
Nukes of Hazard (2013) - sizzle
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/nukes-of-hazard
======
chriswarbo
> In 1960, the computer at... NORAD... warned, with 99.9-per-cent certainty,
> that the Soviets had just launched a full-scale missile attack against North
> America... They later discovered that the Ballistic Missile Early Warning
> System at Thule Airbase, in Greenland, had interpreted the moon rising over
> Norway as a missile attack from Siberia.

This is why numbers shouldn't be reported with too many significant figures. I
doubt the engineers thought the reports could be %99.9 certain, given that
they're extrapolated from noisy sensors, networked across huge distances and
that the opponent is adversarial (actively trying to avoid detection).

Percentages can cause a false sense of certainty too; as Leonard Mlodinow
points out in The Drunkard's Walk about changing wine ratings from out-of-10
to percentages. We might be quite sure that an 8/10 compares favourably to a
7/10 but not to a 9/10; we can't say the same about an %82 with an %83 and an
%81.

If you're forced to report percentages, or tenths of a percent, write the
estimated error alongside. Raw numbers like "%99.9" have an implied "+/\-
%0.05" afterwards.

And _that_ , ladies and gentlement, is why Die Hard 4.0 contains too many many
significant figures.

~~~
DennisP
Put it that way and it sounds like 99.9999% is just an excessively precise
version of 99%. Really it's the difference between .01 and .000001. It's just
an expression of the order of magnitude: one in a hundred, a thousand, a
million.

~~~
aragot
...and we did hit that one chance in a million that it was wrong.

~~~
jessaustin
What are the chances?!

~~~
pdpi
“Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.” - Equal
Rites

------
lotharbot
The article claims that a nine-megaton blast would wipe out "most of the state
of Arkansas". Wikipedia claims the lethal radius on a bomb of that size is
about 20 miles for thermal effects
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects)
), which is around 2% of the area of Arkansas; other effects are described as
having an even smaller radius.

I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely to be
correct.

~~~
arethuza
Fall-out effects from such a large & dirty H-bomb detonated at ground level
would have been pretty bad - you wouldn't want to be downwind of such an
event.

[Edit 1]

Actually, if you consider the indirect effects of the use of such a weapon -
particularly the large number of refugees fleeing contaminated areas, huge
numbers of injured etc. while such a detonation wouldn't destroy an entire
state it would probably reduce it to complete chaos.

e.g. The UK government estimated in the 1950s that _three_ H-bombs would be
all it would take to destroy the UK as a functioning society - the UK
ambassador in Moscow even had a drunken debate with Kruschev on this point -
suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK
were complete overkill...

[Edit 2]

The UK government was always pretty gloomy/realistic about the likely impact
of a nuclear war on the UK - basically even in fairly optimistic scenarios
such as the Square Leg exercise used as the basis for Threads were absolutely
awful. A real attack would have been far worse that the one shown in Threads,
if anyone can conceive of that.

~~~
gambiting
>> suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK
were complete overkill...

As Schlosser says in his book - because of the lack of coordination between
the Air Force, Army, US Navy and Missile Forces, at one point there was
something like 400(sorry if I remembered the number wrong,but it was in
hundreds) nuclear rockets aimed at Moscow, many of them with multi-megaton
payload. If they were launched, Moscow wouldn't be just destroyed - the entire
area would be turned into the biggest crater on earth.

~~~
cstross
A point that bears repeating is that this level of overkill was actually
_counterproductive_. One way of disabling a high efficiency nuclear device is
to blast the thing with neutrons (causing a premature and incomplete fission
reaction in the core of the weapon). This was actually how the Sprint ABM
system was intended to destroy its targets:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_%28missile%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_%28missile%29)

Now picture the skies over Moscow with ~400 warheads coming in, most of them
having been launched in a coordinated wave by Minuteman, Titan, or MX missiles
within the space of a few minutes: it turns out that the prompt neutron pulse,
blast, EMP, or thermal effects from one incoming warhead can disrupt another
if it arrives within 10 seconds of the first. This is termed nuclear
fratricide:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fratricide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fratricide)

... And there were enough weapons in play during the Cold War that _this was a
thing war planners worried about_.

