Ask A Genius 948: “Nuclear War,” a book

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17

[Recording Start] 

Rick Rosner:  I am currently reading a book titled Nuclear War. I do not recall the author’s name, but the book explains that we remain at a high risk of nuclear war. There are approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons in existence, which is alarming. The United States has about 1,750 nuclear weapons ready to deploy, with an additional 2,000 in storage. Russia possesses about 1,650 nuclear weapons. We have been at risk of nuclear war since the late 1940s. The Russians built their first atomic weapon in 1949. By that time, the United States had over 100 nuclear weapons. The chapter I have just begun, and I am still early in the book, discusses how North Korea was decades away from having ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. However, they acquired Soviet technology, or someone obtained rocket technology after the fall of the Soviet Union, which North Korea then purchased. Now, they are capable of launching a missile 9,000 miles, reaching the entire continental United States. So, we have been at risk for 75 years. Even a single nuclear weapon detonation would immeasurably change life on Earth. It would crash economies, and if they were H-bombs rather than A-bombs, tens of millions, perhaps a hundred million people, would perish. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was the range of nuclear bomb sizes between the United States and Russia during the peak of the Cold War? 

Rosner: During the early Cold War, in the late 1950s, America had H-bombs. In the late 1950s, they had H-bombs with a minimum explosive force of one megaton. I believe they were called Mark or something. The United States had deployed 10-megaton H-bombs on bombers. This does not mean they always exploded with that much force; they were tested to go off with that much force. They were tested on islands. Whether they would work as efficiently if dropped from a plane is uncertain, but the physics remains the same. Even if a 10-megaton bomb only exploded with the force of a one-megaton bomb, it would still kill four or five million people if it hit a city.

So, the maximum size was about ten megatons. From the 1960s to the present, the United States and Russia have developed battlefield pocket nukes intended for tactical use in battlefield situations. However, even tactical nukes have a yield of a few kilotons, which is not much less than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. You could dial down the yield. To create a chain reaction that breaks apart almost all the fissionable nuclei in a bomb, you need a certain amount of nuclear material, such as about five kilograms of plutonium. A ball of plutonium with some material in the Middle to amplify and capture neutrons is about four inches in diameter. You could possibly tweak the critical mass so it somewhat fizzles or does not fully explode. You could not reduce the explosive force to less than a kiloton. Anyway, the range is from a kiloton to a megaton. I think the United States currently has yet to deploy any 10-megaton weapons.

A megaton weapon has about a hundred times or seventy times, the explosive force of the Nagasaki bomb, which would kill millions of people, many of them instantaneously. What is the minimum blast radius? The fireball of a megaton nuke is 5,700 feet or 1.1 miles in diameter. Everything within that fireball is obliterated. No bones, nothing left. Concrete and everything else is scorched out of existence. The thermonuclear explosion’s temperature is four times that of the sun’s center. The fireball obliterates everything within a radius of nearly 0.6 miles. For another mile beyond that, everyone is killed. You are looking at a radius of fatality or a diameter of fatality of a circle three miles across, where 99% of everyone is killed unless they are in a specially hardened structure. Most people are killed for another mile beyond that, and the casualty rate decreases from there. You have an area of seven to eight square miles where almost everyone is killed by an H-bomb.

Weren’t there conditions under which individuals survived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes. Your skin wouldn’t be burned off if you were far enough away and wearing light-coloured clothing. Dark clothing absorbs more light radiation, causing burns. If you were not looking at the blast and in a structure that shielded you from the initial thermal effects and the blast overpressure that pushed everything down on top of you, you might survive. Survival was pure luck. It depended on the colour of your clothing, the structure you were in, and the direction you were looking. If you were within a mile of the blast, you would still receive a healthy dose of radiation that might not kill you immediately but could do so in 20 years. Could you escape after the initial blast? Nobody knew about fallout then. If you fled to a river because you were burned, the river might collect more fallout than the land. I do not know. If ash fell into the river, the radioactive ash would mix with the water, and you would be in that water. 

Jacobsen: What is the risk of radiation seeping into your body in water contaminated with radioactive material? 

Rosner: There were no precautions. Leaflets were dropped, which were probably not believed before the bomb was dropped. But nobody knew what to do. If you were exposed, if you were in a city that had been nuked and you survived, I do not know, would you take iodine to prevent your body from absorbing radioactive iodine? That is one of the products of a nuclear blast, absorbed by your body in the same way it absorbs iodine. It could be strontium, I don’t know. If you took iodine, you might absorb less of the radioactive material that causes radiation poisoning. But I do not know.

Jacobsen: What is the risk of nuclear war or even a single weapon being used? What is the probability of that happening? What is the likelihood of using a nuclear weapon?

