GROUND ZERO, D.C.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: April 26, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6
10
WASHINGTON POST
26 April 1987
-and the Central Intelligence Agency are Agency, the Pentagon, National Airport,
reinforced monumental structures, a large and the eastern or western runway at An.
-~~ oiast creating pressure of 40 pounds per drews Air Force Base. For the postulated
square inch (psi) might be considered nec- initial phase of the attack, five 50-kiloton
essary to reduce these structures to rubble. warheads therefore would fall in the target
', Since the White House may have under- area within 30 to 60 seconds.
ground bunkers, a 40 psi blast might he The intense light from each fireball could
needed there, also. The Defense Mapping set fires at a range five to six times greater
D^C^ Agency might require a 15 psi blast, which than the contour of 40 psi s'
damage. Tus?
probably could knock down all but the most the detonation at the Central Intelligence
reinforced buildings, while the Naval Re- gene could set ires at t e e ense Ma
By Theodore A. Postol search Laboratory and Navy Yard might re- ping Agency; the detonation at the Penta-
quire a 10 psi blast, since those facilities are gon could set ires at the White House, the
0 NE WAY to understand the immense. "softer" than the others. Capitol, and National Airport; the detona-
destructive power of nuclear weapons The damage objectives for National Air- tion at National Airport could set fires at
is to imagine a nuclear attack against port and Andrews Air Force Base would the Naval Research Laboratory and possibly
targets in the Washington, D.C. area. probably demand the destruction of all as- at the Navy Yard. Independent of blast ef-
This targeting exercise yields some sociated buildings that could be used to sup- fects, the five initially arriving weapons
disturbing conclusions. The most im- port dispersed aircraft, together with the could create mass fires over about 60 to 70
portant is that nuclear war, in practice, wouldn't be cratering of runways so they could not be square miles of the target area.
as manageable as it may seem on a nuclear strat- used after the attack. Nearly all frame buildings within a range
egist's blackboard. The strategists talk in terms Next would come the allocation of war- of four times the 40 psi contour would be
heads. Let's assume the attack planner had knocked down. At yet greater distances,
suggestive of conventional war-about "limited nu- clear options" and "warning shots across the bow" a choice between using 50-kiloton or one- about eight times the radius of the 40 psi
weapons. To allocate them effi- contour, the shock wave from each detona-
and "counterforce" tar etin that seeks to destroy in
g g Y ciently, he would carefully select the ground tion would be severe enought to knock non-
military facilities rather than population centers. zero for each weapon. The attack planner supporting interior walls out of buildings.
But such bloodless discussions ignore the reality of might calculate as follows: A single one- Thus, 12 seconds after the fireball flash
nuclear weapons, which are more devastating and megaton ground zero between the Central _from the detonation at the Pentagon, the
less controllable than the theorists imagine. Intelligence Agency and the Defense Map- shock wave would arrive at the White
.To put the problem simply: Any attack against pint Agency wou rest in a la-st o more -louse and Capitol, shattering windows and
"military" targets is likely to cause severe damage than 40 psi on he rst an more than 15 Psi knocking out the nonsupporting interior
among the civilian population as well. In the Wash- on, - the second. Another one-megaton walls within each building. At still greater
ington area, for example, a "limited" attack against group zero between the White House and distances from each detonation, heavy gen-
Andrews Air Force Base could result in the de- theCapitol'would result in a 40 psi blast on eral damage from the shocks would occur,
struction by mass fire of the southeast suburbs of Navy Yard. and more than a 10 psi blast on the possibly initiating many secondary fires
Washington.. The damage to civilians in such "lim a p YAnd so on. from broken gas mains, electrical shorts,
ited" attacks-would be comnounded by the.inevita- With a lower yield 50-kiloton weapon, a tipped-over stoves and the like.
