“Nuclear weapons are the major danger to the Earth's environment”, researchers have alerted. In a new research of the potential global consequences of nuclear blasts, an American team discovered that even a small-scale war would rapidly damage the world's climate and ecosystems, causing devastation that can last for more than a decade.
Nearly Seventy years ago, the nuclear bombs dropped over places called Hiroshima and Nagasaki exploded and to this day remained the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare. So, what happens if we have a nuclear war? What are the consequences?
The impact of a single nuclear bomb depends on many factors such as the weather, weapon design, geographical layout of where the bomb dropped off and if it explodes in the air or on the ground. Approximately 35% of the energy comes in the form of thermal radiation or heat. Because of the thermal radiation travels at approximately the speed of light the flash of light and the heat comes many seconds before the blast wave and this causes severe flash blindness to anyone looking. A temporary blindness of a few minutes with a Megaton bomb which is 80 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb but much smaller
than many modern nuclear weapons. Those 21 kilometres away would experience flash blindness on a clear day and even up to 85 kilometres away on a clear night.
Thermal radiation burns happen closer to the bomb with first-degree burns occurring around 11 kilometres, second-degree burns at 10 kilometers and third-degree burns destroying skin tissue at 8 kilometres, third-degree burns that cover over 24% of the body will likely be fatal without quick medical care these distances are variable depending on the weather and what clothing you're wearing white clothing. For example, white can reflect some of the energy well, darker clothes absorb it at its centre .
The Hiroshima explosion was calculated to be 300 thousand degrees Celsius which is nearly 300 times hotter than the temperature bodies are cremated. The radiation from the blast also behaves like sunlight. So object cast shadows where the radiation does not directly hit but most of the energy released in the nuclear explosion is the blast which makes air away from the area of the explosion which creates a sudden change in air pressure that consequently crush objects.
If we use a 1 Megaton bomb as an example again, within a 6 kilometre radius there would be an estimated 180 tons of force on the wall of every two-story building with wind speeds of almost 255 kilometres an hour within a 1 kilometre radius. The peak pressure is four times greater and wind speeds reached 756 kilometres an hour. The human body can resist this amount of pressure. However the winds would create fatal collisions with nearby objects so deaths would largely be from collapsed buildings.
All this at one Megaton compare that with the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated the 50 megatons, Tsar Bomba dropped on an isolated island in Russia and you are looking at 3333 Hiroshima bombs combined. If you happen to survive all this now you have to worry about radiation. Ionizing radiation at the centre of a nuclear bomb has enough energy to pull electrons from atoms.
If India and Pakistan went to war, this would do huge damage after the nuclear exchange 5 megatons of Blackrock would immediately enter the atmosphere causing global temperatures to fall and receive 9% less rain annually. Though these changes sound small they could be enough to trigger crop failures and famine a separate study estimated two billion people would starve in the bomb war.
Source: The Guardian
Source: Cornell University
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Data as of : March 2, 2016
