Edward Teller |
December 13, 1961
|
|
Edward Teller
Physicist, The Manhattan Project; Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1958-1960); Member, General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission (1956-1958); Professor, University of California
Thank you very much indeed. You heard, a few minutes ago, the most interesting enumeration of recent important events. It was the gratifying news that today this club has 10,000 members and can speak with 10,000 voices. I'm afraid it has also the capability of listening with 20,000 ears, which is somewhat frightening to me.
Among the events, a very important recent event was not mentioned, and this is also of concern to me - of great concern to me - and should be to all of us. This is not known as a certainty, but it is probable that recently the Soviet Union has passed the United States in military strength and, in particular, in the power and effectiveness of their nuclear weapons. This means that we are faced with a most serious situation.
About a month ago, Gerard Piel has made an important contribution in this place to civil defense, which, in turn, is a very significant phase of our preparedness. He said a few things that needed to be said. He said that civil defense is not, and cannot, be simply the building of fallout shelters; that there are other dangers, dangers from blast and from fire, which are as great, or greater, than the danger from fallout. He is right; I am glad that he made this statement. He also said that the two alternatives, "Red or dead," cannot be and must not be the only ones, and that we should look for other alternatives. He certainly is correct.
Now, my purpose in my main day-to-day work, and my purpose in talking to you, is to make a little contribution toward finding and developing another and a reasonable alternative. My main purpose is to find a way in which we can have peace and in which we can preserve our freedom.
This will not be easy, and I do not know the answer, but I have strong feelings about the directions in which we have to look for an answer. I also have the strong conviction, the complete conviction, that any simple answer is not the right one. And here, the rumor has been right. I disagree with Mr. Piel, when he put the problem to you in an exaggerated and simplified form. He said that real civil defense will mean that the nation will have to go underground. And he continued, the down-payment on the cost of taking the nation underground would be $l50 billion. But that is only the fiscal cost. The social cost of going underground would not fall short of the total transformation of our way of life, the suspension of our civil institutions, the habituation of our people to violence, and ultimate militarization of our society.
The figure, 150 billion, is grossly and improperly exaggerated. The following statements are even more wrong: Mr. Piel considers civil defense as a form of violence. He says that it is a step in this ever-growing danger, the escalation of military force; and he says the civil defense program of our federal government, however as intended, must be regarded as a step in the escalation process. This is a sinister development, because it works as psychological subversion of both government and citizenry.
Gentlemen, these are strong words to use. If civil defense is violence, what is active defense? What is our whole military establishment, together with the development of missiles and nuclear explosives? Knowing that Mr. Piel is a reasonable and logical person, I know he must be opposed to all of these.
I will try to put to you the dilemma in a fair and simple way. That we are in danger, that we have to try and preserve peace: on that we are all agreed. There is a disagreement as to the question, from what quarter our main danger arises. There are those, and Mr. Piel is one of them, who believe that the main danger comes from the military men throughout the world, in Russia as well as in the United States, and the peace-loving people on both sides of the Iron Curtain can develop this dreadful trend which may carry us toward all-out war.
There are others who believe differently, and I am one of them. I believe that we are peace-loving, that with the exception of a small and insignificant minority, a completely insignificant minority, we are all peace-loving. And this includes our military men, many of whom I know, and many of whom I respect very highly.
I also believe, with Mr. Piel, that there are a great majority of peace-loving people behind the Iron Curtain. But I believe, in fact I think I know, that these peace-loving people behind the Iron Curtain have no voice, and the minority in Russia is determined to conquer the world. This is not the same as loving peace, and there are some leaders who love peace only to the extent that they would rather conquer us without bloodshed and without risk. In fact, I believe that they are cautious; I do not believe that they are adventurous; and I do not believe that they will attack us, as long as we are strong.
I believe, for this reason, that we must be both strong and patient; that we must never strike first, but we must be able to retaliate in case we are attacked; and, furthermore, we must be able to survive an attack, so that it should become clear to the Russian leaders that by attacking us they can not win. If we accomplish this, we shall be safe. But it will take a lot to accomplish this.