ble preference among military planners for redun- Nagyground~Yard zero wouuld ld barely e the r band the During the next 10 minutes after the ar-
dant systems and "overkill." coveer both ot with ap-
propriate levels of blast. Another ground rival of the 50-kiloton warheads, the mass
The first step in-Planning a nuclear attack on _ zero north of the Naval Research Labora- fires would intensify. Because of smoke
Washington would be the selection of specific tar- tort'. would cover that target and do addi- from fires and dust raised by the shock
gets. Without giving away useful information to p0 . tional damage to the untargeted air facility waves, visibility on the ground would be
tential adversaries, we can safely assume that a hy- - - very low. Large amounts of smoke from the
pothetical target list probably would include: bases (Bolling Air Force Base) north of the lab- burning areas would begin to fill the sky,
' for military operations (such as Andrews Air Force oratory. The attack planner's goal would be blocking out the sun. Black radioactive rain
Base and National Airport); facilities that support to mix the warheads efficiently, with some might fall in much of the target area as wa-
rm i ary operations suc as the Central Intelligence redundancy and "cross targeting" to make ter vapor that was carried to high altitudes
Agency, the Defense apping gay, the _ sure each target was destroyed. by the heated buoyant air from the fires
gon, the Navy Yard, and the Naval Research Lab- o understand the effect of a nuclear condensed in the cooler air above.
oratory); and the headquarters of the political and attack, it's useful to imagine what Movement on the ground within the tar
m' i ry lea ers ip (the White House, the Capitol, hypothetical attack on Washington get area, even by very well equipped per-
and-tree ent would look like from ground zero, and how sonnet, would probably be impossible.
The next step. after selecting targets would be to it would evolve over the first few hours. Winds on the ground would begin to in-
set damage objectives for each. If the attack plan- The first warheads to arrive at their tar- crease as cooler air from regions surround-
ner's objective was to destroy America's leadership gets in our scenario would be the 50-kiloton ing the target zone became drawn in to re-
and support structures, he would probably opt for a submarine-launched warheads. They would place the buoyantly rising heated air from
high level of damage in the Washington area. travel their course of about 3,000 nautical mass fires. As. the heat from mass fires in-
Setting damage objectives would involve a care- miles in about 20 minutes. The warheads tensified, air temperatures would begin to
ful calculus of how to do the most damage in the probably would arrive about five to sec- rise, perhaps to hundreds of degrees.
most efficient way. Since the Capitol, the Pentagon, on - s apart, first at-the Central intelligence
enc , then at the Defense Mapping
~ 8
fir ,?,17'i
-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6
wouia start to arrive at aoout this to be certain that they destroy their assigned
time. Since they would come from targets completely, they are likely to use
the north, the two airfields would be struck more weapons-and more powerful ones-
first. Both air installations might be hit ini- than would be appropriate fora truly "lim-
tially with cratering surface bursts, and ited" strategy. For the same reason, planners
then within two to three seconds by air- are likely to overestimate the hardness of
bursts slightly offset from the targets so as targets and to neglect some weapons effects.
to avoid the tremendous cloud of developing Consider, for example, the effects of a one-
debris from the surface bursts. megaton airburst over Andrews Air Force
Because these one-megaton detonations Base. Under certain conditions such an at-
would have a much higher yield than the tack might be considered limited, since rules
earlier 50-kiloton explosions, the blast and adopted for damage assessment might con-
thermal effects would be considerably more sider the nearby population centers subjected
intense and extensive. For example, the to 5 psi or less to be "lightly damaged." The
blast from a detonation between between
the White House and the Capitol could same rules might also determine that fatality
knock down some buildings near the De- levels in the area beyond the 5 psi radius
fense Mapping Agency and could shatter would be very low.
windows and do heavy damage to buildings But if planners do not include the effects of
at Andrews Air Force Base. fire in their assessments of unintended dam-
Within 10 or 20 minutes of the near-sur- age, a decision-maker would be unaware that
face detonations, pieces of intensely radio- his "limited" option could produce mass fires
active dust, rock, and clumps of earth would over a large area. These fires could be exr
start falling over large sections of the tar- pected to generate high winds and air tem-
get area. During the next few hours, in. peratures, perhaps as intense as those wit-
tense fires would burn over hundreds of nessed in the Dresden and.Hamburg fire-
square miles The fires would generate air storms of World War II, and could gtuckly kill
temperatures above that of boiling water; most or all of the population in the fire zone.
