I know you don’t want to hear this but you need to. I know I needed to hear it, just as a reminder of how dangerous this moment is — and that the fact we have these weapons at all is insane. This is from the Lancet:
On Feb 27, 2022, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear forces to be placed on “the special regime of combat duty”. This decision increased the alert status of Russian nuclear forces from a peacetime status to a pre-combat status, creating the legal conditions for any further instruction to launch missiles.
Presumably Putin’s move is intended to create fear and uncertainty, intensify pressure on Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and partners, reduce resistance to Russian attacks in Ukraine, and extract concessions in negotiations. But these threats represent an absolutely unacceptable escalation of his invasion of Ukraine.
The threat of nuclear weapons ratchets up tensions and increases the anxiety and stress that every soldier, resistance fighter, civilian, and politician is experiencing. This threat is also likely to affect analysis and decision making by all parties to the conflict in regard to the potentially far-reaching impacts of decisions. Indeed, history has shown us the risks that these types of situations can pose.
Since the 1960s the assumption by nuclear armed states was that the prospect of mutually assured destruction would guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used. Nuclear war was believed to be so catastrophic that no leader would ever dare use their nuclear arsenals. More recently, in January, 2022, all the nuclear weapons states that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (China, France, Russia, the USA, and the UK) reiterated the Reagan–Gorbachev statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”.
Nonetheless, documentary research and testimonies have revealed occasions during the decades after the Cuban missile crisis when nuclear weapons were very nearly used as a result of misperceptions and misinterpretation of signals. In 1983, for example, the NATO Able Archer military exercise increased the fear level in the Soviet Union to such an extent that Russian nuclear forces were mobilised. Also in 1983, satellite signals that appeared to be incoming nuclear missiles from the USA to the Soviet Union nearly led to a launch-on-warning response from Moscow. The decision not to do so rested largely on the decisions of one individual, lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov
Even after the end of the Cold War, when tensions were low, a Norwegian rocket was initially feared to be an incoming nuclear weapons attack in Russia. In the case of nuclear weapons, such mistakes, if they lead to inadvertent use, can never be small or put right. Any use of so-called tactical nuclear weapons (in the low kiloton range) in battle situations would also risk rapid escalation to large-scale nuclear war.
The overwhelming humanitarian catastrophic impact of a nuclear weapon is too great to allow these weapons into stressful conflict situations in which such mistakes will occur. Humanity has not avoided nuclear war thus far because of wise leaders, sound military doctrine, or infallible technology. As former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara observed: “We lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”
An estimated 200 000 people died within 5 months of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 and many survivors suffered long-term effects, including increased risk of leukaemia, other types of cancer, and effects on mental health. The world’s nuclear armed states currently have a combined arsenal of around 12 700 nuclear weapons.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the USA deploys 1644 and Russia deploys 1588 strategic warheads on bombers and missiles, many with an explosive power of 100 kilotons or more. Both countries are modernising their nuclear delivery systems.
If a single warhead of 100 kilotons exploded over a major city it would kill hundreds of thousands of people outright and injure many more, overwhelming the health-care system of an entire nation.
Even a small-scale nuclear war, involving 250 of the deployed nuclear weapons in the NATO and Russian arsenals, or as might take place between India and Pakistan, would be expected to result in sufficient dust and smoke blocking solar radiation to cause major climate disruption that would trigger a global famine, putting billions of people at risk and destroying modern civilisation.
A large-scale nuclear war would create a nuclear winter, with temperatures falling an average of about 10°C across the globe, and could kill most of humanity over 10 years.
Those of us of a certain age are well aware of all this. We grew up with it. But in recent years this knowledge has receded into an abstraction for many people, particularly young people. But it’s back.
It’s hard to believe that humankind failed to deal with this insane threat over the last 70 years but we didn’t. And here we are.