A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear
Armageddon
According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Armageddon (, from grc, Ἁρμαγεδών ''Harmagedōn'', Late Latin: , from Hebrew: ''Har Məgīddō'') is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies ...
, or atomic holocaust, is a
theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of
nuclear weapons
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
causes globally widespread destruction and
radioactive
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is consid ...
fallout. Such a scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of
nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear ...
, potentially causing the
collapse of civilization and, in the worst case,
extinction of humanity
Human extinction, also known as omnicide, is the hypothetical end of the human species due to either natural causes such as population decline from sub-replacement fertility, an asteroid impact, or large-scale volcanism, or to anthropogenic ( ...
and/or termination of life on Earth.
Besides the immediate destruction of cities by nuclear blasts, the potential aftermath of a nuclear war could involve
firestorm
A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and wildfires. Although the term has been used ...
s, a
nuclear winter
Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into th ...
, widespread
radiation sickness from
fallout
Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
, and/or the temporary (if not permanent) loss of much modern technology due to
electromagnetic pulse
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also a transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. Depending upon the source, the origin of an EMP can be natural or artificial, and can occur as an electromagnetic fie ...
s. Some scientists, such as
Alan Robock
Alan may refer to:
People
*Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname
*Alan (given name), an English given name
**List of people with given name Alan
''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.''
*Al ...
, have speculated that a thermonuclear war could result in the end of modern civilization on
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
, in part due to a long-lasting nuclear winter. In one model, the average temperature of Earth following a full thermonuclear war falls for several years by 7 – 8 °C (13 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit) on average.
Early
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
-era studies suggested that billions of humans would survive the immediate effects of nuclear blasts and radiation following a global thermonuclear war.
The
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 63 countries, representing doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned people who share the goal of ...
believe that nuclear war could indirectly contribute to human extinction via secondary effects, including environmental consequences,
societal breakdown, and economic collapse.
The threat of a nuclear holocaust plays an important role in the
popular perception of nuclear weapons. It features in the security concept of
mutually assured destruction
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the ...
(MAD) and is a common scenario in
survivalism
Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, as well as other disasters causing disruption to social order (that is, civil disor ...
. Nuclear holocaust is a
common feature in literature and film, especially in
speculative genres such as
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
,
dystopia
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
n and
post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astro ...
.
Etymology and usage
The English word "holocaust", derived from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
term "holokaustos" meaning "completely burnt", refers to great destruction and loss of life, especially by fire.
One early use of the word "holocaust" to describe an imagined nuclear destruction appears in Reginald Glossop's 1926 novel ''The Orphan of Space'': "Moscow ... beneath them ... a crash like a crack of Doom! The echoes of this Holocaust rumbled and rolled ... a distinct smell of sulphur ... atomic destruction." In the novel, an atomic weapon is planted in the office of the Soviet dictator, who, with German help and Chinese mercenaries, is preparing the takeover of Western Europe.
References to nuclear destruction often speak of "atomic holocaust" or "nuclear holocaust." For instance, U.S. President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
stated in August 2007: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust".
Likelihood of nuclear war
![World nuclear weapons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/World_nuclear_weapons.png)
As of 2021, humanity has about 13,410 nuclear weapons, thousands of which are on
hair-trigger alert. While stockpiles have been on the decline following the end of the Cold War, every
nuclear country is currently undergoing modernization of its nuclear arsenal. The ''Bulletin'' advanced their symbolic
Doomsday Clock
The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe, in the opinion of the members of the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists''. Maintained since 1947, the clock is a metaphor for threats to humanity ...
in 2015, citing among other factors "a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals". In January 2020, it was moved forward to 100 seconds before midnight.
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
estimated the probability of the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
escalating to nuclear conflict as between 33% and 50%.
In a poll of experts at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference in Oxford (17–20 July 2008), the
Future of Humanity Institute
The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Oxford investigating big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects. It was founded in 2005 as part of the Faculty of Philosophy and the ...
estimated the probability of complete human extinction by nuclear weapons at 1% within the century, the probability of 1 billion dead at 10% and the probability of 1 million dead at 30%. These results reflect the median opinions of a group of experts, rather than a probabilistic model; the actual values may be much lower or higher.
Scientists have argued that even a small-scale nuclear war between two countries could have devastating global consequences and such local conflicts are more likely than full-scale nuclear war.
