I think he doesn't have a full understanding of nuclear fallout. Yes, a nuke will vaporize 14.9 km^2, but it will render a much larger area unlivable. Also, many people will die in the following months from radiation poisoning. There is also the possibility of nuclear winter.
Exactly. Also, why should a layperson's back of the envelope calculations be more accurate than, say, a recent peer reviewed study that actually models the effects of a nuclear war?
In short, the conclusion was that a nuclear war using 1/3 of the world's arsenal would devastate agricultural production for years due to average global temperature drops on the order of the last ice age occurring in /less than one year/, with temperature drops over land five times as severe (~-20 C), reduction in precipitation by over 45%, and a reduction in freeze-free growing seasons across the northern hemisphere by 50-100 days.
That is an unfounded claim. According to Nuclear War Survival Skills (a downloadable book on the construction of improvised fallout shelters), nuclear fallout remains directly lethal only for two weeks. This is the kind of fallout produced from a detonation where the fireball touches the earth. After this period, radiation from the fallout is weak enough that it is safe to move about for a limited time each day. A nuclear detonation in the air produces much less fallout, and it will be diluted over a much larger area unless there is precipation.
Any discussion beyond this is guesswork..as far as I know we have never really studied this stuff. It would be interesting if someone could point out that I'm wrong. The following article claims that the number of birth defects and cancer-related deaths from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings are too small to be seen in the (admittedly sparse) data collected.
I think it's a good idea to study the traditional notion that nuclear war is so extremely destructive. The subject seems to be a voluntary intellectual wasteland - no one ever wants to find out how things really would work, only quote the canonical belief that any nuclear war would cause huge amounts of deaths from cancer, birth abnormalities, barren fields, genetic mutations and nuclear winter.
What such a war would do to society is an entirely different matter, but this is almost never discussed.
I think it's a good idea to study the traditional notion that nuclear war is so extremely destructive.
I love the word "traditional". As I was saying to my wife the other day, on the occasion of the passing of Les Paul, "it's amazing how many of the inventors of our ancient and venerable traditions were still walking around as of last week."
In this case, the "traditional notion" that nuclear war could destroy all of life of earth dates back only to the 1960s, was by no means universally accepted, and still is not universally accepted. Nuclear survivability has, for obvious reasons, always been of intense interest to our political leaders, and I assure you that the subject is not an "intellectual wasteland": There are reams and reams of research on it. Much of it is classified, of course.
And talk of "what will happen after the nuclear war" used to be popular -- witness all those movies and bomb shelters and plans made during the 1950s and early 1960s, when people held the then-quite-reasonable belief that nuclear war was inevitable. But then the popular notion of global nuclear annhilation took hold -- probably because, like quite a few "traditional notions", it contains a big grain of truth. Perhaps it is hard to kill the whole world in a nuclear war. But it's not so hard to kill my whole world. I can give you a target list of eight cities, all of which contain major US research universities, which (if bombed) would destroy, say, 95% of all the people I've ever known. In a full-scale nuclear exchange involving the United States, odds are that my world would be destroyed. (I, personally, am incredibly likely to die in the initial blast wave, as I live down the street from the Route 128 tech corridor, home to companies like Raytheon.)
So maybe a person who lives in the New Guinea highlands really can afford to laugh at the prospect of the post-apocalypse. (May we never know.) But those of us who live in Boston, San Franci, New York, or Washington can't. Because, for us, bombing all four of those cities would be an apocalypse.
In a full-on nuclear exchange, it would be much more than major cities getting attacked. I live about 5 miles from Lincoln Labs and about 6 miles from Raytheon, so I'm screwed anyway. But, every ICBM installation, every port, and every military base would also be attacked in such a situation. I'd love to see some specific data on it, but I'd bet when you add those targets to the major cities, the vast, vast majority of the US population wouldn't fare too well.
Of all the "noble lies", if you could call them that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie), people way over exaggerating the potential negative capability of nuclear weapons has to one of the least harmful and most positive. Any country or organization using nukes in warfare would suffer such a huge global backlash that it'd mitigate almost any tactical benefit. That's probably a large reason why the United States, Israel, and Russia, who've all had some pretty serious armed conflicts since getting their arsenals online, haven't used them at all.
I'm generally considered very pro-military in the crowd I run in, but I consider the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to both be in the top ten of WWII atrocities, and that's saying something.
