Conceptual Framework

The social "glue" that holds complex industrialized societies together is efficient but impersonal. In the course of a typical day, an individual is expected to play a variety of highly segmented roles. Adherence to these roles creates an image which often masks the underlying personality. It is only rarely that the true persona, the whole person, is revealed to others. When this happens it is normally to a close intimate. Most human interaction in complex industrialized nations is impersonal and limited role playing. This impersonal social glue serves an important function in that differentiation and objectification are essential to efficiently carrying out the task of provisioning society and caring for unmet needs. For example, once the role of customer is learned, a person can buy almost anything in almost any store in the nation without going through the more personal but time-consuming task of getting to know the salesclerk. Role playing is of lesser importance to small rural communities, agrarian societies, and tradition-bound cultures which are bonded instead by personal relationships. In such a setting, individuals are more apt to get to know each other and interact personally (cf. Tonnies, 1957; pp. 31-102).

The impersonal social glue dissolves quickly under the stress of national or community emergency. Disasters that result in significant loss of life and property will serve to transform the order which bonds social life (cf. Mileti et al., 1975; Dynes, 1970; Barton, 1969), eliciting an intense identification with the community (Barton, 1969), guilt over being a survivor (Lifton, 1967), an energetic response to provide help to those who need it (Dynes, 1970), and the development of an emergency consensus (Barton, 1969) which focuses human attention on the few acts directed toward the sole values of preserving life and helping others. A disaster-induced shift in social order and behavior triggers a temporary suspension of providing aid and comfort to the disaster victims. This pattern has been observed time and again (cf. Mileti et al., 1975; Dynes, 1970). However, these findings are drawn from experiences where communities were capable of rebuilding both their physical capital and social relationships in a form which reflect their predisaster states. In almost every instance, ample resources, information, and relief personnel were funneled from unaffected regions to the disaster-stricken community (cf. Fritz, 1961), making it possible for it to return to the predisaster form of social organization. Localized, community-wide disasters, therefore, would undoubtedly see the social order change, albeit temporarily, to enhance the ability and stamina of medical and health care system personnel to perform their work.

The first order of routine social life is thus impersonal but efficient. The second order of social life is personal and typifies life and behavior in both communities impacted by localized disasters and life in agrarian and traditional societies; it, too, is efficient for it focuses attention on disaster relief goals, temporarily abandoning less-important priorities. The second order soon reverts back to the first as immediate emergency needs are met.

Application To CRP-2b

The finding that disasters experienced see the first order of social life replaced temporarily with a second order that reverts back to the first order when emergency needs are met and after outside assistance converges on the stricken area is not likely to hold given the magnitude of disruption and depravation accompanying a nuclear exchange. In this case the second order would give rise to a new third order rather than revert back to the first order; in other words, nuclear exchange would produce changes leading to a permanent social reorganization rather than a temporary change as characterizes most other disasters.

Sociological research has documented the emergence of second orders replacing first orders in hundreds of studied disasters (cf. Mileti et al., 1975; Dynes, 1970; Barton, 1969). These second orders contain the seeds of new third social orders including new group leadership (e.g., Dynes, 1970), new bases for the distribution and use of power (e.g., Quarantelli, 1970), less complex systems of social stratification and status (e.g., Barton, 1969), and the abandonment of traditional societal priorities (cf. Mileti et al., 1975). These changes have been detected in cataclysms of all types ranging from snow storms (Frtiz et al., 1958) and mine disasters (Lucas, 1969) to natural and technological emergencies in general (cf., Mileti et al., 1975; Quarantelli, 1970; Form and Loomis, 1956). These seeds and the second order are only abandoned when the inevitable demise of the second order is triggered by the convergence of outside help and when the goals of meeting emergency impact needs and the restoration of that which was destroyed are met.

