Don’t be shocked by the title of the article. I am a nuclear physicist myself and, in any case, this is not just my personal opinion. Some of the greatest nuclear scientists and military strategists in the former Soviet Union and USA share this view and have actually prepared plans to fight, survive and win a full-fledged nuclear war.
In an earlier article titled ‘Why United States of America must be destroyed for the world to exist’, I had shown at length that the only way to contain the marauding USA from raping the world is to destroy it completely in a nuclear war. The destruction has to be complete so that the snake does not rear its head again. This article is the sequel to that.
I am acutely aware; many readers would immediately jump that this would plunge the world into the Third World War. I know that. So be it. But I still insist on it because I strongly believe in the Roman maxim ‘fiat justitia ruat caelum’ (justice must be done, the universe may perish). There will be casualties and devastation alright but, take it from me, the world will absorb that. Human civilization shall not be wiped out. No way! In the Second World War, the world suffered some 70-85 million casualties. Did not the world sustain it? Nations, both victor and the vanquished, emerged better and stronger after that.
What happens when a Nuclear Bomb explodes?
The problem with nuclear weapons is that they have been mystified in popular perception and the laymen hardly know anything about nuclear weapons or their effects. In popular imagery created and shaped by ignoramuses in the media, it is believed that if a nuclear war takes place, it will be the end of the world. No, it is not so. The power of the nuclear weapons has been grossly exaggerated in popular perception.
A nuclear explosion will, in general terms, release its energy in the following ways:
- Explosive blast: For a low-altitude atmospheric detonation of moderate sized weapons in the 10-50 kilotons range, the blast will carry about 50% of the energy.
- Direct electromagnetic radiation: For the weapons discussed above, it will carry about 35% of the energy in the form of infrared, visible, and ultraviolet rays and soft X-rays emitted at the time of the explosion.
- Direct nuclear radiation: For the weapons discussed above, it will carry about 15% of the energy. This will include 5% as initial ionizing radiation consisting chiefly of neutrons and gamma rays emitted within the first minute after detonation, and 10% as residual nuclear radiation. Residual nuclear radiation is the hazard in fallout.
- Radioactive particles: A variety of radioactive particles is thrown up into the air by the force of the blast, and they are called radioactive fallout when they return to earth.
In an atmospheric detonation, the electromagnetic radiation, particularly the soft X-rays, is absorbed within a few metres of the point of detonation by the surrounding atmosphere, heating it to extremely high temperatures and instantly forming a brilliantly hot sphere of air and gaseous weapon residues, the so-called fireball, which keeps on expanding and rising and producing the blast wave. For a one-megaton bomb, the fireball would become some 2.2 km large in 10 seconds and keeps on rising up in the atmosphere at a speed of about 100 m per second. As in any explosion, a nuclear weapon also produces a shock wave, a very sharp compression wave, inthe so-called positive phase of the shock wave. The blast overpressure declines as it propagates and, quite like a swinging pendulum, overshoots below atmospheric pressure in the negative or suction phase. When the pressure becomes less than atmospheric pressure, the wind reverses in direction and blows backward toward the point of detonation. As the fireball cools, the vaporized materials in it condense to form a cloud of solid particles. The combination of the upward movement of the hot gases and the cooling of the fireball gives rise to the formation of the characteristic mushroom cloud, the famous signature of a nuclear blast. Following an airburst, condensed droplets of water give it a typical white cloud-like appearance. In the case of a surface burst, the blast digs out a huge crater. The dust and debris vaporized by the blast is sucked into the column as a result of the wind blowing back in the suction phase, giving the mushroom cloud a dirty brown appearance. This dirt and debris become contaminated with the radioisotopes generated by the explosion or activated by neutron radiation and fall to earth as fallout.
In case of a high-altitude burst (that is, more than 30 km above), the fireball is much larger and the ionizing radiation can travel for hundreds of miles before being absorbed. So much ionization of the upper atmosphere leads to generation of an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which can significantly degrade performance of or destroy sophisticated electronic equipment and disrupt communications.
The rule of thumb in using nuclear weapons is that if you want to kill or injure as many people as possible in a wide area, then you must detonate the bomb at an altitude in the atmosphere—just like a high-mast light, so that you cover a larger area below. However, if you are keener on destroying structures such as missile silos, buildings or factories, etc. on the ground, then you must explode it closer to the surface. However, it will correspondingly reduce the area of destruction.
