Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: hjsdvm@ziebmef.uucp (Howard J. Scrimgeour)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Reliability of Ballistic Missiles
Message-ID: <6769@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 21 May 89 21:54:06 GMT
References: <6551@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
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From: hjsdvm@ziebmef.uucp (Howard J. Scrimgeour)
In article <6551@cbnews.ATT.COM> G.Heinig%CS.UCL.AC.UK%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU writes:
>
>I would like to ask this newsgroup a question to
>which I have to date not received a straight answer.
>
>A while back ('81-'84) while the cruise and pershing
>missiles were being installed here in Britain there
>was a lot of talk along the lines of:
>"Assuming each side fired n warheads (n usually some
>absurd 32-bit quantity) the world would be wiped out
>m times (m some equally absurd 16 bit quantity) ...
>etc.. etc"

While I can't answer your main question, I'd like to respond to that 
bit about "the world would be wiped out m times", because it crops
up with such regularity. I recommend doing one's own calculations on this.
The last calculation I ran came up with less warheads than enough
to devastate the land area of the world ONCE, by three orders of magnitude.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Howard J. Scrimgeour, D.V.M.                                           |
| hjsdvm@ziebmef.uucp       CIS:75126,2744                               |
| uunet!{utgpu!moore,attcan!telly}!ziebmef!hjsdvm                        |
| "We also walk dogs..."                                                 |
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