It is unlikely that the two factors that trigger the demise of second orders would occur after nuclear exchange; the seeds of a new social order contained in second orders would not be blocked from emerging into a new and permanent third order. The first of these factors is the convergence of nonvictims on the affected area. It is unlikely that outside assistance would reach the surviving victims of destroyed cities in the CRP-2B scenario for months, if at all. The second of these factors is meeting impact needs and the restoration of that which was destroyed. It is also not likely that survivors could, on their own, restore the destroyed physical environment and meet impact needs. The CRP-2B scenario surpasses the threshold needed for a permanent social reorganization into a new third order: surviving human collectives would be isolated from the others, no outside aid could be expected, and survivors could not meet all the needs required to restore their community to its preattack states.

It is not likely that the temporary disaster-response norms that characterize a typical second order would prevail for long. They would produce a permanent social reorganization—a third order—with new leadership, values, systems of stratification and status, power relationships, and societal priorities to guide behavior. The actual shape that the third order takes would be determined by personalities and a mix of individual characteristics (e.g., knowledge of survival skills, emergent leadership qualities, and so on), as well as the ownership of scarce resources that survive the disaster. These are difficult to predict; consequently it is difficult to predict the character of the third order that would emerge. It is not unlikely, however, that new, localized, small, nonnational and self-contained emerging societies would replace the national state and that these would vie for uncontaminated food, fuel, and other resources deemed to have survival value. It is not likely, therefore, that medical resources would be shared between these community-like "societies." Medical and health care systems would be constrained to function within emerging neighborhood societies until international aid is received and equitably distributed.

Pharmaceutical Industry

The highly concentrated production of pharmaceuticals in the Philadelphia area contributes in no small way to the problem of vulnerability. Programs of cost containment have forced hospitals to cut inventories to the point where, if not resupplied within 3 days, they would be forced to implement rationing. It appears that no significant stocks of critical drugs exist anywhere within the public or private sector. The nation's current state of drug dependence speaks to the importance of this single industry. It is surprising, therefore, that it is the least-studied component of the medical care system. Reports identifying the vulnerability of its production processes, the location of manufacturing plants, and the nature of its distribution networks are out-of-date or classified (Anderson, 1982), or the data have yet to be collected.

The sensitivity of this industry to disruption is changing as a result of the combined effects of technology and international competition. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States, although still a significant contributor to worldwide production, has lost ground in recent years to its foreign competitors. Nearly 150 firms currently conduct research and produce patented drugs in the United States. Only 20 percent of these, however, represent significant U.S.-based multinational operations. An equal number are foreign-owned firms which have chosen to locate facilities in the United States. The following quote from a National Academy of Sciences study (1983, p. 34) of the pharmaceutical industry aptly describes the complicated ties that have evolved within this highly internationalized industry.

The extensive and increasing multi national diffusion of individual pharmaceutical firms has rendered "U.S. pharmaceutical industry" a term of unclear meaning. The larger pharmaceutical houses found in America have long since developed extensive facilities in dozens of foreign markets. Conversely, foreign based firms have established operations in the United States; in fact, the largest U.S. firm in the mid-1970's in terms of pharmaceutical sales to American consumers was Roche Laboratories, a subsidiary of the Swiss based firm Hoffman LaRoche. The widespread practices of licensing innovations, marketing agreements, and joint ventures among firms of many nationalities further complicates the assignment of specific products to individual nations.

It is clear from the statistics that U.S. dominance in pharmaceutical production and research and development (R&D) has declined over the past two decades. The U.S. share of world R&D expenditures has fallen from greater than 60 percent during the 1950s to less than 30 percent in 1982. The percentage of world pharmaceutical production occurring in the United States has declined from 50 percent in 1962 to 38 percent in 1978.⁸

It is still too early to tell exactly what these statistics portend for the U.S. producers. However, if the number of new drugs⁹ entering U.S. clinical trials continues to decline, one might expect the profit position of U.S. producers to follow suit and the U.S. position in the world marketplace to further erode. One must conclude, therefore, that world dependence on an undisrupted flow of pharmaceuticals from U.S. firms has been exaggerated.