Rosner: I wonder if anyone can calculate that. Are there loose nukes that disappeared from inventory after the Soviet Union fell? I have not heard of that. Is there a chance that terrorists could steal a nuke from Russia or the United States? I do not know. The United States has had broken arrow situations. A broken arrow is when a nuke escapes custody, like when it is accidentally dropped. In 1958, an H-bomb was accidentally dropped. It was not armed, so only the traditional explosives went off. The bomb was scattered over a pasture and broken apart by the regular explosives. Did that scatter nuclear material? I guess so. Even if bad actors got to it first, they would not have been able to make it into a bomb because it was broken and scattered.

It is much more likely that terrorists would gather a subcritical mass of nuclear material, strap it to conventional explosives, and make a dirty bomb that scatters radioactive material over a few square blocks. This could make the area uninhabitable for weeks or months until it is cleaned up, causing widespread fear. Currently, I would guess that the most significant risk of someone setting off a single nuke would be Russia unleashing a tactical nuke in Ukraine. However, I do not think Russia would do that because it would likely lead to war with NATO, involving all of Europe and the United States. Europe and the United States have a combined population of 800 million, while Russia only has 160 million. Its arms have been depleted by more than two years of war.

I do not think they would want the consequences of setting off a single nuke. The second most significant risk might be Iran. I do not believe Iran can make a nuclear weapon yet, but they are getting closer. If they had one and were suicidal, they might try to smuggle or launch one into Israel. This would result in brutal bombing by the United States, Israel, and their allies. The third scenario would be North Korea launching a single nuke. The odds of any of these three things happening are pretty low because the country doing it would be heavily bombed. If Iran launched a nuke, I do not know if we would bomb Iranian cities, but we would bomb every possible site where nukes were thought to be developed and many other military sites. We would drop thousands of bombs on Iran, destroying their air force and most of their army bases.

Jacobsen: Do you think any use of a nuclear weapon by Iran would automatically isolate Iran from the rest of the Middle Eastern countries? 

Rosner: Yes.

Jacobsen: Do you think any other country has suicidal intent?

Rosner: Iran, besides Israel, is the only Middle Eastern country that has nuclear weapons that I know of. If Iran dropped a nuke on Israel, Israel has about 50 nukes and might retaliate by nuking Tehran. The United States probably would not bomb Iranian cities but would target military sites. If Iran attacked Israel, a couple of hundred thousand Israelis would be killed if they targeted a town. At least that many Iranian military personnel would be killed in response within a day. Well, I do not know if Israel would retaliate with nukes. The United States might talk Israel out of a nuclear retaliation. The United States would likely support Israel in bombing the hell out of Iran with conventional weapons, and the United States would probably join in. I am just guessing. I am not an expert on this.

Jacobsen: Are there any weapons more dangerous than an H-bomb or a nuclear bomb, theoretically?

Rosner: There is no known biological agent that could kill as many people as an H-bomb. That does not mean that some lunatic countries haven’t developed something with the potential, but I doubt it. Viruses can spread uncontrollably. You cannot target an enemy country with a virus because they have unlimited reach. An aerosolized Ebola virus, contagious like COVID-19, would be more dangerous than an H-bomb. It could kill hundreds of millions of people worldwide. But… People would be crazy to develop it. Oh, one more thing. The chapter I just read discusses the United States’ semi-claim that we have technology capable of intercepting nuclear warheads. However, as this book explains, you can only intercept a nuclear missile during the launch phase. Within the first three minutes, the rockets accelerate it to 14,000 miles per hour. The missiles then use their fuel and drop away, leaving a projectile flying through the air under its kinetic energy, which is much harder to track.

When we have tried to intercept targets like that, we fire a heavyweight at the incoming missile, trying to break it apart by hitting it directly. We are not launching a bomb close to the incoming nuke and setting it off to wreck the nuke. We do not have that technology yet, if ever. So it is like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. One object moves at 15,000 miles per hour, and the interceptor moves at 20,000 miles per hour. The hit has to be exact. Each object is only 8, 10, or 20 feet across, which is not a large target. The United States’ success rate at hitting a single missile aimed at us is less than 50 percent. Some tests intercepted with a 55 percent success rate, others with 40 percent. Even one missile has more than a one-third chance of reaching its target.

Assuming North Korea’s technology is good enough to get the missile to its target, even if it isn’t, say they are aiming for Washington DC, and the rocket only travels 8,000 miles instead of 9,000, it would detonate over Minnesota. You still have a nuke exploding over the United States. We cannot stop a launched nuke with even 80 percent certainty. According to this book, we only have 44 kinetic interceptors. If an enemy launched even six nuclear weapons and we launched all 44 interceptors, it is still likely that one or two would get through. I do not know if we would launch all 44 simultaneously because we might save half for a second wave. This is how we got the Soviet Union to go bankrupt and collapse. Reagan scared the Soviet Union with the Star Wars defence system, an early version of intercepting incoming missiles. Russia spent a lot of time trying to develop its technology, which was the last straw in bankrupting them. I do not know.

[Recording End]

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