|
Nuclear weapons are so deadly it is - literally - hard to really even imagine anyone using one. But, it is also important to understand the reality of the danger we face.
A small, crude, and simple-to-make nuclear bomb is light enough and small enough that it can easily fit in a mini-van. Less than 100 pounds of heavily enriched uranium is sufficient to make a bomb as powerful as 20 million pounds of dynamite -- a "10-kiloton" bomb.
The damage would be enormous. Everything within a two mile diameter will be damaged or destroyed.1 Every building, every car, every hospital, every house. Every person. In Manhattan, on a typical day at lunch, that would mean 500,000 people will die instantly.2 Over a million people will die within the next few days due to radiation exposure from the blast.
Large sections of New York City will become uninhabitable due to radiation. There will be no water available anywhere in Manhattan. Everyone not killed will have to evacuate the now deadly wasteland. The physical damage alone will be in the trillions of dollars and will plunge the country and world into a deep, deep global depression.3
All that, from one single, small, crude nuclear bomb.
If possible to even contemplate, a single nuclear warhead would be over ten times worse.
|