In recent years, generic drug producers have posed a growing threat to the industry's profit position since technological advances have made it possible to imitate patented drugs by slightly altering a compound's molecular structure. These so-called multisource drugs accounted for 45 percent of licit drug sales within the United States in 1979, 7 percent of which (or 3 percent of all sales) were achieved by smaller firms. Most of the 600 generic producers distribute their product almost exclusively to the domestic market, oftentimes restricting their efforts to a particular region. The scale of operation is typically $10 million or less in annual sales (Egan et al., 1982; p. 37).

How quickly might the pharmaceutical industry be rebuilt and sufficient production of pharmaceuticals and biologicals be resumed? There is, of course, no definitive answer to such a question; however, some indicators are worth noting. Most industry analysts would agree that a nuclear attack on the Northeast would devastate pharmaceutical research and development. The high concentration of skilled lab technicians and scientists in the region would be difficult to replace, given that many of the nation's prestigious institutions of higher learning would perish in the same attack. Such losses would have an incalculable impact on the nation's ability to advance pharmacological research, one which may take decades to recover. The impact such a loss would have on a global scale may, however, be less significant since the Swiss and Japanese have made great strides to advance their own capacity to carry on independent research.

It is clear from Abrams' (1984) work that drug shortages would materialize quickly after the attack and might continue for years as a result of the potential immunological impacts reported by Greer and Rifkin (this volume). However, there are several factors which could work to boost supply in the months after the exchange. Offshore production could be expanded, providing, of course, that the effects of the war are limited to the United States and the Soviet Union. How climatic change may alter production and distribution from these facilities is not at all clear. Second, the technical challenge of producing critical drugs varies widely. The fact that the manufacturers of generic drugs tend to be small suggests that sophisticated training and equipment may not be necessary in all instances. How quickly an onshore drug industry might be reconstructed is open to debate, since to our knowledge the resilience of this important health care sector has never been subjected to careful scrutiny. However, it is quite possible that production of certain antibiotics, volume expanders, and technically less challenging pharmaceuticals might rebound rapidly.

This possibility was confirmed by a reconnaissance study of a representative pharmaceutical firm conducted in preparation for the symposium on which this paper is based. When faced with the questions regarding communications, supplies, or personnel, the managers revealed that automation would play a key role, permitting the firm to continue production. It was agreed that the most threatening aspect of the problem would be the availability of supplies in the desired quantity and quality required by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards. The high cost of carrying raw material inventories (in terms of both product and warehouse space) has induced manufacturers to rely heavily on their suppliers. This has placed firms in a vulnerable position with regard to disruptions of the distribution network. The required ingredients are furnished by suppliers that have either been approved directly by the FDA or indirectly as a result of having a U.S. Pharmaceutical Standards designation.

It should be pointed out that in the absence of the FDA, the purity of supplies might deteriorate rapidly. Furthermore, it is unclear how these small producers would seek out new sources of raw ingredients or adjust production to account for the expected variability in raw ingredients. These two factors, more than almost any other, could act to restrict the speed with which pharmaceutical production might rebound.

The production process, in contrast to quality assurance, is dependent upon durable electromechanical equipment. Providing that power is available, production could be carried on with as few as 20 percent of the workforce reporting. Surprisingly, it was suggested that producing units could continue for at least short periods of time without the involvement of upper-level management. Microprocessors and communications equipment are currently more heavily utilized in the testing laboratory and the marketing and sales departments than in production. It is, therefore, unlikely that EMP-induced damage to electronic testing equipment would force production to be terminated, since mixtures and processes are well established. Operations could continue so long as electrical power and raw ingredients of sufficient quality and quantity are available.

