by Fred Reed for the Saker blog
Pleasurable excitement ripples through the usual boredom of Washington, and the resident curiosities enjoy exquisite frissons, over the possibility of nuclear war over the Ukraine. Some official of the EU, or maybe it was the mediocrity in the White House with the truculence problem, but anyway one of the geniuses ruling the planet’s fate has said that if Russia used nukes, the Russian army would be destroyed, grrr, bowwow, woof. Exactly how it would be destroyed, the sayer didn’t say. Anyway, the threats and counterthreats swirl around the idea that a nuke war between Russia and the West might occur. Maybe, with tactical nukes in the Ukraine, about which nobody gives a rat’s nether region. The world is full of damned fools.
But:
The general staffs of both Russia and China are, whatever else you may think of them, sane. They know of America’s massive nuclear forces. They are not going to launch an atomic war. Sane behavior cannot be relied on with Washington’s second-rate lawyers, but the generals in the Pentagon are not crazy. They like hobbyist wars and big budgets, but if Biden ordered a nuclear strike, they would be likely to suddenly remember that Congress has to declare war and, seeing that their radar screens were empty of incoming missiles, and say, “Mr. President, we are not authorized to do that.” And recommend a committee.
what would such a war be like? Let’s guess.
America is fragile. We don’t notice because it works smoothly and because when a local catastrophe occurs—earthquake, hurricane, tornado—the rest of the country steps in to remedy things. The country can handle normal and regional catastrophes. But nuclear war is neither normal nor regional. Very few warheads would serve to wreck the United States beyond recovery for decades. This should be clear to anyone who actually thinks about it.
Defense is impossible. Missile defenses are meaningless except as money funnels to the arms industry. This is not the place to go into decoys, hypersonics, Poseidon, maneuvering glide vehicles, bastion stationing, MIRV, just plain boring old cruise missiles, and so on. Coastal cities are particularly easy targets, being vulnerable to submarine-launched sea-skimming missiles. Washington, New York, Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle for starters, all gone.
A modern country is a system of systems of systems, interdependent and interconnected—water, electricity, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, transportation, pipelines, and complex supply chains. These are interconnected, interdependent, and rely on large numbers of trained people showing up for work. Modern warheads are not the popgun squibs of Hiroshima. Talking of repair any time soon after the nuclear bombing of a conurbation is foolish because the city would have many hundreds of thousand of dead, housing destroyed, massive fires, horrendously burned people with no hope of medical care, and in general populations too focused on staying alive to worry about abstractions like supply chains.
The elimination of transportation might cause more death than the bombs. Cities, suburbs, and towns cannot feed themselves. They rely on a constant, heavy influx of food grown in remote regions. This food is shipped by rail or truck to distribution centers, as for example Chicago, whence it is transshipped to cities like New York. Heavy megatonnage on Chicago would disrupt rail lines and trucking firms. Trains and trucks need gasoline and diesel which come from somewhere, presumably in pipelines. These, broken by the blast, burning furiously, would take time to repair. Time is what cities would not have.
What would happen in, say, New York City even if, improbably, it were not bombed? Here we will ignore the likelihood of sheer, boiling panic and resultant chaos on learning that much of the country had been flattened. In the first few days there would be panic buying with shelves at supermarkets being emptied. Hunger would soon become serious. By day four, people would be hunting each other with knives to get their food. By the end of the second week, people would be eating each other. Literally. This happens in famines.
Most things in America rely on electricity. This comes from generating plants which burn stuff, usually natural gas or coal. These arrive on trains, which would not be running, or in trucks, not likely to be running. They depend on oil fields, refineries, and pipelines unlikely to function. All of the foregoing depend on employees continuing to go to work instead of trying to save their families. So—no electricity in New York, which goes dark.
This means no telephones, no internet, no lighting, and no elevators. How would this work out in a city of high rises? Most people would be nearly incommunicado in a lightless city. Huge traffic jams would form as people with cars tried to leave—to go where?—as long as gasoline in the tank lasted.
Where does water come from in New York? I don’t know, but it doesn’t flow spontaneously to the thirtieth floor. It needs to be pumped, which involves electricity, from wherever it comes from to wherever it has to go. No electricity, no pump. No pump, no water. And no flushing of toilets. River water could be drunk, of course. Think of the crowds.
In all likelihood, civil society would collapse by the end of the fourth day. The more virile ethnics would surge from the ghettos with guns and clubs to feed. Police would have disappeared or be either looking after their families or themselves looting. Civilization is a thin veneer. The streets and subways are not safe even without a nuclear war. The majority would be unarmed and unable to defend themselves. People who had never touched a gun would suddenly understand the appeal. If you think this would not happen, give my best to Tinker Belle.
Thus it would not be necessary to bomb a city to destroy it, only to cut it off from transport hubs for a couple of weeks. An attacker would of course destroy many cities in addition to necessary infrastructure. Those who plan nuclear wars may be psychopaths, or just insular geeks fiddling with bloodless abstractions, but they are not fools. They have carefully calculated how to most seriously damage a target country. In no more than a couple of months, perhaps two hundred million people would starve to death. Do you think this fantastic? Tell me why it is fantastic.
Parenthetically, in my days of walking the E-ring in the Pentagon, I read manuals on how to keep soldiers fighting after they had received lethal doses of radiation. They don’t die immediately and, depending on dosage, might be administered stimulants to keep them on their feet, or so the manuals said. These manuals also discussed whether these walking dead should be told that they were about to die. The authors used the evocative phrase “terrain alteration” to describe landscapes with all the trees lying on their sides, and we have all heard of “overkill.” After a nuclear war, millions would slowly die of radiation—read up on Nagasaki and Hiroshima—and burned corpses would rot in the streets, too numerous for burial by survivors with other things on their minds.
How would the next season’s crops be planted? Answer: they wouldn’t be. Where would fertilizer come from? Parts for tractors, trucks, harvesters? Making these requires functioning factories which require electricity, raw materials, and workers. If the attacker chose to hit agricultural lands with radiation-dirty cobalt bombs, these regions would be lethal for years. Nuclear planners think about these things.
Among “defense intellectuals,” there is, or was when I covered such things, insane talk of how America could “absorb” a Russian first strike and have enough missiles in reserve to destroy Russia. These people should be locked in sealed boxes and kept in abandoned coal mines.
Note also that Biden, Blinken, and Bolton, bibbety bobbety boo, and their families, live in DC, the priority target. While the rats are aboard the ship, they won’t sink it. If they are discovered boarding a Greyhound out of Washington at three a.m., dressed as washerwomen, it will be time to worry.
Petraeus said today that NATO may intervene even if Russia dos not use nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Russia attacked Ukrainian energy facilities today with greater ferocity than they did on October 10.
Nikolaev and Odessa will be liberated this winter. At which point it’s game over. But Western MSM will say these two cities have been taken by Russia because it is losing on the battlefield.
