I decided to buy some Potassium Iodide tablets.
I needn't have bothered.
Maybe, I thought, nuclear warheads would be aimed at military facilities, not out-of-the-way places like Medford.
I wrote my college classmates. I said my first thought was that nuclear war meant near 100% of Americans would be killed, so any effort to "prep" for survival was pointless. But maybe there would be survivors. Maybe I need to lay in a store of supplies of medicines, food, and water. Did anyone have any data to share?
Dr. Ira Helfand did. He is Co-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and a Board Member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Two different organizations he has helped lead have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had an article on him and his work.
He wrote me:
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| Ira Helfand, M.D |
Guest Post by Ira Helfand.
Peter, unfortunately your initial instinct is correct. It is possible that Russia could use one or two nuclear weapons in Ukraine without triggering a larger nuclear war, but I certainly don't think any reasonable person would bet on it. In the past, whenever the U.S. has conducted a war game simulating a nuclear a conflict between the NATO and Russia, the use of even a single nuclear weapon has almost invariably led to full scale nuclear war. Ukraine is not part of NATO and does not have its own nuclear weapons, but once we cross the nuclear threshold I think we have to assume that all bets are off.
Certainly the kind of war that you suggest ( "There could be an exchange of attacks on military and strategic sites: Aircraft carriers, power plants, hydroelectric dams, D.C., ports, railroad centers") would almost immediately involve the full strategic arsenals of both countries. The immediate death toll in the U.S. would be well over 100 million and the entire economic infrastructure on which we all depend would be destroyed. There would be no internet, no electric grid, no health care system, no system for distributing food or heating oil, no running water. There would be widespread radioactive fallout. And in the months following the initial attack, the vast majority of people in both Russia and the U.S. who were not killed in the initial attacks would also die--from starvation, from exposure, from epidemic disease, from radiation poisoning.
But this utter destruction of both countries is only part of the story. A large war between the U.S. and Russia would loft some 150 million tons of soot into the upper atmosphere dropping temperatures around the world an average of 18 degrees F. In the interior of North America and Eurasia, temperatures would drop 45 to 50 degrees F. Earth has not been this cold in 18,000 years, since the coldest period of the last Ice Age. Under these conditions all the ecosystems that have developed since the end of that Ice Age would collapse, food production would stop, and according to a study published in Nature/Food this past August, more than 3/4 of humanity would starve. Nature.
The same study also showed that a much more limited war, as might take place between India and Pakistan, involving just 250 100-kiloton weapons, less than 4% of the world's arsenal, would kill more than 100 million directly and put enough soot into the atmosphere to trigger a global famine that would kill more than 2 billion people and destroy modern civilization.
So, you will not be living with 19th century technology in Medford. You will probably be dead and if you do beat the very steep odds and survive, you will be living in something considerably worse than the Stone Age.
This is why it is so terribly important to get rid of these weapons. According to Robert McNamara, we have survived this far in the nuclear age, not because we had wise leaders, or sound military doctrine, or infallible technology. "We lucked out. . . . It was luck that prevented nuclear war." And if we don't get rid of these weapons, sooner or later, and probably sooner, our luck is going to run out.
Fortunately this does not have to be our fate. Nuclear weapons are not a force of nature over which we have no control. They are little machines, the size of an arm-chair. We have built them ourselves and we know how to take them apart. We have already dismantled some 60,000 of them. We just lack the political power to make the nuclear armed states dismantle the 13,000 that remain.
http://www.PreventNuclearWar.org
Here in the U.S. we have formed the Back from the Brink campaign to build that political power and get our government to initiate negotiations with all eight of the other nuclear armed states for a verifiable, enforceable, time-bound agreement to dismantle their remaining nuclear weapons. It is possible that such an initiative would fail, but we don't know that, and we do know what is going to happen if we don't try.
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13 comments:
In a nuclear holocaust, those who are immediately obliterated would be the lucky ones.
I own guns. If I threw all my guns in the trash can, then the bad guys would still own their guns (and they'd still kill innocent people). I need my guns for protection.
Russia, China, North Korea, and soon Iran all own nuclear weapons. America could throw all their nuclear weapons in the trash can, and you know what?
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran would still own their nuclear weapons, and they'd still terrorize the world. These outlaw nations don't give a rat's-ass what some naive peace-nik in America thinks. They'd eat you for lunch.
What liberals fail to realize over-and-over again is that strength is a deterrent to violent threats. How many street thugs want to try to assault Mike Tyson?
Whether you like it or not, America HAS to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent to outlaw nations who wish to terrorize the world. Those outlaw nations won't give-up their weapons.
We must think the unthinkable and lay down our nuclear weapons or we are all toast.
https://astronomy.com/news/2020/11/the-great-filter-a-possible-solution-to-the-fermi-paradox
In the years after World War II, the United States drastically drew down its military; Russia did not. Communism was on the march, and half of Europe, ended up behind the Iron Curtain. The reason that the rest of Europe didn’t fall was nuclear weapons. We very explicitly told the Soviets that if they attempted to invade Western Europe with their superior numbers, we would use tactical nukes to stop them.