Energy Industry

A secure supply of energy is, without question, one of the two most important ingredients determining the speed with which a viable economy could be reconstituted. Katz (1982) and Sassen and Willis (1974), among others, have pointed out the extent to which the nation's capacity to provide food and shelter is tied to the various facets of energy production, processing, and distribution. It is well known that the nation's largest petroleum refineries are concentrated along the Gulf coast, inviting speculation as to how few warheads would be required in order to deliver the economy a crippling blow. Katz (1982; p. 115) concludes that as few as 100 to 300 Mt could produce unacceptable economic disruption and bottlenecks. In our opinion, it is doubtful whether such a limited exchange would create hardships which would last more than several years. Furthermore, we believe that it is unlikely that significant longer-term health effects would result. The nation's agricultural heartland would be spared, as would be a sizable proportion of the nation's housing stock and productive capital. In contrast, the CRP-2B scenario poses a level of destruction from which the economy might never recover and which could produce a state of chronic malnutrition and health problems similar to those observed in the Third World. It is questionable whether the nation's stock of liquid fossil fuels would be sufficient to replace the vast investment in housing, plant, equipment, and the supporting public infrastructure lost due to such a large-scale nuclear exchange. The importance of energy to the economy has already been noted; however, one must also ask whether rebuilding would so deplete the nation's proven oil, gas, and coal reserves that economic recovery would be a painful process drawn out over several decades. It is noteworthy, however, that both Japan and Germany were able to reestablish viable economies within 5 years after the armistice ending World War II. How were they, especially Japan, able to overcome a heavy dependence on external suppliers of energy and raw materials? If, in the process of rebuilding, the United States is forced to exhaust its liquid fossil fuel reserves, might it still count on repeating the Japanese experience?

Capital As Embodied Energy

The complexity of modem production techniques belies the simple fact that energy, predominantly in the form of fossil fuels, is an essential ingredient. It is easy to conceive of manufacturing processes which are fully automated and therefore require little or no labor. Such methods may even appear to economize on the use of energy. However, robotic machines are little more than common tools controlled by microprocessors. They are fashioned primarily from materials such as steel forgings and wire harnesses which involve the use of furnaces, drop hammers, and similar energy-intensive processes. It is, therefore, misleading to focus solely on the direct energy used in projecting fossil fuel requirements to rebuild a war-shattered economy. Barring the obvious exceptions of transportation and space heating, most energy is consumed by the intermediate goods and primary metals industries.

Sorting out what might appear to be an infinite number of interactions continuously taking place in a sophisticated economy is less of a problem than one would first anticipate. Economists have learned that by normalizing the shipment of goods and resources from one industry to another, the direct and indirect effects of any change in product demand can be forecast. The resultant multipliers are readily modified to determine the amount of energy, measured in Watt years (a unit of energy equivalent to the energy expended in one year by one watt of power), for example, that would be required per dollars worth of shelter produced. Table 1 shows a range of energy intensiveness for a sample of industries. As of 1977, the average energy intensiveness of the U.S. economy was 2 Watt years; radio and telecommunications required only 0.46, while buildings, public utilities, and highways absorb 1.61, 1.99, and 3.32, respectively (Krenz, 1977; p. 122). The shift from a predominantly service-based economy characteristic of the prenuclear war U.S. pattern of production to one designed to emphasize construction would result in a potential doubling of direct and indirect energy demand per dollar worth of product.

Table 1

Energy Intensiveness by Selected Sectors of the National Economy.

Do We Have Enough Oil And Gas To Rebuild?

Since plant, equipment, shelter, and public facilities are to some extent the embodiment of fossil fuels, nuclear war would not only destroy cities and communities but the process of rebuilding would deplete the nation's stock of natural resources. Estimates of how much are open to heated debate. However, given certain simplifying assumptions regarding the magnitude of losses and the postwar availability of fuel from abroad, a reasonably accurate picture can be developed.

The U.S. stock of capital is currently worth nearly $9 trillion (1985 dollars).¹⁰ Assuming that 60 percent of this stock is destroyed in the wake of the CRP-2B 6,559-Mt exchange, and given the simplifying conditions shown in Table 2, a total of 3.7 × 10¹³ Watt years would have to be expended to restore the capital stock to its prewar state. At present, however, the nation's demand for fossil fuels far outpaces domestic supply. Hence, energy required for reconstruction can only be obtained by cutting into the prewar pattern of use or by boosting imports significantly. For reasons discussed under the topic of trade relationships and underscored in Table 2, the process of rebuilding may have to rely on domestic reserves alone.

Table 2

Assumptions Used to Compute Energy Requirements.