The fallout (when taken globally) is actually not that bad. In 1962 there were 150 atmospheric nuclear tests. That is 150 normal nukes were set off just to see how it works. And we are still alive. With a bit more deformed kids, cancer and so on. But civilization is still here.
After the water supplies are contaminated, the soil is rendered infertile, most ecosystems implode, and the climate changes ... sure, some humans might survive. But I wouldn't envy their lives of eating cockroaches and moss and delivering misshapen children.
yeah i've heard that, and after reading this i still wouldn't be surprised if we do. the effect of radiation clouds, nuclear winter, etc. is far far far more devastating than the blasts themselves, which even according to this guy could still kill hundreds of millions.
One Trident submarine can stay at sea for up to two years without refueling. It can produce it's own recycled water, and produces little to no waste. It is only limited by food, since it is powered by a nuclear reactor.
Each submarine is armed with 24 (nuclear) Trident II long-range ballistic missiles, each one able to hit almost anywhere in the world. Each one of these missiles can be launched from underwater at a moments notice. In mid-flight, each missile can split up into 12 individual bomblets, each of which is capable of wiping out a city.
One submarine, which is manned by less than 200 men, could destroy 288 major cities in half an hour from anywhere in the world. That's a frightening thought.
We have technology that can keep 200 men alive for over two years, including all of their needs for food, air, water, electricity and such, and yet we're still getting around by burning old plants from millions of years ago.
To make it cost effective, the U.S. has to stop making enemies. Do you know how much it will cost to secure a few hundred nuclear power plants from people willing to blow themselves up?
As much as 200 more low security prisons? 20'000 federal employees (to be generous) is peanuts to a project of that scale. How many attacks have there been on power plants anyway? You cant make modern designs go boom, just melt.
I certainly hope your right that modern nuke plants are safer. But the general public responds more to security theater than real security.
As to "how many attacks have there been"? Well, it only takes one successful one. How many successful (reached their ultimate goal) airline highjackings have their been?
The Trident missile is truly an amazing piece of kit. The most remarkable thing for me is that would be able to operate with zero external systems (such as GPS), so that in the event of a complete electromagnetic blackout it could still hit its target. It does this by fixing off the stars (http://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/13/science/trident-s-technolo...).
The Royal Navy subs only carry upto 48 warheads, even though they are capable of carrying 192, so I guess that's only 48 major cities from the Uk contingent :o (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/uk/slbm/vanguard.htm)
One fascinating limitation (read engineering opportunity) of these boats is they way they dispose of waste gas (such as that produced in oxygen generation). It's ejected from the sub, but tends to form into largish bubbles, which when they hit the surface are sometimes detectable by spy satellites - so their location is sometimes compromised. (sorry, can't find a link to back this up - I wonder why..)
I believe the Vanguard class subs (the Royal Navy's Trident bearing subs) can carry ~4 months food supply, so that's how often they have to resupply.
"One fascinating limitation [...]"
Sounds highly unlikely. The sub has a huge area across which to dispose of the waste gas, the volume can't be that high that they need to release big bubbles at once. The chances of a satellite pointing at the right area of sea being able to detect even a metre-cross bubble against wave background ... I really can't see it.
Perhaps they should blow bubble rings and disguise as a dolphin?
I was going to correct you about MIRV's being not being able to attack a geographically distributed area, but then I read this: "The bus's on-board propellant limits the distances between targets of individual warheads to perhaps a few hundred km," with the accuracy of each warhead being about "90-100m". That's simply terrifying.
It's also frightening because all codes required to arm the warheads are kept onboard and can be accessed by three cooperating individuals (in contrast with stationary installations).
I doubt that missiles can be launched on the "moment notice". De-conservation and targeting are bound to take hours.
"Yup. Thanks for all the feedback. I’m going to redraft the image with radiation, fallout, nuclear winter, failure rates, poisoned water supplies, crop deaths, deformed babies, and cancer all factored in. After I’ve had this stiff drink…"
How about looking it also from another angle. How many missiles do you need to wipe out all the big Cities and capitals of the world. Probably only one missile per City. Given +- 200 countries and that is the end of civilization as we know it. From there onwards whoever survive will have to compete like cockroaches to continue living.
I have read the article and my point was different. I said .. and civilization as we know it will end. I used my elementary school maths. The current number of countries in the world are 192, since some of them have two capitals I rounded the number to 200. His statistics for London showed that 1 warhead was enough to wipe it out and London is spread out unlike Singapore or Hong Kong. As per my calculation 200 missiles are more than enough to destroy our current civilization.
