One of my correspondents sent me an email containing a pasted article entitled "A World Without Nuclear Weapons -- Ours."
The gist of it was that the Obama government was irresponsibly paring back our nuclear arsenal while Russia was beefing up theirs and that they would survive a nuclear conflict while we would not. Because they have more nukes. Hey, good thinking! All we have to do is stay a step ahead in the construction of nuclear weapons and we've got ‘em by the short hairs. Right?
I decided to do a little research and find out the sizes of our respective nuclear arsenals and, of course, answer the really meaty question: how many nukes would it take to make the earth uninhabitable? In other words, despite the difference in size of our respective arsenals, would Russia – or anyone – survive an all-out nuclear conflict given the combined size of our arsenals (and this is not even counting the Chinese arsenal also arrayed against us)?
I discovered here that the difference in the numbers of nukes held by the Russians and those held by the US is a few hundred, with each country bristling with over 7000, or a difference of only a few percentage points.
But scientists reckon that even a small nuclear exchange of about 200 nuke explosions between countries like India and Pakistan, which could have about that many such weapons between them, would make the earth uninhabitable for up to 25 years by kicking up black dust that would quickly spread throughout the earth’s atmosphere and block the sunlight.
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