SESSION VI
aa?
TAYLOR: I! mentioned that because I think there is a difficulty ia
anewering your question as to what one should do to mahe aure that
the people who are charting our courses are well informed, because
a definition of ‘good info. mation or ‘bad snlurmation ‘ or lack o¢
information is based so much on what one's own idea is of what these
pecpte should do.
EISENBUD:
[think that the goveriment hae done & good job on the
various editions of the Effects of Nuclear Weapons, which describes
the technical facts, and certainly information of this form ehould be
useful to people that have the intellect of our decision-makere,
They
should not have to read it second hand, they should nat have to trust
taking it out of the newspapers or out of the polaziaed journals,
FREMONT-SMITH:
EISENBUD:
Which information te thie that's available”
There are severas editions, three or four, of a vol-
ume that wae first put out in 1947,
At that time it wee calied The
Sc(fects of Atomic Weapons, and ie now The tifecte of Nuclear Weape
one. It's several hundred pages thick and ts put out jointly by the
DOD and AEC, It's ao fairly authoritative and grim account of the
technical facta,
.
FREMONT.-SMITH. Yee. Fut, wouldn't it be based on certain
assumptions, ether that you had a very big ur that you had a amaticr
war?
{ wouldn't give all of the posible alternatives that might
af
happen.
,
SISENBUD So. It doesn't go into the overall consequences but
it does tell you that if you explode a 20-megaton Lomb. the blast demage will kill people 2-thousand yards away, you see, and from that
you get the picture, Then following that, in addition to thet, there
was avery thorough examination of the subject in some hearing? of
the Jaint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1958. At these hearings
many of the people arcund the table here took the opportunity ta ga te
Washington to give their point of view within their epeciaitios on just
what the implications of nuclear wae would be, So there is a large
body of information that ts available,
{ muet eay that I think that one of the problems ia that there has
been a cultural change tn this country which makes any diacussion
about anything that's unplearant unpopular at any dinner party or
cocktail party.
When l was a child, my recollection of the house