Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: consequences

  • 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.

  • Occupied Territories: Iraq, America

    It has quickly become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with that term during the second world war. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied countries. The United States liberated them from occupation.

    Now we are the occupiers. True, we liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the US established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. US corporations moved into Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The US framed and imposed, with support from local accomplices, the constitution that would govern Cuba, just as it has drawn up, with help from local political groups, a constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation. An occupation.

    And it is an ugly occupation. On August 7 2003 the New York Times reported that General Sanchez in Baghdad was worried about the Iraqi reaction to occupation. Pro-US Iraqi leaders were giving him a message, as he put it: “When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family.” (That’s very perceptive.)

    We know that fighting during the US offensive in November 2004 destroyed three-quarters of the town of Falluja (population 360,000), killing hundreds of its inhabitants. The objective of the operation was to cleanse the town of the terrorist bands acting as part of a “Ba’athist conspiracy”.

    But we should recall that on June 16 2003, barely six weeks after President Bush had claimed victory in Iraq, two reporters for the Knight Ridder newspaper group wrote this about the Falluja area: “In dozens of interviews during the past five days, most residents across the area said there was no Ba’athist or Sunni conspiracy against US soldiers, there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops … One woman said, after her husband was taken from their home because of empty wooden crates which they had bought for firewood, that the US is guilty of terrorism.”

    Soldiers who are set down in a country where they were told they would be welcomed as liberators and find they are surrounded by a hostile population become fearful and trigger-happy. On March 4 nervous, frightened GIs manning a roadblock fired on the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, just released by kidnappers, and an intelligence service officer, Nicola Calipari, whom they killed.

    We have all read reports of US soldiers angry at being kept in Iraq. Such sentiments are becoming known to the US public, as are the feelings of many deserters who are refusing to return to Iraq after home leave. In May 2003 a Gallup poll reported that only 13% of the US public thought the war was going badly. According to a poll published by the New York Times and CBS News on June 17, 51% now think the US should not have invaded Iraq or become involved in the war. Some 59% disapprove of Bush’s handling of the situation.

    But more ominous, perhaps, than the occupation of Iraq is the occupation of the US. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

    More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong. More and more every day the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie, that everything the US does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a “war on terrorism”, ignoring the fact that war is itself terrorism, that barging into homes and taking away people and subjecting them to torture is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less.

    The Bush administration, unable to capture the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, invaded Afghanistan, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. Yet it still does not know where the criminals are. Not knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein was hiding, it invaded and bombed Iraq in March 2003, disregarding the UN, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorising the population; and not knowing who was and was not a terrorist, the US government confined hundreds of people in Guantánamo under such conditions that 18 have tried to commit suicide.

    The Amnesty International Report 2005 notes: ” Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times … When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity”.

    The “war on terrorism” is not only a war on innocent people in other countries; it is a war on the people of the US: on our liberties, on our standard of living. The country’s wealth is being stolen from the people and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of the young are being stolen.

    The Iraq war will undoubtedly claim many more victims, not only abroad but also on US territory. The Bush administration maintains that, unlike the Vietnam war, this conflict is not causing many casualties. True enough, fewer than 2,000 service men and women have lost their lives in the fighting. But when the war finally ends, the number of its indirect victims, through disease or mental disorders, will increase steadily. After the Vietnam war, veterans reported congenital malformations in their children, caused by Agent Orange.

    Officially there were only a few hundred losses in the Gulf war of 1991, but the US Gulf War Veterans Association has reported 8,000 deaths in the past 10 years. Some 200,000 veterans, out of 600,000 who took part, have registered a range of complaints due to the weapons and munitions used in combat. We have yet to see the long-term effects of depleted uranium on those currently stationed in Iraq.

    Our faith is that human beings only support violence and terror when they have been lied to. And when they learn the truth, as happened in the course of the Vietnam war, they will turn against the government. We have the support of the rest of the world. The US cannot indefinitely ignore the 10 million people who protested around the world on February 15 2003.

    There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.

    Howard Zinn is professor emeritus of political science at Boston University; his books include A People’s History of the United States.

    Originally published by The Guardian.

  • DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care

    Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets

     

    Far from the radioactive battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan , another war is being waged. This war, over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, is being fought between the military top brass and the men who understand the dangers of DU: former military doctors and nuclear scientists.

    This war is for the truth about uranium weapons, and the consequences of their use, and has been waged for more than 13 years-since the U.S. government first used DU weapons against Iraq . Most Americans, however, are unaware of this historic struggle, because the Pentagon has used its power to prevent information about DU from reaching the public.

    John Hanchette, editor of USA Today from 1991 to 2001, in a recent interview with anti-DU activist Leuren Moret, said he had written several news stories about the effects of DU on gulf wars veterans. Every time he was ready to publish a story about the devastating illnesses afflicting soldiers, however, the Pentagon called USA Today and pressured him not to publish the story. Hanchette was eventually replaced as editor and now teaches journalism to college students.

    Dr. Doug Rokke, 37-year Army veteran and former director of the Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, has become an outspoken “warrior for peace” in the war against DU weapons. Rokke is fighting for medical care for all people exposed to DU: active soldiers, veterans and civilians, including Iraqis, and for “remediation” or cleansing of all DU-contaminated land.

    “Anyone who demands medical care and environmental remediation faces ongoing and blatant retaliation,” Rokke told AFP. “Anybody who speaks up-their career ends.”