~~~
mcguire
Hey, there's a simulation I'd like to see.

"It appears that two weapons targeted on a silo must arrive at least 10 s
apart to avoid fratricidal fireball effects, and less than 1 min or more than
1 h apart to avoid fratricidal nuclear dust cloud effects."

Anyone for _Missile Defense_ with a 50-100Mt Tsar bomba?

~~~
dredmorbius
A primary reason for the generally larger, and in some cases, insanely large
throw-weights of Soviet nuclear missiles was their much less accurate
targeting and guidance systems.

If you can land a nuke, or even a conventional warhead, directly on whatever
it is you're trying to make a was, your required explosive yield falls
dramatically.

Blast radius and damage increases with the cube of yield, so if you're half as
accurate, you need 8x the blast, generally, for effective damage.

Turns out that with extremely high precision warhead delivery, the US can
dispense with nuclear weapons even for tasks such as destroying deeply buried
and reinforced bunkers (command and control, or missile launch).

On the one hand this makes nuclear Armageddon that much less likely. On the
other it makes use of highly advanced weaponry less objectionable.

Which way the risk needle ultimately swings given that calculus is an
interesting question.

------
naz
> Mathias Rust had flown a rented Cessna, an airplane about the size of a
> Piper Cub, from Helsinki to Moscow and landed it a hundred yards from Red
> Square

Are there people that know how big a Cub is, but don't know how big a Cessna
is?

~~~
sspiff
I had to look up what a Piper Cub was, whereas I believe almost everyone knows
what a Cessna looks like. It's only the most common air plane ever built.

------
100k
I read "Command and Control" on vacation this summer and I highly recommend
it. It interweaves jaw-dropping nuclear weapon disasters from the whole
nuclear age with a detailed account of one particular incident. It's
astonishing how close we've come to accidental nuclear detonation (and then
what happens?). That's really the point of the book: it's a matter of when,
not if.

~~~
RachelF
It makes a great read. The interleaving of the Titan accident and the rest of
the story is leads to a disjointed structure though, making it a bit hard to
follow.

It seems quite possible that we'll blow ourselves up by accident.

------
runarb
Nuclear bomb security may have be less advanced than we were lead on to
believe. For example British nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle
lock key: "British nukes were protected by bike locks" \-
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm)
.

If one puted that in a movie plot I think few would believe it.

~~~
mootothemax
_Nuclear bomb security may have be less advanced than we were lead on to
believe_

The launch code for US nukes was 00000000 for 20 years:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-
for-u...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-
was-00000000-for-20-years/)

~~~
tonyblundell
It's been changed twice since then.

First it was changed to include one capital letter, one numerical digit and an
asterisk.

Now it's correcthorsebatterystaple.

------
jonnathanson
Anyone who enjoyed this article, or at least the subject of it, should check
out the book itself ("Command & Control" by Eric Schlosser). It's a great
read.

The book's chapters alternate between two narratives. The first is a real-time
account of a bomb-gone-haywire scare in Arkansas, and the people called in to
deal with it. The second is a history of nuclear arms, escalation, and near-
misses during the Cold War.

I could have done without the first narrative. It is awkwardly written,
repetitive, and slow. (No doubt Schlosser does this to draw out the scenario
across N chapters. The tactic actually makes things worse, sapping the story
of its immediacy and urgency). But the main, historical narrative is
fantastic.

------
mobiplayer
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention when in 1966 the US dropped 4
nuclear bombs off the Spanish coast. It was, of course, an accident but I've
always felt it was pretty serious:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash)

~~~
tim333
It sees they actually dropped some on Spain rather that off the coast. From
Wikipedia: "Of the four Mk28-type hydrogen bombs the B-52G carried, three were
found on land near the small fishing village of Palomares"

------
iSnow
I guess the most scary stuff I read in quite some time:

\-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident)

\-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83)

\-
[http://rbth.com/defence/2014/04/03/ultimate_deterrent_how_th...](http://rbth.com/defence/2014/04/03/ultimate_deterrent_how_the_russian_perimeter_system_works_35633.html)

\-
[http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all)

This had so many ways to end in tears and it still does.

