Scientists have figured out how many atomic bombs the superpowers actually need to contain each other.
What will separate our fragile world from World War III? A small trifle - the prospect of guaranteed mutual destruction. This doctrine of the Cold War times states that the use of nuclear weapons by opponents will automatically lead to the destruction of both the aggressor state and its rival, and all other countries on the globe. And therefore, victory in a nuclear war is fundamentally impossible.
Shouldn't we start a small victorious World War III?
However, Joshua Pearce of Michigan Technological University and his colleague David Denkenberger of the University of Tennessee wondered: the member countries of the nuclear club have a total of 15,000 nuclear warheads. This is enough to destroy the planet several times. Isn't this too much for nuclear deterrence? Insane amounts of money are spent on the production, maintenance and disposal of nuclear weapons. What should be the minimum threshold for nuclear deterrence? In other words, how many nuclear warheads must a superpower have for the use of weapons to become suicidal for the attacker, even if the attack is not followed by a retaliatory strike? That is, the aggressor will be destroyed not with bombs, but as a result of the onset of a nuclear winter.
Despite the nuclear arms reduction program, the main players, the United States and Russia, each have approximately 7,000 nuclear warheads. Scientists have calculated 3 scenarios for the development of events: if one or the other side unilaterally uses all 7 thousand warheads; 1 thousand; or just 100 charges.
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The only real experience of using nuclear weapons, on the basis of which various mathematical models can be built, is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans (in the first case, about 150 thousand people died, in the second - 60-80 thousand). However, modern nuclear bombs are much more powerful. For example, the American thermonuclear bomb B41 had a TNT equivalent of 25 megatons, and our Tsar Bomb, nicknamed "Kuz'kina's mother", had 50 megatons. For comparison, the power of the charge that destroyed Hiroshima was only 15 kilotons. Therefore, today the use of even a small part of the accumulated nuclear arsenal will lead to fatal consequences. In addition, the number of victims will increase many times due to the higher level of urbanization - the majority of the population is now concentrated in cities and represent an excellent target, unlike rural residents,scattered in villages and villages.
Pierce and Denkenberger estimate that if 100 advanced nuclear warheads strike cities in the world's most populous country, China, 34 million people will die. This is 2.5 percent of the country's population.
And what about the aggressor country? Let's say the conditional adversary was unable to answer, but what damage will the attacking side cause a nuclear winter? Computer modeling methods have shown that if a superpower uses its entire nuclear arsenal, trillions of tons of dust and soot from burning cities will envelop the Earth in a dense cloud for 1-2 weeks. At the same time, only a few percent of the sun's rays can reach the Earth's surface. The temperature will drop to -15 … -25 ° С. But if the aggressor expects to sit out these two weeks and then uncork the champagne, celebrating the victory, then he is deeply mistaken. Global climate changes will begin on the planet. Average summer temperatures will drop by 10-20 degrees. Freezing temperatures in July and August will be common in mid-latitudes. The harvest will not have time to ripen and an unprecedented famine will begin on the planet.
The Great Famine will kill the winner
Researchers estimate that if the United States rains all 7,000 of its atomic bombs on a rival, 5 million Americans will die of hunger in the first year as a result of a nuclear winter. The use of 1,000 bombs on the enemy would mean the death of 140,000 of its own inhabitants. And this is not counting the numerous losses from cancer, their number will explosively grow even in countries not affected by a nuclear attack.
However, for the offensive of Armageddon it is not necessary for the superpowers to uncover their weapons. Even a local conflict between India and Pakistan, during which 50 bombs similar to the "Kid" exploded over Hiroshima will be used, will result in global shocks for all mankind. Calculations show that due to smoke and burning, the Earth will receive 20 percent less sunlight, the amount of precipitation will decrease by 19%. The temperature on the planet will drop lower than during the era of the Small Ice Minimum, which lasted from the 14th to the 19th centuries. As a result, food production will decline in the US and China by 20% in the first 4 years, and by 10% in the next 10 years.
The picture of the apocalypse is easy enough to imagine, since the climate will resemble 1816, which went down in history as a year without summer. Then the cataclysm in Europe and North America was caused by the catastrophic eruption of the Tambor volcano in Indonesia. It threw 150 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, causing the effect of a volcanic winter. In the summer in America and Europe, snow fell every month, the cold led to an unprecedented crop failure. Bread prices jumped 10 times, and a severe famine broke out.
“Our research has shown that for each nuclear power, 100 warheads are more than enough to provide nuclear deterrence,” says Joshua Pearce. - The use of a large number of atomic weapons by an aggressor country would cause unacceptable damage to its own society. The maintenance of such a huge nuclear arsenal by the United States and Russia is not rational from the point of view of national security and places a heavy and senseless burden on the economy.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV