Topic summary
Nuclear weapons test
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Nuclear weapons testing.
Global fallout
Nuclear weapons testing did not produce an outcome like nuclear winter as a result of a scenario of a concentrated number of nuclear explosions in a nuclear holocaust, but the thousands of tests, hundreds being atmospheric, did produce a global fallout that peaked in 1963 (the bomb pulse), reaching levels of about 0.15 mSv per year worldwide, or about 7% of average background radiation dose from all sources. It has slowly decreased since, with natural environmental radiation levels being around 1 mSv. This global fallout was one of the main drivers for the ban on nuclear weapons testing, particularly atmospheric testing. It has been estimated that by 2020 between 200,000 to 460,000 people had died as a result of nuclear weapons testing, while the total number of deaths may rise up to 2.4 million people.