After the bombs start falling, the appearance of the planet will change beyond recognition. For 50 years, this threat awaits us at every moment of our lives. The world lives with the knowledge that all it takes is one person to press a button and a nuclear holocaust will ensue.
We stopped thinking about it. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea of a massive nuclear attack has become the subject of science fiction films and video games. But in reality this threat has not disappeared. The bombs are still in place and waiting in the wings. And there are always new enemies to destroy.
Scientists conducted tests and calculations to understand what life would be like after the atomic bombing. Some people will survive. But life on the smoldering remains of a destroyed world will be completely different.
10. Black rains will begin 
Almost immediately after a nuclear strike, heavy black rain will begin. It will not be that little rain that will extinguish the flames and remove the dust. These will be thick black jets of water with a texture similar to oil, and they can kill you.
In Hiroshima, black rain began 20 minutes after the bomb exploded. It covered an area with a radius of about 20 kilometers from the point of the explosion and flooded the countryside with a thick liquid, from which one could receive 100 times more radiation than at the epicenter of the explosion.
The people who survived the explosion found themselves in a burning city, fires burned out oxygen, and people died of thirst. Making their way through the fire, they were so thirsty that many opened their mouths and tried to drink the strange liquid that fell from the sky. There was enough radiation in this liquid to make changes in a person's blood. The radiation was so strong that the effects of the rain are still felt in the places where it fell. We have every reason to believe that if the bomb falls again, it will happen again.
9. An electromagnetic pulse will turn off all electricity. 
A nuclear explosion produces an electromagnetic pulse that can damage electrical appliances and even shut down the entire electrical grid of a country.
During one of the nuclear tests, the impulse after the detonation of an atomic bomb was so powerful that it disabled street lights, televisions and telephones in houses at a distance of 1,600 kilometers from the center of the explosion. It happened by accident at the time, but since then there have been bombs designed specifically for this purpose.
If a bomb designed to send an electromagnetic pulse were to explode at an altitude of 400-480 kilometers above a country the size of the United States, the entire electrical grid throughout the entire territory would be shut down. Therefore, after the bombs fall, the lights will go out everywhere. All food storage refrigerators will shut down and all computer data will be lost. The worst thing is that the wastewater treatment plants will shut down and we will lose clean drinking water.
It is expected that six months of hard work will be required to return the country to normal operating conditions. But this is provided that people have the opportunity to work. For a long time after the bombs fall, we will live without electricity or clean water.
8. Smoke will block sunlight 
The areas around the epicenters of the explosions will receive incredible amounts of energy and fires will break out. Everything that can burn will burn. Not only buildings, forests and fences will burn, but even asphalt on the roads. Oil refineries, which have been among the main targets since the Cold War, will be engulfed in explosions and flames.
The fires that ignite around the epicenter of each explosion will release thousands of tons of toxic smoke that will rise into the atmosphere and then higher into the stratosphere. At an altitude of about 15 kilometers above the Earth's surface, a dark cloud will appear, which will begin to grow and spread under the influence of the wind until it covers the entire planet and blocks access to sunlight.
This will take years. For many years after the explosion we will not see the sun, we will only be able to see black clouds overhead that will block the light. It is difficult to say exactly how long this will last and when blue skies will appear above us again. It is believed that in the event of a global nuclear war, we will not see clear skies for approximately 30 years.
7. It will get too cold to grow food. 
When the clouds cover the sunlight, it will start to get colder. How much depends on the number of bombs exploded. In extreme cases, global temperatures are expected to drop by as much as 20 degrees Celsius.
There will be no summer in the first year after a nuclear disaster. Spring and autumn will become like winter. Plants will not be able to grow. Animals all over the planet will begin to die of hunger.
This will not be the start of a new ice age. During the first five years, plant growing seasons will become a month shorter, but then the situation will gradually begin to improve, and after 25 years the temperature will return to normal. Life will go on - if we can live up to this period.
