ze° EN ae ARETE A WSoe arkgee heen ee ogee sianS. oat x rarer ey cectse aes. VEE TITa RE er “* BS ie oa ts se = # 3 374 = DASA 2919-2 a, 4 evidence from Hamburg and Hiroshima, The general conclusion, as Lrecall, was that there are some American cities that would support a tire storm. Of course, many more would support a conflagration, "a fe. 8 EISENBUD: Well, wouldn't a conflagration that's not fought eveatually— you've got to remember that I'm speaking nowof the eastern ad # part of the United States where I think the major problem is..... DUNHAM: Prejudice! [Laughter] ia ir BISENBUD: No. Lthink the problern is soluble 14 many cities in the United States, but I think when you get to Hoste 1, New York or Richmond, Virginia, it may not Ge. Ee oe These tacgets are going to be on roughly, LOO-mile centers, and if they are megaton bombs, the range of blast damape is out to 20 miles in the case of a 20-megaton bomb and the spontaneous ipnition out to about the same distance, If you paralyze your fighting capability, or if it dida't exist in the first place, you haven't anvthing on that scale. In any case, people have to go undereround, and then how can you help but develop a general conflagration or what you called a general fire storm’ What would stop it? SPEAR: A lot would depend, Ithink, on the building materials you used, To affect a city that has hada real tough fire code, with fire resistant materials, and so on, would be different from, say, a frame slum area ina larype cily. HISENBUD- Every city is the same, ‘ Let me just say that most cities have large numbers of wooden dwellings and a large number of o*y relatively old wall-bearing buildings that would just collapse from overpressure, so they would spill their contents. Would you agree to that, Bob” . : . ae ni e3 AYRES: Yes. [would like to add some comments at this point. First of all, fire research is not stopped; it's going on. OCD still spends over $l million a year on fire -search and there are now some sophisticated programs. [think they've done virtually a houseby-house survey of several major cities. This work has been done by Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (Reference 60) and they know in very precise detail, [think, what the burning characteristics of the cities would be. . - , - 74 og