Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Steven Starr

  • The State of the Nuclear Danger by Steven Starr

    This is the transcript of a talk given by Steven Starr at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s symposium “The Fierce Urgency of Nuclear Zero: Changing the Discourse” on October 24, 2016. The audio of this talk is available here. A PowerPoint presentation to go along with this talk is here. For more information about the symposium, click here.

    starr

    David mentioned earlier that, he asked about why do we have this adherence to deterrence, and I believe one of the requirements for that is essentially the avoidance or even the outright rejection of the existential threat posed by nuclear arsenals. In other words, how can you threaten to use nuclear weapons if you would acknowledge that the use of these weapons could lead to the destruction of the human race or at least civilization? So my talk today focuses on what as I see as a confirmation of that rejection here in the United States, which is the rejection by US leadership of the nuclear winter studies.

    I want to talk about the studies first, because I think I want to underline how important they are. Ten years ago, the world’s leading climatologists chose to re-investigate the long-term environmental impacts of nuclear war. The peer reviewed studies that I have listed in the slide are considered to be the most authoritative type of scientific research. It’s subjected to criticism by the international scientific community before its final publication in scholarly journals. During this criticism period, there were no serious errors found in the studies. Working at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers, and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, these scientists use state-of-the-art computer modeling to evaluate the consequences of a range of possible nuclear conflicts. It began with a hypothetical war in Southeast Asia, in which a total of 100 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs were exploded in the cities of India and Pakistan. In order to give you an idea of what a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb can do, please consider these images of Hiroshima before and after the use of an atomic bomb. These bombs had an explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT.

    The detonation of such an atomic bomb will instantly ignite fires over a surface area of three to five square miles. The scientists calculated that the blast, fire, and radiation from a war fought with 100 atomic bombs could produce as many fatalities as World War II. However, the long-term environmental effects of the war could significantly disrupt the global weather for at least a decade, which could lead to, or would lead, likely lead to a vast global famine. This slide was… Each click is one day the smoke spread in the burning cities of India and Pakistan, the scientists predicted this would cause 3 to 4 million tons of black carbon soot from the nuclear firestorms to rise quickly above cloud level into the stratosphere, where it could not be rained out. The smoke would circle the earth in less than two weeks, would form a global stratospheric smoke layer that would remain for more than a decade. The smoke would absorb warming sunlight, which would heat the smoke to temperatures near the boiling point of water, which would lead to ozone losses of 20%-50% over populated areas. This would almost double the amount of UVV reached in some regions, and would create UVV indices unprecedented in human history.

    In North America and Central Europe, the time required to get a painful sunburn at midday in June could decrease to as little as six minutes for fair-skinned individuals. As the smoke layer blocked warming sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface, it would produce the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1,000 years. This is a slide taken from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in an article published by doctors Toon and Robock. Medical experts have predicted that the shortening of growing seasons and corresponding decreases in agricultural production could cause up to 2 billion people to perish from famine. The climatologists also investigated the effects of a nuclear war fought with vastly more powerful thermonuclear weapons possessed by the US, Russia, China, France and England.

    Some of the first thermonuclear weapons constructed during the 1950s and 60s were a thousand times more powerful than an atomic bomb. And when you look at photos of nuclear weapons, it’s important to consider how far away they were taken. This was our first test of a nuclear weapon. During the last 30 years, the average size of thermonuclear or strategic nuclear weapons has decreased, yet today each of the approximately 3,200-3,500 strategic weapons deployed by the US and Russia is 70-80 times more powerful than the atomic bombs that were modeled in the India-Pakistan study. The smallest strategic weapon has an explosive power of 100,000 tons of TNT, a ton is 2,000 pounds, compared to an atomic bomb, that averaged an explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT.

    If you look at the scale, the largest nuclear bomb versus the atomic bomb, you’re going up by a factor of about 1,000. So you have 24,000 pounds of TNT, 3 million pounds of TNT for an atomic bomb, and really about 2.4 billion pounds of TNT for our large strategic nuclear weapon. And I made this photo just to compare an image I showed of the Hiroshima bomb at the base of what it would look like in comparison to Castle Bravo. I had a veteran from the South Pacific say, “You need to do a slide, because the atomic bombs were like fire crackers compared to hydrogen bombs.”

    Strategic nuclear weapons produce much larger fire storms than do atomic bombs. A standard Russian 800 kiloton warhead, which John was kind enough to publish in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, on an average day will ignite fires covering a surface area of 90-152 square miles. So a war fought with hundreds or thousands of US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons would ignite immense nuclear firestorms covering land surface areas of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. This would probably occur within a period of a couple of hours, or less possibly. This is the US-Russian nuclear war. The scientists calculated that these fires could produce up to 180 million tons of black carbon, soot and smoke, which would form a dense global stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke would remain in the stratosphere for 10 to 20 years and would block as much as 70% of sunlight from reaching the surface of the northern hemisphere and 35% from the southern hemisphere.

    It takes maybe a month or two for it to equilibrate. So much sunlight would be blocked by the smoke that the noonday sun would resemble a full moon at midnight, if you were in the northern hemisphere. Under such conditions, it would require only a matter of days or weeks for the daily minimum temperatures to fall below freezing in the largest agricultural areas of the northern hemisphere. Freezing temperatures would occur every day for a period of between one to three years. Average surface temperatures would become colder than those experienced 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, and the prolonged cold would cause average rainfall to decrease by up to 90%. Growing seasons would be completely eliminated for more than a decade, and it would be too cold and dark to grow food crops, which would doom the majority of the human population. So the profound cold and dark following nuclear war became first known as ‘nuclear winter’, and it was first predicted in 1983 by a group of NASA scientists. And I took the liberty of copying a cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that announced this discovery, I think it was in 1984.

    During the 1980s, a large body of research was done by such groups as the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment and Scope, the World Meteorological Organization, and the US National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences. Their work essentially supported the initial findings of the 1983 studies. The idea of nuclear winter, published and supported by prominent scientists, generated extensive public alarm, put political pressure on the US and the Soviet Union to reverse a runaway nuclear arms race. Unfortunately, this created a backlash among many powerful military and industrial interests, who undertook the extensive media campaign to brand nuclear winter as ‘bad science’ and the scientists who discovered it as ‘irresponsible’. Critics used various uncertainties in the studies and the first climate models, which are primitive by today’s standards, as a basis to criticize and reject the concept of nuclear winter. In 1986, the Council on Foreign Relations published an article by the scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who predicted drops in global cooling about half as large as those first predicted by the 1983 studies, and they described this as ‘nuclear autumn’.

