People seem to have this belief that nuclear weapons are instant extinction death cootie weapons. That their mere use in any quantity would result in making the planet a radioactive dead zone decorated by billions of bleached skeletons.
This is not the case and never has been.
Over 500 megatons of nuclear weapons were detonated in atmosphere during nuclear testing over a less than 20 year period. That yield is comparable to a major nuclear war of that period occurring. Setting aside the fact this was done in controlled conditions, enough fallout went into the atmosphere with the same effects.
We’re all still here.
Those weapon tests occurred in an era when large warheads were a thing because weapon accuracy was low. If you were trying to dig out the other side’s missile silos and hit their bomber bases, you needed big bangs to compensate for the fact the warhead might miss by a country mile.
Over time missile and delivery accuracy increased. As it did, you didn’t need big warheads to do the same job. And a smaller warhead was more efficient and lighter than a bigger one. So yields fell from a peak of 10 to 25 megatons to 150 kilotons to around a peak of 1.5 megatons with a typical deployment yield of 150 to 300 kilotons or so in most weapons.
Which means the explosions, while large, are still very localized. A few tens of square miles at most and the most devastating damage is concentrated in a small space of a square mile or two. Even if every nuclear weapon on the planet was used it would only be regional damage at worst and while devastating to a target nation, nothing on the level of extinction.
Most populated places on Earth would never know such a thing has happened even close to places that were affected. You can have one large city turned into ruins but have several medium or small ones 50 or 100 miles away ask “Did you hear something?” or “Did you see that bright flash?”.
Even at the peak of the Cold War when arsenals topped 100,000 warheads, there weren’t enough weapons, literally, to hit and destroy every city, town, village or hovel on the planet. Some places, honestly, just aren’t worth the effort and those places far outnumber the places that would have perceived value to a country. Billions of people would still survive, most untouched and unaffected.
The places that were hit would not become radioactive death zones for generations as been portrayed in movies, a common trope. For those that doubt that, tell me about the no-go zones around the radioactive wastelands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You can’t because they don’t exist. Both cities, despite having been flattened by nuclear weapons, are both thriving, safe cities today. The byproducts of a nuclear weapon detonation are short-lived. Within weeks for the most dangerous and a few months for the less so, the radioactivity levels of a struck location fall back to safe levels quickly.
Even an entire country like the United States, peppered with enemy warheads, would still be a going concern when it was over. Especially today as arsenal sizes limited by several treaties are much smaller than Cold War levels. There are not enough nuclear warheads to wipe a country off the face of Earth as an entity. Enough to hurt it, to be sure, but not enough to destroy it.
Nuclear weapons are little more than very large explosives. Enough to destroy cities, to be sure, but we’ve done that hundreds of times over with scores of conventional bombs and the total damage they did was far worse then the effects of all the nuclear weapons ever built.
We have nuclear weapons because they are more efficient than fleets of planes to deliver the same damage. A single missile can do to a region what would have required, and did require, dozens of modern bombers and hundreds to thousands of older bombers with conventional bombs. And without putting human crews in danger or requiring the massive, long term training and infrastructure required to support such a fleet.
As always, nuclear weapons are about national policy. They are statement to the world that when humans are feeling froggy towards their neighbours, there are lines not to be crossed. And if approached to let others know what lies on the other side of it. Basically, the message is “Keep it localized and conventional otherwise we’re really going to make it hurt.”. The result of that fact is no nuclear weapons possessing state has been invaded or invaded others since the end of World War 2. They serve as a deterrence against overt aggression.
This is why countries want them. They raise the stakes for their neighbours that might be considering it to think twice. The neighbourhood invader might succeed in the invasion but the price is going to be a lot higher. So the warheads serve as a form of modern gunboat diplomacy.
The reality is nuclear weapons never had the power people ascribed to them in the grand scheme. Certainly at the individual level. But getting vaporized by a warhead versus blown up by a few hundred pounds of conventional explosive is the same to those who get killed in the end.
Nuclear warheads never have been, and are not, able to destroy the planet much less a country. The planet has survived impacts that would make all of the nuclear warheads ever built in total little more than setting off some firecrackers on the pavement. And yet, the planet is still here and life still exists. In reality nuclear weapons are just a very efficient bomb, nothing more.
Reality? I don't know, it's a novel.
well given that Hamas has agreed to recent ceasefire proposal it all hinges on Israel coming to a similar agreement in Cairo so guess we can take Middle East out of the equation now the most likely chances will be
heading to Me Backyard with All My Power...!!!
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