Petraeus is a bona fide idiot…
I agree. Whatever General Betrayus tasted in Paula Broadhead rotted his brain.
If he ever had one.
Yes, he literally is an idiot. Programed to sentence a force of thousands to slaughter… merely to serve as kindling for the murder of humanity itself?
The bulk of NATO is already economically destroyed. Hasn’t NATO already done enough damage to itself?
How far could they get if the lights got turned off in Poland?
It would depend on what was used to turn Poland’s lights out.
Just a thought, in my opinion, with the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, where the west basically declared war on Germany, Germany must have finally come to the conclusion that it has no friends. That’s three (3) red lines crossed. Germany may have already gone back to Russia and made a deal. Another red line crossed. Together with Russia, take Poland out of the picture. Divide Poland up. Half and half. Build a new pipeline. Call it “Nord Stream 3.” See who blows that up. That comes to eight (8) red lines. Sixteen (16) red lines crossed if you count red lines as red lines. I’ve probably lost tract of exactly how many red lines have been crossed.
But do red lines really matter anymore, or are they part of the old narrative. The problem here, in my opinion, is that current world population makes conventional warfare too expensive and too impractical to carry out. You’re not killing millions anymore. You are killing billions; or have to if you want to achieve anything. That leaves nuclear war.
Proverbial “You” (“Them”) killing millions, billions of “Us”. Like in zombie apocalypse type of Life is not a game, They should better be planning for the time when Us start to routing out Them.
Happened before, will be happen again. Soon.
I confess to not understanding what Dave Petraeus is playing up to. He’s one of the brainiest guys to graduate at The Academy, and in a class extra full of brainy guys. He has always been well-liked by his peers. He has been widely admired in the Army up and down the ranks. His nickname at The Academy was Peaches. He married his Supe’s daughter!
Paula got to him, obviously, so did Obama — who in their right mind takes CIA under Obama, or anyone? — and so did CIA: they got him fired because he wanted them to do their job, work, provide actual intelligence.
Nor is Dave alone in West Pointers of high rank who flit right past realities to champion wishes dictated by partisan ideologies. Barry McCaffrey comes to mind, a man in his late years wittingly oblivious to facts, even military facts. I do not understand it. But there it is, not even trying to hide in plain sight.
Some years ago I asked a West Pointer of earlier vintage than Dave and Barry why such as Barry ignore their training, knowledge, and experience to parrot political narratives. He responded, “Maybe it’s just because they get used to the perks of high rank and want to keep them.” I don’t know. But it sure is disappointing to hear otherwise fine men toeing party talking points. General Mac Arthur never did that. Neither did a host of other Generals and Admirals of earlier days.
In India there is a saying: when the end is near, reason goes back. In the case of Dave and Barry and so many others, I would take that saying to mean that reason has fled them because the end of the leader cadre to which they belong — the Euro-American “elites,” D-R UniParty — is near.
Great summary.
Needs to be widely disseminated.
True dat. Most people I know (functioning moron seems to be the level of society these days) seem to believe the lie that a few tactical nukes are no big deal. Too much Hollywood and corporate brain washing.
Bravo… excellent work Fred.
Only a few paragraphs with an awful lot of ground covered and a host of home truths.
Cheers and thanks
Col
How did we wind up even talking about nuclear never mind planning for it? All this cause of the midterm elections? Steps should be taken to make political office back into a service to America instead of hitting the mother lode.
It’s now a prerequisite to have obvious serious conflicts of interest in order to have any voice anywhere. Those who object to the narrative stand to lose all versus those with all voting to destroy the rest of humanity. Negotiate, hell no. The next guy who says to me well ya gotta go somehow is gonna get clocked.
It’s the creepiest, sadistic, and diabolical thing I’ve ever read on The Saker. Truly the antichrist is near.
Lo estoy difundiendo en español entre mis contactos.
The Anti-Christ (Dajjal in Islam) will only appear after Armageddon / Al Malhamah Al Kubro which is translated into great war where 99% of combatants will be killed, which can only happening from Nuclear weapons direct impact (explosion) and after impact (Nuclear winter). And yes, seeing how the world today full of turmoil and terror, the Anti-Christ is very near, since the Prophet Muhammad Pbuh himself already warned us 1400 years ago. Also, if the appearance of Anti-Christ is near it also means that the Imam (Mahdi) will be here too, not that long before the advent of Jesus Pbuh son of Mary Pbuh. So it is actually sign of a good thing to come, it seems bad because we are gonna die (most of uw all) and will not be able to see the Imam & Jesus Pbuh.
Thanks & stay safe bud.
Fred Reed in fine form. He has been there has done all that. I think he lives in Mexico now
” But nuclear war is neither normal nor regional. Very few warheads would serve to wreck the United States beyond recovery for decades. This should be clear to anyone who actually thinks about it.
Defense is impossible. Missile defenses are meaningless except as money funnels to the arms industry.”
Fred who is probably a few years older than me (though I didn’t do any of this war shit) makes a valid point. Though I don’t always agree, he can write a lot better than me
But I live in the UK. Liz Truss barely lasted 5 minutes. I think she has got kids – but I have never seen a photo of them, not that I would be interested.
Now Boris and Net Zero Carrie are back in town…
Has anyone seen a family photo of them?
Are their kids real – or dummies???
See if you can find a photo of their children, with their faces smiling at the camera.
When you have Children and Grandchildren, the first thing you do is to photograph them – and show all your friends – family everyone without any fear…Even the British Royal Family do that…
What are Boris and Carrie so afraid of that they can’t do a Family photo?
Is it the competition?
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2017%2F07%2F20170725_zaf_l75_005.jpg%3Fquality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%26w%3D1024&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=724c58470cecf3695c0c43b7ccc283d996650d3638788f00bab0ae27a89bdeee&ipo=images
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.okTq_eHUp0NNKPVkkLhHtQHaE0%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=5149a669886d9c56a3c75f2be467897514692e30df743b92670b244d15a2dc2d&ipo=images
There are enough bombs coming locally from mother nature to cripple the states one at a time, who needs to bother with foreign ones.
The psychopaths want to rule the universe not a small bunker for a few hundred years. Even all those supposed tunnels linking sites wont all survive, making drinking the same babies blood a tad boring. I think the fate of usa to shrink into oblivion like all empires before is set.
The USA just needs to abandon Empire that is sucking it dry, and could once more emerge as one of the wealthiest contries in a multipolar world. It might have to break down first, to get rid of the vampire (read FIRE) at it’s throat.
As an American, I hope against hope that the vast majority of American people wake up and take back this country. But that seems very unlikely. Empires fall, on average after 200+ years and we’ve had ours for years now. Not sure we can buck fate at this point.
When I was in junior high, John Hershey’s ‘Hiroshima’ was required reading. It should be still. Living through those duck and cover exercises and watch B&W films and filmstrips kept the possibility at the forefront of our brains. I guess they’ve stopped because people become anti-war. Great article.
