the prospect of nuclear conflict once
unthinkable
is now back within the realm of
possibility a single modern nuclear
weapon hitting in a major american city
would be many times worse than the
hiroshima and nagasaki it would be
a
historic destruction of unbelievable
proportions 69 percent of americans
surveyed said they are worried the
invasion of ukraine could lead to
nuclear war and they fear that we could
be at the beginning stages of world war
iii
but the biden administration is assuring
americans the threat isn't critical we
are assessing president uh putin's uh
directive and at this time we soon see
no reason to change our own alert levels
even before the invasion of ukraine
over the past few years the norms and
the agreements that kind of put
guardrails on nuclear weapons have
really eroded it's a weapon that's not
designed to kill soldiers
it's designed to destroy cities or take
out critical infrastructure if you are a
activist that cares about climate change
or
reproductive health care or government
spending like you should care about
nuclear weapons as long as these weapons
are balanced possibilities will always
be there if they will actually lose so
while a nuclear attack is very unlikely
here's how it would hypothetically look
and how the u.s could respond
researchers estimate that there are
approximately 12 700 nuclear weapons
around the world spread across nine
different countries the united states
russia france china the united kingdom
pakistan india israel and north korea
the u.s and russia hold the majority as
of 2022 the u.s has more than 5 400
nuclear weapons while russia has close
to 6 000. the total explosive power of
all the nuclear weapons today is so
large that if you took a hiroshima bomb
and dropped it every two hours 12 times
a day every day starting in 1945 on
august 6th up till today you still
couldn't use up our current arsenal in
terms of its explosive power even to use
one single
nuclear weapon would already have
devastating humanitarian consequences
researchers academics and advocacy
groups have written reports detailing
what a hypothetical attack could look
like there would be blast there would be
radioactivity and there would be fires
and those would be horrific and
horrible direct effects on the people
where the bombs would be dropped in 2014
the dutch peace organization pax put
together a report examining what would
happen if a nuclear bomb exploded in a
cargo ship in the port of rotterdam in
the netherlands where pax is based susie
snyder was one of the authors of that
report and we took it at the least
impactful way it could explode which is
at the grounds level you know it's not
dropped from the air
so it minimizes fallout it minimizes
blast 8 000 people dying immediately
will find themselves within one
kilometers of distance others suffering
from severe burns other injuries and
then there's of course the radiation
which over the course of a few days
would result in a death of another
estimated 60 000 people and double that
amounts
would maybe survive but it would have
less than health consequences location
can significantly change how destructive
an explosion is so you have an explosion
on wall street you're going to have
blast damage
probably into the lower east side into
the east village that far away and
you're going to have fire damage maybe
upper east side maybe even up to harlem
and that's in new york where the design
and the the buildings of new york
actually contain things a great way if
it's a smaller city a lower city a city
that's more spread out we did our study
around rotterdam rotterdam does not have
a lot of skyscrapers so the blast damage
and the impact of the firestorm is much
greater if something like that happens
no adequate medical response
would be possible there's a high number
of deaths
the destruction of
infrastructure and then of course
because of the radiation
medical personnel would not be able to
come close and attend to those in need
the plans i've seen in the us the female
plans are you you isolate the the center
the very center of the explosion you
don't allow emergency services in there
and you just that's just it you hope
people can help each other if pull each
other out of rubble and you triage
around that where you can have more
services in the broader concentric
circles the further out but because that
fireball also sets everything on fire
and goes out from there a fire storm
might erupt if putin feels that his
efforts are stalled there's the
possibility of a desperation move you
could use a nuclear weapon in a
demonstration strike
outside in a rural area or even at sea
just to say look i've got these weapons
and i could use them
i personally think that's not that
likely because that to me would signal
ear resolution what's more likely is
that he could use
a nuclear weapon on a ukrainian target
use it on a city and then demand that
ukraine government has unconditional
surrender that's what we did in 1945 at
hiroshima and nagasaki i believe that
that would be a war crime beyond the
immediate catastrophe a nuclear attack
would have a serious long-term impact on
the planet a 2014 report from the
international campaign to abolish
nuclear weapons concluded that a nuclear
blast anywhere could lead to the
collapse of public services
infrastructures which would disrupt the
entire economy including communication
networks and food supplies if there was
a nuclear war
bombs would be dropped on cities and
industrial areas which would burn
and the fires would produce smoke which
would be pumped up into the atmosphere
and a lot of it would get up into the
stratosphere where there's no rain to
wash it out and so the amount of climate
change we would get would depend on how
much smoke there would be once our food
supplies ran out if we couldn't grow any
more food there would be famine and so
many more people could die in the rest
of the world for example if there was a
war between the us and russia
more people in china could die from
starvation and then the u.s and russia
combined survival is going to become the
number one most important thing that we
will have left if we ever do see a
full-blown nuclear war if the u.s or an
ally nation were attacked with a nuclear
weapon there's a chance the u.s would
respond with a nuclear attack of its own