    Nuclear autumn studies were later found to be deeply flawed, but it didn’t matter, because nuclear winter was subject to criticism and damning articles in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine. In 1987, the National Review called nuclear winter ‘a fraud’. In 2000, Discover Magazine published an article which described nuclear winter as ‘one of the 20 greatest scientific blunders in history’. The endless smear campaign was successful, and the general public, and even most anti-nuclear activists, were left with the idea that nuclear winter had been discredited. I found this with Physicians for Social Responsibility, when we were trying to get funding in 2001 to renew nuclear winter research. 9/11 took it off the agenda, but I was kind of shocked that no one really believed this anymore. Yet the scientists didn’t give up, and in 2006 they returned to their labs to perform the research that I just described at the beginning of my talk. The new research not only upheld the previous findings, but it actually found the earlier studies underestimated the environmental effects of nuclear war, because it found that the smoke is heated by sunlight, and it creates a self-lofting effect. That’s why it stays in the stratosphere for so long.

    So after the initial series of studies were published in 2007 and 2008, two of the lead scientists, Dr. Alan Robock from Rutgers and Dr. Toon of the University of Colorado, made a series of requests to meet with the members of the Obama administration. They offered to brief the White House about their findings, which they assumed would have great impact upon nuclear weapons policy. But their offers were met with indifference. Finally, after a number of years of trying, I’ve been told that Dr. Robock and Toon were allowed an audience with John Holdren, the senior advisor to President Barack Obama on Science and Technology. Also, Dr. Robock has met with Rose Gottemoeller, as you all know, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control. Dr. Robock has the impression that neither Holdren nor Gottemoeller think that nuclear winter research is correct. But it’s not only Holdren and Gottemoeller who reject the nuclear winter research. According to sources cited by Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, and I really respect Greg, he’s a brilliant guy. He goes to the White House quite frequently, and talks to people in the National Security Council. He says that the US Nuclear Weapons Council, which is a group that determines the size and composition of US nuclear weapons, as well as the policies for their use, has stated that ‘the predictions of nuclear winter were disproved years ago’.

    It may be that General John Hyten, the Head of the Strategic Command, who is in charge of the US nuclear triad, and General Paul Selva, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second highest-ranking officer in the US, have never seen or heard of the 21st century nuclear winter studies that I describe. Perhaps when they hear a question about nuclear winter, they only remember the smear campaigns done against the early studies, or maybe they just choose not to accept the new research, despite the fact that it has withstood the criticism of the global scientific community.

    Regardless, the question of nuclear winter research by the top military and political leaders of the US raises some profoundly important questions. Do they fully understand the consequences of nuclear war? And do they realize that launch-ready nuclear weapons they control constitute a self-destruct mechanism for the human race? Meanwhile, US political leaders generally support the ongoing US confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China. Mainstream corporate media, including the editorial boards of The New York Times and Washington Post engage in anti-Russian and anti-Putin rhetoric that rivals the hate speech of the McCarthy era. The US has renewed the Cold War with Russia with no debate or protest and subsequently engaged in proxy wars with Russia in Ukraine and Syria, as well as threatening military action against China in the South China Sea. And I brought this up just to show that the Bulletin has supported more recently these studies. This was an article that Toon and Robock.

    I’m going to just quickly summarize, since this is supposed to be the state of nuclear danger, how I see it. Hillary Clinton, who appears to be likely to become the next President of the US, has repeatedly called for a US-imposed no-fly zone over Syria, where Russian planes are now flying in support of the Syrian armed forces. Marine General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Congress in September that, should the US attempt to set up such a no-fly zone, it would surely result in war with Russia.

    Apparently, there’s now some debate about this. However, Russia has responded by moving its latest air defense system to Syria, and has stated it would shoot down any US or NATO planes that attempted to attack Syrian armed forces. Russia has also sent its only aircraft carrier, along with all of its Northern fleet and much of its Baltic fleet to the Mediterranean in its largest surface deployment of naval vessels since the end of the Cold War. In response to what NATO leaders describe as Russia’s dangerous and aggressive behavior, NATO has built up a rapid defense force of 40,000 troops on the Russian border in the Baltic states and Poland. This force includes hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and heavy artillery. NATO troops stationed in Estonia are within artillery range of St. Petersburg, which is the second largest city in Russia. Imagine if that was in Tijuana and they could hit Los Angeles. The US has deployed its Aegis Ashore Ballistic Missile Defense System in Romania and is constructing another such system in Poland. The Mark 41 launch systems that’s used in the Aegis Ashore systems can also be used to launch nuclear long-range cruise missiles, so it’s a dual-use system. And Putin has pointed this out.

    In other words, the US has built and is building launch sites for nuclear missiles on the Russian border. This fact has been widely reported on Russian TV and has infuriated the Russian public. It was in St. Petersburg at an economic forum when Putin… You can look on the internet under ‘Putin’s warning’, and he lectured a group of international media people that Russia would be forced to retaliate against this threat. So, while Russian officials maintain that its actions are no more than routine, Russia now appears to be preparing for war. And Hans pointed out that these things can be viewed in different ways, but I still find some of this alarming, myself. On October 5th, Russia conducted a nationwide civil defense drill that included 40 million of its people being directed to fallout shelters. Reuters reported on October 7th that Russia had moved its Iskander-capable nuclear missiles, as Hans referred to, to Kaliningrad, which borders Poland.

    So, while the US ignores the danger of nuclear war, Russian scholar Stephen Cohen reports that the danger of nuclear war with the US is the leading news story in Russia. I listen to Cohen interviews on the John Batchelor Show every week, and it’s really one of the few sources in our media where you can get informed updates. Cohen speaks Russian and he listens to the Russian media, and he states, “Just as there are no discussion of the most existential question of our time in the American political class, the possibility of war with Russia, it is the only thing being discussed in the Russian political class. These are two different political universes. In Russia, all the discussion in the newspapers, and there is plenty of free discussion on talk show TV which echoes what the Kremlin is thinking, online, in the elite newspapers, and in the popular broadcasts, the number one, two, three and four topics of the day are the possibility of war with the United States.”

    And Cohen goes on to say that, “I conclude from this that the leadership of Russia actually believes now, in reaction to what the US and NATO have said and done over the last two years, and particularly in reaction to the breakdown of the proposed cooperation in Syria, and the rhetoric coming out of Washington, that war is a real possibility. I can’t remember when, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, that Moscow leadership came to this conclusion in its collective head.”

