How Likely Is Nuclear War?

With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the end of the Cold War, the threat of global nuclear war greatly diminished. After that, a lot of people stopped talking about nuclear war as a serious threat. The hype in the media about nuclear war that was characteristic of the Cold War period stopped.

UPDATED: The original version of this page from only two or three years ago said:

Now, over 20 years later, the threat has increased to levels similar to (or worse than) the Cold War days, yet few people realise this. Still, little is said in the media. This has been changing slightly in the last few years, with more news stories mentioning nuclear war — however I think it's fair to say that many people would be surprised by the picture below:

Official "Doomsday Clock", lower down means higher risk (Source: Wikipedia)
Official Doomsday Clock Website

However during mid-2017, nuclear war has returned to the news again and to people's awareness.

On the 26th of January 2017, the Doomsday Clock was moved from three to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. Their official statement from then can be read here.

The nuclear bomb and missile tests by North Korea around that time increased the complexity and danger of the situation.

This is also interesting (Russians performing huge drills to train for nuclear war, while the West slept on).

2018 and 2019

In 2018, the Doomsday Clock was moved an extra 30 seconds closer to midnight, bringing it to 2 minutes to midnight. In 2019 this setting was retained. You can read more here on their website.

North Korea, and EMP

This is a subjective comment but probably the greatest weakness of the USA and the West as a whole, in military terms, is having near-utter confidence in our military superiority and infallibility. Generally anything that suggests the West may not be totally overwhelmingly superior is labelled as "alarmist" and basically ignored.

Recently I was reading a web page with people debating which American city would get fireballed if North Korea was to launch a nuclear attack. However, with the small number of weapons Kim Jong Un has at his disposal (perhaps just a handful), his main attack would almost certainly be an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. He has pretty much said that himself. The reason for this is that an EMP weapon could cover much or possibly even all of the United States, or Europe, with just one bomb. A handful of bombs would be enough to cover the entire USA and Europe. And with enough spare coverage that even if a bomb or two failed to launch or to reach its target or explode, his military objective would still be virtually guaranteed. Read more here about EMP and what you can do to prepare for it.

Preparing early (like starting right now, if you haven't already) is a really good idea — since if a nuclear-capable state were to launch an attack on us, the time between first warning and the end of civilisation as we know it would be about 30 minutes or less. This is true of either an EMP or a more traditional type of attack. However with EMP attacks the number of individual nuclear weapons required by the enemy is a lot less. The good thing about being in Australia is that an enemy with only a very small number of weapons attacking the West as a whole may not send any to Australia. If Europe and the U.S. were to fall to an EMP attack (or other nuclear attack), and Australia did not get hit, it would take much longer than 30 minutes for our own society to collapse.

I'll try to do a whole web page on this, but for now here's a few quick thoughts on what would happen in Australia if the U.S. and/or Europe were taken out by an EMP or other nuclear attack, but Australia was not hit: One of the first effects would be massive disruption of the internet. For example, survival.org.au is hosted in the USA. Google and most other popular sites also, though some parts of some of them are probably locally hosted and may still work for a while. Wall street and much of the global banking system would instantly cease to exist. In response to this it would be almost certain that Australian banks would rapidly go into lockdown mode, with accounts and withdrawals suspended (at the least), including EFT withdrawals. The first reaction of the public would probably be panic buying, with masses of people driving to supermarkets, petrol stations, hardware stores, etc. The exact situation would depend a lot on if any eCommerce still worked, but in any case stores would most likely be depleted in hours, or a few days at most.

However dark as this sounds, it would be a hugely better position than the countries actually hit by an EMP, as they would instantly lose their electricity supply, water supply, and all telecommunications systems (apart from EMP-hardened military systems or amateur radio equipment). Their sewage systems would cease to be pumped out and sewer pipes would start to fill up. It's quite likely that most of their methods of transport (e.g. most cars) would instantly stop working. Since an attack would probably be timed to occur during regular business hours (to cause maximum disruption to the public), people would be stranded at work. Or in elevators, etc. Our cars would still work as long as there was petrol or diesel to fill them.

In the long term, perhaps the most significant chain of events (other than just the collapse itself) would be the reaction of other global powers (e.g. Russia, China, and our overcrowded northern neighbours) to the power vacuum left by the fall of the West.

The excellent (fictional) novels One Second After and Going Home are based on an EMP event and its effects. Both of these are the first book of a series with a continuing storyline.

Of course there are also pages on the internet trying to debunk the idea that EMP can cause that much damage. One I found recently says, in massive bold highlighted font, that the idea that North Korea could kill 90% of Americans originated in a science fiction novel. The article was specifically referring to the book One Second After. This is completely ridiculous as the claim (that North Korea could kill 90% of Americans) was made by James Woolsey and Peter Vincent Pry. Woolsey is an ex-Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and has a long history of concern for the threat of EMP. Pry is also ex-CIA and is chief of staff of the U.S. Congressional EMP Commission. Historically, the general theme of the mass media towards this type of concern for the public is to label it as "opinion" and "alarmist". You can read Dr. Pry's latest comments (11 September 2017) on this issue here.

Global Stockpiles of Nuclear Weapons

Although the chance of nuclear war is now high again, the overall amount of damage that would be done by a global nuclear war is much less than it was historically, due to the smaller number of nuclear weapons that are now operational. This means that a nuclear war is more survivable than it would have been during the cold war. The graph below shows this for the USA and Russia. Other countries contribute only a very minor addition to this total.

There are far fewer nuclear weapons in the world now than during the cold war. (Source: Wikipedia)

Cover image by Cristian Storto.

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