The reality of nuclear

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A ten-megaton bomb could produce a crater 24: feet deep (deeper than London's underground railway) and perhaps half to one mile across, with a huge rim of piled-up wreckage for up to twice that distance. The blast wave would travel along the tunnels of any underground system and so kill people sheltering in them ten or twenty miles away. People out in the open up to twenty-two miles away would be burned fatally; fires would be started up to twenty Everything within three and a half miles would be totally smashed and there would be major damage to houses and streets up to fifteen miles away. People sheltering in basements or ground-floor rooms at this distance would be in danger from their homes collapsing. So the initial effects of blast and fire alone would be capable of killing over half the population Following this there would be further fire damage The enormous number of fires that would be started over hundreds of square miles would not remain isolated. A 'firestorm' would be produced on a scale bigger than the big fire raids of the Second World War at Hamburg, Tokyo, Dresden and other cities.

The fire storm might well destroy everything within twenty miles. People who survived the heat and blast would still have to face the third destroyer: eight miles away. of a city thus attacked. radiation.

John Cox, John Cox's book (published this month by Penguin at • £1.75) describes in sober detail just how "a fraction of the nuclear stockpiles in existence' can 'annihilate the entire population'