    My own personal assessment of the state of the nuclear danger today is that it’s profound. The US is sleepwalking towards nuclear war. Our leaders have turned a blind eye to the scientifically predicted consequences of nuclear war and appear to be intent on making Russia back down. This is a recipe for unlimited human disaster. But it’s still not too late to seek a dialogue, diplomacy and detente with Russia and China, and to create a global discussion about the existential dangers of nuclear war, which, when was the last time you heard about this? You certainly didn’t hear about it in the presidential debates. It’s like people have forgotten about it. But I think that they don’t want to think about it, because it’s just too painful.

    We must return to the understanding that nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought. And this can be achieved if we listen to the warnings from the scientific community about the omnicidal consequences of nuclear war. I think we need to hold the feet to the fire of the US Nuclear Weapons Council, because any debate on this is useful, because then people will go, “What?” Just like my students in my class, they’re all uniformly horrified when they find out about what nuclear weapons will do. They don’t know, they really don’t know. And I think this recognition can provide what David suggested to be as a pressure point.

  • NATO and U.S. Missile Defense in Europe are a Serious Political Concern

    Steven StarrThe Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently published an article by Pavel Podvig, “Point of Distraction”, which categorizes the ongoing US/NATO deployment of an integrated missile defense system in Western, Eastern and Southeastern Europe as an “overblown distraction” to U.S.-Russian relations. Given that Podvig’s first reference is to recent public threats made by Russia’s most senior military commander to launch military attacks against US/NATO missile defense bases, and that these threats have also been publicly made by Russian President Medvedev, Podvig’s assertions seem very abstracted from current political realities.


    What is striking about Podvig’s analysis is that he omits any reference to the fact that US missile defense is being deployed in Europe via NATO.  In fact, the word NATO does not appear anywhere in the article, and thus the entire issue of NATO is avoided.  This is unfortunate and misleading, because Russia has always viewed the NATO military alliance, which was set up to “keep the Russians out”, as a real threat to Russian security. BMD and its deployment by NATO are inseparable issues from any realistic political point of view.


    Podvig subsequently fails to address a concern that has been voiced by Russian Generals and recognized by their counterparts in America, that is, the Russian fear that the US/NATO European missile defense system night be used as a “mop-up” system against Russian strategic nuclear forces that survived a US disarming first-strike. I note that General Cartwright addressed this fear directly, as reported by Arms Control Today:


    “Gen. Cartwright and his coauthors go after the root cause of the problem: Moscow, they say, is not just concerned that the European missile system might be capable of intercepting a few Russian missiles. Rather, Russian leaders are worried about the U.S. capability to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack and then use strategic missile interceptors planned for deployment in 2020 (the SM-3 IIB) and thereafter to deny a Russian retaliatory strike.”


    While Russian political leaders are thus far reluctant to openly discuss the threat of a US nuclear first strike, it clearly is not taboo for Russian generals to do so. They have some cause to worry, since both nations continue to maintain 1700 strategic nuclear weapons at launch-ready status. But their fears are exacerbated because Russia has also watched NATO and US bases surround their borders, while NATO has become actively involved in many international military conflicts, and presses to add Georgia and Ukraine as member states.


    In this context, missile defense is much more than a “distraction”, it is rather the focal point of Russian discontent. It is the straw that is breaking the Russian camel’s back. US scientists, like Theodore Postol and Yousaf Butt have explained the technological basis of Russian concerns, which unfortunately US political leaders continue to foolishly deny, as if the Russians were not capable of understanding such things.


    The deployment of a highly integrated and layered missile defense system also adds real strength to NATO’s conventional capabilities. Russian war planners certainly fear NATO’s overwhelming conventional military strength – following the NATO intervention in Kosovo, it was such fears that led Russia to develop its military doctrine of “nuclear de-escalation”.


    This is where the danger of military conflict between the US and Russia lies. The expansion of NATO to Russian borders will surely provide opportunities for the clash of NATO and Russian troops. That such a conflict could quickly go nuclear is made even more probable by the forward-based nuclear weapons of NATO and standard Russian operating procedures that plan for the preemptive use of their tactical nuclear weapons against overwhelming NATO conventional force.


    This concern was recently voiced in a letter to David Krieger from Russian Minister Lavrov, in which Lavrov agreed with the suggestions made in the “Open Letter on NATO Missile Defense Plans and the Increased Risk of Nuclear War.” Lavrov states, “One cannot help agreeing to a conclusion that deployment of missile defense system at the very borders of Russia as well as upbuilding system’s capabilities increase the chance of any conventional military confrontation might promptly turn into a nuclear war.”


    The deployment of US/NATO European missile defense is hardly a “distraction” to U.S.-Russian relations and it is a mistake to categorize it as such. Analysts who focus solely on the technical capabilities of missile defense, while ignoring the larger picture of missile defense as an integral part of NATO, are missing the forest for the trees. To continue to dismiss Russian concerns on these issues as trivial is a serious political mistake on the part of both the US and its NATO allies.

  • References on High Alert and Nuclear Famine Dangers

    Bruce Blair, “Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark,” Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column (Episode #2:  The SIOP Option that Wasn’t), Feb. 16, 2004. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/blair/launch-on-warning.cfm

    Bruce G. Blair,”A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces,” October 13, 2007. Retrieved from http://lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm

    Bruce G. Blair, Harold Feiveson and Frank N. von Hippel, “Who’s Got the Button? Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,” Scientific American, November 1997. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/aboutcdi/SciAmerBB

    False Warnings of Soviet Missile Attacks during 1979-80 Led to Alert Actions for U.S. Strategic Forces; National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 371 Posted – March 1, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb371/index.htm

    Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, Co-Chairs. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Reference/reports/ent/part-ii-2.html

    Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger, “The Ever-Ready Nuclear Missileer,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 64, No. 3, pp. 14-21 DOI: 10.2968/064003005. Retrieved from http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064003005.pdf

    ICAN Nuclear Weapons Convention: http://icanw.org/nuclear-weapons-convention

    M.Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison and R. Garcia, “Massive Global Ozone Loss Predicted Following Regional Nuclear Conflict,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8, 2008, Vol 105(14), pp. 5307-12. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/14/5307.abstract

    A. Robock, L. Oman and G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear Winter Revisited with a Modern Climate Model and Current Nuclear Arsenals: Still Catastrophic Consequences,” Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen and R. Turco, “Climatic Consequences of Regional Nuclear Conflicts,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012. Retrieved from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/7/2003/2007/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf

