When it was first created in 1947, the hands of the clock were placed based on the threat posed by nuclear weapons, which the scientists then perceived to be the greatest threat to humanity. It is set annually by a panel of scientists, including 13 Nobel laureates, based on the threats - old and new - that the world faced in that year. When it comes to nuclear wars, it’s not the case that the side with the biggest arsenal wins – more that everybody loses.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by Albert Einstein and students from the University of Chicago in 1945, created the ‘Doomsday Clock’ as a symbol to represent how close the world is to a possible apocalypse. He eventually died in 2010, aged 93.Īll the same, there are plenty of reasons to be alarmed when the American president is quoted as welcoming a nuclear arms race. One Japanese man managed to survive being caught in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. A 2012 study projected that a 100-bomb nuclear war would cause two billion people to starve. Global temperatures drop and agriculture would struggle causing famine and yet more deaths. The conclusion of this study? With “just” 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, 20 million would immediately die, five million tonnes of smoke would hit the stratosphere, and we’d enter nuclear winter. Small-scale because, comparatively, both nations have fairly small arsenals of around 250 (remember, Russia and the USA have nearly 14,000 between them). A 2007 study examined what would happen if India and Pakistan engaged in a small-scale nuclear war of their own. Mesmerising and harrowing map shows every major nuclear explosion in historyĪgain, that’s just a single-megaton bomb, and nukes are a little like Pringles: not only are they potentially deadly – you can’t have just one. What do you mean you don’t have a fallout shelter? Yes, its effects diminish after a couple of weeks, but that’s a couple of weeks when you’re going to want to stay in your fallout shelter. Overlooking the fact that it wouldn’t be a nuclear war without retaliation, radioactive fallout can travel for hundreds of miles. You’re safe then, right? Well, not quite. That drops by half when you hit 450 REM, but you’re not out of the woods then, with increased chances of cancer and potential genetic mutations.īut let’s say you’re not anywhere near the blast. Radiation of 600 REM has a 90% chance of death. That’s before we even get on to the radiation poisoning. As a human, you might survive that pressure – but you likely wouldn’t survive any nearby buildings collapsing on you. That speed reaches 470mph in a half-mile radius. Within a four-mile radius of a one-megaton bomb, blast waves can produce 180 tonnes of force and winds of around 158 miles per hour. Your chances improve the further out you get, basically, but even if you get serious burns, you may be killed another way before you can be treated. For perspective, cremations are carried out in furnaces that reach 1,200˚C, so there’s literally no chance of surviving that. The centre of the Hiroshima bomb was estimated to be around 300,000˚C. There’s a good chance that would be fatal, but not as good a chance as if you were closer to the blast zone itself. Stand within five miles of the blast zone, and you’re looking at more serious third-degree burns. Still, temporary blindness aside, you would escape the more serious health complaints: if you were standing seven miles away, you might need to be treated for mild first-degree burns. And you certainly don’t want to read my summary either, but for everyone else, here are the gritty details. If you’re having a cheery day, you probably don’t want to press play on the video below from AsapSCIENCE. READ NEXT: A guide to Kim Jong-un’s nuclear weaponsīefore this recent escalation and subsequent softening, there had been more than 2,055 known nuclear detonations – but only two of those were in an actual conflict: the bombs dropped by the USA on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Time hasn’t stood still, so what would happen if a thin-skinned world leader were to aim one of those nukes at a city today? Jong-un met with Trump in Singapore and the former had pledged denuclearisation. Yet, more recently there seems to have been some sort of truce. At the end of August, state media in North Korea claimed Kim Jong-un successfully tested a nuclear weapon that could be attached to a long-range missile. The weapon is also claimed to have been a hydrogen bomb more powerful than the atomic weapons dropped during the Second World War and is said to be small enough to fit onto a missile.
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