------
mootothemax
The UK's leaders wrote "Letters of last resort" to their nuclear submarine
commanders, explaining what to do if the government was destroyed:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort)

It's terrifying that nuclear war was considered likely enough to do this.

~~~
dghf
My understanding was they still do: I read somewhere (can't find the link now,
sorry) that when the system was explained to Tony Blair on his second day in
office, he went white.

~~~
pjc50
Firing the nukes after the destruction of the government is 50% of the purpose
of Trident. It's a second-strike deterrence weapon. It's not as if it could be
practically used as a first-strike weapon independently of the US, there
aren't enough warheads to obliterate Russia or China on our own.

------
aaronbrethorst
From reading the article, I get the sense that the best thing working in
our[1] favor was having a series of relatively steady, not crazy hands on the
nuclear football, on both sides. It's still incredibly frightening that the
annihilation of the human race was literally placed in the hands of two people
at any given time, but a testament to the capability of the Soviet Politburo
and the American political system to elect capable human beings.

[1] i.e. the human race

~~~
InclinedPlane
Realistically, human civilization would still have survived a full scaled
thermonuclear exchange during the height of the Cold War. Things would not
have been great, but humanity would still have survived.

~~~
VMG
But you're much more likely to be born into a world where this event didn't
happen.

The history of nuclear accidents is not a good indicator for the risk of
nuclear war due to survivorship bias.

The fact that we haven't observed a nuclear war in history might have less to
do with the likelihood of nuclear war and more with the fact that fewer people
would be able to observe that history.

See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument)

~~~
InclinedPlane
Ah, interesting, a bit like a quantitative version of the anthropic principle.
It presupposes that civilizations that have recovered from doomsday scenarios
will never be as large as those that never had such an event occur. Perhaps on
the timescale since the Cold War that holds.

~~~
jessaustin
This seems much sillier than the anthropic principle, however. (And I've had a
professor thunder at me that the anthropic principle itself is silly, anyway.)
It's not as though we know of _any_ nuclear-capable civilizations besides our
own.

~~~
VMG
I'd love to hear an explanation why it seems silly.

~~~
jessaustin
In deference to my professor, I'll just observe why " _The fact that we haven
't observed a nuclear war in history might have less to do with the likelihood
of nuclear war and more with the fact that fewer people would be able to
observe that history,_" seems sillier than Carter's (not Tipler's!) anthropic
principle. The anthropic principle considers only two classes of universe: one
that will at some point host observers of any sort, and the other that will
not. Clearly we find ourselves in a universe of the former class. Whereas your
statement invokes any number of possible histories and events, and blithely
assigns probability distributions to them. I value parsimony.

------
kjbekkelund
The weather rocket was launched from the island where I grew up in Norway
(Andøya in Vesterålen, just north of Lofoten). After the event a local
marketing agency created this t-shirt:
[http://baardmichalsen.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/tskjorte-0...](http://baardmichalsen.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/tskjorte-0002.jpg)

------
rtpg
>And the missile was armed. Schlosser says that the explosive force of the
warhead on a Titan II is nine megatons, which is three times the force of all
the bombs dropped in the Second World War, including the atomic bombs that
destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If it had detonated, most of the state of
Arkansas would have been wiped out.

That is the scariest thing I have read in a while. I always had the impression
that there were a lot of active steps in a bomb actually exploding.

~~~
winestock
The largest nuclear detonation set off by the United States was Castle Bravo.
It was fifteen megatons. It had serious fallout issues, but it did not cause
the kind of damage that is claimed for this weapon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo)

~~~
PythonicAlpha
>but it did not cause the kind of damage that is claimed for this weapon

I don't know, what you are referring to here, but to my opinion, given the
distances of a relatively wide area with very limited population, the results
where grave enough. Generations of the inhabitants where contaminated and had
babies with many defects or deaths born. I guess the descendants of these poor
people still struggle with the effects of this bomb.

