Science: Hydrogen Hysteria

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The most serious radioactive aftereffects were those from Test Baker at Bikini, where a uranium bomb was exploded underwater. The water of the lagoon and the lagoon's bottom stayed "hot" for a long time. But even then the effects were limited to a relatively small area.

Special Bomb. Hydrogen bombs, too, will leave radioactive residues. The uranium detonators will contribute their usual fission products. The "fusion" of hydrogen isotopes will probably free a great number of neutrons. Some of the neutrons will react with the nitrogen of the atmosphere (78%), turning it into radioactive but comparatively mild carbon 14. Others, reacting with elements in the bomb's casing, will form more dangerous isotopes. It would be possible to supply special elements for the neutrons to react with.

This might increase the amount of active materials created by the bomb, but it would probably reduce the bomb's overall destructiveness.

According to many well-informed physicists, it would be extremely difficult to design a bomb whose radioactive residues would do serious damage at a distance. The mushroom clouds created by a bomb look big in a photograph, but they would be specks if imposed on the map of a continent. To cover the U.S. or the U.S.S.R., such clouds would have to be diluted to the point of virtual harmlessness.

Inconstant Winds. Another flaw in the continent-scorching theory: winds do not blow uniformly from west to east. Their general drift is that way in the north temperate zone, especially at high altitude, but they usually blow every-which-way on any particular day. They cannot be depended upon to carry a killing cloud across a hostile continent.

All scientists admit that a sufficient number of hydrogen bombs (or uranium bombs, for that matter) might raise the radioactivity of the entire atmosphere. But to kill the world's inhabitants, the amount of reactive material used would have to be improbably large.

At present, scientists know about as much about hydrogen bombs as they knew about the uranium bomb in 1941. They will know more when one has been tested. If the H-bomb succeeds, it will be sufficiently terrible, with no need for exaggeration. But not for a long time, if ever, will any kind of bomb threaten the life of a whole continent.

Drs. Seitz and Bethe made one telling complaint: that the prevailing atmosphere of fearful secrecy makes it almost impossible for the full facts to be known. If the world does acquire the ability to commit suicide, the world's people, they insist, should be told.