The atomic and then hydrogen bombs were dropped in August 1945 and
since then global devastation via nuclear war has been a major
apocalyptic scenario. As a potential globe killer, it has run hot and
cold over these decades, with periods of high alert, followed by years
of relative calm.
States who by now have acquired nuclear capability: US, Russia, United
Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and
North Korea. Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, but they
are playing their apocalyptic cards close to the millennial vest.
Iran, of course, is suspected of running a development program for
nuclear weapons, though evidence indicates it was halted in 2005.
That's a lot of loose ends and live wires, any one of whom could spark
the fuse of nuclear conflict (if not mixed metaphors) and thus global
catastrophe. Rogue states or terrorist organizations seizing a
country's nuclear warheads is another plausible possibility. One
nuclear warhead detonated in Moscow, Israel or the US could trigger a
concatenation of counterattacks.
We are hypothesizing a scenario of substantial catastrophe, not just a
single explosion, though that would certainly be sufficiently
catastrophic.
- Multiple warheads explode, especially over
cities that burn out of
control. Smoke and soot from the conflagration will fill the
stratosphere, encircling the Northern Hemisphere. Sunlight would have
difficulty penetrating this veil. Temperature drops for months - even
years, usually called "nuclear winter."
- The blasts' shock waves create a wall of pressure that expands from
the point of impact. Buildings, people, trees don't stand a chance.
Wind speed from a 20 psi blast reaches 500 mph.
- Humans located seven miles away from a one-megaton explosion will
experience first degree burns. Six miles: second degree burns. Five
miles: third degree burns.
- Toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, dioxins, furans and cyanides
would be released when synthetics were burned in the destruction of
the cities. See Carl Sagan's "The Nuclear Winter."
- Rainstorms wash radioactive iodine and cesium onto the land and into
the ponds, streams, rivers, lakes and oceans.
- For those who survive the immediate effects of nuclear blast,
radioactive fallout will cause cancer, leukemia, and other maladies in
great swathes of many countries, but not all; most of those will perish as the Nuclear Winter darkens the sky for months and months.
- Crops and farm animals perish in many
important areas of the world. Photosynthesis is interrupted; most plants, including most all
forests and crops, die from lack of sunlight.
- The delicate ecological ties that connect us
are destroyed.