Maybe, just a few neutron bombs on DC?
Perhaps aimed to miss the Pentagon, likely the only place in DC where you might still find sane people whose only corruption in the “old fashioned” way: “greedy patriots”.
I do like the thought of the Pentagon telling FJB, the Deep State and the Wall Street and London bankers and globalists that they can’t really launch those missiles because there are NO incoming missiles.
EMP blast will cause return to year 1900 very fast.
When I looked at Russia, and all they had prepared for war I asked myself: When will the war come :(
Maybe like this clip from We Russians by Zhanna Bichevskaya at minute 4:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m01lI-5kaI
The infrastructure is a mighty task to pull off in the best of normal times… throw in a nuclear war and guess what…?
You’d be surprised how much of the world is ignorant about the 100 Seconds to Dooms Day. My people are happily snapping up all new condo launches, shopping, eating.
This is an effective description of many of the prompt effects and somewhat longer term consequences of a nuclear war. I appreciate the imagery and details that, if seriously considered, should cause a reader to shudder.
But I would like to elaborate more on the likely scale of destruction based on the current nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia. And most importantly, we should not ignore the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war.
The US and Russia each have close to 6000 nuclear weapons/warheads in their nuclear inventories. On each side, a few thousand of these warheads are classified as retired and “scheduled for dismantlement” (but remain intact), a few thousand more are held “in reserve” (meaning they can be uploaded in a relatively short time), and each nation has about 1600 or 1700 warheads that are kept ready for immediate use. (See the Nuclear Notebook by Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for details on the US and Russian nuclear arsenals.)
Of these deployed and operational nuclear weapons, the US and Russia can each launch about 1000 strategic nuclear warheads (minimum explosive power of each warhead is 100,000 tons of TNT, or 100-kilotons) in a matter of a 15 minutes or less. The land-based ICBMs of the US and Russia can all be launched in a matter of a few minutes.
Both Biden and Putin are constantly followed by military officers carrying a “nuclear briefcase”, which is a communication device that allows either president to give the permission order to carry out a nuclear strike. The options can be for one warhead or an all-out attack with more than 1000 nuclear warheads. Unless the military refuses to obey the command, the attack will be carried out.
The US has roughly 350 cities of populations greater than 100,000; Russia has about 250 cities with populations of greater than 100,000. Each side can easily destroy every one of the cities of the opposing side (with an order that takes 5 minutes to carry out) and still have more than 1000 deployed and operational warheads for other targets.
Russia has about 700 strategic nuclear warheads that each have an explosive power of 800,000 tons of TNT. These are among the “launch-ready” weapons they can launch in a few minutes time. Each of these warheads, on an average weather day, will ignite fires over an area of 150 square miles. In a matter of 10-15 minutes, these fires will coalesce into a single gigantic nuclear firestorm, with air temperatures of 500 -600 degrees Fahrenheit and hurricane force winds blowing towards the center of the fire zone. No one in the fire zone will survive the fire. For details, see an article that I co-authored in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan?”. https://thebulletin.org/2015/02/what-would-happen-if-an-800-kiloton-nuclear-warhead-detonated-above-midtown-manhattan/
A war fought with hundreds or thousands of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons would ignite immense nuclear firestorms covering land surface areas of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. Peer-reviewed studies have calculated that up to 180 million tons of smoke and soot would be created by these nuclear firestorms. See the https://nuclearfamine.org/ and http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/robock_nwpapers.html for details.
Most of the smoke from these firestorms would rapidly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where it would rapidly spread around the earth. In a matter of a few weeks, a global stratospheric smoke layer would form, which would block up to 70% of warming sunlight from reaching earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere and 35% in the Southern Hemisphere.The smoke, being above cloud level, could not be rained out and it would remain in the stratosphere for a decade or longer.
The loss of warming sunlight would cause daily temperatures to fall below freezing every day for up to 3 years in central North American and central Eurasia. The intense cold weather would endure for many years, preventing crops from being grown. Most humans and animal populations would perish from starvation.
Unfortunately, those in charge of the US military have rejected the findings of the scientific studies on nuclear winter. I wrote about this for the Federation of American Scientists, see “Turning a Blind Eye Towards Armageddon — U.S. Leaders Reject Nuclear Winter Studies” at https://fas.org/2017/01/turning-a-blind-eye-towards-armageddon-u-s-leaders-reject-nuclear-winter-studies/
In 2010, at the UN meetings of the First Committee, I asked Rose Gottemoeller and Anatoly Atonov (during their briefing on New START) if they were familiar with the new studies on nuclear winter, which predict that a US-Russian nuclear war would wipe out most of humanity. Both answered “no”.
Perhaps they have learned more about nuclear winter since 2010. But it is willful blindness to chose to ignore such information and criminal insanity to start a nuclear war that would amount to a mass extinction event.
I do hope that Fred Reed is right about the Generals in Washington and Moscow, that they can prevent a nuclear war from taking place. But we are walking on very thin ice right now, with incompetent ideologues in Washington who clearly have no real understanding of the existential dangers of nuclear war.
Dear Dr Starr,
I first learned about how an all-out nuclear war would destroy the ozone layer from your learned articles and presentations. This means that the few remaining survivors following the decade long nuclear winter will be exposed to UV intensities that human beings were never evolved to cope with. Bottom line: epidemics of cancers and infertility and ultimate human extinction. This message needs to be shouted out from the rooftops.
Any proponents of nuclear war need to be locked up in insane asylums and the keys thrown away.
A couple of points: As a physicist who spent many decades in modeling, I know well that the model output is only the logical result of a bunch of assumptions. Any honest modeler knows that, and that only the most simple situations involving problems that are almost completely physics, are in any way reliable. Models using assumptions about human decisions and complex systems (e.g. atmospheric processes) are just a shot in the dark. Certainly, they are useful and often should be done, but the truth is that only those of us who have done this kind if work and are honest to the point of pain really appreciate how little the results actually mean.
Yes, human life may be destroyed by nuclear war, however, it depends heavily on what happens. Use of EMP is very logical, which would kill by starvation, etc. All out city bombing seems less likely to be, but let’s admit that we are guessing.
What seems clear to me is that nuclear war is likely whether it is catastrophically dangerous or not. Russia is up against the existential wall, and so are the globalists in a different way. Who do you suppose will give in? Better to wrap ones head around it whether you like it or not.
@perspective: “Better to wrap ones head around it whether you like it or not”
The message from your post appears to cast doubt on the prospect that nuclear war could lead to extinction, to simply accept nuclear war is definitely going to occur and that everyone should just passively accept it.
If so, you are part of the toxic nihilistic omnicidal establishment, one of those psychopaths who needs to be locked up in an asylum.
My position: nuclear war is not a foregone conclusion, we need to adopt the precautionary principle that it may cause human extinction, therefore all sane and decent people need to oppose nuclear war with every fiber of their being.
