Table of Contents

1 Front Matter; 2 Understanding and Preventing Nuclear War: The Expanding Role of the Scientific Community; 3 Part I: Nuclear War with Modern Weapons: Physical Effects and Environmental Consequences; 4 1 Possible Fatalities from Superfires Following Nuclear Attacks in or near Urban Areas; 5 2 A Review of the Physics of Large Urban Fires; 6 3 Recent Assessments of the Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War; 7 4 Nuclear Famine: The Indirect Effects of Nuclear War; 8 5 Nuclear Winter: The State of the Science; 9 6 Atmospheric Perturbations of Large-Scale Nuclear War; 10 7 Possible Toxic Environments Following a Nuclear War; 11 8 Radioactive Fallout; 12 Part II: Health Consequences of Nuclear War; 13 9 Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and Radioactive Fallout from Various Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the United States; 14 10 Acute Radiation Mortality in a Nuclear War; 15 11 Burn and Blast Casualties: Triage in Nuclear War; 16 12 Food and Nutrition in the Aftermath of Nuclear War; 17 13 Psychological Consequences of Disaster: Analogies for the Nuclear Case; 18 14 The Immunological Impact of Nuclear Warfare; 19 15 Expected Incidence of Cancer Following Nuclear War; 20 16 Genetic Consequences of Nuclear War; 21 Part III: Medical Resource Needs and Availability Following Nuclear War; 22 17 Medical Supply and Demand in a Post-Nuclear-War World; 23 18 The Consequences of Nuclear War: An Economic and Social Perspective; 24 Part IV: Images and Risks of Nuclear War: Psychosocial Perspectives; 25 19 Children's and Adolescents' Perceptions of the Threat of Nuclear War: Implications of Recent Studies; 26 20 Scandinavian Youth View the Future: A Preliminary Report of a Large Questionnaire Survey; 27 21 Adult Beliefs, Feelings, and Actions Regarding Nuclear War: Evidence from Surveys and Experiments; 28 22 Hope and the Denial of Stress in the Nuclear Age; 29 23 The Nuclear Arms Race and the Psychology of Power; 30 24 Managerial Demands of Modern Weapons Systems; 31 25 Sources of Human Instability in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons; 32 26 The Impact of Crisis-Induced Stress on Decision Making; 33 Part V: Long-Term Consequences of and Prospects for Recovery from Nuclear War: Two Views; 34 27 View I; 35 28 View II; 36 Concluding Remarks; 37 Summary and Perspective: With Some Observations on Informed Consent; 38 Glossary; 39 Biographies of Contributors; 40 Index

About the Author

Fred Solomon and Robert Q. Marston, Editors; with a foreword by Lewis Thomas; Steering Committee for the Symposium on the Medical Implications of Nuclear War, Institute of Medicine