Provided that these assumptions hold, one might expect a pattern of production and exhaustion such as that shown in Figures 1 through 4. The results indicate that the nation's stock of shelter and productive facilities can only be reestablished if other energy uses are drastically curtailed. For example, the reconstruction process would take 8 years to complete if the annual supply of petroleum allocated to activities other than rebuilding was cut to 15 percent of that observed prior to the war. In the event that these petroleum demands can only be reduced to 25 percent of the prewar level, total reconstruction would never occur; slightly more than 40 percent of the capital stock could be replaced.

Figure 1

Oil for consumption.

Figure 4

Percent of capital stock rebuilt as a percentage of prewar gas consumption.

These results are dependent on a rather restrictive set of assumptions which, if anything, exaggerate the speed with which rebuilding might occur. The only factors which hold the potential to brighten the picture is a dramatic jump in the level of energy imports or a rapid growth in U.S. coal production. Both would be subject to a variety of bottlenecks and economic considerations, reducing the likelihood that such simplifying assumptions would significantly alter the conclusions.

Figure 2

Percent of capital stock rebuilt as a percentage of prewar oil consumption.

Agriculture

A point which seems self-evident but has not been the subject of systematic research is the effect of the postattack weather on the economy. Without question, the combination of colder temperatures, envisioned by Sagan (Ehrlich et al., 1985), and radiation would reduce agricultural yields. One might also expect that increased variance in rainfall accompanying the new environmental conditions would induce surviving farmers to abandon specialized crops. Diversification might be the only option available for coping with fluctuating temperature and moisture. It is clear that abandoning specialization would depress production. Lastly, the effects of nuclear winter on soil losses have yet to be addressed. It is not implausible to expect significant amounts of wind erosion for several years after the war. The magnitude of such losses and their subsequent impact on agriculture have not yet been established.

Money, Credit, And Banking

The wholesale destruction of physical capital envisioned by the formulators of the CRP-2B scenario would result in a sudden and dramatic flight from money to real assets. To the extent that a postwar voluntary exchange economy is permitted to function, a rapid acceleration in the price of essential goods could be anticipated. Based on the experience of German monetary reform after World War II, it may be possible to quickly reissue currency in amounts which are tied to the reduced scale of economic activity (Stanford Research Institute, 1969). However, the fact that modem banking is highly dependent on electronic funds transfer systems, which have been pointed out above to be highly vulnerable to EMP, may complicate matters. Money is no longer a tangible commodity but is a complex combination of bits stored in electronic memory banks. Who will step forward to conduct monetary reform, and how it would be accomplished in an equitable fashion, is without question one of the most important aspects of economic recovery. Without a means of exchange, the survivors would be forced to resort to barter or simply implement a command economy where production and resource allocation is dictated. In any case, it is clear that the projected period of economic recovery reported in the literature takes no account of this important consideration, and we believe, therefore, that the resultant estimates are overly optimistic. The postwar economy would be more inefficient and grow slower than might appear to be the case given current statistics.

Figure 3

Gas for consumption.

Trade Relationships

International trade would suffer for similar reasons. It is unlikely that our current trading partners would be willing to sustain the balance of payments deficits which have been recorded in recent years. Such has been made possible by the fact that many other areas of the world are politically less stable than the United States. As a result the U.S. dollar has served as a hedge against a sudden reevaluation of other currencies (due to revolutions or monetary mismanagement). Nuclear war would not only wipe out foreign claims on U.S. assets but would eliminate the very reason for the dollar's prominence as an international medium of exchange. Postwar international trading would most likely be conducted on a quid pro quo basis. Both U.S. and foreign economic recovery would suffer as a result.

Treatment Of Surviving Capital

One can only wonder how the ownership of property will be settled and what ingenious mechanisms survivors might invent to distribute that which is still economically viable. Records would be difficult to retrieve. In some cases capital would be rendered useless as a result of raw material shortages. At the other extreme, the owners of uncontaminated land located in more favorable climatic zones could reap substantial gains, providing of course that property rights are respected. An unprecedented reduction and transfer of wealth could take place within a relatively short time period. How would the legal and political systems respond?