Nuclear war: how humanity will perish

After the bombing of nuclear bombs in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the threat of a nuclear war became absolutely real. Scientists studied in detail the possible consequences of more powerful explosions: how radiation will be distributed, what will be the biological lesions, climatic effects.

Nuclear war - how it happens

A nuclear explosion is a huge fireball that completely burns or charred objects of animate and inanimate nature, even at a great distance from the epicenter. A third of the energy of the explosion is released in the form of a light pulse, which is thousands of times greater than the brightness of the sun. All inflammable materials, such as paper and cloth, are ignited from this. People have third degree burns.

Primary fires do not have time to flare up - they are partially extinguished by the most powerful air blast wave. But because of flying sparks and burning debris, short circuits, explosions of household gas, burning oil products, long and extensive secondary fires are formed.

Many individual fires are combined into a deadly fiery whirlwind that can destroy any metropolis. Such fiery tornadoes killed Hamburg and Dresden during World War II.

In the center of such a whirlwind there is an intensive allocation of heat, because of which huge masses of air rise upwards, at the surface of the earth hurricanes are formed, which support the fire element with new portions of oxygen. Smoke, dust and soot rise to the stratosphere, and a cloud forms, which almost completely obscures the sunlight. As a result, a deadly nuclear winter begins.

Nuclear war leads to a long nuclear winter

Due to giant fires, a large amount of aerosol will be released into the atmosphere, which will cause a "nuclear night". According to calculations, even a small local nuclear war and the explosions of London and New York will lead to the complete absence of sunlight over the Northern Hemisphere for several weeks.

For the first time, Paul Krutzen, a prominent German scientist, pointed out the destructive consequences of mass fires that would provoke a further cascade of irreversible changes in the climate and the biosphere.

The fact that a nuclear war inevitably leads to a nuclear winter was not yet known in the middle of the last century. Tests with nuclear explosions were conducted single and isolated. And even a "mild" nuclear conflict involves explosions in many cities. In addition, the tests were conducted in such a way that large fires were not provoked. And only recently, with the joint work of specialists from biologists, mathematicians, climatologists, physicists, it was possible to combine the overall picture of the consequences of the nuclear conflict together. The world community has studied in detail how the world can become after a nuclear war.

If only 1% of the nuclear weapons produced at the moment are used in the conflict, the effect will be 8200 "Nagasaki and Hiroshima".

Even in this case, a nuclear war will entail a climatic effect of the emergence of a nuclear winter. Due to the fact that the sun's rays can not enter the Earth, there will be a prolonged cooling of the air. All wildlife that does not break in fires will be doomed to freeze.

Significant temperature contrasts will appear between the land and the ocean, as large accumulations of water have significant thermal inertia, so the air there will be cooled much more slowly. Changes in the atmosphere will suppress the water cycle, and on the continents, plunged into the night and chained by absolute cold, severe droughts will begin.

If a nuclear war occurred in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, then within two weeks the temperature would fall below zero, and the sunlight would disappear altogether. At the same time in the Northern Hemisphere all vegetation would have died completely, and in the Southern Hemisphere - in part. Tropics and subtropics would die out almost instantaneously, since the flora there can exist in a very narrow temperature range and a certain illumination.

Lack of food will lead to the extinction of animals. Birds will have virtually no chance of survival. Only reptiles can survive.

Dead forests that form in vast areas will become a material for new fires, and the decomposition of dead flora and fauna will cause the release of a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Thus, global content and carbon exchange will be disrupted. The disappearance of vegetation will cause global soil erosion.

There will be almost complete destruction of those ecosystems that now exist on the planet. All agricultural plants and animals will perish, although seeds can survive. A sharp increase in ionizing radiation will cause serious radiation sickness and lead to the death of vegetation, mammals and birds.

Emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur into the atmosphere will cause harmful acid rains.

One of any of the above factors would be sufficient to destroy many ecosystems. Worst of all, after the nuclear war, they will act together, fueling and strengthening each other's actions.

To pass the critical point, after which catastrophic changes in the climate and the Earth's biosphere will begin, there will be a relatively small nuclear explosion - 100 Mt. For an irreparable disaster it will be enough to bring in just 1% of the existing arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Even those countries on whose territories no nuclear bombs will explode will be completely destroyed.

Nuclear war in any form represents a real threat to the existence of mankind and life on the planet in general.