Nuclear war
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===Counter force=== | ===Counter force=== | ||
| − | In a counter force nuclear exchange the objective would be to destroy your opponent's ground-based nuclear weapons. In order to do this | + | In a counter force nuclear exchange the objective would be to destroy your opponent's ground-based nuclear weapons. In order to do this you need really massive penetrating nuclear weapons which would explode at ground level (or ideally below) and dig down to destroy hardned bunkers and buried weapons. This type of explosion would produce massive amounts of nuclear contamination as the ground near the explosion would be heavily irradiated before being blown into the atmosphere. On the other hand, the immediate death toll would be lower as nuclear installations are frequently located away from population centres. |
===Counter city=== | ===Counter city=== | ||
Revision as of 18:49, 15 October 2009
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Nuclear war is the ultimate unthinkable.
Technically, a nuclear war would be any war in which nuclear weapons are used. This could range from a single, small weapon (like a bunker buster or the ones dropped on Japan in World War II) all the way up to a full-blown Armageddon between nuclear powers.
The nuclear powers have put a lot of effort into preventing the latter from ever occuring, engaging in various forms of deterrence. Until recently, it was assumed that Mutual Assured Destruction would be the best way to prevent states from attacking each other with nuclear weapons, since it would be suicide.[1] However, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the fear that undeterrable wackos might get them, people are frantically working to find alternatives.
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Effects of nuclear war
Some attempts have been made to evaluate the likely effects of a full nuclear exchange. Some have speculated that enough nuclear bombs going off at once would create a "nuclear winter" by blanketing the earth in long-lasting airborne dust which would filter out sunlight and result in the death of most life on earth. Even if this was not the result, the extreme increase in radiation would not only cause many health hazards and genetic abnormalities, but it would also contaminate the soil so that any crops that were produced could not be safely eaten. This would be similar to what happened in central Ukraine and southern Belarus after the Chernobyl disaster.
Many hawks have tried to downplay the possible effects of nuclear war, many even believing that a nuclear war is winnable (thus the massive amounts of spending on the Strategic Defense Initiative in the Reagan administration, as well as its successor National Missile Defense, both considered abject failures by outside observers).[2] Scientists, as a general rule, tend to disagree.
The most effective technique to use in a nuclear war is not to have one. India and Pakistan are two nations that, on the brink of war, decided to acquire nuclear weapons. In response to the other one acquiring nuclear weapons they began to increase diplomatic relations to the point where now disputes between the countries are now settled over a game of cricket which has the effect of not destroying the region – and the added bonus that you can break at 3:30 for tea.
Types of nuclear war
In the 1960's there were considered to be two types of nuclear war: counter force and counter city. In reality a nuclear war would tend to be a mixture of the two but it is interesting to look at them separately.
Counter force
In a counter force nuclear exchange the objective would be to destroy your opponent's ground-based nuclear weapons. In order to do this you need really massive penetrating nuclear weapons which would explode at ground level (or ideally below) and dig down to destroy hardned bunkers and buried weapons. This type of explosion would produce massive amounts of nuclear contamination as the ground near the explosion would be heavily irradiated before being blown into the atmosphere. On the other hand, the immediate death toll would be lower as nuclear installations are frequently located away from population centres.
Counter city
In this case the strike is against your opponent's cities and your objective is to destroy his will to resist. The US attacks on Japan were clearly counter city. Counter-city strikes are airbursts some miles above the city as this has the effect of increasing the blast radius. Although casualties are very high the residual radiation is less than that from a counter-force strike.
Nuclear war and pop culture
The threat of nuclear war and the fear of its aftermath has become a fertile topic in popular culture, particularly during the 50s and 60s and then later in the early 80s as the tensions of the Cold War waxed and waned. Many movies depict attempts to prevent it, such as Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe, and War Games. Humorist/musician Tom Lehrer featured the threat of nuclear war in some of his songs, including "We Will All Go Together When We Go", "The Wild West is Where I Want To Be", and "So Long Mom", later inspiring Weird Al Yankovic's "Christmas At Ground Zero"; more serious songs on the subject include Nena's "99 Luftballons" (a song produced in both German and English about an accidental war) and Timbuk3's "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades". Cold War spy fiction became a very popular genre of both books and movies, with authors such as Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, John LeCarré, and many others building lucrative careers on both the human drama of covert ops and the overhanging threat of total war.
