Experts estimate the massive warehouse explosion that sent a devastating blast wave across Beirut could be one of the strongest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded. An overpressure of 10 psi collapses most factories and commercial buildings, and 20 psi will level even reinforced concrete structures. Tactical nuclear weapons exist because each side fears it would be deterred from using its big city-razing weapons by their very destructiveness. And the effects of nuclear war would extend well beyond the warring nations, possibly including climate change severe enough to threaten much of the planets human population. In comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kilotons.) 5. In this case, that was because the team playing the Soviet Union responded to a limited U.S. nuclear strike with a massive all-out nuclear attack. This has been seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. "I hope it doesn't escalate, and I think there's a good chance that it doesn't, but the risk is real whenever nuclear-armed states are engaged in conflict with one another, Drozdenko said. blast and radiation effects of different nuclear explosions, ionizing radiation injury from atomic bomb. An all-out nuclear war would leave survivors with few means of recovery, and could lead to a total breakdown of society. The blast wave moves outward initially at thousands of miles per hour but slows as it spreads. Richard Wolfson is Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics at Middlebury College. During WWI the act of hearing was recast as a tactical activity one that could determine human and even national survival. At Hiroshima the incendiary effects were quite different from those at Nagasaki, in part because of differences in terrain. The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is capable of carrying 10 or more nuclear warheads and can hit targets in the US and Europe. What might these limited nuclear wars be like? Of this total, about 700 warheads are rated at 800 kilotons; that is, each has the explosive power of 800,000 tons of TNT. No one should imagine, however, that it makes sense to use a tactical nuclear weapon. In a ground burst, the explosion digs a huge crater and entrains tons of soil, rock, and other pulverized material into its rising cloud. We publish thought-provoking excerpts, interviews, and original essays written for a general reader but backed by academic rigor. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin has given orders to increase the alert level of Russia's nuclear forces and has made veiled nuclear threats. Mach 1, or the speed of sound, is about 761 mph ( it will change based on temperature, though). People outside this radius would still be likely to suffer first or second-degree burns. The war is a tragedy for Ukraine. What about a limited attack on the United States? An exploding nuclear weapon instantly vaporizes itself. Why did Republican Senator Mike Lees Twitter account gets banned and then reinstated? (For example, the U.S.s newest version of its B61 nuclear bomb can release 0.3, 1.5, 10 or 50kilotons of explosive energy. And these are not the only tactical weapons that could be deployed; the United States has about 100 nuclear gravity bombs (with less sophisticated guidance) stationed around Europe. Nuclear weapons are fundamentally different from conventional weapons because of the vast amounts of explosive energy they can release and the kinds of effects they produce, such as high temperatures and radiation. A screenshot from the Outrider Foundation's nuclear simulator, showing the radius of the fireball, shockwave and heat generated by a hypothetical attack on New York City. Nevertheless, the use of EMP in a war could wreak havoc with systems for communication and control of military forces. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Russias has a suspected nuclear arsenal of 6,257 warheads. (For a graphic depiction, the interactive site NUKEMAP, created by nuclear historian Alexander Wellerstein, allows you to simulate the effects of a nuclear explosion of any size anywhere on the planet.) While President Biden's White House raised doubts that Putin would indeed use any of Russia's tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ominously reset its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest since its creation in 1947. The research cited above also suggests that a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons, would shorten growing seasons and threaten annual monsoon rains, jeopardizing the food supply of a billion people. The same shelter-in-place arguments apply to survivors in the non-urban areas blanketed by fallout. However, North Korea didnt respond at all, making analysts wonder whether the bombers were even detected. How do they achieve their destructive purpose? A thermonuclear explosion of any size possesses overwhelming destructive power. In an air burst, the fireball never touches the ground, and radioactivity rises into the