The whole idea of "limited exchange" has been debated for decades and the conclusion is normally always that this is not realistic.
Once you push the button, you fire it all, or else your missiles and bombs will be destroyed in their silos.
An overall nuclear exchange would be terrifying; even horrific with millions of deaths. However, it would come far short of wiping out the entire world's population. That just cannot happen; there are not near enough nuclear weapons around to do that.
The numbers of warheads is reduced (I am not sure what it is today), a few thousand on each side + a few hundred combined for the smaller nations.
Though, there are plenty of nuclear power-plants to be targeted, or do you really think that the gentleman's agreement from the cold war, about not targeting nuclear power-plants, would mean anything in a full-scale war?
If you target such a plant, you get loads of long-lived isotopes that will render huge areas uninhabitable for centuries.
I don't think you would wipe out every man, woman and child from the face of the earth, but during the max-stockpile years of the cold war, I believe they could probably reduce the number down to a few million people, spread out over large areas.
Most scientific papers on global nuclear war, concludes that the main-part of deaths will come from starvation and disease.
The question is the post-war effects and how humanity will fare in it's new environment, radioactive particles tend to travel trough the food-chain and follow wind and sea-currents and animal migratory-routes. Eventually, over time, radiation will accumulate into humans in "clean areas" anyway, they may not die from it immediately, but it will affect the genes and following generations, since they ingest it.
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dannieboy20906
8 years ago
The amazing thing about nuclear weapons is the effect they have on the possessors. The majority of the scientists who first developed the weapons in the United States issued various statements over years expressing their certainty that we would eventually use them in large numbers and devastate the Earth, but we never have.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 the United States had an overwhelming nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union.
- We had approximately 400 B-52 bombers in service in October 1962, along with hundreds of B-47 and dozens of B-58 bombers. The limitation on how many would reach the Soviet Union and bomb successfully was limited by the number of KC-135 aircraft we could deploy to refuel them. The Soviet Union had fewer than 200 TU-95's, the only bomber in their inventory that could reach the United States and it would be a one-way mission at that. However, the Bear was approximately 100 mph slower than the BUFF and we had a much more effective air intercept program in place than did the Soviet Union. Their ability to reach the United States with any manned bombers was questionable.
- We had at least six George Washington and Patrick Henry class SSBN's in operation. At least four were at sea at any time and they could each launch 16 Polaris A-1 missiles. The Soviet Union had a handful of diesel electric missile submarines that needed to surface before launch.
- We had three wings of Atlas II ICBM's and I think two wings of Titan I's in service. The Soviets only ICBM required three to six days to prepare of launch, above ground.
Well, you get the idea. Premier Khrushchev desperately needed IRBM's in Cuba as a means to begin to correct the gross imbalance. The point is that we could have vaporized the Soviet Union and they could not have responded in kind. In the words of Buck Turgeson, I won't say that we would not have gotten our hair mussed, but it would have been survivable for us. Nevertheless, President Kennedy (probably quite wisely) chose to take a cautious approach and we resolved the situation without any combat.
Pakistan and India used to engage in artillery duels every few years. Pakistan would blast away across their border with tube artillery while the Indians worked their way up from canons to rockets. These continued even after India developed a nuclear weapon capability and demonstrated it in 1974. Then in 1998 Pakistan developed its own nuclear weapon capability and conducted tests. India responded with a series of tests. Since then they have avoided shooting at each other.
It seems like every country that can possibly afford a nuclear weapon wants one. Many of them are convinced that they need one. Once they get it, they are extremely reluctant to use it. The United States still wrestles with having used them to end WWII, now matter how justified we still think we were at the time.
The United States and the Soviet Union both moved away from counter-value targeting (MAD, bombing cities to kill the population) to counter-force targeting (aiming at each other's war making capability: missile silos, air bases, and naval facilities) back in the 1970's, as soon as the accuracy of the weapons allowed us to do so.
I agree with the projections on cause of death, but the number of weapons involved in an exchange would be much smaller today than in decades past. The United States weapon inventory peaked at about 30,000 around 1963 and has declined by 90 percent since then. By the 1980's we were down to about 10,000 and the Soviets, who had about 2000 warheads in 1963, were up to about 30,000. Today we have 2,000 to 4,000, depending on who is talking and the Russian Federation has a similar number. The treaty agreed numbers are somewhere near 2000 each. China has 300 or so warheads, the people who count in unclassified sources say the French and the British each also have weapons numbering a few hundred. No one in the unclassified sources claims to know how many weapons that Pakistan, India, North Korea, or Israel have. However, they are expensive to build, to maintain, and to store. It is unlikely that anybody keeps more than they need to satisfy their level of national paranoia.
I personally do not expect to see a major exchange in my lifetime. I think we can concentrate our fears of species demise on massive asteroids instead of nuclear warfare.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
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