I'd imagine nuking Washington wouldn't change the US as a whole (perhaps you'd get another post-9/11 terror obsession, but I'd think the economic infrastructure would still remain rather intact).
I think number of capitals isn't a very good measure of economic infrastructure: Monaco has some 30k people, but a non-capital city like Sao Paulo has 11 million.
One could say "ok, let's drop Monaco and nuke Sao Paulo then", and then maybe nuke Boston and Sydney too while we're at it. But you're going to run out of bombs way before you run out of large cities.
If a nuke truly hit the ground in D.C., I can't help but shudder at the thought of the hysteria that would ensue though. Post-9/11 hysteria would look like rational behavior in comparison.
Mh, just wondering: What about 'creative' nuke usage?
Basically, I am thinking about not dropping a nuclear bomb on, say, Berlin, but rather using bombs to create major disasters, like tsunamis (either by setting off the bomb in an ocean, or by destroying almost collapsed landmasses, which would then drop into the water and cause monster-waves), or by abusing tectonic knowledge and nukes to create major earth-quakes? Is such thing efficient enough to be reasoned about when trying to calculate the overall killing power of all nuclear weapons?
I remember reading, back when I was in junior high school, that the Russians had some plan involving multi-hundred-megaton nukes on or near the ocean floor off the pacific coast.
Supposedly it would have created a massively radioactive tidal wave that wouldn't have stopped until it hit the Rockies.
This is something I vaguely remember reading in the school library, thinking was cool, and using in a report. So it may be my imagination, or it may have been sensationalist writing, or it may have been a real plan, because the Soviets and the US had no shortage of real, ridiculous plans.
Interesting idea. Earth-quakes release much more energy than most nukes. I do not believe it's possible to ignite a quake this way. Tsunamis may be possible with some help from thawing methane ice.
The doctrine of the cold war was MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. But the point wasn't that we had enough weapons to totally eliminate each other's populations, it was that we could totally destroy each other's economic and governmental infrastructure.
I love how this post incidentally highlights the differences between science/statistics and information-centric graphic design and then shows how easily they become unified when you just touch the "scientific method" even tangentially.
We can all argue about his model now and think critically about the threat of nuclear suicide due to a simple hypothesis, curious data, and some nice visualization to communicate it quickly.
Also, I think three well placed nukes in the US could guarantee the collapse of American civilization. Always remember - if the trucks stop driving, it ain't long 'till everybody starves.
How does this article get so in-depth without mentioning a nuclear winter?
The real fear of nuclear war is societal collapse, radiation being everywhere, and the ensuing nuclear winter, which (according to some) could wipe out humanity. Not the direct blasts.
"The main targets of nukes will be nuke launching sites [...]"
Probably not. If USA takes one in the eye (Washington DC) from Russia then they want to hit Moscow immediately after to show that a) we're fighting back, stop now if you don't want to end the world, b) everyone will notice and possibly you might cut off the head before further damage is done.
Yes silos will be a priority target, but not necessarily above major cities.
OK, are we supposed to feel happy that we can only kill less than 1% of the world's population with the available nukes or feel sad that we have spent so much time, energy and money developing weapons, just one of which can completely wipe out everything in a full 15 sq km area?
Well, ok. I don't think nukes were developed to wipe out humanity. They were developed to cause the utmost amount of destruction to a single point of interest. I don't think Iran wants 1000 nukes. I think they want one, so they can aim it at the Saudia Arabia oilfields.
Israel is regarded in International Relations thinking as a rational defensive nuclear power, which is extremely unlikely to ever use its nukes in a first strike. Everything we know about their nuclear policy, declared or otherwise, is that they will activate their arsenal in one of only two scenarios:
a) They have been attacked first by another large-scale WMD, such as a nuclear weapon or a chem/bio attack enough to potentially wipe out a significant proportion of the population, or
b) The so-called 'Samson option', whereby if the state were close to being overrun or destroyed by invading Arab armies it would first threaten to use its nukes against the capital cities of the invading countries and, if the threat were not sufficient, follow it up with actual launches.
The fact that Israel did not even get to the stage of openly threatening the use of the Samson option in 1973, when it came very, very close to losing it all, is strong evidence in favour of its stance as a rational defensive power. In fact, both a) and b) are intended as deterrents, as both scenarios assume the near or total destruction of Israel and wouldn't be any good in saving the country if things got to that stage, but they're intended to create such an inevitably catastrophic cost to any aggressor that trying to destroy the country is no longer worth the price.