the defense department runs exercises to
try to simulate various military
scenarios in order to practice how it
would respond these exercises are called
war games war games are used by
academics by people in government to
basically lay out a scenario that could
happen and go through it step by step to
see how things might play out sometimes
these war games simulate a nuclear
attack on either the u.s or one of its
allies in february 2020 the pentagon
disclosed it had conducted a military
exercise which simulated what it called
a limited nuclear exchange with russia
according to a senior defense department
official this exercise featured a
hypothetical scenario where russia
attacked a nato territory in europe the
military personnel undergoing the
exercise decided to respond with a
nuclear weapon but these war games don't
always end in a nuclear response from
the us the journalist fred kaplan
reports on a
2016 war game held inside the obama
white house in which the russians
intervened in one of the baltic
countries a nato country and they used a
single nuclear weapon against a nato air
base trying to end the war the united
states had to decide what would we do
under that circumstance and they made a
decision in the first round that we're
going to respond conventionally in a
large-scale retaliation presumably
against the base from which the russians
had launched this initial nuclear attack
that to my mind was the appropriate
thing to do to be tough
firm but to de-escalate rather than
escalate the war but in the second round
of that war game military personnel
undergoing the exercise reportedly
decided to respond with a nuclear
exchange but when told if we the us uses
a nuclear weapon on russian territory
they will consider that to be an attack
by the united states and will respond
attacking the united states directly
and so in this war game
the principles reportedly chose to use
nuclear weapons
and targeted them at belarus rather than
russia trying to stop escalation even
though belarus wasn't involved in the
initial war game operation
in the united states the president has
the sole authority to order the use of
nuclear weapons using what is frequently
referred to as the nuclear football the
president is the only person who makes
the decision to launch those weapons and
sometimes they have as little as seven
minutes to make that choice which
doesn't really allow for a lot of
critical thinking presidential
administrations typically publish a
nuclear posture review within the first
year in office this document outlines
the white house's policy on the use of
nuclear weapons and arms control
president biden as a candidate said that
he supported a policy of sole purpose
which is the only purpose of nuclear
weapons should be to deter the use of
nuclear weapons
as of april 5th 2022 the blind
administration has not released its
nuclear posture review to get an idea of
what to expect from the bind
administration experts looked to the
obama white house for precedent while
the obama administration pledged in its
posture review to accelerate efforts to
prevent nuclear terrorism it did not go
as far as adopting a sole purpose policy
i think already we were not expecting
the biden administration to adopt this
policy of sole purpose
because of the
current climate which you know even
before the actual war was very bad with
russia as well as concerns about china's
growing arsenal and
a concern that our allies who rely on us
for their defense would be unnerved
there's a paradox
when it comes to nuclear deterrence
nuclear deterrence works only if an
adversary believes that you might
actually execute a nuclear attack if you
are attacked first
so the u.s government and other
governments practice
nuclear war all the time
so that we are confident that we could
retaliate if necessary that creates an
inherent tension because adversaries
don't know whether we would only use
nuclear weapons in retaliation or
whether we might use them first the
theory of mutually assured destruction
has been around for almost as long as
nuclear weapons have and we have been at
risk of nuclear war for as long as
nuclear weapons have been around there
have been many efforts to create
international agreements in order to
reduce risk the treaty on the
non-proliferation of nuclear weapons was
an international initiative first
launched in 1968 by the united nations
its goal is to work toward a world
without nuclear weapons a total of 191
states have joined the treaty including
five nuclear weapon states states agreed
to negotiate nuclear disarmament and
also work towards reducing their nuclear
but that's not happening on the contrary
actually states are all nuclear armed
states are continuing
to modernize their nuclear arsenals also
and spending
a lot of money on us as well the u.s and
russia also signed a separate agreement
in 2010 called the new start treaty it's
a treaty that's still enforced today and
in fact that is the only treaty
right now that regulates and limits u.s
and russian nuclear forces 18 times a
year
united states inspectors go to russian
territory and you know literally look at
their strategic nuclear weapons and vice
versa now these inspections have been
paused because of covid but not because
of the political situation and in fact i
think that the inspections will be
resuming soon and there are other means
of you know verification provided for in
the treaty including we send each other
notifications every time a
a delivery vehicle a plane
a sub an icbm that's mobile if it leaves
with the place where it normally is we
send it instant notification to russia
so we we have complete pictures at all
times of where each side's nuclear
weapons are i personally would like to
see the united states move towards a no
first use policy i just think this is
not the time to be doing that right now
given this particular crisis i do think
that we should
say that we will
respond appropriately
we will never target
civilian targets
and that we will
use our nuclear forces against military
targets only
in response to grave threats to national
security i am not saying that nuclear
war would end the world um it would just
end the world as we know it
but humans are resilient creatures
and we
we know how to work together when we
have to