Could You Survive a Nuclear War?

And would you even want to?

Soldier in trench during the First World War: “This is the worst war ever.”

Homer Simpson: “The worst war ever, so far.”

Soldier in Okinawa during the Second World War: “This is the worst war ever.”

Homer Simpson: …

On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 was traveling from New York to Seoul via an arctic route when it strayed into restricted airspace over the Soviet Union. The Soviets were vexed because the navigational error took the passenger plane overtop underground missile silos containing some of their intercontinental boomsticks. And so, a Soviet Air Forces fighter plane shot down Flight 007, killing all 269 passengers and crew, including an American congressman. Six months previous, the hawkish President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” We were once again on the brink of nuclear war. I recall feeling particularly anxious, what with being a fifteen-year-old boy who had not yet touched a boob.

When you factor in world per capita death toll and the relatively short length of time of the conflict, the Second World War was the most lethal in history. The horrors of 75 million deaths followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation engendered a “Long Peace.” Alas, the Pax Atomica of the Cold War was only for the West. Since the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, another 50 million died in various wars by the time the Berlin Wall was torn down in the fall of 1989. Most of those deaths happened in developing nations, often fighting proxy wars between the superpowers. The fall of the Soviet Union didn’t change much, as tens of millions more have died in war since. Nuclear weapons are potentially the most lethal invention in history, but the singular military device that has killed more people than any other in history was an assault rifle invented in 1947 by a Russian tank mechanic named Mikhail Kalashnikov.

A single ballistic missile submarine carries more explosive power than all the detonations that took place during the entirety of the Second World War, plus a metric assload of bonus invisible cancer air. In 1986 there existed a whopping 70,300 nuclear weapons around the world. By 2025, that number fell to just over 12,000, with almost 3,000 of them retired. Still plenty of fusion-kaboom to ruin everyone’s day. And holy mother of crap have we come close to ruining all of humanity’s days, more than once.

It seems like we might be getting close again, especially since Trump considers nothing is “off the table,” including using tactical nuclear weapons, in attacking Iran.

It’s been eighty years since any nation used a nuclear weapon against a population. One of the reasons no country has been so bold to nuke another since then, beyond the concept of “mutually assured destruction,” is that it has become “unthinkable.” Even a limited use would be seen as inexcusable, no matter the circumstances. The U.S. got a pass in 1945, but that won’t happen again. The bombing nation would become an international pariah, but the spell of “not ever using them” would be broken. Once nuclear weapons are used again—even small ones in a limited capacity—the genie comes back out of the bottle, and it never gets shoved back in. It would be an international psychological sea change that could lead humanity toward a much larger nuclear exchange. Fortunately, since 1945, no nation in possession of nuclear weapons has ever said yeah, let’s use these fuckers. General MacArthur wanted to launch several smaller “tactical” nuclear weapons to bring a quick end to the Korean War, but President Truman, the one who authorized their use in Japan, said I am le tired of your shit and instead of firing missiles, he fired MacArthur. The same idea was repeatedly bandied about regarding the Vietnam War, but never seriously considered, even by Nixon, because of the fear of uncontrolled escalation into another World War involving Russia and or China. But as many have noted, the current American president is absolutely bugshit. The fucker is actually crazy enough to use nukes.

Could you survive a nuclear war?

Even a “limited” nuclear exchange like India and Pakistan deciding to blow the shit out of each other with a mere one hundred smaller Hiroshima-sized nukes would quickly kill about fifty million or so people, then have long-lasting environmental repercussions likely leading to global famine, killing many more. What if Russia and America decided to launch a few thousand of their far more powerful nuclear weapons at each other? Fuhgeddaboudit. A billion would die quickly, and they’d be the lucky ones. Most of the rest would succumb to radiation poisoning or starvation from “stratospheric soot injection” creating a lasting ice age. Perhaps twenty per cent of humanity would survive, mostly in the southern hemisphere, and it would suck to be them. Society would collapse, radiation would cause nasty genetic mutations for generations, the ozone layer would be shredded … basically the worst parts of every nuclear apocalypse movie you’ve ever seen all rolled into one. Civilization may eventually rise again from the literal ashes, but nuclear war should be Number One on our list of “Things Not to Do.”

I know you’re worried about climate change, but nuclear war remains our most imminent existential threat. The nukes could fly at any time, and other than not voting for psychopathic douchebuckets, there’s not a lot you can do to prevent it. All we can do is continue to hope, because hope is what can get you through another day. Hope is what keeps us going.

I also hope you’ll buy my sweary history books, because those who cannot remember the past … need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.