stratosphere. Thermal flash burns extend well beyond the 5-psi radius of destruction. These directed-energy weapons, also called e-bombs, emit large pulses of microwaves to destroy electronics on missiles, to stop cars, to detonate explosives remotely, and to down swarms of drones. A warhead with a yield (amount of energy released by a nuclear explosion) of one kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT. There is every reason to believe that a limited nuclear war wouldnt remain limited. Nuclear weapons held by other states were not used in this scenario, which has a 440-Mt explosive yield, equivalent to about 150 times all the bombs detonated in World War II. A nuclear weapon exploded at very high altitude produces none of the blast or local fallout effects weve just described. That distance the radius of destruction depends on the explosive yield. In an all-out war, lethal fallout would cover much of the United States. A single nuclear explosion might produce 10,000 cases of severe burns requiring specialized medical treatment; in an all-out war there could be several million such cases. Iran could make enough material for one nuclear bomb in 'about 12 days,' a top US Defense Department official warned on Tuesday, a dramatic fall from the estimated one year it would have taken . Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov should stop threatening nuclear weapons. You can think of the incendiary effect of thermal flash as analogous to starting a fire using a magnifying glass to concentrate the Suns rays. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress is Scientist-in-Residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The blast wave of a nuclear explosion may create overpressures of several psi many miles from the explosion site. Nuclear attacks on cities would probably employ air bursts, whereas ground bursts would be used on hardened military targets such as underground missile silos. This is the region where dose rates exceed a whole-body external dose of about 0.1 Sv/hour. Though their energy is only about 3 percent of the total released in a nuclear explosion, they can cause a considerable proportion of the casualties. Many of the people within this distance would be killed, although some wouldnt. Even a much smaller nuclear exchange could have catastrophic climate consequences. The upper atmosphere includes a layer enhanced in ozone gas, an unusual form of oxygen that vigorously absorbs the Suns ultraviolet radiation. Do we trust the professional strategic planners who prepare our possible nuclear responses to an adversarys threats? According to a simulator created by the Outrider Foundation, a US-based body that campaigns against nuclear weapons and climate change, a 300-kiloton nuclear bomb detonated in the air would, within a fraction of a second of detonation, create a fireball measuring just over one square kilometre. "But you know, what we shouldn't really forget is that this is a big attempt to distract away from his troubles in Ukraine by just deploying into the sort of media space these phrases. A large-scale nuclear war would pump huge quantities of chemicals and dust into the upper atmosphere. Hurricane-force winds would demolish buildings that do not have steel-reinforced concrete, and people in this area would be likely to be injured or killed by the collapsing structures and debris carried by the high winds. chilling warning that conflict in Europe would be inevitable, Russia-Ukraine conflict live: Dozens dead as President Vladimir Putin launches invasion, Chelsea should be seized from Roman Abramovich as part of sanctions, MP says, Do not sell or share my personal information. In the worlds breadbasket agricultural regions, the temperature could remain below freezing for a year or more, and precipitation would drop by 90 percent. How could people know what was happening throughout the country? The ICRC also noted that children under 10 who were exposed to atomic radiation in 1945 went on to be four times more likely than the general population to be diagnosed with leukaemia. The thermal flash of a large weapon can ignite fires and cause third-degree burns tens of miles from the explosion. Heres a hypothetical scenario: After its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia attacks a Baltic country with tanks and ground forces while the United States is distracted by a domestic crisis. The results settle an earlier controversy about whether survivors should evacuate or shelter in place: Staying indoors for 48 hours after a nuclear blast is now recommended. Normal air pressure is about 15 pounds per square inch (psi). A one-megaton weapon exploded at an altitude of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) will generate overpressure of this magnitude out to 7 km (about 4 miles) from the point of detonation. And increasing that risk is unacceptable. This statement alone is a cause for concern whether or not it is true. A nuclear explosion releases vast amounts of energy in the form of blast, heat and