    O.B.Toon, R. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, and G. Stenchikov, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, pp. 1973-2003. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf

    O.B. Toon and A. Robock, “2010:  Local Nuclear War, Global Suffering,”  Scientific American, 302, 74-81. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf

    O. Toon, A. Robock and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War,” Physics Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf

    S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict,” International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, December 2009. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Documents/Starr_Nuclear_Winter_Oct_09.pdf

    S. Starr, “Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, August 2011. Retrieved from https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2011_06_24_starr.pdf

    http://www.nucleardarkness.org

  • Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples

    2011_06_24_starr.pdf

  • Consequences of a Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence

    Only a single failure of nuclear deterrence is required to start a nuclear war, and the consequences of such a failure would be profound.  Peer-reviewed studies predict that less than 1% of the nuclear weapons now deployed in the arsenals of the Nuclear Weapon States, if detonated in urban areas, would immediately kill tens of millions of people, and cause long-term, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer. The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.  A full-scale war, fought with the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, would so utterly devastate Earth’s environment that most humans and other complex forms of life would not survive.


    Yet no Nuclear Weapon State has ever evaluated the environmental, ecological or agricultural consequences of the detonation of its nuclear arsenals in conflict. Military and political leaders in these nations thus remain dangerously unaware of the existential danger which their weapons present to the entire human race. Consequently, nuclear weapons remain as the cornerstone of the military arsenals in the Nuclear Weapon States, where nuclear deterrence guides political and military strategy.   


    Those who actively support nuclear deterrence are trained to believe that deterrence cannot fail, so long as their doctrines are observed, and their weapons systems are maintained and continuously modernized. They insist that their nuclear forces will remain forever under their complete control, immune from cyberwarfare, sabotage, terrorism, human or technical error. They deny that the short 12-to-30 minute flight times of nuclear missiles would not leave a President enough time to make rational decisions following a tactical, electronic warning of nuclear attack.


    The U.S. and Russia continue to keep a total of 2000 strategic nuclear weapons at launch-ready status – ready to launch with only a few minutes warning.   Yet both nations are remarkably unable to acknowledge that this high-alert status in any way increases the probability that these weapons will someday be used in conflict.  How can strategic nuclear arsenals truly be “safe” from accidental or unauthorized use, when they can be launched literally at a moment’s notice?  A cocked and loaded weapon is infinitely easier to fire than one which is unloaded and stored in a locked safe.


    The mere existence of immense nuclear arsenals, in whatever status they are maintained, makes possible their eventual use in a nuclear war.  Our best scientists now tell us that such a war would mean the end of human history.  We need to ask our leaders:  Exactly what political or national goals could possibly justify risking a nuclear war that would likely cause the extinction of the human race?


    However, in order to pose this question, we must first make the fact known that existing nuclear arsenals – through their capacity to utterly devastate the Earth’s environment and ecosystems – threaten continued human existence.  Otherwise, military and political leaders will continue to cling to their nuclear arsenals and will remain both unwilling and unable to discuss the real consequences of failure of deterrence.  We can and must end the silence, and awaken the peoples of all nations to the realization that “nuclear war” means “global nuclear suicide”.


    A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to:



    • A nuclear war between India and Pakistan;
    • 50 Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons detonated in the mega-cities of both India and Pakistan (there are now 130-190 operational nuclear weapons which exist in the combined arsenals of these nations);
    • The deaths of 20 to 50 million people as a result of the prompt effects of these nuclear detonations (blast, fire and radioactive fallout);
    • Massive firestorms covering many hundreds of square miles/kilometers (created by nuclear detonations that produce temperatures hotter than those believed to exist at the center of the sun), that would engulf these cities and produce 6 to 7 million tons of thick, black smoke;
    • About 5 million tons of smoke that would quickly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where strong winds would carry it around the Earth in 10 days;
    • A stratospheric smoke layer surrounding the Earth, which would remain in place for 10 years;
    • The dense smoke would heat the upper atmosphere, destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer, and block 7-10% of warming sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface;
    • 25% to 40% of the protective ozone layer would be destroyed at the mid-latitudes, and 50-70% would be destroyed at northern and southern high latitudes;
    • Ozone destruction would cause the average UV Index to increase to 16-22 in the U.S, Europe, Eurasia and China, with even higher readings towards the poles (readings of 11 or higher are classified as “extreme” by the U.S. EPA). It would take 7-8 minutes for a fair skinned person to receive a painful sunburn at mid-day;
    • Loss of warming sunlight would quickly produce average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere colder than any experienced in the last 1000 years;
    • Hemispheric drops in temperature would be about twice as large and last ten times longer then those which followed the largest volcanic eruption in the last 500 years,  Mt. Tambora in 1816. The following year, 1817, was called “The Year Without Summer”, which saw famine in Europe from massive crop failures;
    • Growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere would be significantly shortened.  It would be too cold to grow wheat in most of Canada for at least several years;
    • World grain stocks, which already are at historically low levels, would be completely depleted; grain exporting nations would likely cease exports in order to meet their own food needs;
    • The one billion already hungry people, who currently depend upon grain imports, would likely starve to death in the years following this nuclear war;
    • The total explosive power in these 100 Hiroshima-size weapons is less than 1% of the total explosive power contained in the currently operational and deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.


    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen, and R. Turco, “Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012.
    B. M. Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison, R. Garcia, “Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8,2008, vol. 105(14), pp. 5307-12.
    C. I. Helfand, ”An Assessment of the Extent of Projected Global Famine Resulting From Limited, Regional Nuclear War”, 2007, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Leeds, MA.
    D. Starr, S. (2009) “Deadly Climate Change From Nuclear War: A threat to human existence.”