6. The ozone layer will be destroyed 
However, this life can no longer be called normal. A year after the nuclear bombing, holes in the ozone layer will begin to appear due to atmospheric pollution. It will be devastating. Even a small nuclear war, using only 0.03 percent of the world's arsenal, could destroy up to 50 percent of the ozone layer.
The world will begin to die out from ultraviolet rays. All over the world, plants will begin to die, and those living beings that manage to survive will have to go through painful DNA mutations. Even the most resilient crops will become weaker, smaller, and reproduce much less frequently. So when the skies clear and the world warms up again, growing food will become incredibly difficult. When people try to grow food, entire fields will die, and farmers who stay in the sun long enough will die of skin cancer.
5. Billions of people will starve 
After a full-scale nuclear war, it would be about five years before anyone could grow a reasonable amount of food. With low temperatures, killing frosts and damaging ultraviolet radiation from the sky, not many crops will survive long enough to be harvested. Millions of people will die of hunger.
Those who survive will have to find ways to get food, but it won't be easy. People living near the ocean may have a slightly better chance because the seas will cool more slowly. But life in the oceans will still be scarce.
The darkness from a blocked sky will kill plankton, the main food source that keeps the ocean alive. Radioactive contamination will also accumulate in the water, reducing the number of living organisms and making any caught living creature dangerous to eat.
Most of the people who survived the explosions will die within the first five years. The food will be too scarce and the competition too fierce.
4. Canned food will remain safe 
One of the main ways people will survive in the first five years will be to consume bottled water and canned foods - just as in fiction, tightly sealed packages of food will remain safe.
Scientists conducted an experiment in which they left bottled beer and soda water near the site of a nuclear explosion. The outside of the bottles was coated with a thick layer of radioactive dust, but their contents remained safe. Only those drinks that were located almost at the epicenter became radioactive, but even their radiation level was not lethal. However, the testing team rated the drinks as "not edible."
It is believed that canned foods will be as safe as these bottled drinks. It is also believed that water from deep underground wells may be safe to drink. Thus, the struggle for survival will be a struggle for access to village wells and food.
3. Radiation will damage your bones. 
Regardless of access to food, survivors will have to contend with widespread cancer. Immediately after the explosion, a huge amount of radioactive dust will rise into the air, which will then begin to fall throughout the world. The dust will be too fine to see, but the radiation levels in it will be high enough to kill.
One of the substances used in nuclear weapons is strontium-90, which the body mistakes for calcium and sends directly to the bone marrow and teeth. This leads to bone cancer.
It is unknown what the radiation level will be. It is not entirely clear how long it will take for the radioactive dust to begin to settle. But if it takes long enough, we can survive. If the dust begins to settle only after two weeks, its radioactivity will decrease by a factor of 1000, and this will be enough for survival. The number of cancers will increase, life expectancy will shorten, birth defects will become commonplace, but humanity will not be destroyed.
2. Widespread hurricanes and storms will begin 
During the first two to three years of cold and darkness, unprecedented storms can be expected. Dust in the stratosphere will not only block sunlight, but will also affect the weather.
The clouds will become different, they will contain much more moisture. Until things return to normal, we can expect it to rain almost constantly.
It will be even worse in coastal areas. Although the cold snap will trigger a nuclear winter across the planet, the oceans will cool much more slowly. They will be relatively warm, which will cause widespread storms along all coasts. Hurricanes and typhoons will cover all the coasts of the world, and this will last for years.
1. Humanity will survive 
Billions will die as a result of a nuclear war. We can expect that about 500 million people will die immediately, and several billion more will die from hunger and cold.
However, there is every reason to believe that the toughest handful of people will cope with this. There won't be many, but it's a much more positive vision of a post-apocalyptic future than what came before. In the 1980s, all scientists agreed that the entire planet would be destroyed. But today we have a little more faith that some people will survive.
In 25-30 years, the clouds will clear, the temperature will return to normal, and life will begin again. Plants will appear. They may not be as lush as before. But in a few decades, the world may look like modern Chernobyl, where dense forests rise above the remains of a dead city.
Life will go on and humanity will be reborn. But the world will never be the same again.
