ATOMIC AGE: Lesson

The citizens of Hiroshima did not think of their atomic-bombing as an atrocity—until, months after the event, they heard that foreign publications had suggested that it was. Nor are the Japanese the only ones still slowly acquiring fresh concepts of The Bomb. Americans are learning, too. Dr. Stafford L. Warren, who was the chief radiological safety officer at the Bikini bomb tests, has made several informative speeches since his return. Last week, as he took up his duties as dean of the Medical School of the University of California at Los Angeles, he was ready with another.

“Two atomic bombs—dropped [in the water] on either side of tlie Statue of Liberty—and a nice upriver wind could turn the whole of Manhattan into a ghost town for 50 to 100 years,” said Dr. Warren. “Four or five bombs dropped along the water at Chicago would put out Chicago and make all the Great Lakes untenable.”

Dr. Warren was discussing the underwater test at Bikini, a blast that grows more & more sinister the longer scientists study its results. The first four atomic bombs were exploded in the air. Their radiological aftereffects were relatively slight; the dangerously radioactive materials they released were largely sucked up into the substratosphere. But says Dr. Warren: “That second one at Bikini really ties this business up in a knot. . . . Literally astronomical quantities of radioactive material had become intimately mixed with the sea water, mist and spray which accompanied the formation of the giant mushroom of water which rose from the lagoon. . . . [Such atomic mist] will deposit huge amounts of radium-equivalent —anywhere from a ton to 100 tons.” ‘

The First 75 Million. “When this moves in over a city you have to evacuate the people right away or they will die from gamma radiation. You couldn’t clean the area. The fissionable material would get into the water—into everything. It would get into next year’s crop.”

One of Dr. Warren’s sentences suggested the full horror perhaps better than anything else: “I’m not so worried about the killing of 50 to 75 million people as I am about the wiping out of resources.” Dr. Warren is not callous or unkind. (His precautions at Bikini were so thorough that “not a doggone participant got into any trouble.”) What Dr. Warren meant was simply that atomic bombs, concentrated on the world’s most productive areas, would reduce, by much more than 75 million, the number of people the planet could support.