Thinking about nuclear war

A NYT opinion (not behind the paywall - I highly recommend at least scanning this valuable opinion piece) considers the risk of nuclear war and the consequences if one happens:

Today’s generation of weapons — many of which are fractions of the size of the bombs America dropped in 1945 but magnitudes more deadly than conventional ones — poses an unpredictable threat.

It hangs over battlefields in Ukraine as well as places where the next war might occur: the Persian Gulf, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula.

This is one story of what’s at stake — if even one small nuclear weapon were used — based on modeling, research and hundreds of hours of interviews with people who have lived through an atomic detonation, dedicated their lives to studying nuclear war or are planning for its aftermath.

Nuclear war is often described as unimaginable. In fact, it’s not imagined enough.

IF IT SEEMS ALARMIST to anticipate the horrifying aftermath of a nuclear attack, consider this: The United States and Ukraine governments have been planning for this scenario for at least two years.

In the fall of 2022, a U.S. intelligence assessment put the odds at 50-50 that Russia would launch a nuclear strike to halt Ukrainian forces if they breached its defense of Crimea. Preparing for the worst, American officials rushed supplies to Europe. Ukraine has set up hundreds of radiation detectors around cities and power plants, along with more than 1,000 smaller hand-held monitors sent by the United States.

Nearly 200 hospitals in Ukraine have been identified as go-to facilities in the event of a nuclear attack. Thousands of doctors, nurses and other workers have been trained on how to respond and treat radiation exposure. And millions of potassium iodide tablets, which protect the thyroid from picking up radioactive material linked with cancer, are stockpiled around the country.

Nearly 200 hospitals in Ukraine have been identified as go-to facilities in the event of a nuclear attack. Thousands of doctors, nurses and other workers have been trained on how to respond and treat radiation exposure. And millions of potassium iodide tablets, which protect the thyroid from picking up radioactive material linked with cancer, are stockpiled around the country. 

The strategic thinking behind those weapons is that they are far less damaging than city-destroying hydrogen bombs and therefore more “usable” in warfare. The United States estimates Russia has a stockpile of up to 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads, some small enough they fit in an artillery shell. 

But the detonation of any tactical nuclear weapon would be an unprecedented test of the dogma of deterrence, a theory that has underwritten America’s military policy for the past 70 years. 

The toll of a 10-kiloton blast on a military target near a city could be thousands dead, even more wounded. Roads, tunnels and railways are impassable because of debris and destruction. It might be days before rescue workers can venture safely into affected areas.

The thousands of unburied dead, the open sewage and the fetid water are a breeding ground for disease and growth in insect populations that have a higher tolerance than humans for radiation. Flies appear en masse, laying eggs in corpses and the open burn wounds of survivors.

Radiation sickness begins with bouts of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Days or weeks after exposure, people who look fine can suddenly lose hunks of hair, become anemic and weak, and begin bleeding internally. Their immune systems can fail, rendering them helpless against the infectious diseases that start to spread: dysentery, typhoid, cholera.

The opinion is long and interactive. One needs to scroll through the images and commentary at various points. Here is what some of the scrolling looks like after a 10 kiloton nuclear weapon is used in battle. 10 kilotons is considered a small “tactical” bomb, about half the size of what obliterated Nagasaki and Hiroshima. These little fellers are easily mounted on a short range missile or artillery shells and shot at an enemy city or military installation. The big fellers, ~500 kilotons and up are a far more devastating. Here is some of the artwork that imagines what a little 10 kiloton feller can do.

CONTEXT & COMMENTARY

I spent several years working on a project to develop a drug that could treat lethal radiation exposure after a nuclear blast. Long story short: The drug worked amazingly well, but Tony Fauci killed it for reasons the research team was never told and Fauci will never reveal. He might lie about it if asked, but that is as close to truth as the public will ever get. I know a lot about (1) what will happen after a nuclear blast (true knowledge, not just guessing), and (2) the insulting, bullshit propaganda and outrageous lies our own government spews on us about it. Two points merit a mention.

• The comment in the article, millions of potassium iodide (KI) tablets, which protect the thyroid from picking up radioactive material linked with cancer, is an example of the insulting, bullshit propaganda and outrageous lies our own government spews on us about protecting people after a nuclear blast. It is about 97% a lie. Most people do not die years later from thyroid cancers that KI tabs might be able to reduce. They die from acute, lethal radiation exposure within a few days and weeks. KI does absolutely nothing to deal with that. I do mean literally nothing. People die from immune system collapse and massive infections, not cancer years later.

• The comment in the article, it might be days before rescue workers can venture safely into affected areas, is another example of the insulting, bullshit propaganda and outrageous lies our own government spews on us. Official US policy for first responders is this: Do not go into the zone where radiation is high. First responders are required to sit outside and wait for survivors to walk or crawl out of the kill zone. When they get out, there is not a fucking thing that can be done other than to let them die more comfortably than if they had died alone in the kill zone. That assumes that pain killers have not run out before a survivor crawls out. One reason there is not a fucking thing that can be done is because Tony Fauci killed the one and only mass use drug known so far that would save lives if it had been accepted by Fauci and deployed to the US Strategic National Stockpile.

If it sounds like I dislike Fauci, it is because I hate his guts. I hate him for killing a useful radiation drug for no reason, and for his years-later lies about the origin of COVID. His bloody fingerprints are all over both unhappy events.