Their only enemy in World War II was Japan, which was also soon to surrender. It was at this moment that the United States decided to show its military power. On August 6 and 9, they dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after which Japan finally capitulated. AiF.ru recalls the stories of people who managed to survive this nightmare.
According to various sources, from the explosion itself and in the first weeks after it, from 90 to 166 thousand people died in Hiroshima, and from 60 to 80 thousand in Nagasaki. However, there were those who managed to stay alive.
In Japan, such people are called hibakusha or hibakusha. This category includes not only the survivors themselves, but also the second generation - children born to women affected by the explosions.
In March 2012, there were 210 thousand people officially recognized by the government as hibakusha, and more than 400 thousand did not live to see this moment.
Most of the remaining hibakusha live in Japan. They receive some government support, but in Japanese society there is a prejudiced attitude towards them, bordering on discrimination. For example, they and their children may not be hired, so sometimes they deliberately hide their status.
Miraculous Rescue
An extraordinary story happened to the Japanese Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived both bombings. Summer 1945 young engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who worked for the Mitsubishi company, went on a business trip to Hiroshima. When the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the city, it was only 3 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion.
The blast wave knocked out Tsutomu Yamaguchi's eardrums, and the incredibly bright white light blinded him for some time. He received severe burns, but still survived. Yamaguchi reached the station, found his wounded colleagues and went home with them to Nagasaki, where he became a victim of the second bombing.
By an evil irony of fate, Tsutomu Yamaguchi again found himself 3 kilometers from the epicenter. As he was telling his boss at the company office about what happened to him in Hiroshima, the same white light suddenly flooded the room. Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived this explosion as well.
Two days later, he received another large dose of radiation when he came almost close to the epicenter of the explosion, unaware of the danger.
What followed were many years of rehabilitation, suffering and health problems. Tsutomu Yamaguchi's wife also suffered from the bombings - she was caught in black radioactive rain. Their children did not escape the consequences of radiation sickness; some of them died of cancer. Despite all this, Tsutomu Yamaguchi got a job again after the war, lived like everyone else and supported his family. Until his old age, he tried not to attract special attention to himself.
In 2010, Tsutomu Yamaguchi died of cancer at the age of 93. He became the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as a victim of the bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Life is like a struggle
When a bomb fell on Nagasaki, a 16-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi delivered mail on a bicycle. In his own words, he saw something similar to a rainbow, then the blast wave threw him off his bicycle to the ground and destroyed nearby houses.
After the explosion, the teenager remained alive, but was seriously injured. The flayed skin hung in shreds from his arms, and there was no skin at all on his back. At the same time, according to Sumiteru Taniguchi, he did not feel pain, but his strength left him.
With difficulty he found other victims, but most of them died the night after the explosion. Three days later, Sumiteru Taniguchi was rescued and sent to the hospital.
In 1946, an American photographer took the famous photograph of Sumiteru Taniguchi with terrible burns on his back. The young man's body was mutilated for life
For several years after the war, Sumiteru Taniguchi could only lie on his stomach. He was released from the hospital in 1949, but his wounds were not properly treated until 1960. In total, Sumiteru Taniguchi underwent 10 operations.
The recovery was aggravated by the fact that at that time people were faced with radiation sickness for the first time and did not yet know how to treat it.
The tragedy he experienced had a huge impact on Sumiteru Taniguchi. He devoted his entire life to the fight against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, becoming a well-known activist and chairman of the Council of Victims of the Nuclear Bombing of Nagasaki.
Today, 84-year-old Sumiteru Taniguchi gives lectures around the world on the terrible consequences of using nuclear weapons and why they should be abandoned.
Orphan
For 16 year old Mikoso Iwasa August 6 was a typical hot summer day. He was in the courtyard of his house when neighboring children suddenly saw a plane in the sky. Then came an explosion. Despite the fact that the teenager was less than one and a half kilometers from the epicenter, the wall of the house protected him from the heat and blast wave.
However, Mikoso Iwasa's family was not so lucky. The boy's mother was in the house at the time; she was covered in debris and could not get out. He lost his father before the explosion, and his sister was never found. So Mikoso Iwasa became an orphan.