Given such an event in or near a city of the US, I guess not only one city
might get wiped out but the effects would be very real and destructive in a
very big part of the US.

~~~
PeterisP
"Horrible effects" and "wiped out" mean very, very different things and can't
be used interchangeably, especially if you're writing an article that pretends
to be serious.

------
swah
The movie plug is in the article but most of us are only skimming so let me
plug it again:
[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dr_strangelove/](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dr_strangelove/)

I didn't like 2001, maybe because in 2014 its harder to appreciate, and it has
a very slow pace. Dr. Strangelove a much easier watch.

~~~
gdubs
"Fail Safe" [1] is also an excellent movie. I believe it was based on the same
book as Strangelove, but is a drama and not a dark comedy. Excellent movie and
cast.

~~~
swah
Which one ?
[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/failsafe/](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/failsafe/)
vs
[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1175374-fail_safe/](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1175374-fail_safe/)

~~~
gdubs
Sorry, forgot the link:

[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/failsafe/](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/failsafe/)

------
Spearchucker
This is my problem with the American and Russian government - actually any
government - they play games. Stupid, myopic and arrogant idiots who see life
other than their own on this planet as a thing to be toyed with.
Intellectually they're little better than teenagers.

Machiavelli's blueprint smothers the benevolence of the Ghandis, the Tutus and
the Mandelas. A populace too absorbed in day-to-day survival is in no position
to change the status quo. Depressing.

~~~
arethuza
Both "Better red than dead" and "better dead than red" were slogans thrown
around in my youth here in the UK in the 70s and 80s.

Utter craziness - all of it.

~~~
kghose
This attitude is part of 'better to be dead than a slave'. I think many people
saw what the Nazis did in the occupied territories and their thinking was
influenced by that (extending it to, what would happen if the Soviets invaded
our lands).

~~~
mseebach
By the 70s and 80s, people knew (or had the option to know - many chose not to
know) what the Soviets did to people at home, so it wasn't totally out of
whack to assume what would happen if they invaded.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich)

~~~
jackpirate
People often forget how awful the west treated the bottom of its society at
the time. For a black in the South, the soviet union (or more likely
Cuba/communist latin country) probably looked pretty good.

That's not to excuse or downplay these country's mistakes. Let's just not
forget our own.

~~~
dmm
Criticism of the US for segregation was a common tactic used in Soviet
propaganda.

~~~
jackpirate
Roughly to the same extent that criticism of the soviets was a common tactic
used in western propaganda.

~~~
dmm
It was used as a form of misdirection, a way to change the subject when
someone brought up stalin's genocide.

------
AnimalMuppet
tl;dr: Modern nuclear warheads should not go off by accident, even in (almost)
any conceivable accident.

Modern warhead design has the idea of the "strong link" and "weak link". The
strong link is a critical part of the detonation path, and is not ordinarily
in place. It can only be put in place by arming the warhead, or by a severe
accident. But any accident severe enough to put the strong link in place
should be more than enough to destroy the weak link, which is _also_ a
critical part of the detonation path.

A warhead accident could still leave an awful lot of radioactive
contamination, of course...

------
asadlionpk
There was a really nice documentary on similar subject: Countdown to Zero
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572769/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572769/)

------
AnimalMuppet
I seem to recall hearing that, back in the 1960s, the US at least offered to
the USSR that we would teach them how to improve their nuclear command and
control. The thinking was that, yes, in event of war this would improve their
ability to fight, but it was more important to reduce the possibility of
accidentally starting such a war.

------
myrandomcomment
How hard is it to report facts.

"The plane split in two, the base was evacuated, and the fire burned for two
and a half hours. But the explosives in the warhead didn’t detonate; that
would have set off a chain reaction."

This statement seems to imply the bomb would have went off, which is just not
true. The physics just do not work that way.

