First you'll have to know what happens when an atomic bomb explodes
You will know when it comes. We hope it never comes
Ready, it looks something like this
In
1947 an international group of researchers called the Chicago atomic scientists began publishing a magazine titled The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
This group of scientists had previously worked on the Manhattan Project a world war two research and development
undertaking tasked with producing the world's first nuclear weapons
They succeeded in their research and ended up creating two atomic warheads
fat man and little boy
The cover of the first edition of The Bulletin included a clock in the background with the minute hand at seven minutes before midnight
To many people this may just seem like another normal clock not representing anything special, but this clock is quite the opposite
This isn't any normal clock this clock represents utter anthropogenic global catastrophe which might be confusing to here
So let me word it like this
The clock represents total obliteration by the hands of mankind
since published in
1947 The Bulletin has updated the minute hand of the clock every year
The hand can move both forwards and backwards and does so according to many factors nuclear tension global warming and many other things in
1947 the clock was at 7 minutes to midnight in
1963 12 minutes in 1991 17 minutes
But today in 2018. We aren't 20 minutes away. We aren't 10 minutes away. We aren't five minutes away
We're two minutes away
Two minutes from midnight two minutes from complete obliteration
Today when discussing the destructive power of nuclear weapons or asteroids or any large-scale
Detonation we tend to measure them by how much TNT is needed to produce an equivalent explosion
For example fat man and little boy the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During World War two were at the time the most powerful and most destructive weapons ever made
Fat man was a plutonium bomb and had a blast yield of over 21 kilotons or over 21,000 tons of TNT
Little boy on the other hand was a uranium bomb and had a blast yield of over 15 kilotons
However, these explosions didn't exactly reach their full potential
see fat man was jam-packed with about six and a half kilograms of plutonium, but when it detonated over the city of Nagasaki
only about one kilogram of that material actually fissioned a
little over 16%
Not bad little boy on the other hand was a lot worse see contained over 64 kilograms of enriched uranium
However, whenever dropped over Hiroshima less than one kilogram of that uranium actually fissioned that's a little over 1%
Even though neither of these bombs lived up to their full potential the fissioning of less than 2 kilograms of plutonium and uranium
Was enough to kill over
200,000 people
People used to live here and then in a blink of an eye. There are ghost towns
And that was 1945 and since then over
125,000 nuclear weapons have been made that are much much more powerful than both fat man and little boy combined in
1961 the Soviet Union detonated a hydrogen bomb over the remote Siberian wilderness
This bomb had a yield of not 15,000 tons, not 21,000 tons. Not even 100,000 tons
It had a yield of over 50 million tons of TNT
the bomb has many names project 7,000 product code to 0-2 RDS 220
But the majority of people know this as the Tsar Bomba
When the Tsar Bomba was detonated
The mushroom cloud from the explosion exited the layer of the atmosphere that we live in and stretched far into the mesosphere
The mushroom cloud was over 64 kilometers high that's over seven mount everest stacked on top of each other
The explosion could be seen from over 300 kilometres away and this shock wave from the blast broke window panes nearly
1000 kilometers away from the explosion
the shock wave circled the planet three times before it finally died out and this wasn't even the most powerful version thought of
The bomb was actually initially planned to be 100 megatons which amounts to 100 million tons of tnt
It was eventually decided against as a full 100 Megaton explosion could have easily sent the world into a global nuclear winter
However, the fact that the bomb was theorized and nearly became a reality is truly terrifying
Superimposing the 100-megaton explosion over popular cities around the globe really puts the destruction into perspective
If 10 of these bombs were detonated over the world's most populated cities the casualties start to become horrifying
The use of just ten of these bombs on those specific cities could cause almost as many deaths in just one day as there were
Fatalities from the combined total of every war and the 20th century
From just ten of these bombs
Today however in 2018 there are an estimated
15,000 nuclear weapons in the world on standby waiting to be launched at any moment and
If or when these bombs are used it won't just be one. It won't be ten it will be all of them
See if two countries that have access to nuclear weapons end up in a conflict in that conflict
Escalates to the point to where these nukes are used
There's no reason for either side to hold back
Because if one side fires one nuke towards the other why would the other side only send one back?