Iran's nuclear ambitions should really be seen in a wider context than just Israel though. Iran is likely pursuing nuclear weapons not in order to attack Israel (or more ridiculously, defend itself against Israel), but in order to project power unchallenged across the Middle East and thus dominate the region in a way that no other country has done for decades. This is why the traditional Sunni Arab power centres of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are just as wary about Iran's nuclear ambitions as Israel is. I would not be surprised if at least two of those countries have begun their own covert nuclear weapons programs in order to counter the Iranian one.
When thinking about nukes, remember that the whole point is to not fire them - their value lies in deterrence, and in everyone knowing the horrible things that would happen if they were fired (this is less the case with tactical nuclear weapons, but Iran doesn't have those). So if you're using them for deterrence - especially in the case when you're up against a much stronger enemy - you target them (and announce this) in such a way as to cause the greatest damage for the greatest number of parties.
Let's say Iran had a nuke, and was feeling so threatened that it had to launch its nuke. If it takes out Jerusalem, it destroys a significant pilgrimage location for Islam, as well as the capital of the (local) great enemy. The US then comes and levels most of the country, and the Israelis likely drop a nuke on Tehran. There's also the pretty good possibility that the Israelis would be successful in shooting down the missile, but would still launch an overwhelming military response. Israel is now in bad shape, Iran is gone, and the rest of the local Arab countries are pretty unhappy, but still alive and kicking.
If they launch on Mecca, there's a much greater change of the thing detonating where it's supposed to. They also destroy a very significant Islamic pilgrimage site. The rest of the Arab world then converges on attacking Iran (with American blessing), as well as Israel (the Sunni states would use the logic that those evil Shiites must have conspired with the Israelis to do this). This results in the US now getting involved militarily to protect Israel, and now you've got a pretty serious war going on in the Middle East, disturbingly close to both India and Russia.
Of those two, the second causes much more hell - which is what they're going for. The second also has the benefit of making the Islamic states much more interested in dealing with their threats, and possibly getting the US to (covertly) be more accommodating.
Iran hasn't developed or bought a weapon yet that hasn't been used to attack Israelis.
If Iran gets a nuke and targets it somewhere else and doesn't use it, I'd be impressed. It would show a lot of restraint.
There's no doubt in my mind that Iran threatens Saudi Arabia -- I guess I just always thought of it in a more indirect way. It'd be good to see them pivot and disperse some of that revolutionary fever instead of pointing it all at the same place constantly [insert larger discussion on mideast politics here]
The thing is that even though we have like 10k warheads we have a much more limited amount of missiles, so we wouldn't be able to deliver them. On the other hand if we wanted to wipe out only cities bigger than 2 000 000 it would be ok: theres only 200 of them
The data visualization is pretty well done and convincing. That said, I think the concern about nukes that most people have is less about the possibility that it will wipe out civilization but instead, a bit more selfish - themselves/ourselves.
It's convincing, until you realize that the author is treating nukes as just really big bombs. If he's only looking at the area of total destruction, then he should be counting all explosives, since that's ignoring where the real deadliness of nuclear weapons lies.
First off, the heat wave let off will be lethal at a much larger radius than where it will cause total destruction. Total destruction means that everything is gone: buildings, cars, people, anything that was there will be unrecognizable/gone. For a nuke, this is a very small part of the destruction caused. The fallout and radiation will carry much much farther than that. If you tried, you could probably cover the entire earth with fallout with fewer than 100 strategically placed nukes.
It's not beyond belief that ten thousand would both cover the earth with concentrated radiation, and cause enough fallout to create nuclear winter. Volcanic explosions are often enough to affect sunsets on the other side of the world. If we exploded nuclear weapons all over the world, there'd be enough debris in the air to block out the sun, causing a significant temperature drop, and killing plants around the world. Scratch the global food supply, and we're all toast.
Radation, disruption of food production, nuclear weather effects (nuclear winter or whatever), disruption of medicine production, disruption of police protection. These will kill far more than the actual explosions.
I'd think that those which are not in immediate ready-state are probably stored very near a silo or hangar. Simply because it doesn't make much sense to store a nuke very far from a location where it could be used (except when that nuke is heading for disassembly). Consequently I wouldn't be surprised if it was merely a matter of hours (minus the odd dud)...
