CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF
CONCLUSIONS
CHRONICLE
George Bernard Shaw once opined ‘Much of your space and time is
being wasted on the subject of atomic warfare. The disuse of poison gas
in the 1939-45 war, because it was as dangerous to its users as to their
targets, makes it very unlikely that atomic bombs will be used again. If
they are, they will promptly make an end of all our discussions by making
an end of ourselves. .. . Still, give me space for another cry in the wilder-
ness, that my unquiet spirit, wandering among the ruins of empires, may
have at least the mean and melancholy satisfaction of saying: ‘I told you
so.” "*
Project SUNSHINE was born of kindred unquiet spirits, most of which,
however, are not as grimly pessimistic as Mr. Shaw’s. Its purpose is to
inquire into the nature of the various large-scale disasters that conceivably
might result from the detonation of large numbers of nuclear or thermonuclear weapons. By “large scale’ we imply areas many magnitudes larger
than the immediate destruction area, and thereby also connote an ex-
panded temporal span.
The first reasonably comprehensive study of this problem, by Nicholas
M. Smith, was submitted to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in the
Spring of 1949 and was resubmitted in final form at the end of that year
under the code name of Project GABRIEL.* A far less thorough butsimilar
study was made available in unclassified form in a section of The Effects
oidtomioecho ts”
*References appear at the end of each chapter.
tThe original Project GABRIEL report, having been superseded by several others, including
the present report, is no longer available.