But let’s be honest: Most people, even in mildly damaged areas, will not survive. No one lives or works in solid, windowless buildings, or near a concrete yard. (Even bankers have to go into a vault to be in a safe place; people on the subway would benefit from a lower station.) Most people live in wooden frames or with little or no other equipment. house.
This shouldn’t be interpreted as a defense against a nuclear explosion, says Dylan Spaulding, an earth scientist and nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Strong structures made of steel-reinforced concrete and earthquake-proof structures can survive the challenges the group faced, he says, but the challenges would be enough to destroy many traditional buildings, built of wood and bricks without reinforcement.
And he points out that windfall is only part of the story. Although it is the main source of danger in non-nuclear explosions – like the one that rocked Beirut in 2020, which was caused by a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored in the city’s port, nuclear weapons also emit radiation and ionizing heat. , followed by radioactive fallout.
Exposure to radiation through the skin or inhalation can have many health effects, including skin burns, organ damage, and cancer. The different temperatures of the radiation can extend tens of kilometers from the explosion, so that people who survive the explosion can be killed by the radiation.
Drikakis’ model focused on so-called “strategic” nukes that are placed on ICBMs, but there are also “tactical” nukes, which are dropped by aircraft on the battlefield and explode on the ground. Such eruptions play out differently but can be dangerous and destructive, potentially exposing many people to lethal levels, Spaulding says.
Russia and the US also have so-called low-yield bombs, which have a yield of 5 to 10 kilotons and are much smaller than the 15-kiloton bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. This would still have resulted in massive destruction and crossed a dangerous red line, perhaps escalating the debate over the use of heavy weapons.
The most destructive weapons of humanity have been used in war only once, when the US dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of World War II in 1945. Together they killed more than 100,000 Japanese people and injured many more. And Spaulding points out that together with the experiments conducted at the Nevada Test Site, they provide the only evidence in the world about the types of materials that can survive an atomic blast, and how they do.
But last year Russian President Vladimir Putin said that nuclear weapons were not on the table for his invasion of Ukraine. Although NATO leaders did not use such threatening words, the international organization held a nuclear test in October, simulating the launch of B61 nuclear bombs. US President Joe Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review that month abandoned the “no first use” policy he had supported in the past. One can imagine nuclear threats in other conflicts as well, such as the possibility of North Korea using nukes against South Korea, or Pakistan and India using them against each other.
The world’s arsenal includes about 12,700 weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. This is lower than their number of about 70,000 at the end of the Cold War, thanks to the arms reduction agreements. But some of the agreements were broken, and the danger did not end, as the Doomsday Clock illustration shows.
This is not a game, says Drikakis. The danger of a destructive explosion of nuclear weapons is very dangerous, he said: “We must keep the peace by understanding the danger of not keeping the peace.”