    During Gulf War I, Rokke was theater health physicist with the 12th Preventive Medicine Command professional staff and served on three special operations teams. Rokke and members of his teams were exposed to large amounts of uranium during recovery of U.S. tanks and armored vehicles mistakenly hit by DU weapons.

    Today, Rokke is fighting to get the Pentagon to abide by its regulations regarding care for individuals exposed to uranium and remediation of contaminated areas.

    The military records of one of Rokke’s comrades, who suffers from the effects of DU exposure, have been completely “gutted” from Army archives, Rokke told AFP.

    “They [defense officials] willfully ignore existing Department of Defense directives that require prompt and effective medical care be provided to ‘all’ exposed individuals,” Rokke says.

    Rokke points to a U.S. Army Medical Command memo dated April 29, 2004, from Lt. Gen. James B. Peake about medical management of Army personnel exposed to DU. The memo, which says “all personnel with actual or potential exposures to DU will be identified, assessed, treated (if needed), and assigned a potential exposure level (I, II, or III),” reiterates the U.S. Army regulations originally written by Rokke in 1991, he said.

    “A radio bioassay has to be done within a few days of exposure,” Rokke said. “This means nasal and pharyngeal swabs being taken and 24-hour urine and fecal analysis.

    “Today,” Rokke writes, “although medical problems continue to develop, medical care is denied or delayed for all uranium-exposed casualties while Defense Department and British Ministry of Defense officials continue to deny any correlation between uranium exposure and adverse health and environmental effects.”

    Rokke said the individuals at the Department of Defense are engaged in a “criminal” conspiracy to deny the toxicity of DU weapons. “The lies by senior Defense Department officials are designed to sustain use of uranium munitions and avoid liability for adverse health and environmental effects,” he said. According to Rokke, a recent Gulf War Review reported that only 262 vets had been treated for DU poisoning through September 2003.

    The military’s strategy of lies and concealment about DU began in March 1991, shortly after the first widespread combat use of DU weapons by the U.S. government in Iraq , Rokke said.

    On March 1, 1991, Lt. Col. Michael V. Ziehmn of Los Alamos National Lab wrote a memo about the effectiveness of DU penetrators. The “future existence” of DU weapons should be ensured by active “proponency” by the Department of Defense, Ziehmn wrote.

    “If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability,” Ziehmn wrote. “I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after-action reports are written.”

    When American Free Press began this series on DU weapons, the U.S. Army alerted the Centers for Disease Control, an Atlanta-based agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.

    “The CDC is going to do a whitewash on DU,” Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore Lab, said. Fulk told AFP he had received this information directly from CDC officials.

    AFP asked Stephanie C. Creel of the CDC about its position on the toxicity of DU. Creel said the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) on-line “fact sheet” would provide the “most in-depth information” on the subject.

    The ATSDR fact sheet: “The radiation damage from exposure to high levels of natural or depleted uranium are [sic] not known to cause cancer.”

    “No apparent public health hazard,” the CDC assessment of Livermore lab, published June 29, said about local exposure levels to tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, Fulk said.

    “It’s nonsense,” Fulk said. “It’s been dumped all around the area. It goes through glass and steel.”

    Depleted uranium is a misnomer, according to Fulk. Depleted uranium, mostly U-238, is uranium that has had the naturally occurring fissile material, U-235, removed. DU is very radioactive, however. While one gram of U-235 emits 81,000 alpha particles per second, U-238 emits 12,000 per second. These high-energy particles coming from DU particles lodged in the body cause the most damage, according to Fulk and others.

    “Depleted uranium dust that is inhaled gets transferred from the lungs to the regional lymph nodes, where they can bombard a small number of cells in their immediate vicinity with intense alpha radiation,” said Dr. Asaf Durakovic, former Pentagon expert on DU.

    Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a defense contractor in San Diego , published an extensive article about the dangers of DU six months before President George H.W. Bush waged war against Iraq in 1991.

    “Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably the ground troops [who] re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armor-piercing (DU) munitions,” SAIC published in its July 1990 magazine.

    “Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer,” SAIC wrote.

    AFP submitted written questions to the U.S. Army Medical Command asking how the Army can claim that DU exposure is harmless when military documents have stressed its lethal toxicity.

    Mark A. Melanson, of the Army’s Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine in Aberdeen , Md. , responded in an email: “The two positions are not opposing. As with all potentially hazardous material, the amount determines the risk.”

    Melanson wrote that the Army was complying with its own regulations regarding medical care for DU exposure, saying: “Soldiers are being screened by completing the post deployment health questionnaire upon demobilization. Troops identified as being at potential risk for DU exposure are directed to provide a urine bioassay for analysis.”

    Rokke said: “That is too late. Hence they find a way out.”

    AFP repeatedly tried to speak to Melanson about the quantity of DU that the Army considered hazardous. He did not return phone calls.

    “An individual could [safely] breathe in up to a gram per year every year for 50 years,” Melanson recently told The New York Daily News.

    “That’s absolutely absurd,” Fulk said. Fulk said the number of alpha particle emissions from a gram of DU lodged in the body over a year would be about the same as one-10th of all the cells in his body.

    The inhaled DU particles have a tendency to bind with phosphate in the human body, found in the bones and the DNA. The alpha particle being emitted to the cells nearby “is doing the dirty work,” Fulk said.

    Painful breathing and respiratory problems are the first and most common symptoms of DU inhalation, Rokke said. Dr. Janette Sherman told AFP she met a 31-year-old female former soldier at a Maryland veteran’s hospital who had recently served in Kuwait . Sherman, a toxicologist, was shocked when the young woman told her that she required a lung transplant.

    Finis