The Dangers of a Regional Nuclear Conflict

[Heraclius]

"Twenty-five years ago international teams of scientists showed that a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union could produce a "nuclear winter." The smoke from vast fires started by bombs dropped on cities and industrial areas would envelop the planet and absorb so much sunlight that the earth's surface would get cold, dark and dry, killing plants worldwide and eliminating our food supply. Surface temperatures would reach winter values in the summer. International discussion about this prediction, fueled largely by astronomer Carl Sagan, forced the leaders of the two superpowers to confront the possibility that their arms race endangered not just themselves but the entire human race. Countries large and small demanded disarmament.

Nuclear winter became an important factor in ending the nuclear arms race. Looking back later, in 2000, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev observed, "Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act.""

-Scientific American, January 2010 Issue, Pg 74.

Unfortunately for us, even though the Cold War is over, there are still smaller cold wars going around all over the world. And the decision of any two nuclear capable nations to nuke each other would have drastic consequences on the rest of the world.

The fires that would result from a mere 100 nuclear explosions detonated in India and Pakistan would produce about 5 terragrams of smoke. After 5 days the entire region would be covered, the entire world in 9. The effect of this would is not debatable, the world would be in a constant overcast, temperatures would drop, growing seasons would shrink, the world's agricultural infrastructure would collapse. There would be a global famine, and I don't need to explain how that would be detrimental to civilization.

Here is a list of nuclear capable nations and the amount of nukes in their position. Any of them, except for Iran and North Korea, would be able to create a Global Nuclear Winter.

Russia: 15,000
United States of America: 9,900
France: 350
United Kingdom: 200
China: 200
Israel: 80
Pakistan: 60
India: 50
North Korea: >10
Iran: Possibly in development

When two nations engage in nuclear war, nobody wins.

Discuss.

[FoxyBunny]

Negative. This cannot be discussed without bringing politics into the debate, and that is a forbidden topic. I'm sorry, but thread closed.