radiation. Weve noted that more than half the United States population might be killed outright in an all-out nuclear war. Two months before Science would publish the paper, he decided to introduce the results in the popular press. That time allows fallout levels to decay by a factor of 100. That means every square inch of your body or your house experiences a force of 15 pounds. It's closer to 3x. A W-76, a weapon common in the UK and Frances arsenals, could kill 250,000 and injure 1 million. The missile can hold up to 1,000 pounds of conventional warhead. Follow Nina Tannenwald on Twitter. In the current crisis, Putin clearly wants the US and NATO to know that if the West were to intervene with military force on behalf of Ukraine, he might reach for his so-called tactical (or nonstrategic) nuclear weapons. The bloody nose strategy relies on the expectation that Pyongyang would be so overwhelmed by U.S. might that they would immediately back down and not retaliate. With 5,550, the US has slightly less and its Nato allies France and UK have 290 and 225 respectively. Of equal concern is Russia's claimed hypersonic capacity, which means it is able to accelerate some missiles faster than Mach 5 (3,836 miles per hour) on their way to their targets. The volume the weapon's energy spreads into varies as the cube of the distance, but the destroyed area varies at the square of the distance. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. Marine life might be damaged by the increased ultraviolet radiation, and humans could receive blistering sunburns. That is a very big nuclear question so big that its best left unanswered, since only an all-out nuclear war could decide it definitively. Russian President Vladimir Putin has caused global alarm by instructing his countrys military to put its nuclear forces on special alert, a decision he said was in response to aggressive statements from the West, amid international condemnation of Russias invasion of Ukraine. Nuclear weapons are commonly divided into two categories: strategic weapons those being the longer-range missiles that can cross oceans and threaten rival superpowers and tactical. But enough is known about nuclear wars possible effects that there is near universal agreement on the need to avoid them. A tactical nuclear weapon would produce a fireball, shock waves, and deadly radiation that would cause long-term health damage in survivors. Destructive blast effects extend miles from the detonation point of a typical nuclear weapon, and lethal fallout may blanket communities hundreds of miles downwind of a single nuclear explosion. The goal is to signal Russia that it has crossed a line and to deescalate the situation. Lethal direct radiation extends nearly a mile from a 10-kiloton explosion. Blast effects depend in part on where a weapon is detonated. Another goal was testing a submarine-launched missile. Twitter: @NinaTannenwald. The 77-year-old tradition of nuclear nonusethe nuclear taboois the single most important accomplishment of the nuclear age. Each of these limited nuclear attack scenarios kills millions of Americans many, many times the 1.2 million killed in all the wars in our nations history. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. The best location is in the half of the building farthest from the blast, in a room with no windows. firestorm A massive fire formed by coalescence of numerous smaller fires. However, its important to recognize that the lethality of fallout quickly decreases as short-lived isotopes decay. -President Putin says the Tsirkon (Zircon) powered nuclear capable hypersonic cruise missile has a range of over 1,000-km and a speed of Mach 9. According to figures published by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 2015, nearly two-thirds of all deaths among Hiroshima survivors in the preceding 12 months were cancer-related; in the case of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, it was just over half. This week, we explain how nuclear weapons work and how they could be deployed in. Experts say that the missiles could upend the grim psychology of Mutual Assured Destruction, the bedrock military doctrine of the nuclear age that argued globe-altering wars would be deterred. What are the winning numbers for Wednesdays $143 million Powerball jackpot? Fallout would also contaminate a significant fraction of U.S. cropland for up to year and would kill livestock. Extreme and cooperative efforts would be needed for long-term survival, but would the shocked and weakened survivors be up to those efforts? (This is not the first dust-induced extinction pondered by science. Such weapons can be launched on the same short-range missiles Russia is currently using to bombard Ukraine, such as its Iskander ballistic missile, which has a range of about 500 kilometers. However, its unclear how to extrapolate the results to todays more sensitive and more pervasive electronic equipment. Even a small-yield nuclear weapon (0.3 kilotons) would produce damage far beyond that