I do not believe that civil defense is a panacea. I do not believe that civil defense will come easy. It will be hard to have a good civil defense; but it is necessary, and it is possible. Mr. Piel had a point, but he exaggerated it. The past expenditure on civil defense, amounting to less than one-tenth of a cent out of every tax dollar, has indeed been insignificant. At present, this amount has been stepped up to three-tenths of a cent of each tax dollar. This is a good beginning, but it is still not sufficient. I believe that what we need is, perhaps, 10 percent of our military budget: $4 billion a year, spent reasonably over a series of years.
I believe that the Russians today are not strong enough to attack us. I believe that if we start to work on civil defense today, then they never will be in the position of attacking us; but if we neglect civil defense, we are exposing ourselves to a deadly danger.
Now, specifically, Mr. Piel has told you that there are grave dangers in the neighborhood of a nuclear bomb about which he said that there is no defense against them. These dangers are blast and fire. That these dangers are great is certainly true. That there is no defense against them is incorrect. The defense is expensive, but not very expensive. If you do your best with appropriately constructed mass shelters, you can buy reasonable defense for approximately $200 per person. This can be done by excavation underground, by building into this little tunnel that you have made underground a Quonset hut-like structure; this has been worked out by the Naval Radiological Defense people here in San Francisco. It is believed, and I think correctly, that such a shelter will stand up under a mighty megaton explosion if that explosion is farther away than approximately one mile.
There will not be much warning. A missile takes only 20 minutes to get here, if it starts from Russia. It is highly desirable, it is necessary, that to everybody a mass shelter should be available in a walking distance of five minutes. In heavily built-up areas, this is possible.
Nor is this Quonset hut structure the only possibility. In places where you have limestone or other soft-rock formations, one can dig straight into the rock and have an even more adequate shelter, for approximately the same amount per person which I have mentioned, or, at any rate, not much more. In many places, in places distant from the actual target area, less complete shelter will be adequate.
Mr. Piel has pointed out, quite correctly, that the fire hazard is great, and that, in fact, it may very well be the greatest of our hazards. The danger of fall-out has somehow been exaggerated out of all proportion, and, for instance, the statement which has been often repeated by Mr. Piel and others, that there will be a danger to future generations, is in itself grossly distorted. I have estimated that a really terrible attack, the kind of attack that we are fearing in our worst dreams, will have, among other things, the effect of increasing the normal mutation rate for one generation by a factor of two. There will be twice as many stillbirths and twice as many changes than under normal conditions. Mutations have also contributed to the development of the living world, and if a natural process is speeded up by a factor of two for one generation, it's not something you would want to do, but it's certainly not a catastrophe compared to this horrible possibility of an all-out war. Let's, please, see things in proportion.
The fire danger, however, is a very real one. The Russian multi-megaton bombs, 50 megatons, 100 megatons, could, in fact, be exploded in such a way to produce a great amount of fire. How much fire will depend, to a great extent, on the question how much combustible material is around. Fires can be fought. Against fires there is a defense, in well-constructed underground shelters, in the shelters of the kind which I have described to you, if to the shelters there is added the relatively small cost of putting in chemicals to absorb the carbon dioxide, and putting in bottled oxygen, which for mass shelters is not very expensive, to supply the people in the shelter with air for the probable duration, the probable maximum duration of the fire, which may be as long as 24 hours. This is a minor additional cost, and will make the defense complete not only against nuclear attack but against chemical and biological attack as well.
I want to make a general statement of some importance. Please do not interpret my words as a statement which is authoritative, correct, which presents a real plan. The civil defense program is a program of enormous complexity, which so far we have not taken seriously enough. I am merely saying that if you use your imagination not only to outline the dangers to which you may be subject, but also, in a positive way, to find every reasonable avenue to combat these dangers, I believe that solutions can be found, and I believe that we can even discern the beginnings of a solution. That is all I claim.