And although Mikoso Iwasa miraculously escaped severe burns, he still received a huge dose of radiation. Due to radiation sickness, he lost his hair, his body became covered in a rash, and his nose and gums began to bleed. He was diagnosed with cancer three times.
His life, like the lives of many other hibakusha, became misery. He was forced to live with this pain, with this invisible disease for which there is no cure and which slowly kills a person.
Among the hibakusha it is customary to remain silent about this, but Mikoso Iwasa did not remain silent. Instead, he became involved in the fight against nuclear proliferation and helping other hibakusha.
Today, Mikiso Iwasa is one of the three chairmen of the Japanese Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Victims' Organizations.
Was it necessary to bomb Japan at all?
Disputes about the expediency and ethical side of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have not subsided to this day.
Initially, American authorities insisted that they were necessary to force Japan to capitulate as quickly as possible and thereby prevent losses among its own soldiers that would be possible if the United States invaded the Japanese islands.
However, according to many historians, Japan's surrender was a done deal even before the bombing. It was only a matter of time.
The decision to drop bombs on Japanese cities turned out to be rather political - the United States wanted to scare the Japanese and demonstrate its military power to the whole world.
It is also important to mention that not all American officials and senior military officials supported this decision. Among those who considered the bombing unnecessary was Army General Dwight Eisenhower, who later became President of the United States.
The attitude of the hibakusha towards explosions is clear. They believe that the tragedy they experienced should never happen again in human history. And that is why some of them dedicated their lives to the fight for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Most of the destruction from a nuclear explosion will result from a shock wave traveling at supersonic speed (in the atmosphere - more than 350 m/s). While no one was looking, we took the W88 thermonuclear warhead with a capacity of 475 kilotons, which is in service with the United States, and found out that when it exploded within a radius of 3 km from the epicenter, there would be absolutely nothing and no one left; at a distance of 4 km, buildings will be thoroughly destroyed, and beyond 5 km and further, the destruction will be medium and weak. The chances of survival will appear only if you are at least 5 km from the epicenter (and only if you manage to hide in the basement).
Light radiation
Causes ignition of flammable materials. But even if you find yourself far from gas stations and warehouses with Moment, you risk getting burns and eye damage. Therefore, hide behind some obstacle like a huge boulder, cover your head with a sheet of metal or other non-flammable thing and close your eyes. After a W88 explodes at a distance of 5 km, the shock wave may not kill you, but the light beam can cause second degree burns. These are the ones with nasty blisters on the skin. At a distance of 6 km there is a risk of getting first-degree burns: redness, swelling, swelling of the skin - in a word, nothing serious. But the most pleasant thing will happen if you happen to be 7 km from the epicenter: an even tan is guaranteed.
Electromagnetic pulse
If you are not a cyborg, the impulse is not scary for you: it only disables electrical and electronic equipment. Just know that if a nuclear mushroom appears on the horizon, taking a selfie in front of it is useless. The radius of the pulse depends on the height of the explosion and the surrounding situation and ranges from 3 to 115 km.
Penetrating radiation
Despite such a creepy name, the thing is fun and harmless. It destroys all living things only within a radius of 2–3 km from the epicenter, where the shock wave will kill you in any case.
Radioactive contamination
The meanest part of a nuclear explosion. It is a huge cloud consisting of radioactive particles raised into the air by an explosion. The area where radioactive contamination spreads strongly depends on natural factors, primarily on the direction of the wind. If W88 is detonated in a wind speed of 5 km/h, the radiation will be dangerous at a distance of up to 130 km from the epicenter in the direction of the wind (infection does not spread further than 3 km against the wind). The rate of death from radiation sickness depends on the distance of the epicenter, weather, terrain, characteristics of your body and a bunch of other factors. Infected people can either die instantly or live for years. How this happens is purely a matter of luck.
When the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, the world found itself on the brink of a global catastrophe - a large-scale nuclear war between two superpowers, the USSR and America. What would the remnants of human civilization be like after a massive exchange of blows? The military, of course, predicted the outcome using computers. They like to calculate everything, this is their strong point.