    A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to:



    • The launching of 1000 U.S. and 1000 Russian strategic nuclear weapons which remain on launch-ready, high-alert status, capable of being launched with only a few minutes warning;
    • These 2000 weapons – each 7 to 85 times more powerful than the Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons of India and Pakistan – would detonate in the United States and Russia, and probably throughout the member states of NATO;
    • The detonation of some fraction of the remaining 7700 deployed and operational U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads/weapons would then follow;
    • Hundreds of large cities in the U.S., Europe and Russia would be engulfed in massive firestorms . . . the explosion of each weapon would instantly ignite tens or hundreds of square miles or kilometers of the land and cities beneath it;
    • Many thousands of square miles of urban areas simultaneously burning would produce up to 150 million tons of thick, black smoke;
    • The smoke would rise above cloud level and form an extremely dense stratospheric layer of smoke and soot, which would quickly engulf the Earth;
    • The smoke layer would remain for at least 10 years, and block and absorb sunlight, heating the upper atmosphere and producing Ice Age weather on Earth;
    • The smoke would block up to 70% of the sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 35% of the sunlight in the Southern Hemisphere, producing a profound “nuclear darkness”;
    • In the absence of warming sunlight, surface temperatures on Earth become as cold or colder than they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age;
    • There would be rapid cooling of more than 20°C over large areas of North America and of more than 30°C over much of Eurasia;
    • Average global precipitation would be reduced by 45% due to the prolonged cold;
    • 150 million tons of smoke in the stratosphere would cause minimum daily temperatures in the largest agricultural regions of the Northern Hemisphere to drop below freezing every night for 1 to 3 years;
    • Nightly killing freezes and frosts would occur, no crops could be grown;
    • Growing seasons would be virtually eliminated for at least a decade;
    • Massive destruction of the protective ozone layer would also occur, allowing intense levels of dangerous UV-B light to penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface of the Earth; as the smoke cleared, the UV-B would grow more intense;
    • Massive amounts of radioactive fallout would be generated and spread both locally and globally. The targeting of nuclear reactors would significantly increase global radioactive fallout of long-lived isotopes such as Cesium-137;
    • Gigantic ground-hugging clouds of toxic smoke would be released from the fires; enormous quantities of industrial chemicals would also enter the environment;
    • It would be impossible for many living things to survive the extreme rapidity and degree of changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with drastic increases in UV light, massive radioactive fallout, and massive releases of toxins and industrial chemicals;
    • Already stressed land and marine ecosystems would collapse;
    • Unable to grow food, most humans would starve to death;
    • A mass extinction event would occur, similar to what happened 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out following a large asteroid impact with Earth (70% of species became extinct, including all animals greater than 25 kilograms in weight);
    • Political and military leaders living in underground shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.

    1. O. Toon , A. Robock, and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War”, Physics  Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008, p. 37-42.
    2. A. Robock, L. Oman, G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences”, Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. p. 4 of 14.
    3. S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict”. (2009). ICNND


    See www.nuclearfamine.org or www.nucleardarkness.org for detailed sources of information on the environmental consequences of nuclear war.

  • Consequences of Nuclear Weapons

    2010_10_25_starr_1stcomm.pdf

  • Deadly Climate Change from Nuclear War: A Threat to Human Existence

    2010_02_18_starr_climate_change.pdf

  • Cold War Has Thawed Only Slightly

    Article originally appeared in Columbia Tribune

    At the conclusion of their April 2008 summit, Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin agreed the Cold War was over and that another Cuban missile crisis would be “unthinkable.” Standing nearby were U.S. and Russian military officers, each holding a briefcase from which their respective president could quickly transmit a launch order that, in about three minutes, would cause hundreds of ballistic missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads to begin their 30-minute flights toward Russia or the United States.

    Regardless of public expressions of friendship, the United States and Russia continue to operate under policies that assume each could authorize a nuclear attack against the other. The failure to end their Cold War nuclear confrontation causes both nations together to maintain a total of at least 2,600 strategic nuclear warheads on high-alert, launch-ready status, whose primary missions remain the destruction of the opposing side’s nuclear forces, industrial infrastructure and civilian/military leaders.

    Most Americans don’t know these weapons exist. They have no idea a single strategic nuclear warhead, when detonated over a city or industrial area, could ignite an enormous firestorm over a total area of 40 to 65 square miles. The vast nuclear arsenals have effectively been hidden from public view and removed from public knowledge, thus making it easy for smiling U.S. and Russian presidents to proclaim “peace in our time.”

    Another Cuban missile crisis might be “unthinkable,” but the continued U.S.-Russian nuclear confrontation means it certainly isn’t impossible. Presidential assurances to the contrary, the relations between Washington and Moscow are worse than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union. And nuclear weapons remain at the heart of U.S.-Russian political disagreements.

    Eleven months before the April 2008 summit, Putin revealed Russian tests of a new ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads were a response to the planned deployment of a new U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Bush said the U.S. system is designed to intercept Iranian missiles aimed at America. Russia argues Iran has no long-range missiles and is not soon likely to have them – and even if it did have them, the sites for the proposed U.S. radar and interceptors are hundreds of miles north of where they should ideally be located.

    The U.S. system, however, would be in an ideal spot to track European-based Russian nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. X-band radar in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland are to be located between 800 and 1,000 miles from Moscow. If the situation were reversed, it would be the geographical equivalent of putting Russian missiles on the northern edge of Lake Superior. Russia views the proposed U.S. system as a direct threat to its strategic nuclear weapons and warns it will target its missiles at the Czech and Polish sites where the system is to be based.

    Russian arguments are supported by two respected U.S. physicists, George Lewis and Theodore Postol. They say the U.S. missile defense system would be able to track and engage almost every Russian missile launched toward the United States from Russian sites west of the Urals. The physicists said the only obvious reason for choosing Eastern Europe for a missile defense site is to place U.S. interceptor missiles close to Russia, making it possible for the European-based radar and interceptors to be added as a layer against Russia to the already developing U.S. continental missile defense.

    Russia is also deeply threatened by constant efforts to expand NATO and encircle Russia with U.S. military bases. Despite vehement Russian objections, Bush continues to insist the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia be allowed to join NATO. Should this happen, NATO military forces will be positioned on the borders of Russia. If Ukraine joins NATO and accepts the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defenses on its territory, Russia has threatened to target it with nuclear warheads.

    NATO, which began as an anti-Soviet alliance, is locked in a Cold War mentality that regards Russia as the enemy and keeps nuclear weapons as a primary military option. Four hundred eighty U.S. nuclear bombs (a force larger than the entire deployed nuclear arsenals of France, the United Kingdom, China or Israel) are stored at eight European NATO bases. These forward-based U.S. weapons are intended for use, in accordance with NATO nuclear strike plans, against targets in the Middle East or Russia.

    The Cold War will not really end until the United States and Russia stand down their high-alert, launch-ready nuclear arsenals and finally cease their nuclear confrontation. This surely will not happen as long as the United States continues to push for NATO expansion while ignoring Russian concerns about its proposed European missile defense system.

    Steven Starr is an independent writer who has been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies. He recently retired from the medical profession to work as an educator and consultant on nuclear weapons issues.

