Life in the shadow of nuclear war

It's autumn. Winter shelter is being prepared, the current covid wave is waning, and all possible ways to ensure heating in the coming winter are being considered. From the east, where Ukraine regained part of the territory with its successful counter-offensive, and Russia formally annexed four areas and at the same time is retaliating for the destruction of the Kerch bridge, new waves of anxiety are coming. In the West, analysts still do not expect a so-called nuclear exchange, but now, as if wishing for it, they often say that the Kremlin is ready to use "tactical" nuclear weapons. How to prepare for nuclear war?

One nuclear explosion really isn't the end of the world. However, with the devastation that no other weapon can achieve and the immediate death of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people near the epicenter, the various gruesome and vivid consequences of using a nuclear bomb are painful to imagine. For example, general radiation poisoning.

After ten minutes the absolute majority of directly exposed people will experience nausea and vomiting, an hour later fever, then diarrhea and a devastating headache, with a general decline in body functions, including a clearly visible loss of cognitive abilities due to which the person cannot remember, think and decide . Along with shock and disorientation, the symptoms quickly become more and more severe, accompanied by devastating, indescribable pain, organ failure and finally and inexorably - death. At extremely high absorbed doses of radiation, greater than 8 Gray, death is expected in 99-100 percent of cases in this period, regardless of whether or not the person has medical care (which is difficult to expect after a nuclear detonation).

The effects of so-called radiation poisoning, sometimes called acute radiation syndrome, primarily depend on the dose received. According to the American Standard Industrial Manual scale, if the absorbed dose to the whole body is higher than 30 Gray, death, with even more extreme effects, is expected within just one day. However, with doses lower than 6 Greys, it is possible to prolong life by a month to a month and a half, and even avoid death with medical care. At doses less than 2 Grays, as many as 95 percent of people can survive, of course, with certain aftereffects.

Although people can be exposed to various sources of radiation even without a nuclear war (and any dose above 0,7 Gray is considered life-threatening, while significantly less lead to various forms of cancer), the above-mentioned doses can be caused by so-called gamma radiation, which, as one of the numerous effects, occurs during the explosion of a nuclear bomb. Gamma radiation is a destructive ionizing electromagnetic wave of high energy and, as a rule, damages the bone marrow, leads to accelerated cell division and permanent DNA damage.

ESCAPE FROM RADIATION

There is no effective protection against gamma radiation outdoors. That is why during the Cold War the doctrine was adopted that the civilian population should be protected by sheltering underground, in so-called atomic shelters, where regardless of the type of nuclear weapon used, they would be protected from the mechanical consequences of the impact and then could wait for a potential episode of radiation to pass. Investments were made in education, information and rapid warning systems, but such an approach, when in the 1990s there was a détente between the great powers, the fear dissipated, and the general awareness of the nuclear threat completely declined, leading to the fact that most people today think that radiation and bombs have no other escape than deep underground.

Modern studies, based on the understanding that the long stay of the entire population underground is not only difficult, but also impossible to organize, try to find a solution for partial protection in the open air. It turns out that a strategy where certain parts of the body, primarily the collarbone, where there is the most bone marrow, would be protected from gamma radiation, can be very successful.

It is also possible to escape from other effects of the explosion outside the shelter. The so-called beta-radiation, which consists of very fast electrons and positrons created during the fission process, can be stopped by a simple barrier - it is stopped by a few millimeters of aluminum. When it comes to alpha particles, much heavier products (they are made up of two protons and two neutrons, i.e. the nucleus of helium 4), they are stopped by the human skin itself. But a bizarre circumstance meant that these particles, if inhaled, can lead to death, which is why it is necessary to wear, you guessed it, the well-known protective masks in the conditions after a nuclear detonation.

The detonation itself is accompanied not only by devastating shock waves - which tear apart everything except the reinforced concrete, create a vacuum in the impact zone and then suck the dust particles back, raising them into a characteristic mushroom - but also by a heat wave that leads to the burning of everything that is flammable, and at people lead to terrifying burns that are not easy to treat. One of the iconic effects of the bomb is a powerful flash that causes blindness in people, which in the case of fusion, thermonuclear bombs can happen even at a distance of 100 kilometers. This phenomenon, often used in nuclear apocalypse movies, recently prompted a local commentator (determined to justify the use of "tactical" bombs) to say that the most terrifying consequence of a nuclear bomb is the aforementioned flash.

Although analyzed in simulations, books and studies, the overall effects of the bomb cannot actually be clearly predicted. There is a clear gradation of damage not only when it comes to the length of exposure and the amount of radiation, but also a whole series of other factors - weather conditions, natural obstacles, distance. Whether it is direct exposure and immediate casualties or distant radioactive rains that would be blown across the continent by the winds, destruction of water and soil, long-term health problems, as well as immeasurable economic consequences, a detonated nuclear bomb means only one thing - evil for millions of people. However, it is quite possible to survive the bomb and then adapt to the new, somewhat darker world, provided that you are not so unlucky as to find yourself near the epicenter of the explosion at the wrong time.