All aggravations have been from one side and one side only: the USA and its puppets.
The puppetmasters are the Neocons, they are the cancer of humanity.
There is a difference between passivity and assessment, though I understand your angst.
I worked for many years on various government committees, etc, and eventually became aware of the hidden movements that control political decisions. If you touch on these power circles, even a passing mention of taboo subjects will see you ostracized. If you don’t know what I mean, try talking sense with some wokies (ie the woke crowd) for a somewhat analogous situation.
People talk about the Deep State, but it is so much deeper than you can imagine with secret societies, vows of silence, etc. Machiavelli was a piker by modern standards.
My efforts lately are directed towards individuals rather than trying to change the system. Partly because I am out of political world. I find it appalling that people believe either a) that nuclear war will never happen, or b) that if it does, no one will survive.
Better to have at least some moderate knowledge of how the world works. For example, how many people know that nuclear fallout radiation decays to 10% in 2 hours, and 1% in two days? And then to 0.1% in two weeks. That simple knowledge can easily save your life.
@perspective:
” I find it appalling that people believe either a) that nuclear war will never happen, or b) that if it does, no one will survive”
I find you even more appalling, saying that
a) nuclear war will definitely happen and that
b) if it does, plenty of people will survive.
Nobody knows how things will unfold, but we know for damned sure that if global nuclear war happens it will not be worth surviving (unless you, ‘Perspective’, believe you can live well in you luxury bunker, to later emerge after radioactivity has decayed).
Nuclear war will be horrific beyond anybody’s worst imagination, it will be the end of civilisation and huge numbers of initial survivors, with the flesh falling off them, will envy the dead. Later survivors will face starvation and also envy the dead.
It is far better, indeed IMPERATIVE to assume that nuclear war is NOT an inevitability (it is being provoked by people hence can be prevented by people) and that it CAN cause human extinction (you cannot argue that it cannot), so that we are motivated to prevent it. There is only one option, prevention.
Perspective, you seem to be either
a) intimidated by fear of the deep state into passivity, which is fine. Most people are that, or simply disinterested. But why try to infect your cowardice and passivity on others, unless you are
b) a psychopathic instrument of the deep state trying to convince others to be cowardly and passive, in which case you need to be locked up and the key thrown away. You are appalling.
Are you a tool of the deep state “elite” aiming for a massive population cull? What else could explain your appalling attitudes?
The peer-reviewed articles predicting nuclear winter and the destruction of the protective stratospheric ozone following nuclear war, which you apparently dismissed in your first post, have been published in journals since 2008, with many more recent publications (see http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/CoupeNWjgr.pdf and https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay5478 and http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/IndiaPakistanBullAtomSci.pdf and http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/BardeenOzoneUV2021JD035079.pdf ).
The long-tern environmental consequences of nuclear war predicted in these studies are primarily functions of the enormous amounts of smoke and soot created by nuclear firestorms; they do not focus on radioactive fallout. Have you ever taken time to read or study any of this research, or do you simply dismiss it out of hand?
Journal studies are subject to criticism from all scientists; if they are found to.contain inaccuracies, they are corrected or withdrawn. These studies have undergone some revision during the last 14 years, but most of the corrections actually tended to increase the likelihood of the basic predictions, which state:
1) that the smoke and soot created by nuclear firestorms will be heated by sunlight, creating a self-lofting effect, which will cause most of the smoke and soot to rise about cloud level into the stratosphere,
2) the heated smoke will create temperatures near the boiling point of water, which will greatly accelerate the destruction of stratospheric ozone, leading to massive increases of UV light reaching the surface of the earth
3) a war fought with 100 atomic bombs (the size of those that destroyed Hiroshima), if detonated in large urban areas of Southeast Asia, would put enough smoke into the stratosphere to block 10% of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere. This would create temperatures colder than those experienced in the Little Ice Age, which would lead to crop losses and global nuclear famine killing up to 2 billion people
3) a nuclear war fought with the strategic nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia would put up to 180 million tons of soot in to the stratosphere, blocking 70% of sunlight and creating temperatures colder than those experienced at the height of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago. Crops could not be grown for many years, perhaps a decade or longer. Most people and animals would perish from starvation.
You also seem to infer that there would be no problem with radiation after several weeks of waiting in a fallout shelter. I would note that fallout would also be enormously elevated by the targeting and destruction of nuclear power plants. Nuclear reactors produce a much higher percentage of long-lived radioactive isotopes, such as cesium137 and strontium90, then are produced by nuclear detonations. The spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants contain many times more radioactivity than found in the reactor cores; this would be widely distributed by a direct attack on the nuclear power plants.
The radioactive exclusion and control zones at Chernobyl and Fukushima are primarily defined by the amount of cesium137 found in these areas. See the map of the Chernobyl exclusion and control zones at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#/media/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg
The key to the map shows that 40 curies of cesium137 will make an area into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. There are 88 curies per gram in cesium137, meaning that an amount of cesium137 less than half the weight of a US dime, if made into an aerosol and spread over 1 square mile will make that land uninhabitable for at least a century.
Each US spent fuel pool at US nuclear power plants holds something like 900 to 1000 pounds of cesium137, and this is likely the case for any spent fuel pool that uses high-density storage. That is why I don’t agree that nuclear power is “safe and clean”.
Dr Starr, you are a star!
You have utterly demolished the distorted perspective of ‘perspective’ who claims to be a physicist but is obviously nothing more than a troll
Steven Starr –
Excellent reply to support your case. I was making only a couple of points, which I will elaborate a bit. But first, I apparently did not make it clear that I am against nuclear war to the utmost and have worked against it for decades. In graduate school, I incurred the wrath of my professors for pointing out and publicizing well-documented weaknesses in nuclear power plant implementation. And yes, I agree and teach that these plants are one of the greatest threats associated with any type of war, simply because they are not fail safe against power failure and other damages. And, as you mentioned, they contain large quantities of long-lived isotopes.
Regarding the studies, I have no doubt about the quality of the work by you and others. Having served on journal editorial boards and as officer in various scientific societies, and as both a researcher and research director, I know the work that goes into a good study.
For the sake of any readers who are not scientists, I will offer a little history. The concept of modeling blossomed with the advent of computers. Before that, we estimated with equations solved by hand. Many processes do not have closed-form solutions (e.g. processes like convection flows which include instabilities), so computers were particularly useful to map out thousands of scenarios based in the different initial conditions and solve the problems probabilistically.
This computer-based approach is fantastic when the results can be compared to physical experiments. Modeling originally always included this dual aspect: model and then compare to reality. This process was repeated dozens or even hundreds of times to refine and validate the models.
