You often hear things like this, but what is it supposed to mean? Usually these numbers are spouted by anti-war types, so I have to assume the numbers were doctored to seem more terrifying than they actually are.
Did they do some projection where they crammed 6 billion people into iowa, and repeatedly nuked it with the world’s arsenal to come up with those figures, or what?
Usually it means the speaker doesn’t like fighting.
My understanding is that calculations indicate, to go by your example, that 1/10 of the arsenal(s) being discussed would be sufficient to kill off humans. I’m sure they’re best-case projections, assuming all devices work perfectly, etc.
I don’t think they figured on moving everbody to Iowa, but they may or may not have included effective delivery of warheads, etc., in their thinking.
I actually used this response to the idea that America should get rid of some of it’s nukes because of that theory mentioned in the first post:
“What if we use all these nukes and it doesn’t destroy the world? then it only weakens our position and pisses off other countries. It’s better to have too many than too few”
I don’t think I beat those guys.
I think it probably has something to do with the idea that, according to http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/krieger-faq.htm
“…it would require the detonation of only some 400 nuclear weapons to create a Nuclear Winter.”
The U.S. (10,500) and Russia (13,000) have 23,500 nuclear weapons between them.
The world as a whole has an estimated 30,000 nuclear weapons.
400 x 10 = 4,000 …hmmm I’d say we could kill ourselves a lot more than 10 times.
Maybe they meant instantaneously evaporated death!
The modern “nuke” today has roughly 20 times the destructive force of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The world’s arsenal at some 30,000 weapons x 20 = 600,000
mmmmm…that looks like six hundred thousand atom bombs doesn’t it! Let’s just round it down to a half a million, to be safe.
Yeah, I think that’ll probably incinerate all life on the planet, several times over…and then of course it’ll be dark and radioactive for awhile afterwards.
other sources:
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/issues/nuclear_weapons_states.html
and
http:///www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/50.HTM
that oughta do it
PEACE
I got one too many backslashes in the last link,
darn, darn ,darn, lily…it was supposed to be
http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/50.HTM
and we thankyou for your support!
(sorry guys, it’s gettin’ kinda late…g-nite)
If I recall correctly, however, the USA has always had an edge in nuclear/missile numbers and superior design and implementation. SO those numbers above are likely incorrect. TO my knowledge, the “missile gap” was always a Soviet fiction.
Nah, people were saying that LONG before the nuclear winter theory came along.
It’s just another doctored stat designed to scare people. There’s no truth in it whatsoever. It was just shorthand for saying, “There are far more nukes in the world than we need”.
damned post-eating S.O.B.
I’ll try this again, here’s the short version. The numbers from earlier were made available by the…long list of US gov. agencies, including Depts. Justice/Defense/Energy and so on…
The “advantage” we (U.S.) have, if there is such a thing!
It is not in numbers. We have more strategic weapons than Russia, we even have weapons in our allies homelands. The only country to do so.
The totals stated earlier were simply totals. If you want to get into tech. and tonnage then look around. We got that too.
What I thought was interesting is the fact that the UK’s nuclear capability is concentrated on its Trident submarine fleet.
Point was whether by N.Winter or incineration we have far more than would required to finally get some peace and quiet around the world.
I mean isn’t dead once enough?
Peace
Actually, it was more of a US fiction designed to justify continued expansion of defence spending despite the fact that the United States was far ahead of the Soviets in the nuclear race. Hey, gotta keep the boys at GE, IBM, McDonnell Douglas, etc. etc. happy.