I have blogged in the past about the devastation that would result from a nuclear war. It is estimated that the detonation of as few as a hundred nuclear warheads could cause a nuclear winter which would end human civilization on this planet. This sort of discussion can seem dry and academic so I thought that it would be useful to talk about the local effects of a nuclear blast. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently republished an article based on a 2007 book titled "Whole World on Fire". The primary thesis of the book was a critique of military planning that only assessed the immediate blast damage of a nuclear strike in a major city without also assessing the secondary damage from fire and firestorms. For an example, the book describes in detail the detonation of an eight hundred kiloton nuclear warhead above island of Manhattan.
In a tiny fraction of a second after detonation, a temperature of about two hundred million degrees Fahrenheit would be reached in the middle of the warhead. Within the first second, inside a half mile of the blast center, the asphalt in the streets would melt, paint would be burned off walls and metals surfaces would melt. After a second, there would be a mile wide fireball that would be about sixteen thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Hurricane force winds containing flames and burning material would incinerate anyone caught out in the open. Those who took shelter in basements of big buildings would probably be suffocated by gases from the fire or roasted alive as their shelters heated up.
Under normal weather conditions, the heat from the initial fireball would start fires in an area of a hundred square miles around the blast center. Powerful winds stirred up by the fireball and initial fires would carry flames into areas that were not immediately ignited. These fires would eventually merge with each other and become a single huge fire. The energy generated by this huge fire could be as much as fifty times greater than the energy released in the nuclear blast. The rising superheated air above the fire would create a powerful suction that could tear up trees as much as three feet in diameter and pluck up anyone out in the open beyond the fire.
The chaos beyond the area directly affected by the blast and fire would be enormous. All the streets would be clogged with fleeing people making access by first responders almost impossible. There would be massive injuries and casualties that would demand attention from over-extended first responders. Assistance would flood in from near and far. A much greater area than that damaged by the blast and fire would have to be evacuated for fear of radiation and housing would have to be found for the evacuees. Even if the Manhattan bomb was the only detonation in the U.S., the entire country would be thrown into turmoil. With death tolls in the millions and costs in the hundreds of billions, the U.S. economy would crash resulting in economic and social turbulence that would spread to the world as the world economic system followed the U.S. economy down.
Nuclear disarmament has returned to the headlines with the antics of North Korea and the negotiations with Iran. Considering that both the U.S. and Russia have about five thousand warheads aim at each other and there are other nuclear powers in hostile confrontation with each other, nuclear disarmament is still a priority if we want our society to survive.
Manhattan:
