Herman Kahn - How Many Can Be Saved (1959)

Introduction

The general belief persists today that an all-out thermonuclear war would inevitably result in mutual annihilation, and that nothing can be done to make it otherwise. Even those who do not believe in total annihilation often do believe that the shock effect of the casualties, the immediate destruction of wealth, and the long-term deleterious effects of fallout would inevitably jeopardize the survival of civilization. A study recently carried out by the author and a number of his colleagues at RAND, and privately financed by The RAND Corporation, has reached conclusions that seriously question these beliefs.1 While a thermonuclear war would be a catastrophe-in some ways an unprecedented catastrophe-it would still be a limited catastrophe. Even more important, the limits on the magnitude of the catastrophe might be sharply dependent on what prewar measures had been taken. The study suggests that for the next ten or fifteen years, and perhaps for much longer, feasible combinations of military and nonmilitary defense measures can come pretty close to preserving a reasonable semblance of our prewar society.