There have been periods when the fear of nuclear war was palpable, unlike today, where journalists and politicians freely discuss the potential use of nuclear weapons. In the sixties, this fear escalated to hysteria; it persisted through the seventies despite détente and continued into the eighties as nuclear arsenals peaked.
Dark films and eerie books such as “On the Beach” were created. Subsequently, some scientists introduced the concept of “nuclear winter,” which predicted the demise of all living things, to alarm their leaders. While we won’t delve into the concept’s idea and history, as ample materials are available online, it was arguably as much of a bluff as the green energy transition agenda.
Even today, 40 years later, it remains uncertain whether a “nuclear winter” would have ensued following a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, with a potential yield of 25,000 megatons. Scenarios were modeled for 10,000MT and 100MT explosions, promising a winter in both cases, albeit a shorter one in the latter scenario.
To accurately answer this question, a high-quality model of the atmosphere and ocean interaction, including heat and mass transfer, is required, which we currently lack. Hence, despite advanced supercomputers, significant improvements in weather forecast accuracy remain elusive.
On one hand, phenomena like the “year without a summer” following the 1815 Tambora volcano eruption on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia, which released the energy equivalent to an 800-megaton explosion and ejected up to 180 km³ of ash into the atmosphere, have occurred.
On the other hand, Earth’s recent history has witnessed events like asteroid impacts that released comparable energy without leading to life’s extinction. For instance, the asteroid Apophis travels at 30.728 km/s, with a mass of 2.7 × 10^10 kg, yielding a kinetic energy of 2.4 × 10^19 J, approximately 5700 megatons.
Since then, the number of nuclear weapons has significantly decreased, both in terms of warheads and their power. It is believed that the improved accuracy of warhead delivery vehicles compensates for the reduced power.
Today, megaton-class warheads are rare, and it is thought that a range of 100-750 kilotons is sufficient for most scenarios. Consequently, some persuasive arguments suggest that the extensive use of nuclear weapons by both sides would not annihilate life on Earth as feared. At worst, it could render an area the size of France—or slightly larger if nuclear power plants are targeted—barren, which is considerable but not catastrophic. Thus, the notion that there can be no victors in a nuclear war is no longer seen as absolute, and this is well understood by the elites.
Furthermore, due to the degradation and loss of adequacy among elites, the concept of “unacceptable damage” as a deterrent against the initiation of nuclear war has diminished in value, meaning that the capability to inflict such damage on an adversary is no longer a reliable safeguard, and for more rational administrations, unacceptable damage meant the complete destruction of several large cities, then today’s “esteemed partners” seem like individuals who would readily sacrifice half of their country, and even the world, if it meant they could unconditionally dominate the remainder.
Intelligence and state secrets are significant as long as the system functions. However, if the system collapses and society regresses to a primitive state within 20-30 minutes, the affiliations and subscriptions of individuals become irrelevant. This scenario is reminiscent of the popular TV series “The Walking Dead.”
