Estimates of Nuclear War Casualties During the Cold War Regularly Underestimated Deaths and DestructionĪpprehensions about the escalation risks involved with the current Ukraine war has produced speculation about the possibility of limited Russian nuclear strikes against targets in that country. national strategies and capabilities) candidly admitted that a nuclear war could never have a “winner.” Carter administration reports on the famous PRM-10 (assessing U.S.
A 1964 report to JFK approximated 134 million American and 140 million Soviet deaths from a theoretical superpower nuclear exchange. strategists produced from the late 1940s into the late 1970s.Įxamples include the landmark Harman Report from 1949 which was the first to spell out (massive) casualty projections while also predicting that resorting to nuclear weapons would not force the Kremlin to capitulate. To put the problem of nuclear casualty estimates in broad perspective, today’s posting of almost two dozen high-level White House, State, Defense, CIA, and other records features a broad range of the fatality estimates and related information U.S. government analyses provided civilian and military leaders with staggering estimates of likely casualties in a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union, but the sheer scale of those projected fatalities kept the reports classified until after the end of the Cold War.Īpprehensions over escalation risks involved with the current Ukraine war have brought the issue of potential casualties, even from possible limited Russian nuclear strikes, back to the forefront of public attention even though averting a superpower conflict is a high White House priority. Washington, D.C., J– For decades starting in the late 1940s, influential internal U.S. FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports.
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