Moral importance of human extinction risk
In his book ''
Reasons and Persons
''Reasons and Persons'' is a 1984 book by the philosopher Derek Parfit, in which the author discusses ethics, rationality and personal identity.
It is divided into four parts, dedicated to self-defeating theories, rationality and time, personal ...
'', philosopher
Derek Parfit
Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of ...
posed the following question:
Compare three outcomes:
#Peace.
#A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world's existing population.
#A nuclear war that kills 100%.
(2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences?
He continues that "Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is ''very much'' greater." Thus, he argues, even if it would be bad if massive numbers of humans died, human extinction would itself be much worse because it prevents the existence of all future generations. And given the magnitude of the calamity were the human race to become extinct,
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom ( ; sv, Niklas Boström ; born 10 March 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the rev ...
argues that there is an overwhelming moral imperative to reduce even small risks of
human extinction
Human extinction, also known as omnicide, is the hypothetical end of the human species due to either natural causes such as population decline from sub-replacement fertility, an asteroid impact, or large-scale volcanism, or to anthropogenic ...
.
Likelihood of complete human extinction
![US and USSR nuclear stockpiles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles.svg)
Many scholars have posited that a global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to human extinction. This position was bolstered when nuclear winter was first conceptualized and modelled in 1983. However, models from the past decade consider total extinction very unlikely, and suggest parts of the world would remain habitable.
Technically the risk may not be zero, as the climatic effects of nuclear war are uncertain and could theoretically be larger than current models suggest, just as they could theoretically be smaller than current models suggest. There could also be indirect risks, such as a societal collapse following nuclear war that can make humanity much more vulnerable to other existential threats.
A related area of inquiry is: if a future nuclear arms race someday leads to larger stockpiles or more dangerous nuclear weapons than existed at the height of the Cold War, at what point could war with such weapons result in human extinction?
[ Physicist ]Leo Szilard
Leo Szilard (; hu, Szilárd Leó, pronounced ; born Leó Spitz; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear ...
warned in the 1950s that a deliberate doomsday device
A doomsday device is a hypothetical construction — usually a weapon or weapons system — which could destroy all life on a planet, particularly Earth, or destroy the planet itself, bringing "doomsday", a term used for the end of planet Earth. ...
could be constructed by surrounding powerful hydrogen bombs with a massive amount of cobalt. Cobalt has a half-life of five years, and its global fallout might, some physicists have posited, be able to clear out all human life via lethal radiation intensity. The main motivation for building a cobalt bomb in this scenario is its reduced expense compared with the arsenals possessed by superpowers; such a doomsday device does not need to be launched before detonation and thus does not require expensive missile delivery systems, and the hydrogen bombs do not need to be miniaturized for delivery via missile. The system for triggering it might have to be completely automated, in order for the deterrent to be effective. A modern twist might be to also lace the bombs with aerosols designed to exacerbate nuclear winter. A major caveat is that nuclear fallout transfer between the northern and southern hemispheres is expected to be small; unless a bomb detonates in each hemisphere, the effect of a bomb detonated in one hemisphere on the other is diminished.
Effects of nuclear war
Historically, it has been difficult to estimate the total number of deaths resulting from a global nuclear exchange because scientists are continually discovering new effects of nuclear weapons, and also revising existing models.
Early reports considered direct effects from nuclear blast and radiation and indirect effects from economic, social, and political disruption. In a 1979 report for the U.S. Senate, the Office of Technology Assessment
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was an office of the United States Congress that operated from 1974 to 1995. OTA's purpose was to provide congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scien ...
estimated casualties under different scenarios. For a full-scale countervalue
In military doctrine, countervalue is the targeting of an opponent's assets that are of value but not actually a military threat, such as cities and civilian populations. Counterforce is the targeting of an opponent's military forces and faciliti ...
/counterforce
In nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or ...
nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, they predicted U.S. deaths from 35 to 77 percent (70 million to 160 million dead at the time), and Soviet deaths from 20 to 40 percent of the population.
Although this report was made when nuclear stockpiles were at much higher levels than they are today, it also was made before the risk of nuclear winter was first theorized in the early 1980s. Additionally, it did not consider other secondary effects, such as electromagnetic pulses (EMP), and the ramifications they would have on modern technology and industry.
