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Nuclear War: The Human and Ecological Effects
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10244 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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8 / 1986 |
4,081 Words |
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Herbert D. Grover
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The future of humankind now rests squarely on the horns of a dilemma. Over the last forty years or so, a handful of nation-states have acquired the technological capability to destroy human civilization and perhaps to threaten the survival of other species with which we share this planet.
The development and deployment of nuclear weaponry has been deliberate and goal-directed. At the superpower level, nuclear armaments are considered the most effective deterrent to conventional and nuclear world war. Yet can we be certain that the correct choices have been made and are being made in configuring these arsenals? How many of what type of weapons are sufficient to effectively deter aggression by either superpower toward the other? In order to answer these and other questions related to nuclear arms policy, we must understand fully the relative costs and benefits (the risk) associated with nuclear weaponry.
A series of reports produced in the late 1960s and during the 1970s examined the potential consequences of nuclear war in terms of health effects on humans and social and economic effects, but these are only a small part of the issue to be considered.
In preceding articles, physical scientists have described the potential effects of multiple nuclear-weapon detonations on the composition of the atmosphere and related potential effects on climate. Knowing these effects is important only if the biological implications of such changes are understood. This article deals with the serious implications of nuclear war for humans and for the other species with which we share this planet.
The Dimensions
Certainly the habitability of our continent, hemisphere, and the entire planet fro the immediate survivors of nuclear war must be of central concern. If the environment could be severely affected by the direct and indirect effects of hundreds or thousands of nuclear-weapon detonations, thereby threatening all life on Earth, then we should know this. Such knowledge entails the imperative that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe's occurring by miscalculation, or accident be eliminated. And so the scientific community has shifted some of its effort to studying the long-term effects of nuclear war on the global ecosystem. We do this not only in an effort to avert nuclear war, but also to come to a clearer understanding of how the global ecosystem operates in the absence of nuclear war, and how human activities even today are altering the function of our planetary life-support system.
As we pursue an assessment of the human and ecological effects of nuclear war, there are a few major points to emphasize. First, even if there were no climatic effects of nuclear war, the direct cumulative effects of thousands of nuclear weapons on human societies would be devastating and unprecedented in our history. As I will review later, as much as 30 percent to 50 percent of the global human population could be killed or mortally wounded even if targeting were limited to military industrial sites in the superpower and allied nations. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that 95 percent of the U.S. population lives within 100 miles of important military-industrial targets, and 60 percent lives within 20 miles. Although the population of the Soviet Union is more dispersed than our own, many strategic targets are located near
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