  • An Explanation of Nuclear Weapons Terminology

    Discussions of nuclear weapons and the policies which guide them often utilize terminology which lacks standardized definition. Much of the nuclear jargon consists of words or phrases which are essentially descriptive terms whose meaning is generally agreed upon, but in fact do not have precise technical definitions in any military or civilian dictionaries. Such imprecision in language has created confusion among those trying to comprehend nuclear issues and has even hindered the process of negotiation among nations.

    This problem of imprecision exists for a variety of reasons. Some terms may not be listed in the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) online Dictionary of Military Terms (see http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/) because they refer to policies, such as “launch-on-warning”, which the U.S. government does not wish to acknowledge or discuss. Other terms, such as “high-alert status”, “hair-trigger alert” and “de-alerting”, may be regarded as useless by military officers who would wish to regard their forces as always “alert”.

    Although civilians and the military may approach the use of such terminology from different perspectives, it is important that they at least be able to understand each other when conversing. A lack of precise terminology will continue to plague discussions of nuclear policy until adequate definitions are finally agreed upon by all parties.

    The U.S. recently employed imprecision in terminology as a tactic during the 2007 General Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations, when it announced, “The fact is that U.S. nuclear weapons are not and have never been on “hair-trigger alert”. By repeatedly using the term “hair-trigger” (which lacks technical meaning but is commonly used to describe fire-arms and bad tempers), the U.S. deliberately muddied the semantic waters in an attempt to avoid serious discussion about the true status of its nuclear arsenal[1].

    The U.S. apparently chose this strategy because the governments of New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Nigeria and Chile had put forward a Resolution to the General Assembly which called for the removal of all nuclear weapons from “high-alert status”[2]. This left many of the delegates at the U.N. scrambling for a means to decipher exactly what was being debated.

    Because I had been asked to speak in support of the New Zealand Resolution[3], I decided to present the delegates with definitions for commonly used nuclear terms. I found, however, that very few published definitions are available for such terms, and so I instead developed a list of what I believe are valid explanations for commonly used nuclear jargon (copied below). It is my hope that eventually all these words and phrases can be assigned standardized definitions usable by both civilians and military authorities.

    “Operational”, “Active” and “Deployed” nuclear weapons

    • Fully functional nuclear weapons which are either mated to delivery systems or available for immediate combat use.
    • There are about 11,800 operational/active/deployed nuclear weapons in the global nuclear arsenal (mostly U.S. and Russian).

    Note: The DOD has a rather confusing definition for “Deployed Nuclear Weapons” available at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/d/01632.html “Reserve” or “Inactive/Responsive” nuclear weapons

    • Nuclear weapons not immediately available for combat. They are kept in long-term storage as spares, as a source of parts for remanufacture or the manufacture of other weapons, or held in reserve as a responsive force that may augment deployed forces. These weapons can lack some component which renders them inoperable unless that component is replaced.
    • There are 13,500 reserve nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. Should they choose to do so, the U.S. and Russia could use these reserves to essentially double the number of operational nuclear weapons in their arsenals within a relatively short period of time.

    Note: The great irony of “arms control” negotiations is that the reductions which have occurred through the SALT, START and SORT treaties have focused only upon the destruction of missile silos and submarine launch tubes – not on eliminating nuclear warheads or even missiles, but only upon reducing the total number of operational delivery systems. Consequently, as the delivery systems were eliminated, many of the warheads were taken out of active service and placed in the “reserve” arsenals of the U.S. and Russia.

    “Low-yield” nuclear weapons

    • Generally refers to simple fission weapons, first described as “atomic bombs”, which have a nominal explosive power of about 15 kilotons, roughly the size of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are the type of weapons which would be made by emerging nuclear weapon states such as India and Pakistan or by terrorists (using Highly Enriched Uranium).

    “Tactical” nuclear weapons

    • This is an older term which is no longer useful in describing the explosive size of nuclear weapons (many modern versions of these weapons can have large yields). “Tactical” now infers that the weapon is used for limited, or “theater” military operations, but not long-range intercontinental missions. Thus, the term “non-strategic weapon” is more appropriate.

    “Strategic” nuclear weapons

    • Often referred to as “high-yield” or “thermonuclear” nuclear weapons. The first generations of these weapons were called “hydrogen bombs” because they used (and still use) atomic bombs as triggers to generate enough heat to cause the nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms (fusion is the same process which powers the Sun). Most modern thermonuclear weapons are 20 to 50 times more powerful than the Hiroshima-size bombs, although weapons more than 1000 times as powerful still exist in the global nuclear arsenal.
    • Strategic nuclear weapons generally have an explosive power of at least 100 kilotons yield, i.e. 100,000 tons of TNT.
    • There are 7200 strategic nuclear weapons in the global nuclear arsenal.
    • For a detailed explanation of nuclear weapon design, look it up at Wikipedia, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design

    Note: The DOD actually has a definition for thermonuclear weapons, see http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/t/05511.html

    ”High-alert status” or “Launch-ready alert”

    • Commonly refers to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) armed with strategic nuclear warheads, able to be launched in a matter of 15 minutes or less. Can include any missile or weapon system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead in this time frame.
    • Maximum flight time of 30 minutes or less for U.S. and Russian ICBMs and SLBMs to reach their targets.
    • Total time required to launch high-alert ballistic missiles and have their nuclear warheads reach their targets = 45 minutes or less. With high-alert nuclear forces a nuclear war can be ordered, launched and completed in less than one hour.

    Note: A definition of high-alert requires no specific explosive power of the weapon on the missile, but in general, most high-alert missiles are armed with strategic nuclear weapons with yields equal to or greater than 100 kilotons. The U.S. and Russia have for decades possessed solid fuel ICBMs and SLBMs capable of being launched in 2 or 3 minutes. The U.S. “Minuteman” ICBM earned its name for its quick-launch capability.

    Nuclear forces now at “High-alert status”

    A large fraction of the following forces, including at least 2600 to 3500 strategic nuclear warheads:

    • U.S. land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles = 1050 strategic nuclear warheads
    • 4 U.S. Trident submarines kept at “hard alert”, carrying a total of 600 high-yield warheads
    • Russian land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles = 1843 strategic nuclear warheads
    • Russian nuclear subs in port (virtually all year) carrying a total of 624 high-yield warheads

    Note: for published references on 2007 U.S. and Russian nuclear forces see the NRDC Nuclear Notebook at the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The URL for the U.S. arsenal is http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/91n36687821608un/fulltext.pdf; for Russia see http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/d41x498467712117/fulltext.pdf. And also stay tuned for my new website, www.globalnucleararsenal.com .