Nuclear winter
In the early 1980s, scientists began to consider the effects of smoke and soot arising from burning wood, plastics, and petroleum fuels in nuclear-devastated cities. It was speculated that the intense heat would carry these particulates to extremely high altitudes where they could drift for weeks and block out all but a fraction of the sun's light. A landmark 1983 study by the so-called TTAPS team (Richard P. Turco
Richard Peter "Rich" Turco (born 1943) is an American atmospheric scientist, and Professor at the Institute of the Environment, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles. He won an award in 1986, from Ma ...
, Owen Toon
Owen Brian Toon (born May 26, 1947 in Bethesda, Maryland) is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. He is a fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received an A.B. in ...
, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack
James Barney Pollack (July 9, 1938 – June 13, 1994) was an American astrophysicist who worked for NASA's Ames Research Center.
Pollack was born on July 9, 1938 in New York City, and was brought up in Woodmere, Long Island by a Jewish family ...
and Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ext ...
) was the first to model these effects and coined the term "nuclear winter."
More recent studies make use of modern global circulation models and far greater computer power than was available for the 1980s studies. A 2007 study examined the consequences of a global nuclear war involving moderate to large portions of the current global arsenal. The study found cooling by about 12–20 °C in much of the core farming regions of the US, Europe, Russia and China and as much as 35 °C in parts of Russia for the first two summer growing seasons. The changes they found were also much longer-lasting than previously thought, because their new model better represented entry of soot aerosols in the upper stratosphere, where precipitation does not occur, and therefore clearance was on the order of 10 years. In addition, they found that global cooling caused a weakening of the global hydrological cycle, reducing global precipitation
In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...
by about 45%.
The authors did not discuss the implications for agriculture in depth, but noted that a 1986 study which assumed no food production for a year projected that "most of the people on the planet would run out of food and starve to death by then" and commented that their own results show that, "This period of no food production needs to be extended by many years, making the impacts of nuclear winter even worse than previously thought."
In contrast to the above investigations of global nuclear conflicts, studies have shown that even small-scale, regional nuclear conflicts could disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario where two opposing nations in the subtropics
The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical and climate zones to the north and south of the tropics. Geographically part of the temperate zones of both hemispheres, they cover the middle latitudes from to approximately 35° north and ...
would each use 50 Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
-sized nuclear weapons (about 15 kilotons each) on major populated centres, the researchers estimated as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago a ...
, including most of the grain-growing regions.[Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate Global Climate](_blank)
Science Daily, December 11, 2006 The cooling would last for years, and according to the research, could be "catastrophic". Additionally, the analysis showed a 10% drop in average global precipitation, with the largest losses in the low latitudes due to failure of the monsoons.
Regional nuclear conflicts could also inflict significant damage to the ozone layer. A 2008 study found that a regional nuclear weapons exchange could create a near-global ozone hole, triggering human health problems and impacting agriculture for at least a decade.[as PDF]
This effect on the ozone would result from heat absorption by soot in the upper stratosphere, which would modify wind currents and draw in ozone-destroying nitrogen oxides. These high temperatures and nitrogen oxides would reduce ozone to the same dangerous levels that are experienced below the ozone hole above Antarctica every spring.
Nuclear famine
It is difficult to estimate the number of casualties that would result from nuclear winter, but it is likely that the primary effect would be global famine (known as Nuclear Famine), wherein mass starvation occurs due to disrupted agricultural production and distribution. In a 2013 report, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 63 countries, representing doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned people who share the goal of ...
(IPPNW) concluded that more than two billion people, about a third of the world's population, would be at risk of starvation in the event of a regional nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, or by the use of even a small proportion of nuclear arms held by America and Russia. Several independent studies show corroborated conclusions that agricultural outputs would be significantly reduced for years by climatic changes driven by nuclear wars. Reduction of food supply would be further exacerbated by rising food prices
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices have an impact on producers and consumers of food.
Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing an ...
, affecting hundreds of millions of vulnerable people, especially in the poorest nations of the world.
According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal ''Nature Food
''Nature Food'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Nature Portfolio. It was established in 2020. The editor-in-chief is Anne Mullen.
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
* Science Citation Inde ...
'' in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would kill 360 million people directly and more than 5 billion people would die from starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, dea ...
. More than 2 billion people would die from a smaller-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
Electromagnetic pulse
An electromagnetic pulse
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also a transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. Depending upon the source, the origin of an EMP can be natural or artificial, and can occur as an electromagnetic fie ...