The aftereffects of nuclear war have also been popular topics for fiction, in movies (Threads, The Day After, Damnation Alley, the Terminator trilogy), television (Jericho, Woops!, several episodes of the multiple incarnations of The Twilight Zone, and as historical background in some episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5), novels (On The Beach, Z for Zacariah and Farnham's Freehold; also an establishing detail for Lord of the Flies), and even video games (Wasteland and the Fallout series). During the Cold War, many propaganda films were created as well, generally of the sort considered most appropriate for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and aspects of the civil defense infrastructure became part of the national consciousness in many countries (most notably, in the United States, CONELRAD and its successor, the Emergency Broadcast System).
Nations with nuclear weapons
The following nations have developed nuclear weapons:
- United States - developed first in an arms race with Germany (whose nuclear program was ultimately unsuccessful), then used in 1945 against Japan to end World War II
- Russia - developed as the Soviet Union to deter the US
- The United Kingdom - developed to deter the Soviet Union - or according to some theories, France.
- France - developed to deter the Soviet Union - or according to some theories, The United Kingdom. France is also a world leader in peaceful use of nuclear power, deriving something like 75% of its electrical needs from nuclear generation. They are going to build the first nuclear fusion power plant in the world[3] (or at least the prototype) as well.
- China - developed to deter the Soviet Union
- India - developed first to deter China and, later, Pakistan.[4]
- Israel[5] - built to deter its Arab neighbors
- Pakistan - built to deter India
- North Korea - built them to deter the US (and likely threaten South Korea and Japan), but their technology seems to be rather weak and messed up (their one known nuclear test was, relatively speaking, a very messy fizzle).
- South Africa - developed to deter an entire continent that was unhappy about that whole apartheid thing. Dismantled its nuclear programme when the ANC took power. May have been involved, along with Israel, in the 1979 Vela Incident[6], where American detector satellites noticed a bright flash over the South Atlantic.
- Both Ukraine and Kazakhstan once had nuclear weapons, as a holdover from the Soviet Union, but gave them up.
It should be noted that almost every time a nation develops nuclear weapons, another nation also feels forced to. This is what makes proliferation so hard to stop. It doesn't particularly help that a number of countries, including Canada and Japan, possess the technology to create nuclear weapons quite quickly (but, so far, have chosen not to; however, Canada is a huge exporter of reactor technology[7] that makes plutonium production quite easy).
War with nuclear by-products
Depleted uranium
Although less horrific in the direct and obvious results, the US has been using depleted uranium in armor and ballistic weapon casings. Its weight and fracture modes both make it ideal for these purposes. But there is a small problem - it's still radioactive, and its use in bullets and rockets leaves behind toxic pollution; in particular, pulverized uranium (which is chemically similar to the lanthanide elements, one of which, cerium, is used in cigarette lighter flints) has a strong tendency to spontaneously ignite in air, creating radioactive smoke that cannot be easily cleaned up. The long term results of this policy are yet to be known.
"Dirty" bombs
A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive that is set up to spread radioactive material of some kind (such as waste from a reactor) when detonated. These devices are theorized to be popular among potential terrorists, to scare the bejeebus out of us. However, like several of the "chemical, biological, and nuclear" exploits that terrorists are supposed to want to use, such material and devices would be very dangerous to make and handle, and do far less damage than typically understood. Unfortunately, there might be plenty of terrorists willing to risk what they see as martyrdom to get such a bomb built, delivered, and detonated.[8]
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ In fact, the realist school of international relations has specifically called for greater proliferation, to reduce the number of wars in the world. Specifically, John Mearsheimer, a leading neorealist, wants to give nuclear weapons to Germany and Japan. Others wish to give nuclear weapons to Taiwan to discourage China.
- ↑ SDI was originally the baby of Dr. Edward Teller, whose reputation among the nuclear scientists of the US was based primarily on his two-faced political machinations rather than his scientific work. Ostracized by his scientific colleagues for getting J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance revoked on trumped-up charges of spying, Teller found favor with conservative hawks and enough clout to get his pet projects done without being subject to public scrutiny. The end result: billions of dollars spent on a Teslaesque and possibly non-functional X-ray laser, followed by years of work on barely functional interceptor systems that only ever worked in rigged tests. Teller would go to his grave a hero of hawkish politicians and a pariah among scientists.
- ↑ Well, after the countless ones built in the SimCity™ series
- ↑ India Pakistan problems prior to later tests.
- ↑ It is widely assumed that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, but has never officially acknowledged this.
- ↑ See Wikipedia on Vela Incident
- ↑ The Canadian CANDU reactor design is a heavy water design that runs on unenriched uranium, converting unfissionable U-238 into fissionable Pu-239, enough of which is left behind in the spent fuel rods to make reprocessing relatively easy.
- ↑ Including white supremacist terrorists.