kengr

The estimates from the Fifties and Sixties "proving" that a nuclear war would kill everyone on Earth were seriously flawed. They made several erroneous assumptions, such as that everyone else on Earth lived as tightly packed together as the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As well as that the damage from an explosion increases linearly, when more realistically it is at roughly the cube root of the increase in yield. They also assumed that all nuclear explosions would be low enough for the fireball to touch the ground. For maximum damage to civilian structures you want an airburst, which produces much less fallout.

I don't know if it's still offered, but about twenty years ago I took the CD radiological monitoring course. Very interesting.

I met Dean Ing once. He was a guest at RiverCon many years ago. Fascinating guy.