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MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART
NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS -1963
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1967
ORNA 3427
CONF-670949--1
NOV 2
PROJECT HARBOR IN RETROSPECT *
J. C. Bresee
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
MASTER
I have been asked to present my impressions of possible changes in the
results and conclusions of Project Harbor after four years. Such changes
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dirinys
weapons and defense technology, and modified domestic priorities.
Project Harbor, as many of you know, was a summer study of civil defense
sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and held at the Academy center
in woods Hole, Massachusetts, in August and September 1963. There were more
than 60 full-time participants with a wide variety of backgrounds. Counting
lecturers, consultants, and observers, there were more than 100 attendees at
the study session. The technical director of the study was Eugene P. Wigner
of Princeton, assisted by Lauriston Taylor of the Academy. The product of
the summer study was a summary report published by the Academy and widely
distributed, plus a series of summary documents from each of the six panels,
made available on a limited basis to both government and private organizations.
I want to stress at the beginning of my talk that this four-year backward
look at Project Harbor is very definitely my own and, in particular, does not
necessarily reflect the views of a group of 13 physical scientists, social
scientists, and engineers who during May and June this year reviewed for the
Academy under the direction of Professor Wigner the Project Harbor study for
the purpose of doing in a formal way what I will attempt to do today informally.
Incidentally, results of this so-called Little Harbor study are at present
undergoing editorial and security review and should be published by the Academy
later this year.
"Presented at the second Emergency Operations Symposium at System Development
Corporation, Santa Monica, California, September 8, 1967.
Operated by the Union Carbide Corporation for the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission.
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I will discuss the three aspects of the study in which I believe the
most significant changes in results and conclusions might occur. These
are (1) changes in emergency organizations, (2) changes in emphasis in shelter
concept, aná (3) a greatly increased recognition of the interdependence of
ballistic missile defense and civil defense.
I. Emergency Organizations
A. Original Harbor Concept: a federal cadre of 30 to 50 thousand full-
time civil defenders associated with a large civil defense program. This
organization would provide staff at the district level in each state, that is,
an office staffed with from 5 to 50 serving, at one extreme, a portion of a
large metropolitan area or, at the other extreme, several agricultural
counties. During peacetime the organization would help in operational planning
and hardware procurement in cooperation with local organizations and during .-
a civil defense emergency would have operational responsibilities for federal
emergency programs for survival and recovery. The consensus of the Harbor
study was that the organization would have a "paramilitary" character paralleling
the FBI or the Coast Guard, organizations which provide federal guidance in
such diverse activities as local law enforcement and the design of life jackets.
B. Revised Concept: In my judgment, an important and necessary change
in emergency organizations for civil defense would be a drastic decrease in
the number of full-time members of the federal planning and operations staff
and a great increase in the dual use of existing organizations (that is,
organizations assigned a part-time civil defense responsibility) such as the
Continental Army Command, the Corps of Engineers, the offices of the State
Adjutants General, local police and l'ire organizations, industrial management
staffs, and local political administrative staffs.
A program implemented since Project Harbor for the military support
of civil defense activities represents a very helpful step toward creating
a workable dual-use national civil defense organization. Under this plan,
all State Adjutants General, who during peacetime report to the state governor,
have been provided with full-time planning military staffs to analyze require-
ments for military support of civil defense in the individual state and the
possible availability of both physical and organizational resources from
all military activities in the state, including in particular the material
resources at military bases and the organizational resources within the
reserve forces.
Many of these military resources will have higher priority responsi-
bilities than civil defense in the event of a nuclear emergency in the U.S.,
but it is probable that a substantial fraction and perhaps in marzy cases the
majority of the state military resources can be used to assist local civil
authorities in their civil defense activities. In the erent of such an
emergency, all State Adjutants General would be federalized and the desig-
nated support forces would be put under their direction. One can imagine
that quite substantial aid could be given to local civil defense directors
very quickly. Imagine, for example, a local active reservist, who with an
on-going military training responsibility after two years active duty, could
be given training in shelter management and be assigned to a specific community
shelter near his home to which he would report under military orders in a
nuclear emergency. ..
