Effects of Nuclear War on Health and Health Services

Abstract

This book is an updated report by an international committee of experts in medical sciences and public health commissioned by the World Health Organization to report on the consequences of nuclear war on health and health services. If you consider yourself knowledgeable and appropriately alarmed about the danger of nuclear war, and even if you are involved (as are many physicians) in the effort to prevent nuclear war, this book will still disturb you. There is the obligatory recitation of the magnitude of arms buildup (more than 15 000 megatons, the destructive power of this mass being such that if only 1% of it were utilized in urban areas, more people would be killed in a few hours than during the whole of the Second World War) followed by a very detailed but quite readable accounting of physical characteristics of nuclear explosions. In addition to the blast wave (containing half