Gradually, however, modeling was extended to processes that could not be tested. In the present case, for example, we have not had a worldwide nuclear war so the models can not be tested against reality. Instead, the models are weakly “validated” by looking at similar processes. They are thus our best guesses about what will happen. But they remain estimations, subject to the many assumptions involved in the inputs. Peer review means that some other scientists agree that the assumptions seem reasonable. It cannot, of course, prove that the predicted outcomes will in fact be observed.
Excuse me if I conveyed any sense that a nuclear war would not be horrible beyond belief. It would be under any circumstance. I am staunchly against it. But several decades of work as a physicist trains one to see with a clear eye: Not to see only what we want to be true, but what is actually occurring.
Russia will not, in my opinion, surrender in any conventional war scenario. On the other side, hidden government forces have ruled the world happily for decades or more. If they reach a point of no longer being in near total control, they not only lose their grip on unimaginable wealth and power, but stand a very real chance of prosecution by tribunals that are energized by the survivors of the millions who have already been murdered. That is why it appears to me that both sides are in an existential fight to the death. And in such fights to the death, the biggest weapons are not held back. This is only my opinion, but one formed by almost five decades of professional work fighting for peace, security, health, and honest science.
Personally, I pray daily for peace. As an Orthodox Christian, this is normal. However, I also believe it is good to keep one’s eyes open as to current realities. It is one thing to say that a nuclear war is so horrible that we should try with all of our effort to prevent it. And quite another thing to say that it is so horrible, that I will not consider and at least modestly prepare for it.
I have a little advantage in perspective in that, in addition to a long scientific career which included national and international committees, I have lived on three continents. Currently, here in Europe, the picture is not so bright as the more insular one I experience when in the U.S.
However, humans remarkably survived a cataclysmic event about 12000 years ago that changed the face of the planet (although saber-toothed tigers and several other large mammals did not). I do indeed believe that large numbers of humans will survive if there is a nuclear war.
Am I so foolish? At least I am in good company. Russia has, and is prepared to use, a large system of fallout shelters as are other countries. When I was a child, the US also maintained fallout shelters in large cities.
For the record, I do not have a fallout shelter, though think it would be worthwhile. And yes, knowing the decay rates of fallout is worthwhile because if you die from avoidable gamma ray and other fallout exposure, you certainly have no further chance to survive.
Now, the only way we will know whether your models are really, truly correct is in the case there is a worldwide nuclear war. But in that case, we will not be chatting on a blog about in which areas you were right or wrong. So as i sit here listening to increasing numbers of NATO jets rumbling over my head, I will share with you in advance where I stand: If your models prevent a nuclear war, I am a huge supporter! But if there is a nuclear war, I hope you have overestimated the effects. In either case, perhaps we can agree to work for a more peaceful world while dealing realistically with the one we have.
Yellowstone Caldera.
“Among “defense intellectuals,” there is, or was when I covered such things, insane talk of how America could “absorb” a Russian first strike and have enough missiles in reserve to destroy Russia.”
There are many preppers that think they’ll survive as characters in a mel gibson movie, when in reality, rural preppers will be the first targets. 82% of US population lives in cities. Thats about 280 million headed out to the rural areas after cities collapse. There will be no survivors, and an algamation of chinese/north korean/middle eastern armies will come in and start removing what natural resources not radiated, ie coal mines in east coast mtns, oil wells in dakotas/texas, etc, lumber, and so on.
Everyone would like to take over US, not destroying it like Germany, US is the most resourceful nation on Earth.
People may believe Alaska is what is valuable of US, but that is not true. There are a trillion mosquitos in Alaska.
– Thats about 280 million headed out to the rural areas
With the car full bed madrasses and cooking gears? It is not that easy to survive off-grid. One need a ton of gears and tools and knowledge about how to use it
you missed my point. Most of the rural areas throughout the US, are private property and already off limits to the 280 million starving US citizens fleeing the defunct cities. Do you think the farmers are going to allow their farms to be over run and destroyed? Outside of state and federal parks, which will be quickly over run, the only thing that waits urban people fleeing to rural areas in search of food/shelter will be more conflict, which is why there will be no survivors. jew social programming has seen to this.
You are just trying to rationalize your own lack of preparation as a model for other
– There will be no survivors
I have not heard about that theory before
– There are many preppers that think they’ll survive as …
Here you talk about (Alex Jones?) preppers as being naive. Next you will tell us Alex Jones has consistently missed out …
@kjell 108.
I conjecture that only the preppers that are currently living off grid away from urban cities have a chance of survival.
Back in February, the ramifications of a continued war with Russia elucidated the need for stocking up on food and using alternative energy as silly chains for further disrupted.
In May, I actively started storing food more as an attempt to offset food shortages. I bought seeds to grow next year. Then I bought 8 solar panels and a power storage unit to offset electricity costs and in case of power failure, as I live in a suburbs with 80 year old above ground power lines. It will power my furnace enough hours to warm the house. 4 days of clouds recently and the storage unit went down to 30%.
I am an active tent camper having camped across America because it’s affordable. So I have camping gear. Sleeping bags down to 20 degree weather are a necessity when it gets as low as 38 degrees.
None of that will make a difference if my urban area gets hit by a nuclear bomb. I do not have years of food stock, I don’t have 28 gallons of water needed per person per month. My alternative energy source would not last long. Solar panels, gas grill with two propane tanks, camp stove with spare tanks.
Bought the book, “Get Prepared Now” and learned how really hard it would be to survive for any length of time. Nuclear fall out will affect water supplies, though two 5 gallon buckets and soil obtained about 5 inches below nuclear contaminated soil can filter water of contaminated soil. But then it needs to be purified by boiling or bleach or chemicals.
As I cook and smells carry on the wind, and light eminates from my house because solar panels charge solar powered lights easily, it advertises to the hungry and cold that I have something. So then I have to defend that something. As people die from sickness, diseases set in and spread easily. I don’t have medical supplies to defend from that.
What is a civil society will descend into a rapacious society where others will turn on others in order to survive. How can it be otherwise?
My very intelligent son who’s practical knowledge of many things and the ability to fix, build, anything car related, home related, as he is a polymath, commented, all my preparation will be for naught if a nuclear strike occurs. Better off to commit suicide.
So these last seven months I have prepared for our existence to survive for maybe 6 months or a bit longer for a food shortage. With our skills and supplies on hand we might survive a bit longer than most in a nuclear fall out. I have some iodine and water purification tablets and know where spring water is accessible.
Getting out of my urban area will be very difficult if near impossible. Surviving in the wild long term would be impossible. I am realistic enough to acknowledge that.
Survival will be limited to a hardy few. Until people start to prepare for this, they are terribly unaware of what it will take to survive.
@appdom2
Your comment makes sense until you go racist with your fantastical claim that “an algamation of chinese/north korean/middle eastern armies will come in.” First, how would they get here in a nuclear-blown world? Second, why would they go to such trouble when they have resources of their own close to hand? Third, why not Mexicans, rural Blacks, Native Americans ‘coming in’. I mean if your fear of the “Other” is so intense, look close to home.
