VI

… generalizations about the effects …

            When Deer Park’s grade-schooler tossed a rock in the direction of the Atlas E, he was throwing the first type of ballistic missile used by humans at what may yet prove to be the last.  From rocks to rockets, artillery’s progression has been punctuated by leaps in destructiveness.  In concept, there is little difference between a Roman artillery catapult throwing projectiles of burning resin, and the thermonuclear warhead sitting atop a guided missile — except that one might incinerate a wooden ship, the other a modern city.

            Atlas ballistic missile crews were not made aware of the explosive yield of their rocket’s warhead.  They knew the warhead’s power was significantly larger then the bombs used against Japan.  Beyond that, they could only speculate. 

            Both atomic bombs dropped on Japan were classified as fission weapons — meaning the atoms in the core were being split into lighter elements, and in the process liberating energy.  The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, used 132 pounds of uranium-235 as its fissionable material.  Although only a small amount of that actually converted into energy, it produced an explosion equivalent to fifteen thousand tons of TNT.  The Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man, used 13.6 pounds of plutonium, and produced an explosion equivalent to twenty-one thousand tons of TNT.

            Deer Park’s Atlas missile used a warhead designated by the military as type W-38 — believed to have an output of about three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand tons of TNT.  This was a fission/fusion weapon.  Though commonly called, a hydrogen bomb, it’s also known as a two-stage Teller-Ulam implosion device.

            Different from the cracking of atoms in fission weapons, the fusion process produces energy the same general way the sun does.  Energy is created by combining two light elements — usually isotopes of hydrogen — into a heavier element.  The byproduct of this conversion is intense radiation. 

            Although the actual designs are classified, the general details of how various types of thermonuclear bombs work have been released.  We know that the hydrogen isotopes used as fusion material in the bomb’s second stage need to be severely heated and compressed to trigger the fusion process.  The only non-theoretical way known to produce that much heat and pressure is to use a Hiroshima or Nagasaki style fission bomb as the initiator.

            This first stage plutonium/uranium trigger, in a shaped radiation implosion, compresses the lithium-deuteride core of the bomb’s second stage.  Lithium is a metal, only half as dense as water.  Because of its chemical reactivity, it only occurs in nature in combination with other elements or compounds.  The other fusion material, deuterium, is an isotope of hydrogen that combines with oxygen to form ‘heavy water’.  When overwhelmed by the pressure of the neutrons produced in the atomic blast and then reflected by the inner case of the bomb to compress the lithium-deuteride core from all sides, the lithium part breaks down into tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and into the element helium.  Under the intense heat and pressure of the blast, the new tritium and original deuterium fuse into more helium, and in the process, liberate an explosive flood of energy.

            The difference between the explosive power of early fission and modern fusion devices is startling.  One way to visualize this difference is to explode each device in the air and measure the diameter of the initial fireball.  This fireball is produced by the outward expansion of a shell of super-heated gas.  The gas is formed when the nuclear explosion sends a wave of radiation outward, compressing and heating the air.  This plasma is initially pushing outward at several million miles an hour — thus the nuclear shockwave.  The fireball itself is defined by the edge of the plasma’s visible luminosity.

            A Hiroshima size blast should produce a fireball about six-hundred and fifty feet across.  The weapon detonated over Nagasaki could have burned a seven-hundred and twenty foot wide hole in the sky.  But the Atlas missile’s W-38 warhead would produce an airburst fireball one mile, six-hundred and twenty five feet in diameter.  This says nothing of the destruction that would radiate outward from the edge of that plasma front.

            If a Russian device of similar size to the Atlas warhead had been detonated above Deer Park’s missile base, certain generalizations about the effects of that blast can be calculated.

            If the airburst had been close enough to the ground for a good portion of the plasma front to contact the earth, energy would have been reflected back into the fireball, increasing its size.  This enlarged fireball could reach a mile and a half across, overrunning the northeastern segments of the municipal airport’s runways.  This fireball would have remained visible for just over eight seconds.  As the fireball rolled overhead, anything organic that had not been buried deep underground would be reduced to superheated powder, and either fused into the earth, or blow away.

