Of late, the big question on the table is whether or not Iran should be able to make an A-bomb and then threaten the rest of the world with it. Well, that got me to thinking about how many bombs there actually are out there.
Here's the question I asked Google's AI machine - "How many nukes would it take to kill everyone on the planet?"
The answer I got back is kinda chilling, and I guess there really is no correct answer to the specific question. However, according to Google, estimates for how many nuclear weapons it would take to cause human extinction vary wildly based on the method of "destruction" — whether it be through direct blasts, long-term climate failure, or "salted" radiation. While a few thousand weapons could end modern civilization, completely eradicating every human on the planet is significantly more difficult.
Scientists and historians have proposed different thresholds for global destruction:
10 to 100 "Super" Bombs: In 1945, Los Alamos scientists estimated that between 10 and 100 extremely high-yield "super" bombs could put the entire human race in peril.
400 Standard Atomic Bombs: Some commentators suggest that detonating approximately 400 modern atomic bombs could be enough to wipe out humanity.
100 Regional Weapons: A conflict using just 100 modest nuclear weapons (roughly 1% of the global stockpile) could trigger a "nuclear winter," causing global famine that would put over 2 billion people at risk of starvation.
1.3 Million High-Yield Warheads: To kill everyone through direct blast and heat (assuming an equal distribution of humanity across land), it is mathematically estimated that over 1.3 million one-megaton warheads would be required.
IDK how many share my thinking about this, but if the world was a More screwed up place and getting through became more difficult, I don't want to participate.
ReplyDeletewe did a study on this back in the 80's. nuclear winter is a propaganda myth, earth wide at least. the southern hemisphere would be largely untouched. what would kill the u.s./europe is lack of electricity. 300 million would starve fairly quickly. wouldn't need but a half dozen of the correct type of bombs in the exact right place/altitude. of course the african will starve without us to feed them. so the latin americans will inherit the earth. right up until the plagues begin.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is where we find it's all bullscat of one form or another.
ReplyDeleteAirbursts? Not a lot of fallout or other long-clinging radiation. Woooo. Could probably pop off a couple hundred or more without any real damage to the world except lots of light and an increase in background radiation.
Groundbursts are where the real damage is. Huge amounts of fallout, radioactive dust, long-lasting radiation. Pop off a couple hundred decent sized groundbursts and you're talking high levels of dust and ash, like a string of 10 volcanoes popping off all at once. Locally and regionally there will be loss of sunlight for days from the super-fires and the ejected dust material. Wait a couple weeks and all the dust and smoke will be out of the air. Bad radiation will be splattered everywhere, but from Chernobyl and Fukushima we have found that even 'bad rads' aren't as bad longtime as the panic artists make it out to be.
The real damage to the modern world would be high-altitude bursts creating electro-magnetic pulses. Pop off enough at roughly the same time and you could stop the modern world for a while. But the world will be a-okay, just without power.
Nuclear weapons, even really big ones like the Tsar Bomba, aren't as scary as Hollyweird and the press and the leftist scientists with agendas (the same that said we'd die from climate change or lack of food or that DDT was bad or that Ivermectin was bad) make them out to be. Yeah, short term, serious suckage. Lots of local deaths, especially from a groundburst. Overall? Dust in the air, some pretty sunrises and sunsets for weeks or months.
And it takes a lot of nukes putting a lot of dust and smoke in the air to even meet the output of one volcano erupting over a long time, or even a Mt. St. Helen's event. One of the causes of the French Revolution was two Icelandic volcanoes firing off around the same time and locally (western Europe) depressing weather due to the huge plumes of ash continually pumped into the air. Nukes just pump dust and ash all at once and smoke until all the burnables are burned, and then the pumping stops. Volcanoes, those mother-humpers are the real scary thing. Set off 10-15 decent sized volcanoes at the same time to where they're pumping for weeks on end and that will be a real cataclysmic event.
At this point, I don't know if I care if the world ends. It will, someday. The misery that the commies spread makes me want to blow up their half of the world.
ReplyDeleteNihilism Friday, it's my new thing.
Anyone . . creating nuclear or biological weapons is evil. It really is just that simple. They have no place in the hereafter.
ReplyDelete