There isn't some written rule that says you have to play fair. No, not at all. It's quite the opposite
Studies have been conducted on the idea of a regional nuclear war between the two countries of Pakistan and India
Not only would deaths be inevitable from just that region. This would affect every last person on the planet
These countries have about 200 nukes combined if all of these weapons were used and pinpointed to the right cities
It's more than likely that you could see upwards of more than 100 million casualties in just those countries alone
The fallout from these weapons that is the radiation that has spread throughout the air after the bombs go off
Would be enough to finish off most of the population of those countries if anyone was even alive after the initial impact
But that's only the beginning of the problem the smoke and dust from these bombs will spread much further than just India and Pakistan
Nuclear fallout would make its way into the atmosphere and end up coating the planet in a layer of smoke in dust
This would ultimately block out most of the sun's rays that reach the planet which would end up causing the failure of plants and crops
That all humans and life need to survive
black rain would fall from the sky rain polluted with radiation and dust
The fallout from these bombs would cause even more casualties than the initial explosions themselves
from only 200 news
Compare this 200 to the total number of nuclear weapons in the world today and you'll find that it's barely over 1%
1% of the entire nuclear arsenal of the planet in the perfect circumstances is
enough to cause over 1 billion deaths
In 2008 at Oxford University the future of humanity Institute conducted a survey among participants at the University
Asking them to make their best guess at the chance on possible extinction level events before 2100
The results of this survey actually covered the threat of a nuclear
Armageddon and placed the estimates of at least 1 billion people dead by the hands of nuclear weapons at 10 percent and
Placed the odds of complete human extinction by nuclear weapons at 1 percent
by 2100
1% doesn't seem that high though one in a hundred chance
But think about this the chance of you dying in an airplane accident is one and 11 million
The chance of you dying by lightning is one in 84,000
the chance of humanity being wiped out by
Nuclear weapons is more likely than you died from almost anything else other than heart disease and cancer
This 1% assumes the worst scenario possible
The conflict you hear about more often involves the countries of the United States and Russia
who respectively own over 90 percent of the nukes that exists today if
For some reason these two countries went to war with each other. The results definitely wouldn't be good
Should the United States and Russia go into a full-scale nuclear war with both sides throwing everything they have at each other
This may as well be the end of civilization as you know it
See the goal of a war of that magnitude isn't for any one side to win
It's to make sure the other side
Loses and the best way to make sure that the other side loses is not to wait to see them stand next to you on
the podium
But rather take them out of the picture completely
And that's exactly what the goal of this war would entail
on top of the massive number of nukes dropped on major cities across both countries
Agricultural centers hospitals schools and many more facilities would be destroyed to ensure that both sides endure the most suffering
Both sides know that this isn't a game that has a pause button
That once you pick up the controller, you can't put it back down
Once a nuclear warhead is confirmed to have been sent to either side the idea of a nuclear holocaust becomes a reality
today the Doomsday Clock is the lowest that it has ever been and
should we leave the issues at hand unchecked the clock will inevitably keep ticking forward and
The book reasons the person´s author Derek perfect. Posed the following question compare these three outcomes
Peace a nuclear war that kills 99 percent of the world's population or a nuclear war that kills 100 percent of the world's population
- could be worse than one and three could be worse than two
But the question is which is the greater of these two differences
If we find ourselves in a full-scale nuclear war, is it even worth trying to survive?
Because in the end if you survive
No one will be there waiting for you
The global nuclear winter that would come from this would leave almost every major city uninhabitable for years to come
The 1983 movie wargames is set in America during the midst of the Cold War it
discusses many possible outcomes of nuclear wars of various magnitudes
And it there is a quote that states
And I find that that really fits the situation
The only way to survive and come out on top at the end of the day is not to play the game in the first
place
because
Should you participate the clock ticks over the midnight?
You