Walter Mondale once said that “there will be no World War III veterans.” Contrary to this seemingly absolutely correct remark, in just a few decades since the creation of the atomic bomb, the world has turned into a huge powder keg. Although, if it were gunpowder. By the end of the Cold War, the number of strategic nuclear warheads and related intermediate-range munitions alone in the arsenals of NATO and the Warsaw Pact exceeded 24,000 units.
Their total power was 12,000 Megatons, more than enough to repeat the tragedy in Hiroshima approximately a million times. And this does not take into account tactical nuclear weapons, various mines filled with atomic warheads, torpedoes and artillery shells. Without an arsenal of chemical warfare agents. Not counting bacteriological and climate weapons. Would this be enough to bring about Armageddon? Calculations showed that - behind the eyes.
Of course, it was difficult for analysts to take into account all the factors, but they tried, in various institutions. The forecasts turned out to be frankly depressing. It has been calculated that during a large-scale nuclear war, the parties will be able to rain down on each other about 12,000 bombs and missiles of various bases with a total capacity of about 6,000 Mt. What could this number mean?
And this means massive attacks, first of all, on headquarters and communications centers, locations of intercontinental ballistic missile silos, air defense positions, large military and naval formations. Then, as the conflict grows, it will be the turn of industrial centers, or, in other words, cities, that is, areas with a high degree of urbanization and, of course, population density. Some nuclear warheads would be detonated above the surface to cause maximum damage, and some would be detonated at high altitudes to destroy satellites, communications systems and the power grid.
Once upon a time, at the height of the Cold War, the military strategy that implied all this madness was called the second strike doctrine. American Defense Secretary Robert McNamara defined it as “mutually assured destruction.” American generals calculated that the US Army and Navy would have to destroy about a quarter of the USSR's population and more than half of its industrial capacity before they themselves were destroyed.
We should probably not forget that in terms of the invention of new weapons, humanity has advanced much further than in the manufacture of anti-cancer drugs, so the American “Little Boy” bomb, which destroyed Hiroshima in August 1945, is nothing compared to modern exhibits. So, for example, the power of the SS-18 Satan strategic missile is about 20 Mt (that is, millions of tons in TNT equivalent). This is approximately one and a half thousand “Kids”.
“The thicker the grass, the easier it is to mow.”
This phrase was said by Alaric, the legendary Gothic leader, who made proud Rome tremble. In a hypothetical nuclear war, residents of all large cities without exception would become this very grass. About 70% of the population of Western Europe, North America and the former USSR were urban and suburban residents. If they exchanged massive nuclear strikes, they would be doomed to immediate death. Calculations show that the explosion of even a bomb as obsolete by today’s standards as “Baby” over a city the size of New York, Tokyo or Moscow would result in the immediate death of millions of people. Just imagine what losses could be caused by the use of thousands of atomic, hydrogen and neutron bombs.
This, at one time, was more or less accurately predicted. As a result of a large-scale nuclear war, the fate of radioactive ruins was prepared for most of the cities of the warring parties. The shock waves and heat pulse would destroy buildings and highways, bridges, dams and levees over areas of millions of square kilometers in a matter of seconds. This is not so much in relation to the entire land surface of the Northern Hemisphere. But it is quite enough for the beginning of the end.
The number of people who evaporated, burned, died in the rubble or received a lethal dose of radiation should have been seven figures. Electromagnetic pulses, which spread over tens of thousands of kilometers during high-altitude nuclear explosions, caused paralysis of all power supply and communication systems, destroyed all electronics and would lead to an accident at those thermal and nuclear power plants that miraculously managed to survive the bombing.
Most likely, they would disrupt the Earth's electromagnetic field. As a result, this would provoke devastating natural disasters: hurricanes, floods, earthquakes.