KILOTONS AND MEGATONS

The key question, of course, is how close? Today's nuclear weapons can be roughly divided according to the physical process that leads to the explosion. Traditional bombs, such as were used for the only time in wartime conditions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are based on the process of fission, which is the name given by physicists to the splitting of atoms. This fascinating process, which also drives civilian nuclear reactors, is naturally inherent in heavy and unstable atomic nuclei, such as isotopes of uranium and plutonium. In nature, many such isotopes spontaneously decay and release energy (which is natural radioactivity).

Just before the Second World War, a group of researchers in various countries established that if such radioactive material is placed in a large enough pile, which is the critical mass, a chain reaction process occurs, when the splitting of the nuclei "feeds" itself and releases incredible energy. . This is how all fission bombs work. Their power is usually measured by the amount of ordinary TNT explosive needed to cause an equivalent explosion - for example, a bomb was detonated in Hiroshima that was comparable to the explosion of 15.000 tons of TNT, so it is said that that bomb had a power of 15 tons, i.e. of 15 kilotons.

Fusion is a similar process, based on the action of interactions in the atomic nucleus, but in layman's terms, quite the opposite of fission - this also a natural phenomenon, which constantly takes place on stars, does not mean that heavy radioactive nuclei are split, but that the light, lightest nuclei in naturally, atoms of hydrogen isotopes combine into larger, helium nuclei. In this process, there is no radiation like in fission, but nature wanted this process to be extremely energy-rich, because thousands of times more energy is released during it. Man fails to use fusion for civilian needs and to create energy from hydrogen alone, although there are many attempts, but since the fifties of the 20th century, both the USA and the then USSR, and now the Russian Federation, can create uncontrolled fusion and that is why they have so-called fusion or thermonuclear bombs.

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These bombs require such a high temperature to detonate that they do not occur naturally on Earth, except, you guessed it, during the detonation of the aforementioned fission bombs. That's why each of them uses an old atomic bomb as a lighter, so they also have radiation effects. Their strength is thousands of times greater. The largest bomb ever used in a nuclear test was the Soviet Tsar bomb, detonated on October 30, 1961, on the northern island of Novaya Zemlya. Its power was greater than 50 million tons of TNT, so it is said to have been a 50 megaton bomb (the bomb was originally designed to produce a force of 100 megatons, but was only tested at half power).

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And while fission bombs are able to destroy a city of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, megaton fusion bombs can destroy entire regions or large cities of millions. The list of possible consequences of their application is terrifying, and in the case of "nuclear exchange" it could lead to planetary effects such as nuclear winter, when life would be difficult for humans and most living species. As the USA and the USSR appeared on the scene during the arms race, a series of strike and counter-strike strategies were developed that would eventually evolve into the military doctrine of mutual total destruction, known as MAD (mutual assured destruction). This dogma, according to which neither side will launch their missiles knowing that the same response awaits them, has led to the fact that the active part of the arsenal delivered by strategic bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles is aimed at each other, but also that the world does not sink into a nuclear conflict .

HELL'S ARSENALS

In the new circumstances, the list of these terrible weapons has again, as in the Cold War, become everyday, like the number of people infected with covid. You probably know that, according to the Arms Control Association (ACA), of the 13.080 nuclear warheads in the world, more than 90 percent belong to the two largest nuclear powers - the US and the Russian Federation. The remaining nuclear powers, 7 of them, have less than 1300 warheads.

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Although the war in Ukraine has summoned nuclear demons, the circumstances today are significantly different than during the Cold War. Arsenals are far smaller. The total number of nuclear weapons today is at least five times smaller than in the early eighties, and has decreased thanks to the NPT agreement against the proliferation of nuclear arsenals and seven successive agreements on its reduction signed by the two superpowers. The last, the "New START" treaty, is still in force and limits the number of nuclear warheads that can be strategically deployed to 1550.

In accordance with that regulation, and according to data from November 2021, the Russian Federation currently possesses the most nuclear warheads in the world, as many as 6257. Of these, according to the agreement, 1760 are "retired" and awaiting decommissioning, 4497 are kept in the strategic reserve , and 1458 are strategically placed. On the other hand, the USA has 5550 nuclear warheads, of which 1800 have been seen for decommissioning, 3750 are in reserve, and 1389 are strategically deployed.

