Nuclear Winter:
The Forgotten DangerYou would think that the destruction of the Northern Hemisphere should be a topic that humanity might want to talk about. Yet, for the last ten years, the subject of nuclear winter has been virtually absent from public discussion.
The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and a highly publicized attempt to discredit the ³theory² of nuclear winter by groups with a vested interest in preserving nuclear weapons: these events led to a decade of silence on the subject of nuclear winter. It is imperative that this silence be broken.
More than ten years have passed since the last extensive investigations on nuclear winter were conducted (during the period 1983 - 1989). The composition of American and Russian nuclear arsenals has changed significantly since the 1980's studies, with substantial reductions occurring both in the numbers and yields of strategic weapons. Yet no one has asked: Is nuclear winter still a likely outcome should existing or projected nuclear arsenals be detonated in a major nuclear war?
This is a question that the nuclear priesthood does not want discussed. Why? Because an answer in the affirmative will completely undermine the legitimacy of maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons on high-alert status. However, the extensive scientific studies of the 1980¹s leave little doubt: nuclear winter is a likely outcome of any nuclear war.
Perhaps the most important finding of the 1980¹s studies was that ³. . .only a few hundred nuclear detonations, or less, seem sufficient to bring about at least a nominal nuclear winter. Only 100 small warheads devoted to petroleum refining and storage facilities would suffice. Indeed, with something like a hundred downtowns burning, or the same number of petroleum facilities, even a substantial nuclear winter seems possible.² (from ³A Path No Man Thought², page 203, by Carl Sagan and Richard Turco, 1990, Random House)
The 1983 TTAPS nuclear winter study (from ³Case 14²) examined the effects of one thousand 100 kiloton warheads exploded over 100 large cities, creating a ³Class III² nuclear winter. Consider that U.S. Trident subs alone now carry more than three thousand 100 kiloton warheads, which are aimed at ³urban industrial² targets in Russia (targeting and warhead information from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan./Feb. 2000, p, 53).
This is a description of a Class III "Nominal" nuclear winter (taken from pages 194-195 of ³A Path No Man Thought²): "It carries in its wake significant cooling and darkening, drought, massive quantities of pyrotoxins generated, widespread radioactive fallout, and other atmospheric perturbations. Average land temperature drops would be about 10 degrees C. At noon, the Sun would have about one-third its usual brightness. Months later, sunlight would return to more than its usual intensity, enhanced in the ultraviolet by depletion of the high-altitude ozone layer.
Collapse of agriculture, and famine, could be widespread. Within the warring nations, these effects might generate casualties approaching those from the prompt effects of the war. Crop failure--from lowered temperatures, failure of the monsoons, and other causes--are expected in many noncombatant nations in the first growing season following the conflict. The most likely such failures would be in India, China, some African nations, and perhaps Japan. Worldwide, as many as 1 to 2 billion people could be placed in jeopardy of starvation."
The 1983 TTAPS study was followed by the ISCU¹s Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) study, which involved hundreds of scientists from more than a dozen countries working over three years. Meetings were held in Australia, Canada, China, England, France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the U.S.S.R., the U.S.A., and Venezuela.
This is a quote from the 1985 SCOPE document, ³Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War². . . "The total loss of human agricultural and societal support systems would result in the loss of almost all humans on Earth, essentially equally among combatant and non-combatant countries alike. . . .this vulnerability is an aspect not currently a part of the understanding of nuclear war; not only are the major combatant countries in danger, but virtually the entire human population is being held hostage to the large scale use of nuclear weapons . . ." A review of the SCOPE assessment done by the U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy confirmed these findings, and actually stated that the SCOPE analysis had been too conservative.
Even under the proposed START III treaty, the United States and Russia will indefinitely keep 3000 to 5000 nuclear warheads on launch-ready status. Should even a fraction of these weapons be exploded over large cities or petroleum refineries, it appears that they would be fully capable of destroying the Northern Hemisphere.
Efforts are now being made to promote the creation of an updated study on nuclear winter. Major advances in computer modeling and in the atmospheric sciences have taken place during the last decade. These advances can be utilized in conjunction with current information on nuclear weaponry to demonstrate the enormous threat to the biosphere posed by global nuclear arsenals.
If you are interested in participating in this effort, you may contact me by mail or email. If you are a member of any group which might also be interested in promoting an updated nuclear winter study, let them know about this project.
