May-June 2005
In harm's way
by Jonas Seigel
Ever wonder what the effects of a low-yield nuclear weapon would look like? (A quick hint: It wouldn’t be pretty.) So did researchers at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who used software from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to simulate a low-yield nuclear weapons attack on North Korea. Despite nuclear war planners' hopes that a new generation of "more effective" earth-penetrating nuclear weapons could destroy underground targets while limiting nuclear fallout, even a low-yield earth penetrator would cause a devastating number of casualties. http://www.thebulletin.org/index.htm