    “De-alerting” nuclear weapons

    • De-alerting prevents the rapid use of nuclear weapons by introducing physical changes to nuclear weapon systems which lengthen the time required to use the nuclear weapons in combat. Such changes are made in order to allow more time for rational decision-making processes to occur and hopefully avoid nuclear conflict.
    • De-alerting is a reversible process which can be used to rapidly implement existing arms control agreements ahead of schedule. In other words, arms control agreements create a timetable to introduce irreversible reductions of weapon systems, but these changes generally occur incrementally over the course of a number of years. De-alerting can be utilized to rapidly implement the entire range of negotiated reductions in a reversible fashion (which over time are then made irreversible), thereby bringing the benefits of the negotiated reductions into being much more rapidly.
    • Examples of de-alerting: (1) Placing large, visible barriers on top of missile silo lids which would be difficult to rapidly remove, (2) Removing or altering firing switches of missiles to prevent rapid launch, (3) Removing warheads from missiles and storing them in a separate, monitored location.
    • De-alerting may require negotiations and verification procedures in order to accomplish symmetrical force reductions on both sides. However, de-alerting can occur rapidly if sufficient political will exists, e.g., the 1991 Bush and Gorbachev Presidential Nuclear Initiatives.
    • De-alerting nuclear forces would prevent a false warning from triggering a retaliatory nuclear strike (accidental nuclear war) via launch-on-warning policy (see next definition).

    Note: It would be worthwhile to define separate stages of de-alerting which would refer to specific increments of time required to return a weapon system to high-alert status. For example, Stage 1 de-alerting would require 24 hours to bring the weapon system back to high-alert status; Stage 2 de-alerting would require a week; Stage 3 de-alerting would require a month or more to reconstitute the weapon system.

    Launch-on-Warning (LoW) policy

    • The Cold War policy of launching a retaliatory nuclear strike to a perceived nuclear attack only on the basis of electronic Early Warning System data before the reality of the perceived attack is confirmed by nuclear detonations from the incoming warheads.
    • Under LoW policy, a false warning misinterpreted as a true attack could trigger a retaliatory nuclear strike, and thus cause an accidental nuclear war.
    • Under LoW policy, the 30 minute (or less) flight time of ballistic missiles dictates that only a few minutes are available to evaluate Early Warning System data and act upon it before the arrival of incoming nuclear warheads. If the attack warning is accepted as accurate, top U.S. or Russian military commanders would contact their President to advise him, and the president would then be allowed only a few minutes to decide whether or not to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike – before the perceived attack arrives.
    • Launch-on-Warning capability can be eliminated by introducing physical changes to nuclear weapon systems which prevent their rapid use (de-alerting). In other words, Launch-on-Warning requires high-alert forces that can be launched in 15 minutes or less. If you remove nuclear forces from high-alert, you CANNOT Launch-on-Warning.
    • Launch-on-Warning policy can be ended overnight by Presidential decree.
    • By replacing LoW policy with a policy of Retaliatory Launch Only After Detonation (RLOAD), a false warning misinterpreted as a true attack could no longer cause an accidental nuclear war.

    For a more detailed analysis on LoW and its alternatives, see “Replace Launch on Warning Policy” by Phillips and Starr at www.RLOAD.org

    Note: The U.S. presently maintains that it does not operate under the policy of Launch-on-Warning (LoW). Although the U.S. DOD Dictionary of Military Terms lacks a definition for LoW, it does define Launch Under Attack (LUA, see http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/l/03079.html) – with a definition exactly the equivalent to the commonly used definition of LoW! Perhaps we should ask the U.S. if it operates under LUA? Furthermore, Russian military experts (writing in English) use LUA to mean something significantly different than the U.S. DOD definition. Russian usage of LUA refers to the delivery of a retaliatory nuclear strike “in response to an actually delivered strike”, i.e. after nuclear detonations have been confirmed (see Valery Yarynich, C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation, Washington, D.C.: Center for Defense Information, 2003, pp. 28 -30.)

    Launch-on-Warning (LoW) capability

    • Early Warning Systems (EWS), high-alert nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and nuclear command and control systems, all working together, provide the U.S. and Russia the capability to Launch-on-Warning.

    Launch-on-Warning (LoW) status

    • The combination of Launch-on-Warning capability with Launch-on-Warning policy has created what is commonly referred to as Launch-on-Warning status.
    • LoW capability + LoW policy = LoW status

    Note: This is my own opinion and definition. I felt obligated to come up with the explanation for “LoW status” because the term has often been used by non-governmental observers to describe the strategic nuclear forces of the U.S. and Russia.

    “Hair-trigger alert”

    • “Hair-trigger alert” is a figurative term sometimes used to describe strategic nuclear weapons at Launch-on-Warning status and in particular the condition of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, see “A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces” by Bruce Blair at http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm
    • “Hair-trigger alert” has been used to confuse the debate about the status of nuclear arsenals. For purposes of diplomacy, it may be wise to use non-figurative and more technical terms to describe nuclear policy and nuclear weapon systems.

    Footnotes

    [1] The text of the Oct. 9, 2007, U.S. statement at the U.N. can be viewed at http://reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/statements/9octusa.pdf Two authoritative rebuttals to the U.S. Statement are posted on the internet at the website of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, see: http://www.lcnp.org/ These include, “A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on Nuclear Weapons Alert, Dismantlements and Reductions”, by Dr. Hans M. Kristensen, the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, see http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/kristensen-rebuttal_oct07.pdf and, “A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces”, by Dr. Bruce Blair, President of the World Security Institute, see http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm
    [2] The Resolution passed by the vote of 124 to 3, with only the U.S., the U.K. and France voting against it. The U.S. voted against the Resolution because it said the Resolution was “meaningless” (see http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/FCM07/week4.html#opstatus ) 

    [3] Our Oct. 16th panel, which discussed the Operational Status of Nuclear Weapons, also included speeches by the Ambassadors of New Zealand and Sweden, and a presentation by John Hallam of Australia, with Ms. Rhianna Tyson of the Global Security Institute as moderator.

    Steven Starr is an independent writer who has been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies. He recently retired from the medical profession to work as an educator and consultant on nuclear weapons issues.

  • The Effects of a 300 kiloton Nuclear Warhead Detonated Above Washington, D.C.