@appdom2
Your comment makes sense until you go racist with your fantastical claim that “an algamation of chinese/north korean/middle eastern armies will come in.” First, how would they get here in a nuclear-blown world? Second, why would they go to such trouble when they have resources of their own close to hand? Third, why not Mexicans, rural Blacks, Native Americans ‘coming in’. I mean if your fear of the “Other” is so intense, look close to home.
Yeah, Appdom is displaying a core American value where he projects what America is actually doing around the world onto its Official Enemies.
America has invaded multiple nations to steal their resources like Iraq (oil) or Syria (oil and wheat) or Libya (oil)–or wishes to invade if it could like Russia (natural gas and other resources) or China (rare earth minerals).
This is not to mention how the Anglo American colonizers stole the entire continent (Turtle Island and Aztlan) from Native Indians or Mexicans and currently occupy it today.
The American ruling class is a class of paranoid genocidal sociopaths, who will likely be responsible for bringing on the Apocalypse–but their are only an organic reflection of Americans themselves, who share the same values.
Psychological projection is a defining pathology of America as a nation.
Looking more like a false flag tact nuke in Ukraine followed by an American first strike. Even the generals will go along with it because they won’t know about the false flag. This strange feeling we all have now is the one that occurs right before civilizations suddenly collapse.
We are learning to except our fate.
Empire has a first strike doctrin, it also believes that tactical nukes can be used in a conventional conflict. It being declared that a Russian victory in Ukraine threatens “the rule based order” will probably suffice to consider it.
We also know that Empire have stated that a rival to hegemon will not be allowed to arise (exist ?).
The critical question is if the decision makers understand that it has already happened, that the rival has supremacy in critical military areas and that MAD still applies ?
The bombings will continue until morale improves.
Stiff upper lip from me, I survived the Coooooooooooovid PaaaaanDemic jab free and 2 tours of Walmart on Black Friday.
One tactical nuke on DC, preferably when the senile aquarium fish is addressing a jount session of professional looters, would go a long way towards solving a number of serious problems.
mini-subs with large nukes have already been placed off shore cities throughout the world. It’s standard military strategy. If they can think it up, and do it, then it has been done.
A nuclear war could be worse then this scenario; several years ago this blog presented an article describing Russian plans to use nuclear bombs to release the energy stored in the fault lines along the coasts, triggering giant tsunamis. They also had plans to bomb the Yellowstone caldera and try to trigger an eruption.
Another very alarming development is that Russia has streamlined its procedure for launching nuclear weapons, eliminating the human element. We only survived the Cuban missile crisis because of this human element. There was an incident where the U.S.S.R. falsely thought a nuclear attack was underway and a human stopped a response. Will we continue to be lucky today?
A frighteningly realistic scenario, reminiscent of the British film “Threads”, which I highly recommend along with its DVD commentary. As Fred aptly points out, modern “civilization” is heavily and intricately interconnected. Break even a few of those threads and pandemonium can emerge.
I can only hope that our US leadership will resist the “exceptionalist” urge to go all out, but I’m not confident of that. Left to this government, “the fate of all mankind … is in the hands of fools” [King Crimson].
Threads is a great movie and is on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Srqyd8B9gE
It was banned in Canada at one point, I think.
Once the nukes are fireing … All hitlers and communists can tell:
– Exactly as I told you
Thanks Fred. It is enlightening to remember that after the end of WW2, which the USSR had won long before the USA even joined in, the USA immediately turned against the evil commies and by 1960 was ready to bomb every city in the USSR. Read “From MAD to Madness”, Diana Johnstone’s release of the book by her father Paul Johnstone, fully involved in the planning of this process. The extremism of the USA as it seeks to retain control of the globe cannot be overestimated.
The Empire turned on their ‘ally’ even before the war was over. It is suggested that the bombing of Japan was ment as a warning to Stalin, more than having any actual military function.
De-classified archives show that the thinking of ridding the world of the red plague (China + Soviet) started in the aftermath of these nuclear bombings. It was calculated that they needed around 400 bombs to eliminate all towns over a certain size, resulting in the death of around 700 million people. This was however before the dager of nuclear fallout was know, and if implemented the death toll would be over a billion.
Fortunately enough, they never managed to speed up the industrial production to reach 400 bombs quicly enough.
– suggested that the bombing of Japan was ment as a warning to Stalin,
Hiroshima bomb was not the type of bomb Manahattan project worled on.
Then Stalin was given the blueprint of the bomb according to Joel Skousen.
Thanks for the book tip from Diana Johnstone BTW, she’s a great writer. I only know her from THE books about the Yugoslav conflict, can’t recall it’s title ATM.
Thank you. Good commentary. Well said.
Perhaps I read doubt, embedded within your thesis regarding whether any government possessing nuclear power would or would not use it.
I believe any government possessing nuclear weapons, if backed into a corner, will resort to the actual use of nuclear weapons. My focus lately is the United States and Russia, but both Israel and Iran are on my radar screen. China, too. North Korea as well.
What happens next depends a great deal upon how the midterm elections turnout in the United States come November. The sense of thing I get is that most Americans believe the two-party system is dead, and only one party runs the country — only politically, not so much at all in fact. The important take away, what the midterm elections will reveal, is the hand the government will be playing for the next two years.
My concern is that Russia’s next offensive will wipe out the Ukrainian army. NATO will feel the need to come to the rescue of Zelensky and Co., by stepping in and invading all of the Ukraine. NATO may invade with conventional forces, if NATO still really possesses any. The invasion route might be through Poland, with NATO testing whether it has crossed that red line Mr. Putin speaks so often about. If they still exist, these forces would then move westward. If NATO makes it as far as the recently incorporated Oblast regions that might be the final red line. Maybe. There are just too many red lines these days.
On the other hand, if the Ukrainian forces are wiped out in the next Russian offensive, and NATO is but an empty shell, then that is a corner the west has painted themselves into. The west has two choices at that point. It can surrender or resort to nuclear weapons.
If you watch the 1953 test fire of the nuclear cannon, “Atomic Annie,” basically what you see are the self-satisfied smiles of those in charge. “Look what we built.” I will let you be the judge.
https://youtu.be/XT5jo7aZzTw
“Those who plan nuclear wars may be psychopaths, or just insular geeks fiddling with bloodless abstractions, but they are not fools.”
“The world is full of damned fools.” You didn’t say just “fools.” You said: “damned fools.” That pretty much cinches it.
What do you really think?
From Pauwels a Belgo Ontarian writter about the new cold war, and how the US did not want a war with Germany(they sponsored with London), but with Japan, USSR..and even Mexico.
And why they only enter WWII so late.He confirms US love nazis because they are russophobe and usefull idiot of great capital. US is antisemitic not the opposite.
They only enter the war when they saw it was game over for hitler.
We are almost in the very same situation now.
Invade 404 to at least save Odessa and then a frozen conflict right like in Syria.
