What It Means To Detonate A Nuclear Bomb
The consequences of nuclear war are now closer than we would like to admit. When you consider the sudden killing of millions of human beings in a matter of hours we shake our heads and say it’s not possible. We prefer to think of the human species as caring and compassionate even in the face of an upsurge of fanatical terrorism and threats by rogue nations using weapons of mass destruction.
What would we face if nuclear threats turned to reality? Imagine the destructive force unleashed on Hiroshima that killed 135,000 human beings. The only problem in trying to imagine that deadly force in today's terms is that the standard size of a single American or Russian nuclear weapon is 9 to 20 megatons or 600 to 1300 times the nuclear explosive power of the bomb used on Hiroshima in 1945.
The physical results of a standard size single American or Russian nuclear weapon detonated today would cause an enormous amount of energy to be released in an extraordinarily short interval of time. Nearly all of this energy would be initially released in the form of fast recoiling nuclear matter that is then deposited into the surrounding environment within a fraction of a second.
Most of the explosive power initially is in the form of intense short wave length light that is efficiently absorbed by the air immediately surrounding the weapon, heating it to very high temperatures creating a fireball. The early fireball is so hot it violently expands; initially moving outward at several million miles per hour while it radiates tremendous amounts of light and heat. During the course of its expansion, almost all of the air that originally occupied the volume within and around it is compressed into a thin shell of superheated, glowing, high-pressure gas. This shell of gas, which continues to be driven outward by hot expanding gases in the fireball interior, itself compresses the surrounding air forming a steeply fronted luminous shock wave of enormous extent and power. During the period of peak energy output a single standard nuclear weapon can produce temperatures of about one hundred million degrees Celsius at its center or about five times the temperature that occurs at the center of the sun.
Simultaneous fires would break out over vast areas of surrounding terrain, heating large volumes of air near the earth's surface. As this heated air rises, cool air from regions beyond the vast burning area would rush into replace it. Winds at ground level would reach hurricane force and air temperatures within the zone of fire would exceed that of boiling water. The violent hurricane of fire would also be accompanied by the release of vast amounts of lethal toxic smoke and combustion gases that would create an environment of extreme heat, high winds and toxic agents. By the time a single nuclear detonation fireball is near its maximum size, it’s a highly luminous ball between one and two miles in diameter. Its surface that masks the much hotter interior of the fireball from its surroundings still radiates three times more light and heat than that of a comparable area of the sun's surface. Extensive fire ignitions would accompany such an air burst over an urban or industrial target.
A single nuclear weapon detonation would start fires hundreds of square kilometers in diameter with its flame convection and radioactive heat producing an absolute hostile temperature environment within a few seconds. Extreme thermal conditions and noxious gas accumulations would easily enter shelters not properly designed to diffuse or dissipate this kind of heat and poisonous air. The induced fire winds would be drawn in from surrounding areas. Measurable velocities would be felt as far as thirty miles from the fires and significant wind speeds may be felt as far as ten miles from the fires edge. This inflow would feed and fan the fires and replace the gases of the rising plume or smoke column. The smoke would mostly be contained in the lower atmosphere, although some may be injected to higher altitudes. That's the result of a single standard nuclear bomb explosion.
In the event of a nuclear war with multiple nuclear bombs exploding the effects would dramatically increase. Today there are approximately twenty thousand warheads carrying over ten thousand megatons of explosives pointed at different targets throughout the world. Combine only a fraction of these warheads with the abundant combustible fuels concentrated in industrial and urban areas and you would bring about a global nuclear winter.
The physical mechanism would involve the ignition of large fires by nuclear bursts followed by the insertion of unprecedented quantities of smoke into the atmosphere where it would divert sunlight and trigger dramatic climatic chaos. Wilderness fire smoke would be a secondary contributor to the nuclear winter with industrial and urban smoke being the primary contributor. The quickly induced black rain would remove a fraction of the smoke immediately. The expected climatic impacts of dense smoke layers include land surface temperature decreases of up to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit within the first week. Large amounts of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, sulfur oxides, hydrochloric acid, pyrotoxins, heavy metals, asbestos and other materials would be injected into the lower atmosphere near the surface by the flaming and smoldering combustion of billions of tons of fuel products and wind blown debris. Numerous toxic chemical compounds would be released directly into the environment by blast and spillage that in turn would contaminate all water and soil. Precipitation scavenging of nitrogen, sulfur, and chlorine compounds dispersed by the fire plumes throughout the troposphere would increase rainfall acidity ten fold over large regions throughout the world for several months. Rapid smoke induced cooling of the surface under dense smoke clouds would cause the formation of shallow, stable cold layers that would trap chemical emissions from prolonged smoldering fires near the ground.