II. Shelter Concept
A. Original Harbor Concept: Civil Defense shelters would be graded
according to their ability to resist nuclear weapons effects, with high-grade
shelters being designed for high resistance to blast and fire as well as
direct radiation, and would be located near where people live, work, or
go to school. For potential target areas, "near" would mean distances which
would allow shelter taking in 15 to 30 minutes from the detection of ICBM'S
penetrating the BMEWS screen. Shelter taking was seen as an alternative to
evacuation. Although dual-use shelters were considered desirable, the diffi-
culty of providing enough dual-use structures capable of resisting very high
overpressures was recognized (the basements of most reinforced concrete struc-
tures would perform badly if required to resist a 100-p84 blast wave from a
10-megaton weapon), and single-use structures were therefore favored in crowded
urban areas.
LEGAL NOTICE
Two report we prepared a NA account of Government sponsored work. Neither the Valled
matas, nor the Commleslon, nor any person nung on behalf of the Commissioni
A. Makes any warranty or representation, expresand or implied, with respect to the accu
racy, completenne, or wwfulness of the informclion contained in the report, or that the ne
of any information, apparatus, method, or procesi dinclound in una report may not Infringe
printly omed matter or
B. Aowan any ilabilith, with respect to the wwe of, or for domesta ruouture from the
um ol any laformation, opparbuo, nethod, or procou dincloued la thulo report.
A. and in the above, person noting on behalf of Use Commisslon" includne wy .
ployw or contractor of the Commission, or employee of much contractor, to the extent that
ouch employee or contractor of the Conninalon, or employee of which contractor preparat,
diana/nia, or provides *coouo to, ary Information pursuant to Me employment or contra
with the Commalog, or ho employment with anche contractor.
B. Revised Concept: In my judgment, a national shelter program which
provides structures which resist direct nuclear weapons effects, as well as
indirect effects, will ultimately be reguired for adeguate strategic defense
of the country. However, there are shelter concepts available which do not
require that shelter taking be an alternative to evacuation. Professor Harrenstien's
interconnected tunnel shelter is a good example of one such system.“ In
addition, much public attention has been focused during the past four years
on the need for increased use of the underground portion of urban areas to
help solve present-day problems such as improved transportation and utility-
distribution systems. Since tunnels can be used advantageously for rail and
automobile transportation and for improving access for maintenance to buried
utilities, there may be many more opportunities for urban dual-use structures
capable of resisting high overpressure than were thought to be available
at the time of Project Harbor. For example, in the transportation field, in
1963 only five U.S. cities had subway systems. In 1967 new systems are
being designed or are under construction in six cities, and 32 other cities
have indicated their intent to build subway systems in the near future. All
cities which now have subways are actively expanding their systems. In
addition, the interconnections in the major cities along the route necessary
for a high-speed (approximately 350 mph) underground transportation system
connecting Boston and Was nington would provide a huge network of interconnected
tunnels in the magalopolis of the northeast.
No municipally owned utility tunnel networks are being actively
considered for installation within the continental U.S., but the desirability
of such an approach was emphasized by a science and urban development study
sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office
of Science and Technology in June 1966.
*"Local Civil Defense Systems," Engineering Research Laboratory, University
of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona (June lt, 1964).
**"Science and the City," U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development;
available from U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.
In general, I believe that slanting the design of the below-ground
structures in older cities during new construction or urban renewal or during
the construction of entire new cities, for blast, prompt radiation, and thermal
resistance could result in the gradual acquisition of the type of urban shelter
reguired when the urban areas themselves become targets. I also greatly favor
a construction program which would result in initial investments in those
parts of dual-use shelter systems which are time dependent and delayed invest-
ments in those parts which are essentially time independent. Those structures
capable of being upgraded might initially serve as blast-resistant (as con-
trasted with blast-proof) shelters with only slightly improved capabilities ---
compared with deep underground reinforced concrete fallout Shelters.
Examples of delayed-investment items whose costs are essentially
time independent are blast doors, blast valves, motor generator units, and
emergency columns erected during a crisis which could quadruple the pressure
resistance of a flat reinforced concrete roof. Examples of initial-investment
items whose costs are time dependent are thickening of a slab rooſ by six
inches to raise the psi resistance of the structure from 10 psi to 50 psi
and providing an additional space in which a motor generator might be installed
at a later date but which meanwhile might serve as a storage area.
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III.
sterdependence of Ballistic Missile Defense and Civil Defense
A. Original Harbor Concept: The presence of hard shelters in an urban
area under attack should increase the effectiveness of terminal missile defense
of that city by increasing the engagement time and therefore the probability
of intercept. That is, an incoming weapon would need to penetrate closer to
the target before being detonated if the vulnerability of the population in
the target area were reduced by blast shelters and if the primary object of
the attack were to maximize fatalities.