Why they love ZE nazis so much.
https://youtu.be/5l19Hrg_c_E
(french only)
Terrifying and at the same time enjoyable, great article, thank you!
Good to have you back Mr Reed.
The latest insanity from USA has it mooting it leading a group of volunteering and willing countries that it will coordinate ….. developing a moral kind of holy crusade mentality….presumably as a development from the friends of Ukraine supporters that eg held their jolly hocky sticks meeting recently in Ramstein . Ye gods.
This seems to be a wishful way of getting round Russia being able to claim Nato is directly involved Apart from this being semantics.. USA seems to say that if sufficient cause is found then Article 5 could be triggered.
Sounds awfully like desperation by lawyers to find legal reasons for action.. a parallel nato that is non nato …(like a shell company or one that is like one of those tax free havens in the Bahamas?)….remember how desperate the UK and USA governments was to find any “legal advice “however spurious that justified Iraq actions? Sounds very similar.
And yet as Caitlin Johnstone recently pointed out Westernaganda now calls it being a Putin appeaser to be against nuclear war.
That’s pretty much the same as back during Vietnam. If you advocated for anti-war and pro-peace you were labelled a “Commie sympathizer.” “Better Dead Than Red You Long-Haired Hippie Degenerate!” The primary difference back then is that the people who were anti-war and pro-peace – are today – the exact people labeling you and I as Putin Appeasers, Russian Stooges, and Red Ruskie Commies (many of these tools and fools have no concept that the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party pretty much disintegrated 30 odd years ago).
Yes – my Boomer compatriots with whom I protested with in the 60’s will now excoriate individuals who are anti-war/pro-peace as they wave their yellow and blue banners and cheer for the Neo-Nazis to exterminate every vestige of Russian culture and language that exists in Ukraine, pretty much right up to the point of advocating ethnic cleansing of all Ukrainian Russians – and all Russians in general. These are the same people who had a conniption fit over Mai Lai and Pol Pot’s Killing Fields. These are the same people who want open borders and have state funds to provide translators for 50 different languages so that an illegal aliens can obtain a driver’s license and welfare in the US. Well, except perhaps soon Russian immigrants will be persona non grata. Perhaps the Blue metro areas will stop providing Russian translators. “Evil Ruskie Commies,” they’ll mutter. (eye-roll) And if some swastika tatted fellows gun down a few tens or hundreds Russian immigrants or naturalized citizens throughout the United States? We’ll hear the media interview Ukie ‘refugees’ in the US who will state that those “Russian Orcs had it coming.” (head-shake) And “perhaps those Ruskies should be put in internment camps for their own protection.” Where have we heard that before?
How do people change like that? Even though I’m a veteran, I detest war. My fellow protesters in the 60s who probably never served a day in the military seem to be all pro-war nowadays especially if it means killing Russians (Chinese, ME/NA, Palestinians, Iranians and any one that the SecState labels as ‘the enemies!”) – well – as long as there is no dirt on their own hands. Wars are just so clean when you can urge your congress-critters and doddering president to send young men and women into a thresher (not their kids who are attending Ivy League schools or who are too fat, out of shape, or plainly too degenerate to be accepted into a US military with a bar set at the floor level) while diverting tens and hundreds of billions of dollars into a 404 Black Hole of a country. Of course, that money will find it’s way to offshore accounts and everyone building the US/NATO war machine will get paid. And they’ll get a place in a bunker too.
No – I don’t understand. Regarding war and human compassion, I’m the same person I was 50+ years ago.
Those I attended college with back at the end of the 1960s early 70s. I don’t know what demonic force entered these people. “Money money money, I want bling and stuff and cheap stuff and lots of it, America is the most exceptional nation, and if anyone disagrees we need to send the full force of our military to go “Over There” and kill them all so we don’t have to kill them “Over Here” (and other utter Bravo-Sierra brainwashing).
Yeah – I don’t get it. But unlike these fools, when WWIII rolls around and the first nukes take flight? I’ll be in the minority who will not be at all surprised. And I’m right with God. So bring it.
This quote by the author wraps it up with a thermonuclear ribbon and bow:
“Note also that Biden, Blinken, and Bolton, bibbety bobbety boo, and their families, live in DC, the priority target. While the rats are aboard the ship, they won’t sink it. If they are discovered boarding a Greyhound out of Washington at three a.m., dressed as washerwomen, it will be time to worry.”
Yep!
What is described re the impact of nuclear strikes on the USA rings true. Problem is Russia works also be levelled with pretty much the same impact.
It’s why it’s called MAD, mutually assured destruction.
Not to worry. Soon the USA will abandon Ukraine when the time is right and go for greener pastures, look for the USA to invade Haiti for the 8th time. Or maybe Panama again, I hear the Chinese are down there.
There is more at stake here. Empire is burning down EU, and trying to create a vitalized Intermarum on the borders of Russia. Ukraine and access to the Blacksea is important in this project.
Brother Fred seems to imagine that cities are targets. The US has long made a policy of bombing cities. But can this be said of the Russians? I doubt it. Terrorism isn’t the Ruskie way of war…and bombing cities is terrorism.
Rather, US cities are US military liabilities as seen from the standpoint of war-making.
The actual target of any war between US and RF are the command and control centers and the actual weapons and bases.
Thus, for example, Jim Creek…where there is no city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Creek_Naval_Radio_Station
Of course, in many cases, there are cities near targets, and targets inside cities.
see > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
Dead Hand… And It can happen. see also> https://portside.org/2015-11-01/okinawa-missiles-october
Do read on the Okinawa matter…very droll. Global suicide…
Thanks for an interesting/entertaining ( LOL ) essay on nuclear Armageddon, which Uncle Joe says now is definitely the joker in the deck. Thankfully for a lot of people here, population centers like NY and LA and etc. would all be targeted, I would think, so my guess is that there would be a few fewer Zombies still walking than Fred speculates on here. I live remotely in the woods, few neighbors, and think we would survive the initial blasts out here, but, my thought reading this is that maybe it is time to purchase that hand gun, as it is a lot easier to get the short barrel into my mouth than that of the AR 15, though I would bet I could manage that. Who would want to stick around after all that, waiting the dismal inevitable ? I rejoice on sunny days when they finally blossom out here, and after such a nuclear exchange we wouldn’t be seeing the sun for an estimated decade. So, no thanks.
Here for ones reading pleasure some eye witness accounts of the real thing from Dr. Cantelon:
In San Diego, I talked with Captain Eddy. He had been with the expedition in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952, when America exploded her first hydrogen bomb. In a sober voice, Captain Eddy said, “No one could visualize the awfulness of that sight unless he were there in person.” Two hundred miles above the Pacific, the mighty hydrogen bomb was detonated. The blast lighted up thousands of miles of Pacific sky. At Auckland, New Zealand, 3,800 miles away from the scene of the blast, New Zealanders said the ocean showed a reflection that was blood red. “The scientists present at the scene were dreadfully shaken,” said Eddy. “They thought they had set the heavens aflame with a chain reaction of exploding atoms that would surely go around the world.” On returning from his mission, Captain Eddy asked to be transferred to another department of service and was given a position in the field of seismology, studying earthquakes back in the South Pacific.