toxic levels of carbon monoxide, carbon di- In contemplating nuclear weapons, it is
oxide, and other poisonous gases; and winds important to bear in mind the enormity of the
of hurricane force. Radiation levels in much change they represent in the nature of war.
of this area might be sufficiently high to- When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hi-
deliver a lethal dose to unsheltered people roshima in 1945, the most revolutionary
every 10 to 20 minutes. weapon ever introduced destroyed not only a
Finally, the bombers and cruise missiles city, but all classical concepts of warfare as
would arrive to take care of any targets that well. Suddenly, . temperatures and energy
had not yet been destroyed. They would densities comparable to those that exist in.
probably reach Washington about the time the interior of stars could be achieved at the
the fires began to subside, perhaps six or surface of the earth. Added to the tools of
seven hours after the arrival. of the first warfare was a weapon that could, in effect,
warheads. If the bombers assigned to'drop deliver pieces of the sun's interior to the.
gravity bombs successfully penetrated to earth's surface.
the target area, the bomber crews might The stunning power of nuclear weapons.
see that the. missiles had already done the should make us wary of too much theorizing
damage and refrain from dropping bombs, about them on blackboard battlefields. And it
moving on instead to an alternate target. should remind us that in matters involving
nuclear. weapons, humility and caution are
Nation clear strategists sometimes argue oomer
hat these scenarios of total devas- _ES
are unrealistic. In the modern
era, they argue, American and Soviet attack
planners would select limited nuclear options,
designed to achieve specific military objec-
tives, rather than launch a spasmodic, all-out
attack.
These limited options, in theory, 'might
leave the Washington, D.C. area unscathed.
For example, attack planners might decide to
spare communications facilities, so that an
adversary could maintain control over forces
that might otherwise be launched. Or they
might decide not to attack leadership facil-
ities, in the hope that officials would survive 2 MILES
to negotiate an end to hostilities. Or they 4
might decide to spare population centers, . ' !Ipt0
either for moral reasons, or to spare their own population from retaliation, or to hold
the enemy's population hostage.
The problem with this approach is that it ignores reality. The very large scale and un- i2
predictable nature of many nuclear effects
may make it impossible to implement cleanly 2
and unambiguously the restraining measures ti^=~`z
ATOMIC DESTRUCTION
sought by policymakers.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6
'i 0 3
MILES
Pentagpn
/ \ 10 psi
Wh/te
i~~
V
1./
EED
Defense \\ CAPITAL
ireycy
Will
shingtt ,, .
Defense CAPITAL
140 psi
Washington, D.C.
White
v
40 psi
Pentago
W H
Vol
561~11
National
Airport
Yard ./
Naval Research
SOURCE: 'Managing Nuclear Operations," The Brookings Institution.
AFB Andre
Q
A mixed attack
of one?megaton
and 50-kiloton
weapons.
A 50-kiloton weapon
has the destructive
power of 50
thousand tons of
TNT.
A one-megaton
weapon has the
destructive power of
one million tons of
TNT.
T he effects of a
single one
megaton airburst.
Unreinforced frame
buildings and similar
structures within the
5 psi contour would
be obliterated by the.
blast.
Structures might
remain standing
within the 2 psi
contour, but would
be consumed by
mass fires.
Theodore Postol is a former adviser to the chief of
naval operations and is now a senior research
associate at Stanford Center for International-
Security and Arms ControL This article is adapted.
from a chapter in "Managing Nuclear Operations,
published by The Brookings Institution.
Defense
Mapping CAPITAL'
Agency . ~. BELTWAY
10 psi low airburst
Yard./
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040004-6