~~~
axman6
Depending on the design, isn't there some chance that the heat could detonate
the conventional explosive used to force the nuclear material together? as far
as I understand it, there is definitely a risk of detonation, though it's
hopefully very low. Physics is not directly the reason for it being so low
either, but more safeguards put in place to ensure detonation only happens
when it's supposed to and is prevented otherwise.

~~~
mnw21cam
Most high explosives will not detonate when burnt. They need to have a shock
wave running through them for the detonation to occur. The initial shock wave
is usually created using a detonator, which uses a very small amount of a much
more risky explosive.

You can get a lump of C-4, and use it as fuel for a fire to cook over without
any danger, and in fact soldiers certainly used to do this. You can also hit
it with a hammer - the shock wave caused by this isn't strong enough to cause
a detonation.

In terms of a nuke, you need to detonate a set of independent lumps of
explosive with very precise timing, in order to get a compression lens that
will squash the fissile core sufficiently to get a nuclear explosion. Heat is
unlikely to cause this to happen with a sensibly-designed bomb.

~~~
sp332
It's still very dangerous if the high explosives go if in an uncoordinated
way. And then you have kilograms of enriched radioactive material spread all
over. Not as bad as a supercritical reaction, but enough to worry about.

~~~
mnw21cam
Uranium isn't really that radioactive. U-235 has a half life on the order of
10^9 years. It is only when uranium is brought together into supercritical
lumps that it becomes a problem from a radiation point of view. However, it is
also a toxic heavy metal, like lead, and that is a problem. That hasn't
stopped militaries firing lumps of it around warzones the world over.

------
Rapzid
"...the American public was regularly frightened by warnings about the dangers
of a nuclear attack that was always made to appear imminent"

Not much has changed.

~~~
Houshalter
Did you even read the article? Such fears may have been totally rational.

~~~
Zikes
We're afraid because they have nukes because they're afraid because we have
nukes because we're afraid because they have nukes because they're afraid
because we have nukes because...

------
sidcool
A very fascinating article.

------
Rapzid
I wouldn't have thought how trumped up and ludicrous this all was. I was born
in 1984, so I really started becoming aware in the bubble that existed after
the wall fell and before 9/11\. Sure, I read 1984 and Farenhiet 451 but the
seemed like commentary about the future, what could become. Apparently they
were just as relevant when they were written. Constant war with the "enemy".
The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build
their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities. Build
their bombs. Spend that sweet tax-payer money. Feel important. Lie to the
government. The past seemed so legit and so ancient when I was growing up.
After 9/11 I had no idea history was repeating itself. Now we have the ever
present(statistically ridiculous) threat of "terrorism". The NSA needs more
powers, more money; to protect us of course. They WOULD say that because
that's how they get more money, more employees, more power. Still lying to the
government of course(weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?). Now we have an ex-
NSA head launching a venture charging companies 1 million a month to protect
them! Of course they'll contract back to government. And the NSA will tell use
all about how we don't need to worry about what they are doing, we just need
to pay up.

 _sigh_

~~~
simonh
> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build
> their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities.

I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs.
Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical
ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that
died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.

I fully accept a lot of mistakes were made during the cold war, and I also
deplore the expensive, ineffective and unnecessary overreach by western
intelligence agencies, but the threats they were and are purporting to defend
us from are very real. Some of our responses to those threats have been
mistaken and unnecessary, but it certainly does not follow that those threats
don't exist and don't need to be responded to.

~~~
Perseids
> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical
> ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that
> died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.

 _Seriously?_

There ought to be something analogously to Godwin’s law to declare discussions
lost after this class of arguments.

To answer in kind: "I'd like to ask how you would explain the proportionality
of the respond to the families of the tens to hundreds of thousand civilian
casualties[1] in the Irak war." OR "[…] explain the justice and civility of
the 'war against terror' to the hundreds (?) of innocent prisoners in
Guantanamo bay." OR even "[…] explain the trillion dollar [2] that were spent
on the military instead on fighting aids, cancer, malaria, diabetes,… to those
suffering or those who have lost friends or family."

Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater
effects to society and the relative danger of the threat.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count_project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count_project)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror#Costs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror#Costs)

~~~
rayiner
> Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater
> effects to society and the relative danger of the threat.

No, but numerical arguments quickly become ridiculous when you ignore the fact
that the emotional reaction of the nation to 3,000 Americans killed in a
terrorist act is itself a physically cognizable phenomenon that must be given
due weight in the analysis.

~~~
dllthomas
It should be factored in. But at the same time, screaming about the badness
_makes that worse_. Refuse to be terrorized.

