A Cold War-era study starkly portrays the potential impact of nuclear fallout in the U.S., highlighting devastating consequences for much of the population.
The study’s map forecasts severe outcomes, predicting that nuclear strikes could lead to the death of up to 75% of the population in certain areas, Daily Express US reported.
Researchers William Daugherty, Barbara Levi, and Frank Von Hippel conducted the study in 1986, analyzing the effects of nuclear strikes targeting America’s nuclear arsenal. Their work primarily examined Minuteman missile siloes, which have housed land-based strategic missiles since the 1950s.
These missiles have long symbolized U.S. defense strategy against nuclear threats from other nations, including Russia, which continues to issue alarming threats. The global landscape of nuclear-capable countries, such as the UK, France, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea, underscores the ongoing tension surrounding nuclear weapons.
The researchers behind this impactful study estimated potential outcomes by creating hypothetical attack scenarios. They envisioned attackers targeting each of the 1,116 U.S. missile silos and missile launch-control centers with two 0.5-megaton warheads. These attacks would cause massive explosions and produce significant radioactive fallout.
The study predicted that this fallout would predominantly travel from west to east across the United States, driven by prevailing winds. As a result, widespread radioactive contamination could impact a large portion of the country’s population.
The report presents a chilling potential reality, where nuclear explosions would propel radioactive particles into the upper atmosphere with fireballs. These particles would then gradually descend, spreading radioactive material across vast areas over months or even years.
The dispersion of radioactive materials would vary depending on the type of burst. Airbursts would propel radioactive particles high into the atmosphere, while ground bursts would draw earthly materials into the explosion, creating intense local fallout.
In cases where hard targets like missile silos are hit, the proximity required by nuclear warheads to effectively damage these fortified structures would mean that explosions would likely lift significant amounts of surface material into the air, mixing it with radioactive bomb emissions.
This lethal concoction of bomb and earth materials would be projected upward by the thermal updraft of the explosion, and later condense into small particles that would return to the ground relatively quickly, resulting in dense, localized fallout patterns impacting the areas downwind from the strike.
The focus on particular regions highlighted by the researchers reveals areas where radiation exposure would exceed 3,500 rads—a level considered extremely dangerous for human survival. In these highlighted areas, they predicted more than three-quarters of the population might succumb to the aftermath of the nuclear strikes.
This grave analysis from the Cold War era, reflecting on the dire potential of nuclear conflict, serves as a sobering reminder of the destructive power these weapons wield, posing major moral and strategic challenges for national leaders and policymakers.
In their conclusion, the researchers expressed a desire that a deeper understanding of the broad, catastrophic impacts of nuclear weapons might lead to stronger policy decisions that veer away from nuclear engagement. They suggest that national decision-makers, by understanding the collateral damage of nuclear strikes, might be less inclined to pursue aggressive nuclear postures that risk inviting equally destructive responses.
This stark vision rendered by researchers decades ago still resonates as an urgent call for thoughtful contemplation and responsible action among today's global leaders, given the unrelenting gravity and potentially irreversible consequences of nuclear war.
