Is Nuclear War Coming to a Community Near You?

The human psyche is quite capable of denying and ignoring likely and imminent dangers. President Trump continues to threaten a nuclear war with North Korea. The apparent brinksmanship they are engaging in is outside the realm of usual exchanges between contemporary world leaders. Nuclear war is being discussed as if it were one among many acceptable options. It is essential that some of us counter this propensity with a reality check. The effects of nuclear bombs are a different order of magnitude from those of conventional weapons. In nuclear war there are devastating blast, firestorm and radiation effects, and no first responders or infrastructure to assist any possible survivors. This is the time to prevent the unimaginable.

Nuclear Weapons Nuclear war will end human society as we know it and may end human society altogether. Indeed, it may well end the continuity of all life on earth. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—tiny by comparison with nuclear weapons available to world leaders in 2017-- produced the greatest immediate mass death from individual weapons yet known. Within the first two to four months following the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings had killed 90,000–146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day.

The threat of nuclear weapons has increased, but the horror was expressed long ago by President Kennedy:

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness.[i]

In 2004, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said, "I have never been more fearful of a nuclear detonation than now—There is a greater than 50 percent probability of a nuclear strike on U.S. targets within a decade."[ii] Apocalyptic dangers like this, that we know exist but still ignore, nevertheless have an effect upon us. They push us away from a long-term connection to our community and our planet, pressing us to live for the moment as if each moment might be the last.[iii]

How would a Nuclear Bomb Affect the United States: Current public attention has focused on the possibility of a nuclear weapon attack by terrorists. The RAND corporation conducted an analysis to examine the impacts of a terrorist attack involving one 10-kiloton nuclear explosion in the Port of Long Beach, California.[iv] (Keep in mind that the US and Russia together have over 2000 nuclear bombs on hair-trigger alert.) A set of strategic forecasting tools were used to examine immediate and long term results. It concluded that neither the local area nor the nation are at all prepared to deal with the potential threat of one nuclear device brought into the U.S. aboard a container ship. Long Beach is the world’s third busiest port, with almost 30% of all U.S. imports and exports moving through it. The report noted that a ground-blast nuclear weapon detonated in a shipping container would make several hundred square miles of the fallout area uninhabitable Such a blast would have unprecedented economic impacts throughout the country and the world. As one example, the report noted that several nearby oil refineries would be destroyed exhausting the entire supply of gasoline on the West Coast in a few days. This would leave city officials to deal with immediate fuel shortages and the strong likelihood of related civil unrest. Blast effects would be accompanied by firestorms and by long-lasting radioactive fallout, all contributing to a collapse of local infrastructure. Impacts on the global economy could also be catastrophic for two reasons: first, the economic importance of the global shipping supply chain, which would be severely hampered by the attack, and second, the well-documented fragility of global financial systems.[v]

By current standards a ten-kiloton nuclear explosion represents a miniscule sample of the power of larger nuclear weapons now in the arsenals of a growing number of countries. Here is a section of a report by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, describing the effects of a single 1-megaton weapon:

At ground zero, the explosion creates a crater 300 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter. Within one second, the atmosphere itself ignites into a fireball more than a half-mile in diameter. The surface of the fireball radiates nearly three times the light and heat of a comparable area of the surface of the sun, extinguishing in seconds all life below and radiating outward at the speed of light, causing instantaneous severe burns to people within one to three miles. A blast wave of compressed air reaches a distance of three miles in about 12 seconds, flattening factories and commercial buildings. Debris carried by winds of 250 mph inflicts lethal injuries throughout the area. At least 50 percent of people in the area die immediately, prior to any injuries from radiation or the developing firestorm.[vi}

What if 9/11 Had Involved a Nuclear Bomb? Had the attack on the Twin Towers involved a 20-megaton nuclear bomb, blast waves would have carried through the entire underground subway system. Up to fifteen miles from ground zero flying debris, propelled by displacement effects, would have multiplied the casualties. Approximately 200,000 separate fires would have produced a firestorm with temperatures up to 1,500 degrees. A nuclear bomb destroys the fabric of water supplies, food, and fuel for transportation, medical services, and electric power. Radiation damages destroys and deform living things for 240,000 years.[vii]

The illustrations above are for nuclear bombs much lower in destructive capacity than most bombs now available on ready-alert status. These larger weapons are capable of what George Kennan has considered to be of such magnitude of destruction as to defy rational understanding.[viii] Such bombs, and others still more destructive, are contained in the warheads of missiles, many capable of delivering multiple warheads. The danger of planned nuclear war, or of nuclear strike caused by human error, is real, and citizens can block it.

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Citizen Action: Our voices need to be heard. First, we can urge our leaders to get Trump to turn off the threats of nuclear war, whether by use of flattery or by pressure from his own military advisors. Second, if we do survive the moment, one of the most important tasks is to block nuclear weapons modernization. Nukes do not need to be tested for absolute yield in order to serve as a deterrent. The improvement of destructive capability will likely lead to a continuation of a race to be nuclear power with the greatest capacity to destroy the enemy—and life on the planet earth.

Now is the time to insist to our Congress that nuclear blasts and nuclear war be avoided, and that the modernization of nuclear weapons be dropped from the national budget. This will buy some time to heal a planet and human community under deep stress.

This blog is based on an essay by Dr. Marc Pilisuk. Dr. Pilisuk is Professor Emeritus at the University of California and Faculty Member at Saybrook University. He has been concerned about the threat of nuclear war for many years. Dr. Pilisuk is one of the founding members of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, an organization formed because of such concerns.