There is an assumption according to which, with the massive use of weapons of mass destruction, the position of the Earth relative to the Sun would change. But we will not deal with this hypothesis, we will limit ourselves to such “trifles” as the destruction of storage facilities for spent nuclear power plant assemblies, and the depressurization of military laboratories producing bacteriological weapons. Some next superflu, hundreds of times deadlier than the notorious “Spanish flu,” once released, would finish the job that was started by the cholera and plague pandemics raging over radioactive rubble, overflowing with decaying corpses.
Humanity has accumulated millions of tons of toxic chemical waste, primarily dioxin-containing. From time to time, accidents that occur, in which a small part of them end up in river basins, lead to environmental disasters on a local scale. It’s better not to imagine what could happen in a disaster on a one-to-one scale. Serious scientific sources assure that this complex issue has not been thoroughly studied. As you can see, it is unnecessary. And it is clear that this would be the end.
Bah, we forgot about penetrating radiation - the fourth factor behind thermal radiation, shock wave and electromagnetic pulse, which distinguishes nuclear weapons from other products that are designed to destroy their own kind. Radioactive contamination would have poisoned colossal territories, the regeneration of which would have taken centuries. In rural areas, crops would be damaged by radiation, leading to starvation among the survivors.
Increased doses of radiation are a source of cancer, pathologies in newborns and genetic mutations due to disruption of DNA chains. In a post-apocalyptic world, after the health care systems are destroyed, these issues from the field of modern medicine would move under the jurisdiction of sorcerers, because the survival of individual doctors does not at all mean the preservation of medicine as a whole. The millions burned and maimed at the first stage of a nuclear conflict, immediately after the exchange of blows, do not count. They would have died in the first hours, days and months after the nuclear Apocalypse. Long before the appearance of healers.
"And those of you who survive will envy the dead"
And these ominous words were said by John Silver, one of the most famous heroes of the English writer R. L. Stevenson. They are said on a completely different occasion, but surprisingly fit into the context of describing the world after a nuclear war. Scientists agreed that nitrogen oxides generated in the fireballs of nuclear explosions would be thrown into the stratosphere, where they would destroy the ozone layer. Restoring it could take decades, and this is at best - with our level of scientific knowledge, it is impossible to predict the timing more accurately. Once upon a time (about 600 million years ago), the ozone layer of the stratosphere played the role of a kind of cradle of life, protecting the Earth's surface from the deadly ultraviolet radiation of the Sun.
According to a report by the American National Academy of Sciences, the explosion of 12,000 megatons of nuclear weapons could destroy 70% of the ozone layer over the Northern Hemisphere - presumably the theater of war - and 40% over the Southern Hemisphere, which would lead to dire consequences for all forms of life. Humans and animals would go blind, burns and skin cancers would become commonplace. Many plants and microorganisms would disappear forever, completely and irrevocably.
“Our arrows will block the Sun from you”
This famous phrase: “Our arrows will block the sun from you,” said the envoy of the Persian king Xerxes to the Spartan king Leonidas, who fortified himself in the Thermopylae pass. Leonidas’ answer is known from history books: “Well, that means we will fight in the shadows.” Fortunately, the brave Spartans did not know the consequences of using nuclear weapons. In the “shadow cast by atomic arrows,” there would simply be no one to fight.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due to water pipelines destroyed by the shock wave, it was impossible to contain the fires. A “firestorm” developed. This is the name of a powerful fire that causes intense vortex movement of air. The city was covered with a huge thundercloud, and it began to rain - black, greasy and oily. Attempts to fight the fire, which was caused by an atomic flash and many short circuits in electrical networks, ended in complete fiasco.
We can say with absolute confidence that in the event of a large-scale nuclear war, there could be no talk of any such attempts, because there would simply be no one to put out the fires. In general, the fire would have spread in earnest, compared to the sea of flames that engulfed Dresden after the ritual raids of allied aircraft. Nowadays, industrial centers contain colossal reserves of paper, wood, petroleum, lubricants, gasoline, kerosene, plastics, rubber and other flammable materials that are capable of blazing and darkening the sky to blackness. Ejecting millions of tons of smoke particles, ash, highly toxic substances and highly dispersed radioactive dust into the atmosphere over the Northern Hemisphere.
