Countdown To Zero Page #6

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Both the U.S. and Russia

guide their nuclear response

with a doctrine called

"Launch on Warning"

It is the policy if you believe

that you are under attack

you are supposed to launch the missiles.

you dont wait for them to land.

According to Russian military doctrine

Boris Yeltsin should have

launched all out nuclear attack

on the United States that morning.

We do not know what

happened in the Kremlin.

All we know is that he didnt.

There have been a no. of false

alarms during the Cold War.

We have had ocassions

where the rising moon

was interpreted to be a

Russian ICBMs attack.

A flock of geese

was thought to be bombers.

A training tape

was slipped into a computer

at our command and control

headquarters at NORAD

Everyone involved

thought

there was an actual attack underway.

A tape was inserted into the

early warning hub in Colorado

that simulated a large scale

Soviet nuclear attack.

And no one realised that it was

just a training tape

until the U.S had gone

into this sort of frenzy

check list procedure

to prepare

for nuclear war.

Airborne command posts,

actually,in some cases, took off.

The Presidents dooms day plane

actually left its base

in preparation

for an incoming Soviet strike.

Senator Charles Percy

happened to be there

at the time

and said there was

absolute panic.

Another false alarm

was caused by a computer

chip malfuntion

that generated

indications of large scale

Soviet attack

We raised the

alert levels.

Crews took launch

codes out of their safes.

Inserted the keys into

the launch switches.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was woken up

in the middle of the night

with the assured instruction

that a nuclear attack is underway

and that he had to go

wakeup President Carter.

There was 8 minutes worth of

nuclear launch preparations

that were triggered

by malfunctioning

computer chip

that costs less than a dollar.

And having missiles on hair trigger

is an accident waiting to happen.

As Fermi said

about the physics:

"What isnt forbidden

is compulsory,''

it will eventually happen.

There is nothing that makes

the launch of nuclear weapons impossible

If the probability

isnt zero, it will happen.

Right now the world has a policy

that is based heavily on technology

you keep something secret and

you call it a day

But secrecy has half life.

Things leak out

Centrifuges happen to be the technology

that is going to change the game.

They are going to democratize the process

of building nuclear weapons.

Uranium exists

everywhere on Earth.

Its more common than tin.

is uranium 238,

isotope that can not be

used for nuclear weapons.

except 0.7% that you

need to separate out

A centrifuge

Its basically a tube.

It spins the uranium in gas form

and pushes the heavier atoms towards the wall.

and the lighter atoms from the center.

And you can skin off the light atoms

You do this over and over again.

Many dozens of times,

and eventually you purify it to a

level that you can use it as a bomb

The common risk in them is

they are very complicated.

Technologies that take countries

decades to build

and the highest achievements.

But the fact is,

is that the centrifuges are

And this is 2010.

Enriching uranium is still

beyond the reach of the individual.

It is a logistics feat,

requiring thousands of centrifuges

working for

months or years.

But highly enriched uranium

is now within the

grasp of nearly any country.

And once you have the HEU

making a crude bomb is easy

We're not just

dicussing limits / i

on a further

increase of nuclear weapons. / i

We seek instead to

reduce their numbers. / i

We seek total elimination

one day/ i

of nuclear weapons from

the face of the earth. / i

Happy New Year, man. / i

Happy New Year. / i

I love you all. / i

In the first

millionth of a second ,

the fireball is 500 feet across

Within 10 seconds,

it would grow to over 1 mile

The temperature would rise

to 20 million degrees Fahrenhiet

hotter than the

surface of the sun

The blast would generate winds

in excess of 650 miles an hour

Forces of that magnitude

can destroy anything

that people can build.

Strongest Buildings

would be reduced to rubble.

Tens of square blocks would just be

melted, would just be evaporated

Everything would be vaporized:

the buildings,the cars,

the trees,the people,

the upper level of earth itself

There were 76 000 buildings

in Hiroshima.

The hospitals,the fire stations

the communications equipment;

the military installations.

Everything just flattened.

In the first 5 to 6 miles,

virtually everyone in that

Somewhere between 3&4 million people

dead immediately

in the first 5 miles

If you are lucky enough to be 8 or

then you would experience it as blast effects

Windows being shattered

It would shatter every window

and turn it to hundreds of missiles

flying outwards from the

center of the explosion,

at speeds more than

After the blast,

Its the firestorm that would combust everything

Everything flammable would burn

paper, cardboard, cloth,

heating oil,

gasoline.

Everything would burn.

Whole blocks would catch fire.

Hundreds of thousands of fires would turn

into a giant firestorm

Everything catches fire

There just will be no air to breathe.

All the oxygen would be consumed

and everyone would die.

It is useless to talk about the way

you die because you are burned to death

or because you have been blown to bits by the blast

Anyone looking in the direction of the

nuclear explosion they will be blinded.

The lungs would be ruptured by the pressure

or the eardrums would be ruptured by the pressure.

crush injuries from

buildings falling,

broken bones thrown in the air

against the buildings

Hundreds of thousands,

possibly millions

would die from the fallout.

The body does have a repair rate for radiation

but the doses are so heavy

and coming so quickly

that it would overwhelm the body's

repair mechanism

The 450 to 70 RAD dose kills you

because of white cells or blood cells

or you will go into seasures

or immediate coma

and you will die within a matter of

minutes or hours.

Most of the doctors are going to be dead

most of the nurses are going to be dead.

Most of the hospitals are going to be destroyed.

Huge number of casualties

and no medical equipment.

They will be a need for antibiotics.

tens of units

of blood per person.

There wont be any electrical power

Vast amounts

of intravenous fluids

to sustain people that have

been burned,just burned.

You couldnt treat all

the burn victims.

And there comes a certain point

the casualties become so high

its pointless to try to make any sense out of it.

The doctor in the Red Cross Hospital

who turns into an automaton,

And that's what desended on the

physicians and nurses

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Someone would surely claim they had 10 more

that were already hidden somewhere

and then start setting them off

and blast

unless they meet

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