(EMP) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. Nuclear explosions create a pulse of electromagnetic radiation called a nuclear EMP or NEMP. Such EMP interference is known to be generally disruptive or damaging to electronic equipment.[Broad, William J. "Nuclear Pulse (I): Awakening to the Chaos Factor", ''Science''. 29 May 1981 212: 1009–1012]
By disabling electronics and their functioning, an EMP would disable hospitals, water treatment facilities, food storage facilities, and all electronic forms of communication, and thereby threaten key aspects of the modern human condition. Certain EMP attacks could lead to a large loss of power for months or years. Currently, failures of the power grid are dealt with using support from the outside. In the event of an EMP attack, such support would not exist and all damaged components, devices, and electronics would need to be completely replaced.
In 2013, the US House of Representatives considered the "Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act" that would provide surge protection for some 300 large transformers around the country. The problem of protecting civilian infrastructure from electromagnetic pulse has also been intensively studied throughout the European Union, and in particular by the United Kingdom. While precautions have been taken, James Woolsey and the EMP Commission suggested that an EMP is the most significant threat to the U.S.
The risk of an EMP, either through solar or atmospheric activity or enemy attack, while not dismissed, was suggested to be overblown by the news media in a commentary in ''Physics Today
''Physics Today'' is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics. First published in May 1948, it is issued on a monthly schedule, and is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society. I ...
''. Instead, the weapons from rogue states were still too small and uncoordinated to cause a massive EMP, underground infrastructure is sufficiently protected, and there will be enough warning time from continuous solar observatories like SOHO
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
to protect surface transformers should a devastating solar storm be detected.
Nuclear fallout
Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive dust and ash propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear explosion. Fallout is usually limited to the immediate area, and can only spread for hundreds of kilometers from the explosion site if the explosion is high enough in the atmosphere. Fallout may get entrained with the products of a pyrocumulus
A flammagenitus cloud, also known as a flammagenitus, pyrocumulus cloud, or fire cloud, is a dense cumuliform cloud associated with fire or volcanic eruptions. A flammagenitus is similar dynamically in some ways to a firestorm, and the two phen ...
cloud and fall as black rain (rain darkened by soot and other particulates).
This radioactive dust, usually consisting of fission product
Nuclear fission products are the atomic fragments left after a large atomic nucleus undergoes nuclear fission. Typically, a large nucleus like that of uranium fissions by splitting into two smaller nuclei, along with a few neutrons, the release ...
s mixed with bystanding atoms that are neutron activated by exposure, is a highly dangerous kind of radioactive contamination
Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...
. The main radiation hazard from fallout is due to short-lived radionuclides external to the body. While most of the particles carried by nuclear fallout decay rapidly, some radioactive particles will have half-lives of seconds to a few months. Some radioactive isotopes, like strontium-90
Strontium-90 () is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission, with a half-life of 28.8 years. It undergoes β− decay into yttrium-90, with a decay energy of 0.546 MeV. Strontium-90 has applications in medicine and i ...
and caesium-137
Caesium-137 (), cesium-137 (US), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nucl ...
, are very long-lived and will create radioactive hot spots for up to 5 years after the initial explosion. Fallout and black rain may contaminate waterways, agriculture, and soil. Contact with radioactive materials can lead to radiation poisoning through external exposure or accidental consumption. In acute doses over a short amount of time radiation will lead to prodromal syndrome, bone marrow death, central nervous system death and gastrointestinal death.[Coggle, J.E., Lindop, Patricia J. "Medical Consequences of Radiation Following a Global Nuclear War." The Aftermath (1983): 60–71.] Over longer periods of exposure to radiation, cancer becomes the main health risk. Long-term radiation exposure can also lead to in utero effects on human development and transgenerational genetic damage.
Origins and analysis of extinction hypotheses
As a result of the extensive nuclear fallout
Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
of the 1954 Castle Bravo
Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of ''Operation Castle''. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful ...
nuclear detonation, author Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 189912 January 1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect h ...
wrote the popular novel '' On the Beach'', released in 1957. In this novel, so much fallout is generated in a nuclear war that all human life is extinguished. However, the premise that all of humanity would die following a nuclear war and only the "cockroaches would survive" is critically dealt with in the 1988 book '' Would the Insects Inherit the Earth and Other Subjects of Concern to Those Who Worry About Nuclear War'', by nuclear weapons expert Philip J. Dolan
Philip Jarvis Dolan (October 5, 1923 – January 5, 1992) was an American physicist. He graduated from West Point in 1945, was assigned to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos in 1948, and received his MSc in physics from the University of Virginia ...
