrug...

...Special clothing was available, as well as prepared stacks of rescue gear, ropes, hawsers, and such like...

...Their conclusions were then interpreted, in terms of possible biological effects, by a second team headed by Paul Ehrlich who considered the biological implications, particularly from the standpoint of pastoral ecology...

...Photosynthesis would be slowed and marine ecosystems would suffer seriously...

...The impact of Physicians for Social Responsibility who stand for a weapons freeze and bilateral nuclear disarmament, carefully monitored, has been impressive...

...Furthermore they have a citizen army of 650,000 men that can be mobilized in forty-eight hours or less, each soldier having in his home a gun and cartridges, in a sealed container...

...Like many Americans, who are finally overcoming their understandable psychological resistance and recognizing the awful power of nuclear weaponry, I was aware of the millions of deaths that would follow from even a so-called "limited" nuclear war and of the claims of civil defense advocates that a good portion of these millions might be saved by adequate preparation...

...The pall, it is anticipated, would prevail for six months or longer...

...The first of these was in a newly built home for four occupants which, in common with all new Swiss construction, includes a basement fallout shelter: thick concrete walls and ceiling, a heavy window shutter of comparable thickness and an entry door of similar construction, both of which swing on heavy iron hinges...

...There were kitchens, water reservoirs, reserve power facilities, and bathrooms...

...Turco, O.B...

...Perhaps the one which disturbed me most was a two-line communication from an alumna of my own college...

...and as cleating occurred, the earth would be subjected to excess amounts of ultra-violet light...

...The TTAPS projections of the physical effects (named yrars for the initials of the participants: T.P...

...Their civil defense measures are equally developed...

...You begged the question in your column -- who are these women achievers from St...

...That column (June 17, 1983) dealt with the surprising number of women in public service who were graduates of Catholic women's colleges...

...These groups believe that nuclear weaponry contains seeds of destruction out of all proportion to the classical notion of the purposes of warfare and do not share the conviction of the military planners who, paradoxically, see prevention as an exercise in strength which must be continually buttressed by additional arms and by improved military skills and technology extended to their ultimate limits...

...The Soviet delegation consisted of: 20 April 1984:231 Yevgeniy P. Velikhov, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences...

...Victor Weisskopf, a physicist who was involved in the development of the atomic bomb and who is now a member of the Papal Academy of Sciences, has commented on how difficult it has been for physicists to make the destructive power of the atom generally understood and has expressed appreciation of the effective role of physicians in publicizing the facts...

...On the tables were loose-leaf notebooks...

...Staff activities would then be shifted to the underground hospital...

...The meeting culminated in an exchange by satellite between the American principals and a group of Moscow scientists who have been engaged in similar studies...

...The subzero temperature would freeze surface waters and sewage systems over wide areas...

...Perhaps s h e thought I had been unduly modest about our college...