Re: On The Beach - accuracy?

[dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David Bromage)]

David Martin (d_martin@mountains.net.au) wrote:
> In the book (by Neville Shute, author of "A Town Like Alice" and "The Far
> Country", they live on an electrified line. Electricity comes from coal.
> Whilst the book (written early 1960's) says we produce no oil, that has
> changed. We now produce a large proportion of our oil needs.

Can't let facts get in the way of a good story. :)

> The story (in the book) was that cobalt bombs were used - lethal radiation
> for 5 years. Does anyone actually have any of these?

In theory you could dope the bombs such that fission produced large
amounts of cobalt-60. This is a high energy gamma ray emitter with a long
half life. We used to use it in the lab as a gamma standard because the
intensity didn't decrease appreciably over a decade or so, after which the
samples would be replaced.

In practice, it's not easy to get cobalt this way. If you want lingering
radiation, you would engineer the bomb so it produced strontium-90 or any
radioactive isotope of iodine. They are lower level gamma emitters, but
are more easily absorbed and retained in living tissue - strontium in the
bones and iodine in the thyroid. About 30,000 Ukranians have died of
thyroid cancer since Chernobyl exploded.

> With normal nukes, you can come out of your fallout shelter after 2 weeks.

Maybe so for one bomb or a few widely dispersed bombs of even high yield,
but with thousands of nukes going off the fallout would continue for
months afterwards.

Cheers
David