Mr. Piel brought up another point of extremely great importance. When we come out of the shelters, then what? How much of the nation's wealth, how much of the nation's livelihood will have been destroyed? Mr. Piel says, maybe half or two-thirds. I will admit this is quite possible. I will say that in many essential areas all our wealth may be destroyed. Some of you may know that all our wealth amounts to the national income of only three years. If we keep a sensible organization under attack, and if we store some goods against this dreadful rainy day, so that we won't starve, and so that we won't have to start the rebuilding process with our ten bare fingers, we can, after a number of austere, but not necessarily terrible years, rebuild our country to its old strength, and to a better strength.
How to do this won't be easy; it will be even more difficult than planning the shelters. But we have an important asset, which can give us a good start. We have food surpluses which can last for two years. These food surpluses will be destroyed, or may be destroyed, if they are left in an insecure place. If they are put into safe places, which will not be very expensive, and if they are distributed throughout the country, near processing facilities or in a semi-processed spot, we can be sure that we at least will eat while we rebuild the country. And if we have built the shelters, the great majority of our population can be saved, even under the most savage and sudden attack.
We are a rich country. We throw away our machines when we can think of something better. Some of these machines should be mothballed, so that we should have something to start from, in case we are attacked. Civil defense and recovery and planning for recovery is possible in a rich country with surpluses like the United States. This same thing is infinitely more difficult in a country like Russia, which is vigorously and valiantly struggling to establish its first generation industry. They have no surpluses. They run their machines until the machines fall apart. The Russians can be made quite certain that in case of an all-out war, we shall survive, our country will survive, and we can recover faster than they can recover. Under these conditions we can be sure that they will not attack first.
Now, this is not enough. This is only the negative part of a program. How to make ourselves safe for the next few years? We have bought time. The value of this time depends on what we do with it. The right plan for a peaceful world will not help us if we have no strength to defend ourselves. Our military strength will, on the other hand, be of no avail if we do not know how to construct a peaceful, stable world on this globe which, decade by decade, becomes smaller, more closely interrelated, and therefore, in an anarchic world, more dangerous.
We have made, recently, a very important step toward the construction of a more stable world. We have announced publicly that we shall never strike first. We must say this; we must know it; we must act accordingly. We must behave in such a way that an all-out war will never be, and need never be, started by the United States. If we are strong, an all-out war will not be started by the other side either.
This does not mean that we shall take every Russian aggression without resistance. We must develop a force, and we can, which will resist Russian aggression in every place, at any time, on the same scale on which this aggression is committed. To do that, we need the most flexible weapons. We need nuclear weapons, among other things, to be used in limited war, but at the same time we must never spread such a war beyond the territory in which the Russian aggression has been committed.
If we can act according to these principles, we will have made another important step toward lasting peace. But even that is not enough. The real question is how to construct a lawful, peaceful family of nations. We can be quite sure that the Russians, who are bent on world conquest, will not sit down with us at the negotiating table and will not give up their plan to conquer the world merely because we ask them to do so. We must first develop the strength and develop the unity in the free world, and this will take a decade or two at the very least. If the Russians are convinced, if they will be convinced in the future, that they cannot conquer the world without a devastating war, then it may be the time, in a different situation from the present one, to see how, in a gradual and reasonable way, we can begin to agree with them.
We first have to stop them, and in order to do that we need unity. We need unity in the free world. We must begin to build a supra-national authority which has moral strength and physical strength to maintain peace, and which has the power to help the backward nations in their struggle for a better existence. Unless we can, with the help of peaceful users of nuclear explosives, with the help of great projects, like influencing weather, like multiplying the food resources of the world by exploiting the ocean better, in many big ways which can be undertaken only by many nations together.
If we do that, if we take the full responsibility for a developing world, for a world in which the Industrial Revolution and a better way of living is spreading from continent to continent; if in this world we can become leaders; if we can make good on our own statement that all men are created equal, whether in North or South America, or Africa or Asia; if we can make good on these magnificent ideas, and these magnificent promises; and if we have the strength to safeguard ourselves and our friends while we are developing our world - then there will be real peace in our time. And a very important part of this real safety and this real peace, is this little, gentle contribution of civilian defense.
Thank you very much.
Generously funded by:
Tom Campbell
Dee Dee Myers