            At two and a half miles from ground zero, the outermost zone of ionizing radiation would just brush Deer Park’s eastern city limits.  Assuming an individual could somehow survive the other detonation effects, this radiation, knocking electrons from the atoms inside the living body, would chemically ionize the tissues.  The mortality expectation for an ionized organism could run as high as 90 percent.

            About the same area would be exposed to very high overpressure — overpressure being an expression of the power of the shockwave produced by the blast.  The overpressure at the outside edge of this zone would have decreased to 20 pounds per square inch — meaning every square foot of structure or person facing the blast would be slammed with a punch equivalent to one ton of weight.  Nothing except broken stubs of the heaviest and most anchored portion of any structure would be left standing from this 20 pound boundary inward to ground zero.

            Any number of factors can determine how effective a bomb will be.  The type of target determines the burst altitude, and the burst altitude and weather conditions at the target determine the area over which the destruction will spread.  If the intent was to root out a hardened or buried structure, such as the bunker, the incoming ordinance would have been detonated at the surface, or slightly above.  If the intention was to cause the maximum damage over the widest possible area, then the bomb would be detonated five to ten thousand feet overhead.

            If the bomb had exploded closes to its optimal altitude for maximum widespread damage, then, seven miles out from the center of the blast, the overpressure would still exceed 4 pounds.  That means the east wall of the old Clayton schoolhouse, at just under seven miles from ground zero, would be hit with of shockwave in the neighborhood of 320 tons.

            Rick Hodges, an experienced mechanical engineer and structural designer, commented, “To put it in perspective, the building codes for this area require designing for a 20 pounds per square foot wind load.  Along the gulf coast of Florida — hurricane country — that number is fifty pounds per square foot.  The indicated 4 pounds per square inch overpressure equals 576 pounds per square foot — over 10 times the design requirement for hurricanes.  In fact, I would guess that the force on the east side of the building would exceed the building’s total weight.  If the building could have somehow managed to hold together, that force could have potentially rip it from the ground and rolled it over like a child’s toy block.  I can’t think of any above ground structure in the Deer Park/Clayton area that could have remained standing against such a shock wave unless it was shielded by intervening hills.”

            The tonnage striking the school is the total calculated against a monolithic wall.  Hit with such a blow, the windows of the old school would have moved inward with the shockwave.  As the shockwave moved into the building through those openings, it would have increased the internal pressure and somewhat countered, somewhat lessened the pressure being exerted on the exterior wall.  Whether this lessening would have allowed any portion of the un-reinforced brick walls of the old school to survive is doubtful.

            Any such calculations of effects at a distance are extremely rough estimates.  The closer to the blast one moves, the less uncertainty exists.

            Though the Riverside school, approximately three miles to the east of the detonation site, is somewhat protected by the land rising to the west, the altitude of the blast — the eye of the airburst fireball being clearly visible from the school — insures that nothing but the foundation would have remained.

            As for any humans or animals in the area — overpressures in excess of five pounds per square inch can rupture eardrums.  At fifteen pounds per square inch, irreversible lung damage can occur — the same blast-lung effect often suffered by people too close to a conventional chemical explosion. At greater overpressures, the shockwave moving through the body releases energy anytime it moves across any density boundary — such as between muscle and bone, or between tissue and air.  This released energy causes hemorrhage of the tissue — causes bleeding in the flesh deep inside the body.

            Accompanying this static overpressure shockwave would be a short-lived dynamic overpressure — a sudden blast of wind.  In the vicinity of Clayton, the wind, for several seconds, would blow away from ground zero at between 125 and 150 miles an hour.  This would immediately be followed by a gust, nearly as strong, in the opposite direction.  The closer to the fireball, the stronger this wind.  This dynamic pulse would pick up and throw objects and creatures, slamming them against each other, and against static surfaces.

