Nuclear Weapons 174 - Welcome to World War III
For the past few years, Russia has been playing with the threat of nuclear war and escalating international tensions. The seizure of Crimea in the Ukraine brought with it the fear of a war in Eastern Europe between Russia and NATO forces. Putin has openly stated that if Russia were losing a conventional war with NATO, he would consider unleashing tactical nuclear weapons. Russia has been consistently violating the air space of other countries with nuclear bombers with their transponders turned off. On one such foray into British airspace recently, the pilot turn on a countdown sequence for arming a nuclear bomb but then turned it off again before it reached zero. Now Turkey, a NATO country, has shot down a Russia fighter near the Syrian border, claiming that the Russian plane violated their airspace. The Russian deny the charge and threatened retaliation for the downing of their plane.
All this has led to fear that a nuclear World War III is a real possibility. The U.S. and Russia both have over four thousand nuclear warheads and the means to launch them at each other. Warning systems are on constant alert and nuclear forces are ready to go. Many people have been searching the Internet for information on nuclear war. Here is a short list of some of the expected effects of such a war.
1) The U.S. has an emergency warning system that is tested regularly to break into television and radio broadcasts. With the ubiquity of smart phones, systems to broadcast a text message warning exist.
2) The best that the average person could hope for would be about three minutes to decide what to do. Maybe there would be time to get inside or underground and maybe not.
3) Anyone who is in the immediate vicinity of the detonation of a typical one megaton nuclear bomb would be instantly vaporized. Beyond that zone, there would be terrible heat and radiation that would kill more. Many more would soon die from radiation poisoning, starvation, exposure, disease and other effects of the attack.
4) Millions of people could die instantly if nuclear bombs detonated over major cities. An estimate from 1979 suggests that as much as eighty percent of the population of the U.S. would die immediately in a major nuclear war with Russia.
5) Those who were not killed in the short war would struggle to survive in a devastated and toxic wasteland where food, water, shelter and medical care would be difficult if not impossible to find.
6) It has been estimated that the detonation of as few as one hundred nuclear warheads anywhere in the world could bring on a nuclear winter that would eventually kill billions of people and bring an end to human civilization.
7) It would take decades for the environment recover from a major nuclear war. Toxic radioactivity would linger for centuries in some areas. There would be a massive die off of all life, not just the human population.
Nuclear weapons are an existential threat to the survival of the human race and should be abolished before either intent or accident brings about World War III.
Have a nice Thanksgiving!
