Scenario of Destruction

A nuclear attack on the U.S. might consist of hundreds of missiles or a few. One military base, or scores of cities, might be targeted. But the results are chillingly predictable. The following hypothetical scenario is based on a study by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

Say it is late April, a cloudless Thursday evening in Detroit. Assume further that there is no advance warning. Shortly after 8:30, the lone warhead of a Soviet SS-13 missile comes swooping down. Six thousand feet, directly above the intersection of Interstate Highways 94 and 75, the 1-megaton bomb--only a fiftieth as large as the Soviets' largest warhead--explodes with the force of 1 million tons of TNT.

The end is heralded not with a bang but with a burst of light. The 35,000 baseball fans in Tiger Stadium watching a game gasp in unison at the preternatural dazzle. The people in the stands who face the fireball are blinded by it. An instant later they and the rest of the crowd are on fire. But the pain ends quickly: the explosion's blast wave, like a super-hardened wall of air moving faster than sound, crushes the stands and the spectators into a heap of rubble.

The blast wave is the main destroyer. Detonation in midair has made radioactive fallout negligible, and people close enough for immediate doses of radiation first succumb to other injuries. More than 250,000 Detroiters were within 2 1/2miles of ground zero; nearly all are now dead. Pedestrians and drivers are incinerated in a molten slag of cars. Skyscrapers burst and fall. Nearly 20 sq. mi. of the city are leveled.

About three miles from the epicenter, the symphony audience of 2,000 at Ford Auditorium live for several seconds longer. Indoors, the music lovers are puzzled by the sudden heat. Their bewilderment is fleeting: the blast wave arrives just as the brightness of the mile-wide fireball peaks. Those who do not die beneath collapsing walls are probably killed by rocketing shards of wood and glass.

In this 33-sq.-mi. secondary ring of destruction, almost everyone is a casualty. Across the Detroit River in Windsor, Canadians strolling the promenade are severely burned and then pounded by fragments from Detroit's Renaissance Center, hurled across the river by 160-m.p.h. winds.

A minute has not yet passed as the fireball dims. A few miles farther out, north into working-class neighborhoods and east toward affluent Grosse Pointe, tens of thousands are dying. Survivors crawl from wrecked homes to see a more ordinary terror beginning. The only illumination is from house fires; the power is out. Ruptured gas lines explode, setting new blazes, and the flames spread unchecked. Rising overhead now is the catastrophe's explanation: a dark mushroom cloud, already eight miles high.

Ferndale and Harper Woods, nine miles from downtown, are battered. Although the death toll is low, at least a third of the population of 43,000 of the two towns have been wounded. In front yards, suburbanites watch tree trunks smolder. Because the havoc is not total, the prospect of civil disorder may be great. Hospitals are intact, with doctors on duty and painkillers in stock. But from all over the city, 600,000 injured are begging or simply seizing the tiny supply of medical aid. Hysteria spreads as drivers crowd all three major highways leading from the 150 sq. mi. of ruins.

Not until the next day will officials make rough death tallies: so far, the single bomb has killed 470,000 people.

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