            As bad as the above may be, it all follows what could potentially be the most, or the least, widespread of the explosion’s damaging effects — and it all depends on the weather.  If the sky was clear of haze or clouds, regardless of it being day or night, the initial flash of light from the explosion, part of that first flood of radiation, would set the countryside on fire.

            Draw a circle 24 miles in diameter — twelve miles in every direction from ground zero.  At the edge of that circle any exposed human flesh would suffer a third degree burn — would be burned completely through the skin, down to the underlying tissue.  Every foot closer to ground zero would increase the depth of the burn.  Mildly put, in the event of nuclear war, and the collapse of effective medical care, any burn covering more than a few inches of skin would likely, over time, be fatal.  Treatment of the infections, and the skin grafts necessary to cover such wounds would be non-existent for the vast majority.  The worse the wound, the less time to suffer.

            To give it some perspective, that circle would touch Sacheen Lake in the north, the top of Mount Spokane to the east, the top of Scoop Mountain to the west, and Wandermere Golf Course to the south.

            If the sky were overcast, this burn radius would be severely reduced.

            In cold weather or at night, the number of people exposed, due to being inside or heavily dressed, would be relatively small.  But the flash, over much of that circle, would also cause dry, exposed combustibles to burst into flames.  While some burning buildings, haystacks, automobile interiors and the like would be extinguished by the dynamic shockwave’s blast of wind, others would just add fuel to the ensuing firestorm.

            While the likelihood of a 3.75 megaton bomb detonating over Deer Park’s missile bunker was almost nil, the Atlas missile’s warhead would most certainly be falling on a densely populated military, industrial, or civilian target over there — with the same effect.

           Regardless of what the missileers did or didn’t know about the potential energy contained in the Atlas missile’s warhead, one thing the entire world suspected was that the nuclear weapons the Russians had aimed at America — due to the extra lifting capacity of the giant Soviet rockets, and to compensate for the greater margin of targeting error expected from their rockets — were much larger than those America was aiming back.

To assure that the American warhead could survive the 15,000 mile per hour plunge back into Earth’s atmosphere, an aero-dynamic re-entry vehicle was fitted around the W-38 warhead.  This vehicle was divided into three distinct sections.  The nose was a blunted bullet shape.

Mark IV ballistic re-entry vehicle containing a W-38 thermonuclear warhead mounted to the nose of one of Fairchild's 567th Strategic Missile Squadron's complex housed Atlas E missiles.

            Surfaces of the vehicle exposed to heating during reentry were covered with a partially ablating material — meaning the surface would char away, carrying the frictional heat produced by atmospheric drag with it.  Below this skin was an insulating layer.

            The re-entry vehicle was fitted to the missile after the missile was secured to its horizontal launch boom in the launch bay.  The re-entry package arrived at the site on its own specialized transporter.  Backed into the launch bay, it was positioned under the missile’s nose.  The transporter’s hydraulic cradle lifted the payload into position for mating.

            The vehicle was fitted under tension to the missile’s adapter ring.  Once the missile reached separation altitude, and the holding mechanism detached itself, the stored tension would assure a clean separation.  As the re-entry vehicle began moving away from the missile, retro-rockets on the Atlas would back the missile away from the payload.

            As for working in the launch bay when the warhead was attached to the missile, the missileers expressed no concern.  Even in the worse case scenario — a fully fueled upright rocket exploding, and its warhead collapsing into the pool of burning fuel and oxidizer — there was only an infinitesimal chance of a radiation leak.  And no chance at all of a spontaneous nuclear detonation.

            Jack Roberts states, “The munitions people most likely did some radiation testing when installing and removing the warhead.  As for the maintenance crews, I don’t recall us doing routine radiation sweeps of the launch bay.”

            “There was a hand held radiation monitor on site,” Jim Geoghegan recalled.  “We tested once in awhile.  But it never seemed to be an issue.”

            The attitude of the missile maintenance crews seemed to be that the warhead was just something stuck on the front of their rocket, and, as long as it didn’t get in the way of their work, of little concern.