Science: Save Those Pine Seeds!

The visiting scientists made their reports in the dry, deadpan language of the laboratory. They seemed to be recording just one more set of facts and figures on the biological effects of atomic radiation. But buried beneath the data presented by Emory University’s representatives at Colorado State University’s conference on the ecological effects of radiation was a dreadful glimpse of the post-World War III world.

The Emory scientists took their measure of the future at Dawsonville, Ga., some 50 miles north of Atlanta, where the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. built a medium-sized (10,000 kw.) unshielded nuclear reactor for Air Force research on atom-powered airplanes. The reactor was set among wooded hills and abandoned fields that were reverting to forest, and in June 1959 it was allowed to operate for a short period at high level, spraying its surroundings with gamma rays and neutrons, the total dose simulating the effect of fallout after a nuclear war.*

Within a week, nearby pine trees began to turn brown and die. Most of the trees within 2,000 feet of the reactor are now dead. Hardwoods proved more resistant. Their leaves showed little effect until autumn, when they fell one to six weeks early. Next spring the buds of hickories and oaks did not develop normally. When the rolling hills of north Georgia were green with fresh new leaves, the sick forest around the reactor looked just as it had in winter.

The Emory biologists set up radiation meters, counted trees, bushes and plants. They noted every change in the doomed forest and fields. Most conspicuous event was the quick death of the pines; but humbler plants died too, or their seeds failed to germinate. The only successful survivors were species of plants that can spring up from deep perennial roots. One annual weed, a kind of Arenaria, grew with unnatural vigor; its seeds apparently thrived on radiation.

After studying their records, the scientists concluded that some well-sheltered humans might well survive an all-out nuclear war. But it seemed clear that the world into which the survivors emerged would lack certain valuable things. Most large mammals are known to be just as radiation-sensitive as humans, so domestic animals that survived the bombs would soon die from eating contaminated forage. Human survivors would have to go without meat, milk and other accustomed protein foods. Forest lovers to the end, the Emory biologists made one positive recommendation. Pine seeds, they said, should be stockpiled in shelters so that the earth’s pine forests can eventually be restored.

* Based on a three-year-old Rand Corp. estimate of the radiation that worldwide fallout from a relatively small (20,000-megaton) attack would scatter on fields, woods and other parts of “the natural environment.”