HALIA
B. Revised Concept: Ballistic missile defense concepts have evolved
substantially during the past four years. In once concept under serious
consideration at present, the entire country might be provided with & so-called
"thin" area defense. Such a defense would be capable of intercepting and
destroying, at high altitudes, incoming payloads not provided with sophisti-
cated penetration aids. One of the most interesting and striking examples
of the effect of active defense, even one with nodest capability, on the
effectiveness of civil defense can be illustrated by the following example.
Let us assume for the sake of this discussion that the original
enemy threat consisted of roany missiles capable of delivering single ten-
megaton weapons. If a "thin" defense were installed by the U.S. and if the
enemy were capable of greatly improving the penetration capability of his
missiles, one possible route he might follow would be to replace each single
ten-megaton warhead with a number of smaller warheads, say ten 100-kiloton
warheads, each being resistant to destruction by the "thin" defense.
Suppose further that the penetration capability is 100% and that
all ten smaller warheads can actually be delivered to their targets. Four
interesting and importént changes (compared to the original threat) result.
First, the total megatonnago, essentially by definition, is decreased by a
factor of ten. Although the total amount of fission products would also be
reduced, the reduction might not be linear due to design changes. Nevertheless,
fallout problems outside the immediate target area would probably be decreased.
Second, the area exposed to a given overpressure or higher (even at optimum
burst height in both cases) would decrease. This change is shown in the
following table.
Area Exposed to Excess of Given Overpressure
(sg. mi.)
Ten 100-Kiloton Warheads One 10-Megaton Warhead
Overpressure
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50
110
10 psi
100 psi
3.4
7.0
Third, the positive overpressure duration (the time for the initial sharp
rise in pressure to decrease to zero) also decreases at any given overpressure,
as shown below.
Positive Overpressure Duration (sec)
Overpressure
100-Kiloton Warhead
10-Megaton Warhead
5.6
10 psi
100 psi
1.2
0.45
1.55
Since the destructive energy is proportional to the product of the
overpressure and the positive düration, the total blast destruction within
any pressure ring would decrease but again not linearly with duration.
Finally, the cost of producing a certain amount of damage would
increase. In general, the larger the warhead, the lower the cost of a megaton
of energy release. In addition, penetrating warheads would be expected to be
more expensive than those designed to be delivered against an unprotected
target.
This final factor, the result of the first three plus the added
cost of penetration, can have a significant effect on the economic feasibility
of civil defense, in the following sense.
Consider a case in which an enemy wishes to maintain a certain "hostage"
level in the U.S. (that is, the assured destruction of a certain percent of
the U.S. population in order to deter us either from what the enemy considers
overly aggressive military policies or from a missile attack on the enemy).
Let us begin by admitting that the U.S. hostage level today, vis-a-vis the
Soviets, is a rather arbitrary number; the Russian offensive missile force
is growing rapidly and our civil defense capability is growing slowly. Perhaps
one hundred million Americans are now at risk and the number is rising. However,
we might look forward to a missile defense of at least limited capability and
to an expanded civil defense capability, both of which would reduce the number
of hostages.
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FURT
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Let's ask the question this way: Suppose an increased civil defense
investment were made (with or without BMD) which included blast protection
and the Soviets responded to return the hostage level to its original value
by building more missiles. How would the costs of the civil defense and
Soviet offensive programs compare (at optimum investments in each)?
Without missile defense, the situation is not very favorable for
the defense, particularly at medium hostage levels. For example, if, say,
there were 60 million: U.S. hostages and shelters reduced the number to 40,
the cost of returning to 60 would probably be less than the defense cost.
However, this would certainly not be true between 120 million and 100 million
(which I would term high hostage levels). Incidentally, one might define
a "stable" hostage level as one at which offense and civil defense costs
are similar.
Given a "thin" missile defense, even completely penetrable, the
situation changes and, based on the previous discussion, in a predictable
fashion. Overall, the "stable" hostage level decreases and now at medium
hostage levels, even small (say five billion dollars) civil defense invest-
ments would require comparable offense expenses to reestablish the levels.
And a large civil defense investment could only be completely negated at
multiples of the defense cost.
Quantitative documentation of these cost ratio trends requires
classified data, but nevertheless it is interesting to recognize how important
to the success of a civil defense program even a penetrable missile defense
can be. Add real intercept capability, and in my judgment, greatly enhanced
strategic defense of the United States becomes a most attractive defense pro-
gram which the nation should adopt in the very near future.
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