    If you live in a large city in the U.S., Russia, or any other nation possessing nuclear weapons, there is at least one nuclear warhead aimed at you. It patiently waits day and night for a computer to give it your address and send it on a 10 to 30 minute flight to incinerate you and your family. There are many thousands of strategic nuclear warheads kept constantly ready to turn the cities of the world into hurricanes of fire.

    Click here for a larger version Image by Steven Starr and Taylor Starr

    This is a brief description of the effects which a single average sized strategic nuclear weapon would have if detonated above the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (dozens of such weapons are probably targeted upon D.C. by Russia). The warhead has an explosive power of 300 kilotons (kT), equaling 600 million pounds of dynamite and would be detonated at an altitude of 1500 feet above its target.

    A 300 kT warhead would within a millionth of a second release 300 trillion calories of energy primarily in the form of intense light. The surrounding air would be superheated and create a rapidly expanding fireball. Almost all the air within and around the fireball would be compressed into a steeply fronted luminous blast wave of enormous extent and power.

    The fireball would extend more than a mile in diameter and at its center produce temperatures of over 200 million degrees Fahrenheit, about four to five times the temperature found at the center of the sun. This unearthly release of heat and energy would create an environment of unimaginable lethality, igniting extensive fires for many tens of square miles and producing a blast wave which would crush and tear apart any structures in its path. The blast wave would also increase the incidence and rate of fire spread by exposing ignitable surfaces, releasing flammable materials and dispersing burning objects.

    At Pentagon City, a shopping and office complex 0.7 miles from ground zero at the Pentagon, light from the fireball would melt asphalt in the streets, burn paint off walls, and melt metal surfaces within a half second of detonation. The interior of vehicles in line of sight of the fireball would explode into flames.

    About one second later, the blast wave and 750 miles per hour (mph) winds would arrive and toss burning and disintegrating vehicles into the air like leaves in a wind. The blast wave could cave in buildings and would turn windows and furniture into missiles and shrapnel. The interiors of buildings that remained standing would, within minutes, be burning pyres of splintered walls, doors and other combustibles. Seconds after the passage of the blast wave, suction effects created in part by the rising fireball would reverse the winds, drawing them toward the detonation point at perhaps 50 – 70 mph.

    All the areas within 1.3 miles of the Pentagon (almost all of the Arlington National Cemetery, most of the Virginia Highlands and Addison Heights neighborhoods, and parts of Washington D.C. reaching to the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials) would experience more than 15 times the thermal energy found at the edge of the mass fire which destroyed Hiroshima. The fireball here would, for a moment, shine 5,000 times brighter than a desert sun at noon.

    Grass, vegetation, and leaves on tress would explode into flames, and the surface of the ground would explode into superheated dust. Flames and black smoke would spew out from all combustible materials illuminated by the fireball. The marble on the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials would crack, pop, and possibly evaporate. The light would melt the surface of the bronze statue of Jefferson. Birds in flight would drop from the sky in flames. People exposed to the light would be instantly cremated.

    Four seconds later the blast wave would arrive and collapse the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. This would be followed by winds of 300-400 mph which combining with the blast wave would completely destroy wood-frame and residential brick buildings. Aluminum surfaces on the aircraft at the Reagan National Airport would melt and warp. Interior sections of the aircraft exposed to the fireball would burst into flame. Tires on the aircraft and any nearby vehicles would also catch fire.

    Within 3 miles of ground zero the clothing worn by people in direct line of sight of the fireball would burst into flames or melt, and areas of skin not covered by clothing would be scorched, charring flesh and causing third-degree burns. For many miles in all directions, any creature unfortunate enough to look into the fireball at the time of detonation would either be blinded or suffer permanent retinal damage.

    Only a few mass fires have occurred in human history; those created by British and American conventional incendiary weapons and the U.S. atomic bombs in World War II. The unique features of the mass fire – the simultaneous combustion of many fires over a large area, which causes a great volume of air to heat, rise, and suck in large amounts of fresh air at hurricane speeds from the periphery – fundamentally distinguish it from other fires in history (otherwise know as line fires, which can burn and spread for days, but were not simultaneously set over large areas).

    Fire environments created by mass fires are fundamentally more violent and destructive than fires of smaller scale, and they are far less affected by external weather conditions. Because their dynamics are dominated by the intense hydrodynamic flows generated by the vast releases of energy from combustion in an area of enormous size and the resulting rise of air over the fires zone, these fires are not substantially altered by seasonal and daily weather conditions.

    The 300kT detonation would create a mass fire with a radius of 3.5 miles in all but the most extreme weather conditions. Under a majority of weather conditions, there would be a mass fire ignited to a distance of just over 4.5 miles from the detonation.

    This gigantic fire would quickly increase in intensity and in minutes generate ground winds of hurricane force with average air temperatures well above the boiling point of water (212 degrees F). The fire would then burn everywhere at this intensity for three to six hours, producing a lethal environment over a total area of approximately 40 to 65 square miles – an area about 10 to 15 times larger than that incinerated by the 15 kT atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima.

    Even after the fires burned out, street pavement would be so hot that even tracked vehicles could not pass over it for days, and buried and unburned materials from collapsed buildings could burst into flames if exposed to air even weeks after the attack. Those who sought to flee through the streets would be burned alive by hurricane-force winds laden with flames and firebrands. Even those who sought shelter in the deepest subbasements of massive buildings would likely die from heat prostration, suffocation, or lack of water. There would be no escape. The fire would eliminate all life in the fire zone.

    The smoke and mushroom cloud, seething with radioactivity, would rise up to blot out the sun. Deadly fallout would contaminate hundreds of square miles downwind with radioactive poisons from the blast, dooming hundreds of thousands of humans and animals to a painful, vicious death from radiation sickness. Much of the land contaminated by the fallout would remain uninhabitable for years. Scattered deaths and higher mortality rates would continue for centuries from cancer, leukemia, and genetic damage to succeeding generations.

    Imagine this same event happening, in less than an hour, with not one, but with thousands of strategic nuclear weapons detonating in the cities of the U.S., Russia, China, Europe, India, and Pakistan. The details of such a holocaust are already inscribed in the guidance mechanisms of the missiles waiting to deliver the warheads. Now you understand what the global nuclear arsenals, continually kept at launch on warning status, are capable of doing.

    What are you going to do about it?

    Most of the information in this article has been taken, with the permission of the author, from the first chapter of the book by Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire (Cornell University Press, 2004). An adaptation of this first chapter also appeared as “City on Fire,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (January/February 2004). Anyone interested in learning more about this subject should read these works.