Part 1 of 3 Parts
I have blogged many times about nuclear weapons. Some of the blogs have been historical and some have been contemporary. I have spoken about the technology, the economics, the politics, the environmental threat, etc. of nuclear weapons. I have often said that nuclear war is a much more immediate threat than climate change, resource depletion, environmental pollution or pandemics. It is estimated that the detonation of only one hundred megaton warheads anywhere in the world would be required to cause a nuclear winter that would kill billions of people and totally destroy our global civilization.
While the world argues over whether Iran should ever be allowed to try to develop a nuclear bomb, there are more than half a dozen countries which each have enough nuclear warheads to destroy human civilization in a matter of hours. Pakistan is politically unstable and India is heading to the right politically. They both have more than a hundred warheads and, thus, they could each trigger a nuclear winter. Israel has over a hundred warheads and, if threaten with annihilation by the surround Arab countries, would not hesitate to unleash that arsenal on Middle Eastern capitals and oil fields. In addition to the horrendous damage of such an attack, the end result would be nuclear winter. But the biggest threat to the world by far are the huge arsenals of the U.S. and Russia.
I grew up with the threat of World War III during the Cold War. With the pruning of the major nuclear arsenals in the U.S. and Soviets during the Cold War and the further reductions after Russia inherited the nuclear weapons of the Soviets, it seemed as if the world was slowing drawing back from the brink of a catastrophic nuclear war although we now know that we teetered on the brink several times. Despite protests, negotiations and treaties, recent trends appear to be bringing back the specter of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia that could destroy humanity.
In the last few years, both the U.S. and Russia have announced major overhauls and upgrades to their nuclear arsenals. Both countries have begun working on new nuclear weapons that the other side says are violations of non-proliferation treaties. In a couple of recent posts, I gave details of Russian nuclear submarine drones and U.S. variable yield highly accurate tactical bombs. There are about five thousand operational nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal with about fifteen hundred delivery systems including submarines, missiles and bomb. The Russian have a comparable number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Each country could destroy the world at least fifty times.
Since the Russian annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine, there are indications that the possibility of the actual use of nuclear weapons has increased. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president's power is threatened by the declining economy in Russia which is being battered by low fossil fuel prices and Western sanctions over Ukraine. He is rallying the Russia people by claiming that the U.S. and NATO are trying to destroy Russia.
(Please read Part 2 & Part 3)