Calculations prove that in a few days impenetrable clouds comparable in size to continents would cover the Sun over Europe and North America, and impenetrable darkness would fall on the Earth. The air temperature would drop by 30 - 40°C. The earth's surface was struck by bitter frosts, which in a short period of time would have turned it into permafrost. The cooling would continue for centuries, aggravated by a gradual decrease in ocean temperatures. That is, the end result of a large-scale nuclear war is a climate catastrophe.
At first, due to significant temperature differences between the continents and the ocean, severe storms would arise. Then, as the temperatures dropped, they would have calmed down a little, the surfaces of the seas and oceans would have been covered first with ice chips, and then with hummocks. Even at the equator it would become more than cool, about -50 degrees Celsius! Animals and plants that would survive a nuclear cataclysm would certainly die from such cold weather. There would be total extinction. The jungle would turn into a forest bound by severe frosts, a taiga of dead vines and palm trees. Well, people who could miraculously survive would probably know that there is real hunger.
Radiation would permeate almost everything - air, water, and soil. Surviving viruses and insects, having undergone powerful mutations, would spread new deadly diseases. A few years after a nuclear war, a population of seven billion would remain, at best, an insignificant shadow - about 20 million people scattered across the Earth immersed in nuclear twilight. Maybe it would have been Twilight of the Gods. Humanity would return to a primitive state under incomparably worse environmental conditions. I don’t want to think about looting, ritual murders and cannibalism, but probably the most terrible pictures of the apocalypse drawn by science fiction writers would become commonplace.
Degenerate descendants of the Normans
There is no doubt that humanity would be very lucky if it were able to survive the cataclysm at all. And what kind of knowledge would he have preserved, and the memories of cars, airplanes or televisions passed down from generation to generation would not become akin to the legends that Plato brought to us. Albert Einstein once said: “I don’t know what weapons it will be with, but I know for sure that the Fourth World War will be with stones and sticks.” Do you think this is not a particularly optimistic forecast? Imagine yourself as just Robinson on a desert island and honestly admit: will you be able to recreate a hot water supply system, design a radio or just a telephone?
Alexander Gorbovsky in his book “Fourteen Thousand Years Ago” cited as an example the fate of the Norman settlements that were founded in the 14th century on the coast of North America. Their sad fate is very indicative. In a nutshell it looks like this. The colonists brought with them from Scandinavia knowledge of pottery, the ability to smelt and process metal. But when communication with the metropolis was interrupted, they found themselves assimilated by local Iroquoian tribes, who were at a much lower stage of development, and knowledge was lost forever. The descendants of the settlers were thrown back into the Stone Age.
When European conquerors arrived in these places 200 years later, they found only tribes that were light-skinned and used a number of Scandinavian words. And, that was all! The great-grandchildren of the Vikings had no idea of the crumbling, moss-covered structures that had once been iron smelters and mining shafts. But they didn’t have a nuclear winter...
Scientists and experts have developed a minute-by-minute action plan in case of a nuclear threat. One day it may save your life.
Recently, relations between North Korea and the rest of the world have become even more tense, and people have remembered the existence of atomic bombs and the threat of a nuclear strike.
However, today we are not talking about the possible launch of intercontinental missiles in the spirit of the Cold War with subsequent complete mutual destruction, but rather about the detonation of an atomic bomb with a yield of about 10 kilotons. To make it clearer, such a charge is only slightly smaller than the “Baby” dropped on Hiroshima. (The nuclear bombs that North Korea has are believed to be about the same power.) But even if you are very scared by the threat of nuclear war, you are unlikely to have re-read the life safety textbooks or government instructions on this case.
So, let's imagine the worst-case scenario: a nuclear bomb with a yield of 10 kilotons was detonated in one of the major cities. What happens next and what are your chances of survival?
First 15 seconds
If you are still alive, then the bomb exploded at least one and a half kilometers away from you - all such a charge cannot wipe out an entire city from the face of the earth, only the epicenter will be destroyed.