Steven Starr
9030 County Road 389
New Bloomfield, MO 65063
email: stevestarr@plnet.net
PREVENTING AN ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR WINTER
By Dean Babst
Nuclear Winter
In a study made by the World Health Organization, they found that a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could kill one billion people outright. In addition, it could produce a Nuclear Winter that would probably kill an additional one billion people. It is possible that more than two billion people, one-third of all the humans on Earth would be destroyed almost immediately in the aftermath of a global thermonuclear war. The rest of humanity would be reduced to prolonged agony and barbarism. These findings are from a study chaired by Sune K. Bergstrom (the 1982 Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine) nearly 20 years ago. (1)
Subsequent studies have had similar findings. Professor Alan Robock says, "Everything from purely mathematical models to forest fire studies shows that even a small nuclear war would devastate the earth." (2)
Rich Small's work, financed by the Defense Nuclear Agency, suggests that burning cities would produce a particularly troublesome variety of smoke. The smoke of forest fires is bad enough. But the industrial targets of cities are likely to produce a rolling, black smoke, a denser shield against incoming sunlight. (3)
Nuclear explosions can produce heat intensities of 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Centigrade at ground zero. Nuclear explosions can also lift an enormous quantity of fine soil particles into the atmosphere, creating more than l00,000 tons of fine, dense, radioactive dust for every megaton exploded on the surface. (4) The late Dr. Carl Sagan said the super heating of vast quantities of atmospheric dust and soot will cover both hemispheres. (5) For those who survive a nuclear attack, it would mean living on a cold, dark, chaotic, radioactive planet.
A nuclear warhead is far more destructive than is generally realized. For example, just one average size U.S. strategic 250 Kt nuclear warhead has an explosive force equal to 250,000 tons of dynamite or 50,000 World War II type bombers each carrying 5 tons of bombs. The truck bombs that terrorists exploded at the New York World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City each had an explosive force equal to about 5 tons of dynamite. (6)
Accidental Nuclear War
The U.S. and Russia each have more than 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads set for hair-trigger release. If launched they could be delivered to targets around the world in 30 minutes. They would have an explosive force equal to l00,000 Hiroshima size bombs. (7) Russia and the U.S. have more than 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. The more automated and shorter the decision process becomes the greater is the possibility of missiles being launched to false warnings.
The U.S. is trying to decide whether to build an anti-missile star wars defense or not. In order for an anti-ballistic missile to hit another missile traveling at incredible speed that can come from many different directions, it would be necessary to have a very complex computerized system.
President Reagan's Defense Secretary, Casper Weinberger, said that since an anti-missile defense would require decisions within seconds, completely autonomous computer control is a foregone conclusion. There would be no time for screening out false alarms and a decision to launch would have to be automated---there would be no time for White House approval. (8)
A highly automated defense system that has no time for determining whether a warning is false or not is highly likely to launch to a false warning. There are always false warnings. For example, during 1981, 1982 and 1983 there were 186, 218 and 255 false alarms, respectively, in the U.S. strategic warning system. (9)
There have been at least three times in the last 20 years that the U.S. and Russia almost launched to false warnings. Fortunately there was enough time to determine that the warnings were false before decision time ran out.
In 1979, a U.S. training tape showing a massive attack was accidentally played.
In 1983, a Soviet satellite mistakenly signaled the launch of a U.S. missile.
In 1995, Russia almost launched its missiles because of a Norwegian rocket studying the northern lights. (l0)
If the U.S. builds an anti-missile defense it appears certain that missiles would be launched to false warnings because no time is available for determining whether a warning is false or not.
Preventive Action Needed
Plans to build an anti-missile defense need to be carefully researched as to how it could increase the danger of an accidental nuclear war. As the research progresses, the findings need to be widely discussed in the news media. The more widely and clearly the danger is made known the more concerned the public should be for agreements to greatly reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons from the world.
As humanity's safety becomes more and more dependent upon technology, the technological dangers need to be guarded against. Technical errors in one system may trigger errors in others. When researching missile defense dangers the following types of factors need to be included in the assessments, e.g. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)), "Dead Hand" control of missiles, High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), Hazards of Electromagnetic Radiation to Ordnance (HERO). Russia's blind spots in its satellite warning system also need to be included in this research.
The U.S. and Russia are in a position where either can destroy humanity in a flash and yet there appears to be little recognition of this peril hanging over the world. Only 71 out of 435 U.S. congressional representatives signed a motion calling for nuclear weapons to be taken off of hair-trigger alert. (11) The U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999. (12)
Queen Noor al Hussein, of Jordan, said "The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought." (13) There is a need to greatly increase public awareness of the danger in order to provide broad, long-term understanding and support for arms agreements ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
Reference and Notes
1. Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA, 1983.
2. Robock, Alan, 1989: New models confirm nuclear winter. Bull. Atomic Sci., 45, No. 7, 32-35.
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