When the bombs fall, the face of the planet will change forever. For 50 years, this fear has not left people. It is enough for one person to press a button and a nuclear apocalypse will break out. Today we are not so worried anymore. The Soviet Union collapsed, the bipolar world too, the idea of mass destruction turned into a cinematic cliché. However, the threat will never go away forever. The bombs are still waiting until someone presses the button. And there will always be new enemies. Scientists must conduct tests and build models to understand what will happen to life after the explosion of this bomb. Some people will survive. But life in the smoldering remains of a destroyed world will change completely.
It will rain black
Shortly after the atomic bomb explodes, there will be a heavy black downpour. These will not be small droplets clearing away dust and ash. These will be dense black balls, like butter, and they can kill you.
In Hiroshima, black rain began 20 minutes after the bomb exploded. It covered an area of about 20 kilometers around the epicenter, covering the area with a thick liquid that could atone for the unfortunate in radiation, 100 times greater than in the center of the explosion.
The city around the survivors was burning and robbing them of their last oxygen. The thirst was unbearable. While trying to fight the fire, desperate people tried to drink even the strange water falling from the sky. But there was enough radiation in this liquid to trigger irreversible changes in human blood. It was strong enough that the effects of the rain continued to this day in the places where it settled. If another atomic bomb explodes, we have every reason to believe that the same will happen.
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An electromagnetic pulse will shut down electricity
When a nuclear explosion occurs, it can send out a pulse of electromagnetic radiation that chops off electricity and knocks out all grids, shutting down a city or an entire country.
In one nuclear test, the impulse sent by the detonation of one atomic bomb was so strong that it knocked out street lights, televisions and telephones in homes 1600 kilometers around. This, however, was not planned. Since then, bombs have been developed specifically for this task.
If a bomb, which is supposed to send an electromagnetic pulse, explodes 400-480 kilometers above a country, for example, the United States, the entire electrical network of the country will fail.
So when the bomb falls, the lights go out. All food refrigerators will fail. Data on all computers will be inaccessible. To make matters worse, facilities that supply cities with water will no longer supply clean drinking water.
It is believed that it will take six months to rebuild the country. But this is on condition that people can work on it. But when the bomb falls, they will not be up to it.
Smoke will cover the sun
Areas near the epicenters will receive a powerful burst of energy and will be burned to ash. Anything that can burn will burn. Buildings, forests, plastic and even asphalt on the roads will burn. Refineries - which were planned targets during the Cold War - will explode with fire.
Fires that engulf every target of nuclear bombs will send toxic smoke into the atmosphere. A dark cloud of smoke 15 kilometers above the Earth's surface will grow and move, propelled by the winds, until it covers the entire planet, blocking out the sun.
In the first years after a nuclear disaster, the world will become unrecognizable. The sun will cease to give its light to the planet, and we will only see black clouds covering the usual light. It's hard to say for sure how long it will take before they disappear and the sky turns blue again. But during a nuclear catastrophe, we can expect that we will not see the sky for 30 years.
It will be too cold to grow food
Since there will be no more sun, the temperature will start to drop. The change will be more dramatic depending on how many bombs are sent. On occasion, global temperatures can be expected to drop by 20 degrees Celsius.
If a total nuclear apocalypse awaits us, the first year will be without summer. The weather in which we usually grow crops will be winter or late autumn. It will become impossible to grow food. Animals around the world will starve, plants wither and die.
But there will be no new ice age. For the first five years, the deadly frost will be a big problem for the plants. But then everything will return to normal, and in about 25 years the temperature will return to normal. Life will go on if, of course, we can testify to it.
The ozone layer will be torn
Of course, life will not return to normal soon and not completely. A year after the bomb hit, some processes triggered by atmospheric pollution will begin to make holes in the ozone layer. It won't be good. Even with a small nuclear war that uses only 0.03% of the world's arsenal, we can expect up to 50% of the ozone layer to be destroyed.
The world will be destroyed by ultraviolet rays. Plants will die everywhere, and living things will face mutations in their DNA. Even the most resilient crops will become weaker, smaller, and less capable of reproducing.
So when the skies are clear and the world warms up a little, growing food will be incredibly difficult. When people try to grow food, entire fields will die, and farmers who stay in the sun long enough to grow crops will die a painful death from skin cancer.
Billions of people will starve
If a nuclear apocalypse comes, it will be at least five years before anyone can grow enough food. With freezing temperatures, killing frost, and an exhausting stream of ultraviolet radiation from the skies, few crops can survive long enough to be harvested. Billions of people will be doomed to starvation.
Survivors will look for ways to grow food, but it won't be easy. People living near the ocean will have better chances because the seas will cool slowly. But life in the oceans will also diminish.
The darkness of the blocked sky will kill plankton, the oceans' major food source. Radioactive contamination will also spill into the water, reducing the amount of life and making it dangerous for anyone who wants to taste it.
Most of the survivors of the bombing will not survive the next five years. There will be little food, a lot of competition, many will die.
Canned food can be eaten
Among the few that people will be able to eat in the first five years will be canned food. It will be possible to eat tightly packed bags and cans of food, and science fiction writers do not deceive us in this.
Scientists conducted an experiment in which they placed beer in a can and soda near a nuclear explosion. The outside of the cans were covered with a thick layer of radiation, so to speak, but inside everything was in order. Drinks that were very close to the epicenter, but they could also be drunk, became highly radioactive. Scientists have tried radioactive beer and come to a completely edible verdict.
Canned food is believed to be as safe as canned beer. There is also reason to believe that water from deep underground wells is also quite suitable. The struggle to survive is likely to escalate into a struggle to control deep-sea wells and stocks of canned food.
Chemical radiation will penetrate to the bone marrow
Even with food, survivors will have to fight the spread of cancer. Soon after the bombs fall, radioactive particles will rise into the sky and then fall to the ground. When they fall, we won't even be able to see them. But they can still kill us.
One of the deadly chemicals will be strontium-90, which tricks the body into impersonating calcium when inhaled or consumed. The body sends toxic chemicals directly to the bone marrow and teeth, endowing the victim with bone cancer.
Whether we can survive these radioactive particles depends on our luck. It is unclear how much the particles will settle. If it takes a long time, you might get lucky.
If two weeks pass before the particles settle, their radioactivity will drop a thousandfold, and we can survive them. Yes, cancer will be wider, life expectancy is shorter, mutations and defects are more common, but humanity will definitely not be destroyed.
There will be massive storms
During the first two to three years of frosty darkness, we can expect the world to be hit by storms like no other.
Debris sent into the stratosphere will not only block out the sun, but will also affect the weather. It will change how clouds form, making them more efficient in producing rain. Until everything returns to normal, we will see constant rain and powerful storms.
Things will get worse in the oceans. While temperatures on Earth will quickly turn into a nuclear winter, the oceans will take much longer to cool. They will stay warm, so massive storms will play out on the ocean front. Hurricanes and typhoons will wreak havoc on all coasts in the world, and they will rage for years.
People will survive
Billions of people will die if a nuclear catastrophe does happen. 500 million people will die instantly in the explosions of war. Billions will starve or freeze to death.
But there are many reasons to believe that humanity will survive. There will be few people, but they will be, and that's good. In the 1980s, scientists were convinced that in the event of a nuclear war, the entire planet would be destroyed. But today we come to the conclusion that part of humanity will still be able to go through this war.
After 25-30 years, the clouds will dissipate, temperatures will return to normal, and life will have a chance to start over. The plants will grow. Yes, they will not be so lush. But in a few decades, the world will be similar to modern Chernobyl, in which giant forests have grown.
Life goes on. But the world will never be the same.
ILYA KHEL