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ee ee , followi ng the explosion, made fire con‘ ‘many small blazes ignited bythe explc hpossible. The woh joined to form bigger blazes, and these finally flowed together to be- come one huge “fire-stosin” that enveloped most of the city and raged for hours.® Terrific winds travelled radially inward toward ¢he center of the conflagration, from a)] directions. An enc:mous column of smoke rose rapidly over the burning area. The loss of oxygen and the outpouring of acrid fumes in the region of the fire seems to have accounted ' for the deaths of many who might othetwise have been abje to reach*safety, : the west of northwest The forests and fields caught fire too. The wind out of swept these fires along, denuding _ vast areas of JJlinois and southern Missouri. Throughout the entire country forest fires raged for weeks, The eastern Ozarks burned for two weeks, until heavy rains put out the blaze. Ironical)y enough, radiation caused little harm imme- diately -- first the heat and fire and flying debris got in their deadly blows. But the fallout came soon enough. It is now calculated that an amount of fission products equivalent to a 9 megaton all-fission explosion was pro- _duced by the two weapons used on St, Louis. '® Of this staggering amount, about seven megatons of energy equi- valent came down as Joca) fallout; the other two megatons have been dispersed in the stratosphere and wi]] come down as world-wide fallout.?1 The loca) fallout was distributed downwind over an elongated area about 80 miles wide at the widest point, and about 200 miles long -- approximately 9000 square miles altogether, stretching across southern Illinois towards Evansville, Indiana. 12 Fallout Casualties Casualties from local fallout were heaviest around East St. Louis, Jn Belleville, persons in the open or in inadequate ‘ shelters received radiation doses of over 1000 rads during. the second hour after the attack. During the first 24 hours after the attack the total radiation to such persons was about 5000 rads.'3 Since only 1000 rads of radiation, received in ‘one dose wil] kil] all the people exposed to it, those who received 5000 rads didn’t live through the second day. Al- though meny people stayed indoors in an attempt to avoid the fallout hazard, some were in buildings that reduced the radia- tion dose to one-tenth, 4 so that 500 rads were absorbed within a day. All who received as much as 1000 rads within a few hours were dead by ihe end of the week. !5 For those who reccived 500 rads in a short interval, mortality was about 90 per cent; mostly they were dead by the middle of November, '6 In the whole 9000 square mile area of appreciable local fallout people who coujdn’t or didn’t find sheller received doses up to 500 rads the second day after the attack, 250 the third day, 150 the fourth day, and 100 on the fifth day.1?7 They didn't live much longer than thit. The repion of local fallout is stiJl radioactive. !8 Phe persistence of hiph radioactivity was one of the factors that Jed {o the decision, later in December, to evacuate most of the arca. Another factor was the probability that Ro crops could be raised on the heavily contaminated soi! for a Jony time, and then there was also the fear that the Senuded land, with its water-holding cover gone, would be subicct to severe flooding in the spring. 9 Ho furns out thet the decivion was well (sken. We hear that over handreds of square miles of Southern |}inois there is stil} envied , wad nothing, bos sprouted, ools candies. pre said to be Samevehai noting, fa be seen but the scarred, earth + nothing war planted Weert SO 4. . is no possibility of u d prown on it. The worst * of it is that the peak . s¢cumulation of the long-lived isotopes is still in the future. In about two years we expect that the strontium 90 concentration in the local fallout region will range from 10,000 to 300,000 milli- * curies per square mile, and cesium 137 from 20,000 to 600,000, 17 On a worldwide scale, the explosion of 4,000 mera- tons of weapons released 2600 megatons of energy equivalent of fission products, This means that 2 folal of 200 million curies of strontium 90 was produced, !9 (Remember that a “curie” is a thousand millicuries.) Four-fifths of this came down as loca) fallout, buf the remaining 40 million curies will come down gradually from the stratosphere. In two to five years, when the strontium 90 concentration will be greatest, the average stroniium 90 concentration in the north tem- perate zone will be about 1400 millicuries per square mile.20 Back in the late fifties we were concerned be- cause the soil around St. Louis had 46 millicuries per Square mile because of fallout from testing'?) And yet it is expected that 10 to 20 per cent of the area of the United States will have concentrations up to 500 times greater than the north temperate zone average of 1400 millicuries per square mile.'7? Right now it doesn’t seem possible that food crops could be ” grown in such areas for a century at least.?? Il. A DOCTOR’S REPORT I’m Bil! Rosenthal, M.D., practitioner of one of the few professions that still flourish in this new era. Sickness and suffering are among the few things we have no shortage of these days. Not that a doctor’s life is ‘a very satisfactory one. lt’s maddening to think of what we could have done, this past year, with doctors and nurses and technicians and hospital beds and antibiotics and drugs. Not to mention food, Well, we did what we could. I was at County Hospital when the moment came. County and St. Vincent’s were the only hospitals in the entire St. Louis area that remained in action, All other hospifals including our two great medica! centers were in the zone of total destruction. St. Joseph’s in Kirkwood stood up, but was heavily damaped in the fire that raged through the area. 1 don’t remeinber when the first casualties began to arrive -- we were too busy moving patients dowstairs and trying to cover the broken windows. We were handicapped by Jack of light. There was an auxiliary power Supply, of course, but we hesitated to draw on it because we suspected, right away, that Union Electric wasn’t likely to operate again in our time, The first victims to arrive were some youngsters fram Clayton High School, Caught out of doors, they had sus- | tained ternible burns. 3 ‘Three of them who had been standing near a wal] had been hit by the “bouncing hack” of the pressure wave from the wall, they were already bleeding from the lungs. In a few minules more, people were pouring in -- more burns, injuries from flying glass and falling masonry, even broken heads and Jimbs from the powerftr! wind that had picked people up and smashed them apainst walls and trees. % Supplics Give Out We worked feverishly, but it was like trying to bail ouf a dake with a teacup. Our supplies gave cil in a aather of hours.** ‘Phe phones were dead, but from whet we could