.
In 1982, nuclear disarmament
Nuclear may refer to:
Physics
Relating to the Atomic nucleus, nucleus of the atom:
*Nuclear engineering
*Nuclear physics
*Nuclear power
*Nuclear reactor
*Nuclear weapon
*Nuclear medicine
*Radiation therapy
*Nuclear warfare
Mathematics
*Nuclear ...
activist Jonathan Schell
Jonathan Edward Schell (August 21, 1943 – March 25, 2014) was an American author and visiting fellow at Yale University, whose work primarily dealt with campaigning against nuclear weapons.
Personal
Schell was born in New York City on August 2 ...
published ''The Fate of the Earth
''The Fate of the Earth'' is a 1982 book by Jonathan Schell. Its description of the consequences of nuclear war "forces even the most reluctant person to confront the unthinkable: the destruction of humanity and possibly most life on Earth". T ...
'', which is regarded by many to be the first carefully argued presentation that concluded that extinction is a significant possibility from nuclear war. However, the assumptions made in this book have been thoroughly analyzed and determined to be "quite dubious". The impetus for Schell's work, according to physicist Brian Martin, was:
The implicit premise ..that if people are not taking action on the issue, they must not perceive it as threatening enough. Perhaps if the thought of 500 million people dying in a nuclear war is not enough to stimulate action, then the thought of extinction will. Indeed, Schell explicitly advocates use of the fear of extinction as the basis for inspiring the "complete rearrangement of world politics" (p. 221)
The belief in "overkill" is also commonly encountered, with an example being the following statement made by nuclear disarmament activist Philip Noel-Baker
Philip John Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker, (1 November 1889 – 8 October 1982), born Philip John Baker, was a British politician, diplomat, academic, athlete, and renowned campaigner for disarmament. He carried the British team flag and won a ...
in 1971: "Both the US and the Soviet Union now possess nuclear stockpiles large enough to exterminate mankind three or four – some say ten – times over". Brian Martin suggested that the origin of this belief was from "crude linear extrapolations" of the bombing of Hiroshima. He said that if the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had been 1,000 times as powerful, it could not have killed 1,000 times as many people. Similarly, it is common to see stated that the combined explosive energy released in the entirety of World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
was about 3 megatons, while a nuclear war with warhead stockpiles at Cold War highs would release 6000 WWII's of explosive energy. An estimate for the necessary amount of fallout to begin to have the potential of causing human extinction is regarded by physicist and disarmament activist Joseph Rotblat
Sir Joseph Rotblat (4 November 1908 – 31 August 2005) was a Polish and British physicist. During World War II he worked on Tube Alloys and the Manhattan Project, but left the Los Alamos Laboratory on grounds of conscience after it became cl ...
to be 10 to 100 times the megatonnage in nuclear arsenals as they stood in 1976; however, with the world megatonnage decreasing since the Cold War ended this possibility remains hypothetical.
According to the 1980 United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
report ''General and Complete Disarmament: Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons: Report of the Secretary-General'', it was estimated that there were a total of about 40,000 nuclear warheads in existence at that time, with a potential combined explosive yield of approximately 13,000 megatons
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a m ...
.
By comparison – in the timeline of volcanism on Earth
This timeline of volcanism on Earth includes a list of major volcanic eruptions of approximately at least magnitude 6 on the Volcanic explosivity index (VEI) or equivalent sulfur dioxide emission during the Quaternary period (from 2.58 Mya to th ...
– the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora
Mount Tambora, or Tomboro, is an active stratovolcano in West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Located on Sumbawa in the Lesser Sunda Islands, it was formed by the active subduction zones beneath it. Before 1815, its elevation reached more than ...
exploded with a force of roughly 30,000 megatons, and ejected of mostly rock and tephra
Tephra is fragmental material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition, fragment size, or emplacement mechanism.
Volcanologists also refer to airborne fragments as pyroclasts. Once clasts have fallen to the ground, they rem ...
,[
] which included 120 million tonne
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s of sulfur dioxide as an upper estimate, turning 1816 into the "year without a summer
The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by . Summer temperatures in Europe were the extreme weather, coldest on record between the years of 1 ...
