The ‘Cold War,’ which followed WWII, lasted until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. When I was in Elementary school, the threat and fear of nuclear war with the USSR were ingrained in us through government documentaries, the media, and the constant “Duck and Cover” drills when we were told to duck under our wooden desks for protection against an atomic bomb.
During that time, what deterred a nuclear war was the awareness and fear that the Soviet Union and the United States had sufficient atomic warheads to annihilate each other and everything else living. The problem today is that the fear has dissipated because the dangers have been critically understated. Governments are not interested in informing, educating, or reminding their citizens through the mainstream media about the real existential risks of nuclear weapons. They prefer to present these weapons in a light-hearted manner or promote the idea that the tactical and strategic nuclear weapons of today can be controlled so that there will be minimum radiation fallout and fewer innocent people will die.
In response to that concept, here’s a 2018 quote from the then-US Secretary of Defense James Mattis: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon.” “Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a strategic game changer.”
It should be a no-brainer to anyone that launching any nuclear weapon against an adversary would be an extraordinary risk. It would not only break the “nuclear taboo” that has held up since 1945 but surely change the minds of global leaders…that the use of nuclear weapons is now fair game.
Duck and Cover for Grownups
Although the duck and cover protocol sounds so ridiculous to me today, I was shocked by the following news flash:
“In July of 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams approved a 90-second public service video announcement that instructed New Yorkers about what to do during a nuclear attack. It was released by the city’s Department of Emergency Management. The video begins with a narrator saying, “So there’s been a nuclear attack.” Don’t ask me how or why; just know that the big one has hit. Ok? “So, what do we do?”
Although the duck and cover protocol sounds so ridiculous to me today, I was shocked by the following news flash:
“In July of 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams approved a 90-second public service video announcement that instructed New Yorkers about what to do during a nuclear attack. It was released by the city’s Department of Emergency Management. The video begins with a narrator saying, “So there’s been a nuclear attack.” Don’t ask me how or why; just know that the big one has hit. Ok? “So, what do we do?”
The narrator also says people should wash off any radioactive dust or ash after the blast.
Facts You May Not Know:
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki exploded with a yield of 15 kilotons and 20 kilotons of TNT, respectively. In contrast, the first test of a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, in the United States in November 1952 yielded an explosion of 10,000 kilotons of TNT.
“How many people died in Hiroshima?” The United States military estimated that around 70,000 people died at Hiroshima, though later independent estimates argued that the actual number was 140,000 dead. Those numbers do not include eventual deaths from radiation.
Hiroshima after the bomb
In October 1961, the Soviet Union dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb in history over a remote island north of the Arctic Circle. It was called the “Tsar Bomba,” and it produced a 50-megaton blast, about 3,333 times more potent than the Little Boy bomb that leveled Hiroshima. It created a mushroom cloud up to more than 130,000 feet in altitude—about 4.5 times the height of Mount Everest—and sent shockwaves around the globe three times over.
Look at that photo above of the Hiroshima aftermath, then close your eyes momentarily. Imagine what New York City would look like after a nuclear blast with a hydrogen bomb today. Then answer the following question:
Will there be a building left standing to go into?
Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. In total, the global nuclear stockpile is close to 13,000 weapons. That does not consider how much more destructive power the present warheads have. Case in point: The warheads on just one US nuclear-armed submarine have seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. And the US usually has at least ten of those submarines at sea!
Considering that so many countries have nuclear stockpiles, the potential of a nuclear war is statistically much more significant now than at any time during the Cold War. This is especially true due to 1) the number of conflicts and wars worldwide at any given time and 2) the unpredictability of how each country’s government will respond if tensions get too high. Some leaders with decision-making powers could do crazy things when angry or with their backs against the wall.
During the Cold War, there were various ‘false alarm’ incidents when the US and the Soviet Union came extremely close to a nuclear disaster. According to a December 19, 2019 article from The Arms Control Association (armscontrol.org):
Forty years ago, on November 9, 1979, the US Defense Department detected an imminent nuclear attack against the United States through the early warning system of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). US bomber and missile forces went on full alert, and the emergency command post, known as “the doomsday plane,” took to the air.
The 1979 incident was one of the most dangerous false alarms of the nuclear age, but it was not the first or last. Within months, three more US system malfunctions set off the US early warning systems.
These incidents were apart from several nuclear false alarms in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Suppose we don’t remember and experience the visceral fear we once had of the devastating risks of a nuclear war. In that case, I’m afraid our survival as a species could be jeopardized. Why? Because there are governments, politicians, arms dealers, and the military-industrial complex that are so obsessed with wars that they may choose to ignore the grave consequences and the wishes of the people.
I remember the 1959 post-apocalyptic science fiction drama movie ‘On the Beach.’ It came out during the most nerve-racking time of the Cold War. It was a solemn reminder of the looming danger of a nuclear holocaust and subsequent radioactive fallout. The only survivors, temporarily, were a few people in Australia. As they waited for the inevitable radioactivity to reach them, they tried incessantly, but in vain, to find other survivors anywhere else in the world. Although the film had a dark ending where everyone on Earth would eventually die, the camera scanned the devastation and eventually focused on the following scene and banner.