Extent of Casualties and Other Damage
Blast Effects: The blast produces two effects. The sudden change in air pressure is called static overpressure. It also results in high winds of up to 250 kmph speed, which is called dynamic pressure. Structures like buildings are destroyed by the static overpressure. Weapons tests suggest that a typical residence will be collapsed by an overpressure of about 5 psi. Most blast deaths result from the collapse of occupied buildings, from people being blown into objects, or from buildings or smaller objects being blown onto or into people. People caught standing in a house hit with an overpressure of just 3.5 psi will have a 50% chance of being killed or surviving; but people who are lying down at the moment, can hope to have a 50% chance of surviving an overpressure of even 7 psi. Blast Shelters must be designed to provide protection against an overpressure of at least 10 psi.
Thermal Radiation Effects: A one-megaton blast can cause a third-degree burn up to 8 km away; second-degree burns at up to 10 km away; first-degree burns at about 11 km away; and flash blindness at about 21 km in the day and 85 km in the night. As you can guess, underground shelters are of great help in saving people from burns. Thermal radiation can also start fires in combustible material.
Radiation Effects: This is one aspect about which a great deal of misconceptions prevail. A rem or ‘roentgen-equivalent-man’ (rem) is a measure of biological damage. A dose of 450 rems within a short time is estimated to create a fatal illness in half the people exposed to it; the other half would get very sick, but would recover. A dose of 300 rems might kill about 10 per cent of those exposed. A dose of 200 to 450 rems will cause a severe illness from which most people would recover; however, this illness would render people highly susceptible to other diseases or infections. A dose of 50 rems generally produces no short-term effects; however, if a large population were exposed to 50 rems, somewhere between 0.4 and 2.5 per cent of them would be expected to contract fatal cancer (after some years) as a result of the exposure. You must take note of the low percentage.
Popular Myths
Popular articles will generally frighten you about the long-term effects and generations of genetically deformed children being born in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—that’s all crap. A most authoritative study by the National Academy of Sciences, ‘Thirty Year Study of the Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, was published in 1975. It concluded that the incidence of abnormalities is no higher among children later conceived by parents who were exposed to radiation during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of abnormalities among Japanese children born to un-exposed parents.
In August 2016, Bertrand R. Jordan published a comprehensive review of more than a 100 studies in which he decisively busted the myths that irradiated survivors suffered a very high cancer burden and dramatically shortened life span, and that their progeny were affected by elevated mutation rates and frequent abnormalities. He concluded that there is a tremendous gap between public perception and actual data. He warned that these misrepresentations and distortions could be very damaging as they skew important public debates.
The radioactive particles that rise higher in the atmosphere will be carried some distance by the wind before returning to earth, and hence the area and intensity of the fallout is strongly influenced by local weather conditions. Much of the material is simply blown downwind in a long plume. The biological effects of fallout radiation are essentially the same as those from direct radiation, discussed above. Fortunately, for all living things, the danger from fallout radiation lessens with time. The intensity of radiation would have fallen by a factor of 10 after 7 hours, a factor of 100 after 49 hours and a factor of 1,000 after 2 weeks. Within two weeks after an attack, the occupants of most shelters could safely stop using them, or could work outside the shelters for an increasing number of hours each day.
Real Life Scenarios for Nuclear Strikes on a Metropolis
You must remember that Hiroshima was a small town and Nagasaki was even smaller. Most of the houses in the town were traditionally built of timber and paper. However, frameworks of many buildings, which were made of reinforced concrete in view of the earthquake risk, did not collapse. The Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall, now commonly known as the Genbaku (A-bomb) dome, survived in spite of damages, at just 490 feet from ground zero because the bomb was exploded at 1900 feet. The ruin was named Hiroshima Peace Memorial and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. A metropolis with predominantly concrete structures would fare much better with both surface and airbursts. But, they have the disadvantage of higher population density.
In any case, casualties would not be as high as they are popularly believed to be. Both American and Soviet scientists did extremely elaborate calculations taking cities like Detroit and Leningrad as reference with one megaton (that is, at least 60 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb) surface explosion.
A simple secret of physics, which most people and journalists fail to understand, is that the explosive power falls off as inverse cube of the distance. If you are two miles away from the ground zero, the explosive force would be one-eighth of what it would have been at a mile away from ground zero.
In the band between the 1.7- and the 2.7-mile (5 psi) circles, typical commercial and residential multi-story buildings will have the walls completely blown out, but increasingly at the greater distances the skeletal structure will remain standing. The casualties would not exceed 220,000 dead.
There shall be no Global Nuclear Winter
It has been the favourite pastime of the ignoramuses amongst journalists and self-styled experts to play the Doomsday Cassandra—be it global warming, melting of icecaps, more and more earthquakes, asteroid strike or nuclear war. A report of Palash Ghosh in International Business Times, for example, screamed ‘India-Pakistan Nuclear War Would Kill 2 Billion People, End Civilization, Report’. Hold on, this is plain and simple, unadulterated bullshit. This is not going to happen.