According to Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, by this time 75-100 thousand people who were near the explosion site were already dead. Brooke Buddemeyer, a radiation hazard specialist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says that most buildings in this radius are destroyed, and significant damage is visible even a couple of kilometers away. In addition, the area within a radius of 1.5 to 5 km around the point of explosion is subject to so-called “light damage” - when a fireball hot as the Sun, together with dust from destroyed buildings, rises into the atmosphere to a height of up to 8 km.
From 1 to 15 minutes
Hide! Buddemeyer explains that you only have 10 to 15 minutes to find shelter, because after that time you will be covered by airborne dust and debris, as well as radioactive particles crushed to the size of grains of sand.
Radiation poisoning is no joke. In 1987, in Brazil, two men decided to make some money and stole a radiation therapy machine that was left in an abandoned hospital. They took it home and dismantled it, exposing it to even more radiation, and then sold it for scrap. The buyers resold it further, and the new owner brought the radiation iron to his home. As a result, four people died, 249 received significant radiation doses, and the country's government was forced to demolish several houses to cope with the sources of contamination. But it was not a bomb, but medical equipment! If the radiation dose is high, you will die immediately. More moderate radiation poisoning can cause blistering of the skin, serious damage to the bone marrow, lungs and gastrointestinal tract, and lead to the development of various diseases such as leukemia.
So it's time to panic. However, you are one of the lucky ones who found yourself far enough from the explosion: you were not covered in debris or cut by glass, so hold on. Buddemeyer urges people not to try to hide in a car: gamma radiation can easily penetrate glass or thin metal. It is necessary to isolate yourself from nuclear fallout with as thick a layer of concrete or brick as possible. They will accumulate on roofs, so the top floors of buildings are not suitable. You can also hide in the central rooms of office buildings, concrete underground parking lots or in the subway.
From 15 minutes to an hour
You are already running to the nearest suitable building, but at the last minute you see two lost, frightened children. Damn it, they need help! Nobility is commendable, but radioactive sand is already falling on the ground, as well as on your head, coat and boots, and now you risk getting radioactive poisoning. The extent will depend on the distance to the epicenter and how soon after the explosion you were exposed to radiation. Baddemeyer explains that the effect of nuclear poisoning is noticeable immediately - this is vomiting. The gastrointestinal tract is very sensitive to radiation, so if you start vomiting, you have received a significant (possibly fatal) dose.
Obviously you need medical attention. According to Redlener, it is best to take Prussian blue as an operational measure - it prevents the absorption of radioactive nuclides into the gastrointestinal tract. But you've probably never even heard of it, like most people. However, the scientist notes that its supplies are so small that there will still not be enough for everyone. Thus, the only thing that can be done is to find a shelter and try to remove the radioactive particles that have settled on it from the body. At least this will shorten the duration of exposure. So: undress and clean your hair of radioactive dust. The shower probably doesn't work, but try to find water and wash yourself, and be careful. If you rub too hard with a washcloth, you will damage the skin and particles will enter the bloodstream.
After the first hour
Now you are locked in an apartment or bunker, and all you can do is wait. Rejoice: radioactive particles scattered during the explosion of a nuclear bomb quickly decompose. According to Buddemeyer, in the first hour they lose about half of their energy, and within 24 hours about 80%. The distribution of poisonous precipitation depends on wind direction, but is difficult to assess from the ground. If possible, you should wait until rescue operations begin.
While you sit in your brick and concrete fortress waiting for help or at least some clarity, problems will arise that are common in any natural disaster. The shelter is overcrowded, everyone is hungry and thirsty. Not everyone present is young and healthy, and if a person needs insulin or other medication, they may panic, so try to reassure those around you.
Suppose you are lucky: you were exposed to radioactive fallout for a short time or immediately took refuge in a shelter, so there is no threat to life. Perhaps sooner or later you will even be able to return to your home and pick up your things, but you shouldn’t count on it. There will be increased background radiation in the city for some time, so you will have to wait until the threat passes. But one day - as in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - life will return to normal.
Prepared by Evgenia Sidorova