The health effects of prompt ionizing radiation from strategic nuclear warheads would be overshadowed by the effects of the blast and thermal radiation. However, because nuclear explosions create highly radioactive fission products and the emitted neutrons may also induce radioactivity in initially inert material near each detonation site, radiological doses would be delivered to survivors globally. Local fallout of relatively large radioactive particles lofted by multiple surface explosions would lead to lethal external gamma ray doses during the first few days. Survivors outside of the lethal fallout zones would still receive debilitating radiation doses. Nuclear war would modify the physical environment in ways that would impact agriculture, ecosystems, essential air, water resources and other important elements of the global biosphere.
The primary mechanism for human fatalities would not be from the initial nuclear blast effects, thermal radiation burns or ionizing radiation but from mass starvation. Whereas the direct effects of such a nuclear war would result in several hundred million human fatalities, the indirect effects would lead to the loss of four to five billion lives. This would be primarily due to the vulnerabilities of ecological and agricultural systems.
The vast majority of the survivors around the world would have less than one year of food if they could reach it. They would be living for months in darkened days and subfreezing temperatures. Most cities worldwide would become toxic waste dumps. Most humans exposed to radiation from a nuclear war would be dead within sixty days or less after exposure. At very high doses death may occur within hours. At lower doses where the hemopoietic syndrome is relevant, there is a slight chance of survival. As the sooty smoke is slowly removed from the atmosphere the sunshine would begin to break through with highly enriched ultraviolet radiation causing serious debilitating skin and eye damage.
The destruction of sanitation, refrigeration and food processing methods, especially in the remaining urban areas or population centers would result in the contamination of food by bacteria which would cause deadly diseases. Spoiled meat, dead putrefying flesh of domestic animals and even human corpses will be eaten by starving humans as has happened in major famines in the past. Disease carrying insects and rodents would proliferate in the aftermath of a nuclear war. It is necessary to stress that radiation exposure does not induce any specific radiation type of cancer but just enhances the incidence of spontaneous malignant tumors in organs and tissues. Genetic defects will appear trivial in comparison with the enormity of the catastrophic development of survivors overall health and the environment.
Among the human children born to survivors some 4 to 8 months after exposure to bomb radiation, mental retardation should be expected. To the extent that protracted irradiation is equally efficient in this respect, even those exposed to fallout radiation and contamination may show this type of damage. Under these circumstances the radiation and genetic load would threaten the abilities of the survivors and a number of practices would have to be instituted to conserve the material resources available. These practices would range from selective breeding, infanticide, euthanasia and compulsory breeding by those individual humans showing indications of least genetic damage.
In order to understand the reality of nuclear weapons and their associated nuances expressed in the media, the following definitions may assist you in understanding this topic more in-depth;
BLAST LUNG: lesion caused when a shock wave compresses the chest wall against the spinal column and then suddenly releases it. Death can occur immediately from the sudden propagation of air emboli into cerebral and cardiac circulation, or later, from pulmonary hemorrhage and pulmonary edema.
FLASH BURNS: resemble first and second degree burns, although with slightly less tissue swelling and fluid loss, and may occur on exposed surfaces as a result of direct thermal radiation.
FALLOUT: particles of radio actively contaminated material which are dispersed in the atmosphere following a nuclear explosion and which subsequently settle to the earth's surface.
FIREBALL: luminous sphere of hot gases that is formed by a nuclear explosion.
FIRESTORM: a large area fire in which heated air and gases rise rapidly, drawing in cooler air from surrounding areas, thus generating surface temperatures of 1000°C, winds up to 90 mph, and convection patterns with a relatively static boundary.
FISSION: the splitting of heavy nucleus into two approximately equal parts, accompanied by the release of energy and neutrons.
FUSION: a nuclear reaction characterized by the joining together of light nuclei to form heavier nuclei.
GAMMA RADIATION: high energy, short wavelength electromagnetic emissions from the nucleus, frequently accompanying alpha and beta emissions and always accompanying fission. Gamma rays are very penetrating and are best shielded against by dense materials such as lead.
HEMATOPIETIC SYNDROME: following nuclear blast exposure, a victim may experience anorexia, apathy, nausea, and vomiting. Symptoms may subside after two days, but lymph nodes, spleen, and bone marrow begin to atrophy, leading to abnormally low numbers of all formed elements in the blood.
PRODROMAL SYNDROME: the early acute effects of exposure to radiation.
RADIATION SICKNESS: the complex of symptoms characterizing the disease known as radiation injury, resulting from excessive exposure of the body to ionizing radiation. Earliest symptoms are nausea, fatigue, vomiting, and diarrhea, which may be followed by loss of hair, hemorrhage, inflammation of the mouth and throat, and loss of energy. Death is usually within one to four weeks.
Note:
This article is based on a full range of relevant information, statistics, studies, simulation models and expert judgment of approximately 150 physical and atmospheric scientists and 250 agricultural and ecological scientists from more than 40 countries.
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