Could Asian Nuclear War Radioactivity Reach North America?

Red arrow points at India and Pakistan on opposite side of the world from Canada and the United States. The Marshall Islands where the U. S. experimented in the 1950s with many atomic tests is at the far left in the Pacific Ocean. From Marshall Island and Nevada Test Site nuclear explosions, radioactive fallout riding on the prevailing westerly winds reached North Carolina and New York, distances nearly equivalent to the 10,000 to 12,000 miles India and Pakistan are from the west coast of the United States.

June 4, 2002 Tacoma Park, Maryland - If India and Pakistan strike each other with Hiroshima-sized bombs, how much radioactivity could reach the atmosphere and fall out around the world? That is a question I began asking a week ago and discovered that very little is known about the consequences downwind of such a catastrophe. The National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California seemed like it should know. NARAC's public affairs office describes its "primary function is to support the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD) for radiological releases." But when I asked an information officer there for information about the spread of radioactivity in the atmosphere from a nuclear war in Asia, the answer was, "That information is classified in the interests of national security."

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