~~~
rayiner
Telling people how they should feel about other peoples' deaths is generally
not going to get you anywhere. People feel what they feel.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
OK, but making irrational policy based on how people feel leads to bad policy.
Let people feel what they feel. But don't make long-term policy based on
peoples' emotional reactions to events.

~~~
dllthomas
I actually disagree, perhaps subtly. Emotional reactions are still reactions,
are still a thing that exists in reality, and should be appropriately
weighted. But emotional reaction should be weighted in terms of considering it
as a consequence, and emotions should be consulted in determining which
consequences we (collectively) care about. This is _distinct_ from responding
in the short term to a demand for vengeance simply because that's how people
feel now (but _not_ distinct from reacting with vengeance if the population
will long-term approve of having done so, balancing emotional _consequences_
with others).

------
danso
Jesus Christ...what a thing to read if you needed to not fall asleep for
awhile. I think this is a perfect real-life example of Hanlon's Razor, "Never
attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"...the
whole world has nearly been annihilated, several times over, due to most
inexplicably benign human errors...and that's not even counting the errors of
bureaucracy (such as the misreporting of Russian nuke capability, which let
military officials press the need for an absurd number of excess warheads).

Also, this is the first time I can remember that I've ever seen a correction
in a New Yorker article.

------
trhway
nah... we'll collapse our civilization slowly by turning into one big always
connected ant colony hidden in concrete from the overheated unfriendly
environment

------
mariusz79
All we need is a solar frame, pandemic, or string of larger earthquakes in
some parts of the globe. That would cause some nuclear plants to meltdown.
Life on Earth would become impossible. No need to worry about some accidental
nuclear war. Damn, we're dumb.

~~~
zorbo
Can you back that up with some numbers, or a source perhaps? Because that just
sounds like fearmongering. We've already had two nuclear plant meltdowns, and
life on earth is doing just fine.

~~~
mariusz79
Fear mongering? Let's see:

First of all, Chernobyl Exclusion zone is about 1000 mile^2. [3] Life is not
doing just fine there. And the effect of Fukushima meltdown are not going to
be known for the next few years, but there are indications that it may not be
as harmless as we are led to believe.[4]

There are currently 62 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 100
nuclear reactors in 31 states in the United States. [1]

A recent study led by European researchers found Fukushima is not alone, as 22
other plants around the world may be similarly susceptible to destructive
tsunami waves, with most of them in east and southeast regions of Asia. [2]

The World Nuclear Association estimates that 20 percent of nuclear reactors
worldwide operate in areas vulnerable to earthquakes.[5]

[1]
[http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=207&t=3](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=207&t=3)
[2] [http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/nuclear-plants-at-
tsu...](http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/nuclear-plants-at-tsunami-
risk-120924.htm) [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Exclusion_Zone)
[4][http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/07/nuclear-expert-
fukushima-...](http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/07/nuclear-expert-fukushima-
plant-now-like-swamp-radioactive-material-due-contaminated-water/)
[5][http://www.frontiergroup.org/blogs/blog/fg/how-many-us-
nucle...](http://www.frontiergroup.org/blogs/blog/fg/how-many-us-nuclear-
plants-are-located-near-earthquake-faults)

~~~
DennisP
Actually life is doing better in the Chernobyl zone than it was when there
were humans there. Humans stay away because they don't like slight increases
in cancer probability, not because life is impossible.

~~~
mariusz79
one more point

"Some claim that the populations of traditional Polesian animals (such as
wolves, badger, wild boar, roe deer, white-tailed eagle, black stork, Western
marsh harrier, short-eared owl, red deer, moose, great egret, whooper swan,
least weasel, common kestrel and beaver) have multiplied enormously and begun
expanding outside the zone. These claims, however, are not substantiated by
any systematic census of any animal taxon."[41]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Exclusion_Zone#Radioactive_contamination)
[41] Møller, A P; T A Mousseau; F de Lope; N Saino (2008). "Anecdotes and
empirical research in Chernobyl". Biology Letters 4 (1): 65–66.
doi:10.1098/rsbl.2007.0528. ISSN 1744-957X. PMC 2412943. Retrieved 2012-02-07.