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After half a year of conflict in Ukraine, the exchange of diplomatic and other expressions between the East and the West showed that a general nuclear war and a "nuclear exchange" of apocalyptic arsenals is very unlikely to happen. In most analyses, the current rattling of nuclear weapons is explained by the Russian president's desire to stop a series of defeats and raise the stakes in Ukraine, and some analysts also believe that Putin wants to raise the price for himself at home. However, we should not forget that Russia has been a nuclear power for too long not to understand what that means, and the rules for using these weapons have been quite clearly set since 1961, when Novaya Zemlya was covered by a thermonuclear flash.

DEAD STRATEGY

"We will die, but we will sink them all", said on October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the captain of the Soviet submarine B-59 Valentin Savitsky, preparing to launch a nuclear counterstrike. After the doubts of his first officer, Savitski began to change his mind, his resolve gave way and he began to hesitate. In the end, he agreed to surface and check what kind of attack it was. When it was established that it was the US naval blockade measures, the threat subsided, and the world did not sink into a nuclear war.

The procedure for the launch in the Kremlin implies that the decision is made by the Russian president, who issues this order through a suitcase called "Sheget" after a mountain in the Caucasus. This case activates the launch safety system, which is also called "Kazbek" after the Russian mountain. The Russian General Staff receives the order in this way, but in Russia there are two parallel launch mechanisms. In addition to "Kazbek" in the 1980s, "Perimeter" - an automatic system for launching the Russian nuclear arsenal - was developed.

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Namely, during the 1980s, the Kremlin was worried that the Americans might decide on a limited exchange and thus bypass MAD, and because of which both sides would not activate their arsenal, with the idea of ​​targeting Moscow with one missile and beheading the Soviet leadership so that it would not come until the return blow. That is why the Soviet colonel of the Red Army Valery Jarinich, in cooperation with numerous Soviet institutes, developed an automatic system that automatically recognizes that the USSR is under nuclear attack and responds with a counterstrike without human intervention. The system with the official name "Perimeter" still exists today, and in the West it is morbidly called "Dead Hand".

Unfortunately, the proportions are often confused and war hawks, among them local ones, do not see the difference between certainly terrible war damage and death that is suddenly measured in hundreds of thousands, such as the "Dead Hand" could cause. The telling example of Japan in World War II reminds us that it is not actually possible to wage war after the use of nuclear weapons. There is no war objective large enough to justify the immediate death of tens of thousands of people, to say nothing of the long-term consequences. The case is such that it applies on the side of the one who is hit by it, but also on the side of those who would use the bomb.

Nuclear diplomacy is fundamentally different from conventional international dialogue. On the one hand, it is the speech of an unprecedented force, and on the other, it is exclusively about force - if everyone has to take you dead serious in terms of security, nuclear status rarely brings any practical or economic benefits to states. If it were otherwise, India and Pakistan would benefit far more economically from their bombs, to say nothing of North Korea. The bomb is a safe defense against a nuclear attack or some equivalent total annihilation. Vladimir Putin's speeches successively remind that he will not give up on it, but at the same time they do not mean that it would be applied for some minor goal.

INFECTION X

Although there is a lot of discussion about it, there is no such thing as a famous "tactical" bomb. The idea of ​​declaring some parts of the arsenal as tactical weapons and considering them for use in conventional warfare, otherwise most popular in UK analysis, developed in the West. In the USA, where the doctrine was established in the 1990s that the bomb can be used against a non-nuclear country, if it is about terrorists, this idea was embodied in the analysis made four years ago by the US Ministry of Defense introducing the concept of substrate nuclear weapons. The analysis known as the "Nuclear Posture Review" actually indicates that even such an application, although on a smaller scale, is far from tactical - it is possible to decide on it in conditions where it is estimated that the losses of a conventional war will have the effects of a smaller nuclear one, and the latter effects will be quite long-term and strategic.

photo: h. left, wikipedia.org

A month after the nuclear explosion that occurred on August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki, where all buildings in twenty neighborhoods were razed to the ground in a radius of one kilometer around ground zero, the first American journalists arrived. Mortality was 96,7 percent among people burned by the spreading fireball, 96,9 percent among victims with severe external injuries, and 94,1 percent among victims with no obvious damage. A kilometer away, the effects of the atomic attack were getting weaker - 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, while the number of survivors was slightly higher.

"The contagion is still taking lives here", wrote the war reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner George Weller, who came to the city on September 7 and wrote the first newspaper reports that, although the effects of radiation were unknown at the time, showed the scale of the atomic destruction. "Men, women and children without any visible signs of injury die in hospitals every day. They had been walking around for the past few weeks thinking they had narrowly escaped death. Doctors frankly admit that they cannot figure out the cause of this scourge. In one hospital, out of 343 patients, 200 people have died so far. They are all dead, killed by the atomic bomb, but no one knows why. In a few days, 25 Americans are expected to arrive to examine the location that was hit by the bomb. The Japanese hope that they will bring answers about the X infection.”