of a conventional explosive. The global effect of these huge weapons comes partly from the sheer quantity of radioactive material and partly from the fact that the radioactive cloud rises well into the stratosphere, where it may take months or even years to reach the ground. Radioactive materials cling to these heavier particles, which drop back the ground in a relatively short time. It carries about half the bombs explosive energy and is responsible for most of the physical destruction. Reportedly, the new Checkmake fighter will be capable of internally carry any of the Su-57 weapons . What risks might such elimination entail? NATO responds with decisive counterforce, destroying Russian tanks with fighter jets, but this doesnt quell Russian resolve. Nukemap estimates a bomb of this size could kill 5.7million and injure a further 3.4million. If you have ever been curious as to what exactly the damage might be should a nuclear device go off anywhere throughout the world, then there are websites which have a nuclear-explosion simulator with a nuclear map that can actually show you the data that you're looking for when it comes to nuclear explosions. A nuclear strike on any UK city would kill everyone within a 1.2-mile radius instantly. The US' vary from around 100 to 1,200 kilotons, while the two other nuclear states in NATO alongside the Americans - the UK and France, who have significantly fewer warheads than the US and Russia - possess weapons in the low hundred kilotons. Would the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon to produce EMP or the use of a directed-beam EMP weapon be an act of war warranting nuclear retaliation? An overpressure of even 1/100 psi could make a door almost impossible to open. July 12, 2021 | 9:30 am. Yet another goal was to "to develop tactical nuclear weapons which can be used for various missions," according to North Korean state media. What can nuclear weapons do? The firestorm that raged over the level terrain of Hiroshima left 11.4 square km (4.4 square miles) severely damagedroughly four times the area burned in the hilly terrain of Nagasaki. An asteroid plummeted through Earth's atmosphere and crashed into the sea floor about 66 million years ago, causing an explosion over 6,500 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima. The image below shows the global picture one month after this hypothetical 100-warhead nuclear exchange. Despite decades of arms reduction treaties, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons in the worlds arsenals. Initial radiation, also known as prompt radiation, consists of gamma rays and neutrons produced within a minute of the detonation. A Tomahawk cruise missile, the kind widely used by the US, has a top speed of 550 mph. Casualties from a major nuclear war between the US and Russia would reach hundreds of millions. How much damage can a nuclear missile do? Most of this fallout comes from fission of the U-238 jacket that surrounds the fusion fuel. Hypersonic missiles are delivered in two ways: (1) they can be fired from the last stages of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) or Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM) and skip along the top of the atmosphere using specialized jet engines to accelerate to hypersonic speeds; or (2) they can be launched independently or released Forgot password? Paradoxically, while this makes deterrence threats more credible, it also makes the arms more tempting to use first, rather than simply in retaliation. He said the alliance would inevitably be drawn into a fight before reminding the world that his country is still one of the leading nuclear states. That raises the risk of nuclear confrontation because some of the NATO countries have nuclear weapons.". A single large weapon exploded some 200 miles over the central United States could blanket the entire country with an electromagnetic pulse intense enough to damage computers, communication systems, and other electronic devices. In 2015, Russia threatened Danish warships with nuclear weapons if Denmark joined NATOs missile defense system. The world would be better off without these weapons. Any nuclear weapon used any time is a strategic game changer. Russian leaders have made clear that they would view any nuclear attack as the start of an all-out nuclear war. The area of destruction grows faster but still not in direct proportion to the yield. Those living near targeted bomber and submarine bases would suffer blast and local radiation effects. Earlier this month Mr Putin gave a chilling warning that conflict in Europe would be inevitable, if Ukraine were allowed to join Nato. The question of firestorms is important not only to the residents of a target area: Firestorms might also have significant long-term effects on the global climate, as well discuss later. Of these, the ones of largest yieldthe strategic weaponsare deployed on submarines, bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. 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