‘Nuclear winter’ is a massive hoax created with regard to nuclear weapons. The theory that smoke from burning cities and forests and dust from nuclear explosions would cause worldwide freezing temperatures was conceived in 1982 by the German atmospheric chemist and environmentalist Paul Crutzen. Subsequently, R. P. Turco, O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan wrote a popular article in the December 23, 1983 issue of Science, titled ‘Nuclear winter, global consequences of multiple nuclear explosions’.
The nuclear winter scenario was actually cooked up as part of a KGB disinformation campaign during the 80s to weaken the resolve of the West. As expected, many in the West had fallen for it. Unfortunately, most people do not read the busting of myths—they only love the creation of myths. Starley L. Thompson and Stephen H. Schneider, atmospheric scientists with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, revisited the hoax of nuclear winter in their article, ‘Nuclear Winter Reappraised’, featured in the 1986 summer issue of Foreign Affairs. They concluded that the predictions were far-fetched.
How USSR and USA prepared for Nuclear War
During the Cold War, the US government had made elaborate preparations for absorbing Soviet attacks. They worked out on paper all the possibilities of coping with as many as 80 warheads of one-megaton each and yet maintaining the war-fighting capability of the nation. The school of Marshal Sokolovsky had done similar calculations for the Soviet Union.
At the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), USA had undertaken an extremely exhaustive study to describe the effects of a nuclear war on the civilian populations, economies, and societies of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Director of this assessment was Dr. Peter Sharfman, Group Manager for National Security Studies. The OTA was assisted by Nuclear War Effects Advisory Panel, chaired by Dr. David S. Saxon, President of the University of California. Before that, OTA had convened a panel of distinguished scientists to examine the effects of a nuclear war.
The OTA study calculations, for example, had shown that the Soviet attack would destroy 64 per cent of US oil refining capacity besides some 5 million deaths. Still, they argued that it would not mean the end of the nation! The study showed that nation can be made to cope with the sudden disappearance of the bulk of oil refining capacity. How? The government must methodically impose rationing, for example. Critical industries and services would have top priority—military forces, agriculture, railroads, police, fire-fighting, and so on. To save oil, railroads could substitute for airlines, trucks, and buses on intercity routes; mass transit would probably substitute for private automobiles and taxis in local transportation. Proper shelters can reduce the number of civilian casualties greatly.
Every critical sector such as critical industries, railway services, aviation, communication systems and Internet, etc. have to have proper contingency planning to withstand large-sale disruption. There will be destruction alright but with proper contingency planning, fierce determination, commitment to their cause, and sheer courage, nations can withstand nuclear strikes and yet continue to fight.
Escalation is certain; Uncontrolled Escalation is impossible
There is a fundamental difference between escalation and uncontrolled escalation. While escalation is almost certain, uncontrolled escalation is almost impossible. There will be an exchange of some nukes, but it will stop after that.
Wars are not driven by any machine logic. Waging war is a human activity and the way the wars are waged depends on the nature and character of the humans that are waging it. The use of any major weapon system in a war by a nation has to do more with the ‘bloodlust’ and ‘pride’ of the people. Once the bloodlust is satisfied, they would not clamour for more. It is not that the nations would go on fighting until all their nukes are exhausted. Was there any race more fanatical than the Japanese in the Second World War was? ‘Fight to the bitter end and die’ was just a lofty exhortation of imperial Japan; they too did not have the heart for it in real life in the face of nuclear bombs even as they had shown great resolve in enduring the strategic bombing campaign of the Allies. After just two nuclear bombs, as John W. Dower has documented in his masterful, Pulitzer-winning history ‘Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II’, Emperor Hirohito lost no time in invoking the issue of the fate of the human civilization to end the war!
No victory comes cheaply
It is only in unscientific, unsubstantiated popular imagination that people start thinking in terms of a nuclear Armageddon and the end of human civilization. In order to fight, survive and win a nuclear war, you have only to ensure that the other guy loses his will to fight before you. In the end, a nuclear war is not as much a military matter as a sociological and psychological one. There will be destruction alright and casualties in millions but do not forget that not too long ago, the world could cope with 85 million casualties in the Second World War. We can sustain a nuclear war too.
The point being made is if we believe that a nuclear war is unthinkable then you are condemned to suffer the atrocities of the USA. If you want to live with honour and self-respect, we must be prepared for some destruction. Russia has got 5,459 nuclear warheads to USA’s 5,177. China has got about 600; France 280; UK 225; India 172; Pakistan 170; Israel 90; and North Korea 50. Rest assured, the USA is not invincible.
