Nuclear Holocaust: The Collapse of Civilization

 

66 million years ago, a mountain sized asteroid travelling 10 times faster than a bullet slammed in the shallow seas, covering what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula of  Mexico. The immense energy of the impact hurled rocks as far as North Canada and it vaporized the asteroid in parts of Mexico and in the shallow sea. The vaporized rock and water rose far above the atmosphere and spread over the planet, as it cooled molten drops of rock about the size of  grains of sand solidified into an immense swarm of shooting stars. These shooting stars when entered the earths atmosphere heated the atmosphere to a thousand degrees faranheit. Standing at the ground the dinosaurs saw the blue sky becoming a sheet of red hot lava. The dinosaurs were boiled to death under the glowing sky. The glowing sky started everything on fire, huge clouds of smoke rose into the upper atmosphere and blocked the sun, so that no sunlight reached the ground. It became cold and dark, photosynthesis stopped and the plants and animals in the ocean and on the land either starved or froze to death. The dinosaurs didn't do anything wrong that caused to their death, it was just their fate that an asteroid hit the earth and killed 70 % of the species that we do not have now on the planet. 

Unfortunately in our life time we may experience the same fate as  the dinosaurs had, but here we are not talking about an another asteroid collision instead we are talking about a nuclear war. A nuclear war would have many of the same phenomena that the dinosaurs experienced. But this time it would absolutely be our fault. Fortunately there are things that we can do to prevent this from happening. Today, there are 15,000 nuclear weapons on the planet and 9 nuclear weapon countries are in conflict with each other, the United States and North Korea, Nato and Russia, India and Pakistan. Just one misunderstanding, one mistake or one insane politician will give a way to a nuclear conflict.     

In the Second World War fleets of thousands of airplanes were used to bomb a single city, but with the invention of the atomic bomb only one airplane and one bomb was needed. The Enola Gay carried only one atomic bomb with the power of 15,000 tonnes of TNT and when it dropped that bomb in Hiroshima, Japan a hundred thousand people died. Over time even more powerful bombs were built that is the Hydrogen Bombs. 

This 1960's airplane carried five hydrogen bombs that had the power of 500 Hiroshima Bombs, and now the nuclear weapon countries don't even have to use airplanes to carry the bombs, they have inter-continental nano ballistic missiles with them, they also have trident nuclear submarines with missiles. A single trident missile submarine can carry a hundred hydrogen bombs with the explosive power of a thousand Hiroshima Bombs. Knowing the power of the bombs and their targets we can understand the destructiveness and loss of life that might occur if these are ever used. 

Let us imagine for example if the United States attacks the capital of North Korea with the smallest bomb it has, carried on a trident missile submarine, then it would kill 5 hundred thousand people there. Nuclear weapons kill people in three different ways:

1. Shock waves: These waves are so powerful that it knocks down concrete buildings and kills everyone within that zone. 

2. Radiation Poisoning: These are the radiations that are released from the atomic bombs during its fission. The radiations would kill 50-90% of the North Koreans within a week.

3. Third Degree Burns: These occurs under 6 miles in diameter of the explosion, these are blasts of light that are so bright that if our skin gets exposed to it we can get third degree burns that can be so fatal. The flammable things like the leaves, News papers even our clothes could burst out into flames.

And if United States attacks North Korea, North Korea is likely to attack US back and if they use the same sized weapon that US used then they could also kill the same number of people in US. These terrific scenarios can occur if each side uses only one nuclear weapon and that also of the smallest size and capacity, but Russia and US each have 4 thousand strategic nuclear weapons, that is enough to attack each city with more than a hundred thousand people in each country with just 10 atomic bombs. In a war like that 400 million people would probably die on the planet which is 10 times the death in World War 2. 

Even a war between India and Pakistan, which are two of the smallest nuclear powers with only a few hundred weapons about the size of Hiroshima bomb, could lead to  the death of a very large population all over the world with its unintended consequences affecting the whole human civilization. Scientists calculated the spread of smoke after a war between India and Pakistan, and they concluded that it only takes about 2 weeks to the smoke to cover the entire planet, and they would rise to altitudes between 20-50 miles above the surface. At these altitudes it never rains and the smoke will stay there for years. All the crops will begin to die with lack of sunlight and the cold weather caused by the smoke, and this situation is called the nuclear winters.

It is estimated that in a war between India and Pakistan we will loose 10-40% of the yields of corn, wheat and rice for years because of the bad weather. The entire world only has enough food to feed the population for sixty days unless agriculture produces more food. The Noble Peace Prize winning international physicians for the prevention of nuclear war has estimated that about 2 billion people would die after a war between India and Pakistan just because of starvation. And after a nuclear war the temperatures would plunge below the ice age conditions and we will be in a nuclear winter, no crops would grow, and we will die of starvation and the human civilization would be destroyed. 

In 1968 the United States and 190 other countries signed a treaty to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In that treaty they promised to reduce the building of nuclear weapons down to zero as soon as they could, but they need to keep that promise because all our lives will depend on it. It is not only the countries who will be into the war will get affected but it is going to put the whole human civilization in danger. If we do not want to experience what the dinosaurs have experienced or what the people of Hiroshima have undergone, we all must say NO to the use of nuclear weapons.