Hiroshima and Austin - 70 Years and Counting

Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb on a populated city - Hiroshima. Since the end of the cold war, nukes have tended to recede from our consciousness, Iran and North Korea not withstanding. With Russia and China modernizing their delivery systems, Iran pursuing the capability to produce a device (and surviving the Stuxnet induced centrifuge self-destruction) and the continued proliferation of secrets to non-nuclear states and entities (Al Quida was pursuing enriched materials; surely ISIS is too) I thought it might be a good moment to think about where all this activity leads - the destruction of human lives.

Many strategic thinkers tend to divorce themselves from the end result of their plans. To them, the end result of building and owning nuclear weapons is to influence other players, bend opponents to their will, deter that which is not wanted. And while I accept that 70 years have passed since the last use of a nuclear weapon, I wonder if that is due to the horribleness of the weapons themselves and the loss of life they induced or if it was due to other factors that no longer apply. Let us not forget that at the end of World War II most of the world was damaged, if not destroyed, and that there was one superpower that had the predominate economy and the vast majority of the modern tools of warfare - America. The United States was able to export its type of economy, influence military affairs, settle the majority of trade transactions with its reserve currency, in short shelter the free world. America did a god job of financing the rebuilding of Europe through the Marshall plan (and gained a huge amount of business through the mandates to use the credits with American businesses). So did we prevent WW III and a nuclear exchange through the stick (i.e. avoidance of destruction) or through the carrot (i.e. the acceptance and pursuit of prosperity and economic growth).

Fast forward to today, when the memory of the bombings are not so fresh. We are 25 years post-cold war. We are once again competing with Russia in Eastern Europe. We are competing in China in the South China Sea. We are trying to bottle up North Korea. We are trying to negotiate with Iran. All of those actors are using nukes (or the threat of nukes) as bargaining chips. Russia and China are modernizing. Have we forgotten what these weapons can do?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock is at 3 minutes to Midnight. It was at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 when the cold war was officially declared over and Russia and the U.S. started making deep cuts to their arsenals. A number of factors are considered in setting the Doomsday Clock (the Doomsday Dashboard), but one thing struck me: Russia has 12 metric tons of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and 2 metric tons of Plutonium (Pu) and the U.S. has 8 metric tons of HEU and 1 metric ton of Pu. The Hiroshima bomb (15kt yield) used about 144 pounds of HEU. A modern U.S. warhead, such as the W-87 that sits atop our remaining Minuteman III missiles, uses about 12 pounds of Pu (and some HEU as a pusher). So the U.S. and Russia combined have enough nuclear material for, well lots of weapons. The U.S. has had 27 incidents of stolen nuclear material, 14 incidents of lost nuclear material and 8 incidents of "delivery failure".

So perhaps we are not so worried about nukes as we were 70 years ago, just after we used them, when Kenneth Bainbridge, the director of the Trinity project, the first test detonation in New Mexico in 1945, declared "Now we are all sons of bitches". So I decided, as a reminder, to post images of Alex Wellersteins' Nukemap, configured for my hometown, Austin, as a touchstone. Something to remember.

Since it is unlikely (although not impossible - think the TV series Jericho) that the U.S. will nuke itself, I chose as a warhead the 800kt warhead atop Russia's latest missile, the RT-2PM2 (SS-27) Topol-M (Sickle-M) road mobile strategic weapon that Russia is modernizing on. I chose as ground zero the UT Tower.

It turns out that it wouldn't be so bad. 300k deaths in an 800k city. If you were getting out of a cab at Bergstrom airport, you would be right on the line between 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Out near Pflugerville, where I live, you would probably be ok. Of course, if you were a UT student, you would be toast, literally. Downtown Austin wouldn't stand a chance, crushed under a 20 psi overpressure that would crush a person's lungs. West Lake Hills - all dead. Barton Creek, well, I hope you have on more than a bathing suit because you are going home (if you have one left) with 2nd degree burns on your exposed side.

For a little different look, this is from Alex Wellerstien's Nukemap3D simulation. Again, 800kt Russian nuke atop the UT Tower. This time, we managed to escape from Bergstrom in an airplane. We are about 15 miles south, at 30,000 feet, looking back over our shoulder. The city looks dark, because the mushroom cloud is hanging over the area. You can see Bergstom off to the right. I-35 is exiting the picture to the lower left towards San Antonio, which, with Joint Base San Antonio, the Army Burn Facility at Ft. Sam, Randolph, Lackland, etc. undoubtably got at least one too. It's so dark under the mushroom cloud, you can't make out details of the city, but you can see Lake Travis in the upper left.

And lest we become too complacent with conventional weapons, here is a nice little map comparing the effects of our firebombing of Japan (conventional) with the comparable cities of the U.S.

There is a good reason we haven't had a nuclear bombing in 70 years. The two at Hiroshima and Nagasaki scared the shit out of everyone alive at that time. With most of those people no longer around, are we ready for another one?