" due to the levels of global dimming
Global dimming is the reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface that has been observed since systematic measurements began in the 1950s. The effect varies by location, but worldwide it has been estimated to be of ...
sulfate
The sulfate or sulphate ion is a polyatomic anion with the empirical formula . Salts, acid derivatives, and peroxides of sulfate are widely used in industry. Sulfates occur widely in everyday life. Sulfates are salts of sulfuric acid and many ar ...
aerosols and ash expelled.[
] The larger Mount Toba eruption, which occurred approximately 74,000 years ago, produced an estimated of tephra and of sulfur dioxide, with a possible explosion force of 20,000,000 megatons (Mt) of TNT, forming Lake Toba
Lake Toba ( id, Danau Toba) ( Toba Batak: ᯖᯀᯬ ᯖᯬᯅ; romanized: ''Tao Toba'') is a large natural lake in North Sumatra, Indonesia, occupying the caldera of a supervolcano. The lake is located in the middle of the northern part of the ...
and reducing the human population to mere tens of thousands. The Chicxulub impact
The Chicxulub crater () is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is offshore near the community of Chicxulub, after which it is named. It was formed slightly over 66 million years ago when a large a ...
, connected with the extinction of the dinosaurs
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
, corresponds to at least 70,000,000 Mt of energy, which is roughly 7000 times the combined maximum arsenal of the US and Soviet Union.
Comparisons with supervolcanos are more misleading than helpful due to the different aerosol
An aerosol is a suspension (chemistry), suspension of fine solid particles or liquid Drop (liquid), droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or Human impact on the environment, anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog o ...
s released, the likely air burst
An air burst or airburst is the detonation of an explosive device such as an anti-personnel artillery shell or a nuclear weapon in the air instead of on contact with the ground or target. The principal military advantage of an air burst over ...
fuzing height of nuclear weapons and the globally scattered location of these potential nuclear detonations all being in contrast to the singular and subterranean nature of a supervolcanic eruption.[ Margulis, Lynn (1999). ''Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution''. Houston: Basic Book.] Moreover, assuming the entire world stockpile of weapons were grouped together, it would be difficult due to the nuclear fratricide In relation to nuclear warfare, nuclear fratricide denotes the inadvertent destruction of nuclear warheads or their delivery systems by detonations from other warheads in the same attack. The blast, EMP and debris cloud may knock them off course, c ...
effect to ensure the individual weapons would detonate all at once. Nonetheless, many people believe that a full-scale nuclear war would result, through the nuclear winter effect, in the extinction of the human species, though not all analysts agree on the assumptions put into these nuclear winter models.
See also
* Second Cold War
The Second Cold War,
Cold War II,
or the New Cold War
are terms that refer to heightened political, social, ideological, informational, and military tensions in the 21st century. The term is used in the context of the tensions between th ...
* Environmental impact of war
of the environmental impact of war focuses on the modernization of warfare and its increasing effects on the environment. Scorched earth methods have been used for much of recorded history. However, the methods of modern warfare cause far gre ...
* Global catastrophic risk
A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanen ...
* Human extinction
Human extinction, also known as omnicide, is the hypothetical end of the human species due to either natural causes such as population decline from sub-replacement fertility, an asteroid impact, or large-scale volcanism, or to anthropogenic ...
* List of nuclear holocaust fiction
This list of nuclear holocaust fiction lists the many works of speculative fiction that attempt to describe a world during or after a massive nuclear war, nuclear holocaust, or crash of civilization due to a nuclear electromagnetic pulse.
Films
...
* Nuclear anxiety
Nuclear anxiety, also known as nucleomituphobia, refers to anxiety or even a phobia in the face of a potential future nuclear holocaust, especially during the Cold War and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
American anthropologist Margaret Mead ...
* Nuclear terrorism
Nuclear terrorism refers to any person or persons detonating a nuclear weapon as an act of terrorism (i.e., illegal or immoral use of violence for a political or religious cause). Some definitions of nuclear terrorism include the sabotage of a ...
* Silurian hypothesis
The Silurian hypothesis is a thought experiment which assesses modern science's ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization, perhaps several million years ago.
Explanation
The idea was presented in a 2018 paper by Adam Frank, ...
* World War III
World War III or the Third World War, often abbreviated as WWIII or WW3, are names given to a hypothetical World war, worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use ...
References
External links
Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, By Paul Brians, Professor of English, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington
with Luke Oman
People
*Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...
on the unlikeliness of human extinction from nuclear war
{{Pollution
Nuclear doomsday
Human extinction