We don't have enough nukes (Data visualization)
informationisbeautiful.net
informationisbeautiful.net
http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/%7Egera/nwinter/nw6accepted.pd...
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.
Large scale nuclear wars: still a bad idea.
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 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.
I wouldn't call that livable.
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.
There might still be people left, but it doesn't mean they'll have a good time.
For more about existential risks (and how to mitigate them), check out the work of the Lifeboat Foundation (http://www.lifeboat.com)
Am I the only one who heard the rumor that we have enough nukes to destroy humanity 8 times?
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.
Just imagine the true "green revolution" that could be brought about with a few hundred more nuclear plants in the US alone.
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 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.
Perhaps they should blow bubble rings and disguise as a dolphin?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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* This presumes all parties collaborate to destroy mutually exclusive regions (unlikely)
* Multiple nukes will be launched at particular sites to avoid countermeasures
* Some of those countermeasures will be effective
* The main targets of nukes will be nuke launching sites, which will cut down the retaliatory nuking
* Nuke launching sites are not in populated cities (generally)
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.
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.
The only way I can imagine Israel getting away with dropping one on Iran is if Iran continues developing nuclear technology.
1. The mother of all PR/lobbying campaigns successfully preserves US support. Especially since it would already be underway before the attack.
2. Nothing changes, except there's now a big radioactive hole somewhere.
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]
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.
I don't have a source, but I've been told that we at one point had enough nukes to kill everybody a few thousand times over.