Australia would have mostly survived a nuclear war

[Talwyn224]

I just came across this article in the online version of the Sydney Morning Herald and thought to share it here.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/secrets-out-soviets-did-not-target-cities-20120805-23ny1.html

 

 

THE US-Australian joint defence installations were almost certainly Russian nuclear targets during the Cold War. However, Australia's cities might well have survived unscathed if superpower tensions had erupted into a global conflagration, according to a top secret intelligence assessment released by the National Archives of Australia.

 

More than three decades after it was written, the Australian government has finally declassified its most secret study of the potential impact on Australia of a nuclear war between the US and the former Soviet Union.

 

Unlike the apocalyptic scenario in author Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach, the Office of National Assessments largely dismissed any danger to the nation from global radioactive fallout or stratospheric distribution of smoke from burning cities.

The office questioned if Australian cities would be targets for Soviet missiles, suggesting the US's southern hemisphere ally would be a ''low priority'' in a global nuclear exchange.

 

 

''In the aftermath of strategic nuclear war, there would be massive economic, demographic and political change in the northern hemisphere, which would pose much more serious problems for Australia than radioactive fallout,'' the office told the then prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, in December 1980.

 

In a strategic assessment written in the context of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, the office warned that the US-Australian naval communications station at North West Cape in Western Australia would be a high-priority nuclear target if Cold War tensions led to global war.

 

''As the nuclear conflict escalated and the prospects of its containment receded, we judge that nuclear attacks on some or all of [the joint defence] facilities would probably occur,'' the office advised. ''Where each side was using, or was judged likely to use, its submarine forces to strike at the opposition's cities, the USSR would rank North West Cape as an important target.''

The risks of nuclear attacks on the Pine Gap signals intelligence satellite ground station in central Australia and the missile launch detection facility at Nurrungar were considered ''somewhat lower'' because those facilities were ''not an integral part of an offensive strategic nuclear weapons system''. However, the office thought it probable that they would be targeted in an all-out nuclear exchange.

 

It was anticipated an attack on North West Cape would kill some 2000 people in Exmouth. Strikes against Pine Gap and Nurrungar raised the possibility of radioactive fallout over Alice Springs, Woomera and other towns in northern South Australia and it was considered a small risk of fallout over Adelaide could require ''temporary evacuation''.

 

Nevertheless, the office argued that ''in the scale of horrors usually associated with nuclear war, the direct physical effects on Australia of an attack on the joint defence facilities would not be catastrophic; apart, possibly, from Adelaide, the main Australian cities would not be significantly affected''.

 

Direct attacks on Australian cities were acknowledged as a possibility but the intelligence agency's view was that the Soviet Union ''would probably see Australian cities as low-priority nuclear targets''.

 

The veteran Australian nuclear disarmament campaigner Helen Caldicott was highly critical, saying the agency had ''severely downplayed'' the threat to Australian cities and the risks of global radioactive fallout.

[JimboUK]

Interesting stuff. It brings back memories of being a small child during the cold war (the latter part of it, I'm not that old :whistling: ) The threat was very real, we were convinced that at some point we were going to die in a nuclear fire, we didn't live in fear, we were resigned to what we thought at the time was fact. You'd hear adults say death would be preferable to living in a post war world, a not uncommon view. I remember seeing a film at school telling us what to do in the event of an attack, at school hiding under the desk was the suggestion. At home bizarre things like painting your windows white to reflect the radiation and building a shelter indoors out of interior doors were apparently going to save us. The fact the a nuclear blast sucks in the air for miles around leaving people to suffocate wasn't mentioned, nor was the fact that where we lived was only a few miles from a high priority target, nothing would have saved us. Very strange times.

[Talwyn224]

We must be of a similar vintage Jim as I had pretty much the same sort of upbringing, albeit without the nuclear attack drills at school. Growing up as a child in the 1970's and teenager in the 1980's I was all too aware of the unspoken dread that was quite pervasive in the world regarding the potential for a possible nuclear war. Even as a 9 year old, I was fully aware that the soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 could be the trigger that started the missiles flying.

 

Although the article states that major Australian cities weren't priority targets, I suspect at least 2 may have been nuked: Sydney and Perth are the top 2 suspects because of the naval bases that are in or nearby each city. HMAS Stirling & the Garden Island Naval base south west of Perth was always a concern although it was far enough away from the major central population area that if it was targeted, the majority of the city would have mostly escaped catastrophic damage. However depending on the time of day, the Fallout would have been carried by the prevailing sea breezes well over a large section of Perth thus hundreds of thousands would have been exposed to probably lethal levels of radiation. Plus we had no shelters or any sort of "official" plan which was given to the public if nuclear war ever did happen.

 

The thing is that Australia probably would have been hit but not as badly as the UK which I think would have become something like the Capital Wasteland :ohdear:

[JimboUK]

We didn't have drills as such, they were either before my time or didn't happen. I would be surprised if Austraila wasn't a target, you're not a member of NATO but you're closely aligned to those who are, it's not like the soviets had a shortage of missiles and had to be careful not to waste any. I'm pretty sure the pollution from the northern hemisphere wouldn't have stayed in the north either, the crap from Chernobyl reached Wales, that's a hell of a distance, imagine the mess a full on nuclear exchange would create.