And then the Soviets also produced nuclear weapons. The Cold War never turned hot thanks to “mutually assured destruction“. We never fought World War III against the Soviets because both sides were afraid of total annihilation.
Nuclear weapons are a two edged sword. They could cause a global catastrophe; they could also prevent a global catastrophe, a World War II level conflict between superpowers. When you eliminate, one edge of that sword, you make the use of the other edge much more likely.
Deterrence has worked for almost 80 years. Is there any reason for confidence that no deterrence will work?
Curt compares our nuclear weapons to protecting his home with guns, but it’s more like protecting his home with dynamite. It’s called Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, for a reason: you’d have to be mad to think it’s a good idea.
My apologies to the readers, my comment needs more explaining.
Enrico Fermi famously asked his colleagues:Where are they? He was describing a possible solution as to why we can not find evidence of intelligent life in the universe. His solution to that question was that in each case where intelligent life arose they eliminated themselves before they could master interstellar travel. His solution bears his name: The Fermi Paradox. It has another name as well: The Great Filter. Both solutions attempt to explain why, logically and statistically, there should be intelligent life out there in the universe, but for one reason or another there is not. The subtext is they destroyed themselves at the pinnacle of their existence.
Sadly, we may be at that juncture presently with nuclear weapons too powerful to be used without total destruction of all humankind. We have a choice to abandon these weapons and use the nuclear fuel they contain to generate peaceful energy essentially burn it usefully, benefiting humankind.
Another question remains: Do we, collectively, globally, have the will to allow humankind continued existence? We have a partial answer if we view the collective global response to Covid pandemic. Sadly we saw the results as fear divided us as it will if a nuclear exchange occurs.
Logically, I would love to prove Fermi wrong. That is my hope. Emotionally, I know human nature too. Eight billion souls depend on us getting a solution soon.
Cheery topic...
I've often thought that with the likelihood that other planets have evolved sentient species that the critical survival threshold is the one we face in this era. Possibly some of the estimated millions of planets get past this one hurdle to consummate civilization and most don't.
Above my pay grade...
There is a cruel irony regarding climate crisis and technological catastrophe. Viewed anthropologically nuclear energy seemed to have been discovered pretty easily; as if pre-ordained to answer the question - "Why is there air?
To my way of thinking this is nothing more than the random chance that collective intelligence evolves a tiny bit faster and overcomes animal instinct, for instance obsessive unmindful reproduction or "flight or fight".
That's it. Purely random in an awesome but utterly indifferent universe.
Talk amongst yourselves...
I don’t think the universe is indifferent. I think the universe is conscious. And it’s watching developments on this planet with great interest.
Each of us is conscious. That’s the only evidence available to each of us about the existence of consciousness. Why would we assume that anything else other than us is not conscious?
Humans have evolved technologically, but if we don’t catch up morally, all that technology will be our undoing. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” It’s way past time for us to discard the politics of fear, anger and planetary mismanagement.
Think of the world we’re leaving our children: firestorms, superstorms, rising seas, active shooter drills in schools and now they can add the old “duck and cover” drills from the cold war. That’s right, kids, when the missiles fly, just hide under your desk and don’t worry, be happy.
The point John F brought up about The Great Filter is exactly where my mind went as well in regard to this topic. It seems wild (though maybe it's not) that we have observed no direct evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe to date. The idea that once a species has the technological capacity to end its own existence it is extraordinarily likely to do so seems in my mind quite likely. One need look only at some of the many comments from someone whose name rhymes with Urt but with the B to see evidence that at least among our species, there's an incredible capacity for self delusion.
Then again, the length of time we as a species have spent as a technological society capable of making ourselves and our intelligence (or lack thereof) detectable to an outside observer via radio waves hasn't been long, 150 years or so max, which is a blink of an eye geologically speaking. And we appear to have already reached that point of being actively engaged with the Great Filter. The outcome is anyone's guess, but based on what we haven't seen, I'd say our odds are not great.
That being said, and this is a side tangent, there's a very interesting thought experiment called The Silurian Hypothesis that asks the question, are humans the first intelligent species to live on Earth, much less elsewhere in the universe? If another species achieved industrial scale intelligence (Kardashev 2 for those of us nerds out there) say 40 million years ago, would it be possible for us to even know about it now? The long and short of it is that yes, it would potentially be detectable, but only if we were paying very close attention to things such as the existence of microplastics (the only direct physical evidence that would remain) in layers of sediment judged to be 40 millionish years old.
Anyway apologies for the tangent. This is a good and interesting topic Peter, thanks as always for the thoughtfulness you put into this and the conversations it provokes.
We must not disregard Curts’s comment today as it is the subfloor of our fear. What will happen if we disarm and or enemy thinks it's the perfect opportunity to attack. Unfortunately there isn't an answer. The which I say we must try.
There’s another possibility: we are unique; there is no other intelligent life in the universe.
Quantum theory tells us that nothing comes into specific being until there is an observer. For all we know, there may have been no stars until the first creature on this planet crawled out of the ocean, looked up, and the universe had to decide what it saw.
Which takes us back to that old Zen koan:
If a man says something out in the woods with no woman around, is he still wrong?
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