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Nuclear Threat and Disaster Management
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L V Krishnan and Jai Asundi
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Commentators speak of two types of nuclear threat. Attack with a stockpile
nuclear weapon by an adversary State during a conflict is one of them. This
would most probably be set off high above the ground to maximise damage. It
may not be a solitary attack.
Surprise attack by a terror group with an improvised device is another
possibility. This is likely to be of a lower yield and explode at ground level.
There are significant differences between the two.
Many reports have been published about the likely mass casualties in the
event of a nuclear explosion. Our focus here is on the management of the
consequences to facilitate early rescue and recovery.
Most of the published reports take their cue from the well documented open
sources of the US experience in tests in dry desert environment. The attacks on
the Japanese cities are the only instances of an explosion in the urban
environment. There are however differences between the Japanese cities then
and modern cities now.
The aerial photo of Hiroshima taken presumably by the US forces before the
explosion shows a crowded array of low slung wooden houses.
There is also a model in the Hiroshima museum providing a contrast of the city
scene before and after the explosion. It highlights the total decimation of the
houses. The houses collapsed like a pack of cards due to the shock wave. A fire
storm that began to rage about 20 minutes after the explosion razed them to
the ground. A closer look of the model shows a few structures still standing.
One of those structures was found to be an RCC building about 300 m from
Ground Zero (GZ). It suffered no serious structural damage from the shock
wave or the fire. Although so close to GZ, half of the inmates of the building
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Presented at the workshop on “Best International Practices In Building Resilient Cities”, Bangalore August 5-7,
2013.
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Dr. LV Krishnan is Adjunct Faculty, NIAS, Bangalore. Dr. Jai Asundi is Principal Research Scientist, CSTEP,
Bangalore.