That there is a connection between atom bombs and earthquakes might sound humorous to some, but the facts allow little room for humour or ridicule.
On an island called Amchitka, southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, man sank a 53-inch shaft deep into the heart of the ground. On September 6, 1971, man created the largest man-made earthquake in history. The bomb he detonated in the island of Amchitka was 250 times more powerful than the one that had been dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion rocked not only the island of Amchitka; it caused the earth to tremor on the other side of the globe.
Professor Marcus Baath in Uppsala, Sweden, declared that the underground blast from Alaska caused his Richter scale to show a 7.4 earth tremor—in Sweden!
and of course lets not forget the Soviets who detonated their own devices. One, on October 23, 1961, was so large that the shockwave was reported to have encircled the earth three times.
and so a song Ride My See Saw, the Moody Blues.
https://youtu.be/jNBmYrEZv8c
https://genius.com/The-moody-blues-ride-my-see-saw-lyrics
Cheers
and of course lets not forget:
“Live happily with the woman you love through the fleeting days of life, for the wife God gives you is your best reward down here for all your earthly toil. 10 Whatever you do, do well, for in death, where you are going, there is no working or planning, or knowing, or understanding.* Eccle 9:9
Not to be trollish or picky, but errors of fact tend to undermine argument, and ” Two hundred miles above the Pacific, the mighty hydrogen bomb was detonated. ” is simply wrong. The explosion took place on the surface. The “bomb” was actually an entire building. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/first-hydrogen-bomb-180967074/
The “ideal” size for a nuclear gadget varies. But explosions bigger than necessary, say >500 MT, simply don’t provide any “useful” results, as they simply blow a larger chunk of the earth and atmosphere into space. https://youtu.be/TIoBrob3bjI (We’ll all go together…piano. Brother Tom..)
oooppps! for “500 MT” read “500KT”
Alaska.. oh boy…..a well known existing earthquake zone and they do that????
Consider the Oligarch feeling smug with his huge and expensive bunker in New Zealand.
Human offal such as Soros surround themselves with private armed military to protect them from the many millions of people who have had their lives destroyed as a result of said oligarchs activities. Think Blair and the Iraq war, Soros and his sabotage of the legal system with bought Attorney Generals.
The loyalty of these armed guards is bought with huge amounts of money.
When the bombs go off and everyone takes to their bunker, money no longer has any function and is worthless.
The armed guards will shoot the oligarchs as useless eaters and form a new hierarchy along with the technicians who can keep the generators, air conditioning, water purifiers, and food freezers running.
It won’t be quick, some of the military nasties might torture their oligarchs for a bit before they shoot them.
Buying loyalty breeds resentment.
I thought about that too.
Came to the conclusion that, if I were a billionaire, I had some sort of password or killswitch so no one of my guards could enter/exit the bunker, access food supplies etc. without me.
No idea if this is possible in real life.
Finger print or eyescan…they just kill you and cut off your hand. Although I don’t know if this still works after 4 weeks with a rotten cut off finger, haha.
Voice recognition software would be nice, but then they could torture you and demand you to record your voice for them.
But I guess there is a way and some billionaire probably thought of that.
Keep in mind that a character as servile and incompetent as Liz Truss, who couldnt do the very bare minimum tasks required of the PM position, also expressed an almost robotic mindless fearlessness with regard to the nuclear use question.
Truss is a particularly incompetent specimen, but the idea that vapid politicos who ride the largesse of rich special interests into positions of great power are so quick to reduce nuclear cataclysm to the quick quotidian is terrifying. If they cant be trusted to protect pensions, what can they be trusted with when it comes to nuke holocaust?
Well said TGL. Those who are most nonchalant about nuclear war are the most psychopathic of specimens. The irredeemably stupid Truss casually spoke about the prospect of our nuclear extermination (to applause) with cold, dead eyes. The banality of evil.
I remember an incident that took place maybe two decades ago in the US. A goods train carrying chemicals and fertilisers blew up while passing a small town. Several died and there were some 100 burns victims. 100!
It took the combined resources of that state and three surrounding states to treat the victims. 100 is a lot of people. So is 20,000,000.
If the powers that be manage to start a nuclear exchange, I say the survivors need to start welding bunker doors shut and playing whack-a-mole with the vermin who manage to escape their lead-lined gilded cages.
Hahaha, I remember when I first saw “The Gen Generation” starring Ling Bai as a headhunter, or bounty hunter/killer, a movie most known because her futuristic bondage domina oufit, like 15 ys ago. She lived in a devastated Paris where all governing had completely gone lost in all directions up to a 1000 miles distance. Then, when she comes home after a day of killing and bloodshed, she enters her lavatoire and takes a long hot shower to thrust her big nipples at the audience and what should I say? Interesting, I thought – it is the small things that you will miss the most. Small things like a hot shower, the supermarket around the corner, and no wolves or mad dogs to fight if outside of your appartement. Tab water, not uncooked rain water from the balcony (if you got one balcony, that is). Toilet to flush. Washing machine, etc pp. Soap. Ketchup. Potatoes. All vegetables are hybrids meanwhile, that means, forget about planting this years potatoes next year – this will not work.
I would prefer a nuclear war to starving in the cold winter, despite that there is plenty of cheap gas to be delivered by Russia – but that the anglosaxon thieves think is theirs, and they want their city of Lodon/NYSE share, that they have even if LNG is transported by chinese ship vessels insurance, and by such high prices that their fracking hororshow keeps going. That means for the rich criminals, things are doing best.
The last time I heard of such a inhuman behavior was when Athen’s “Attischer Seebund”* (look yourself, I’m to lazy bc. of malnutrition – the entity, or (how you say?) population called ‘Greeks’ came down from where today’s Ukraine is, nearly: the folks that has become to be called ‘Greeks’ came from the lower Danub region, some 3500 ys ago. So much about the ‘democrazy made by Greece’ – the were robbers, not bringers.) burned down Delos for refusing to pay their -in today’s words- NATO bill.
Fuck off western world, you’re done. Hope to see ya’ll in hell soon. I bought me a brand new fork, You’ll love the holes I pinch in your stomach with it – forever.
One should have dreams. Starving makes funny thinking, for sure.
* Delian League
These apocalypse scenarios always omit the ONE fatal factor that makes everything else pale in comparison. Last I checked there are 200,000+ tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting in cooling ponds at reactor sites all over the planet, much of which will burn up in the atmosphere once the cooling pumps stop running. Is it plausible that mammalian life can survive anywhere on the surface of the Earth after all that spent fuel is dispersed?