Who Remembers the Threat of Nuclear Holocaust?

 

 

Back in 1984, many of us were worried that the election of Ronald Reagan would usher in an era of nuclear conflict. He rattled his sabers and was cheered as a war hero by the conservatives. Then it didn’t happen. Instead, he was open to the overtures of peace from a Soviet Empire that was, we now know, rapidly crumbling.

But back in and before 1984, there was no shortage of books that addressed the existential challenge of nuclear annihilation. One such book was The Caveman and the Bomb, which drew a comparison between the human desire for war and a Neanderthal mentality. It was quite a long and detailed book, but is perhaps best remembered for its cartoons, of which I provide four:

The authors tried to sound upbeat and, in so doing, addressed some fundamental issues. “We can say no to our Neanderthal mentality, to our genes. We are the only creatures on earth who can do this. We have this opportunity because our genes whisper to us, they do not shout…We can be greater than the sum of our genes. If that is our decision, evolution can’t do a thing about it. Making that decision is the supreme test of our humanity…”

It turned out to not be the supreme test of our humanity. As it happened, the Soviet Union simply could not keep up its military expenditures and needed a way to emerge from the arms race without losing too much face. I do not believe that either they or we have become better people as a result.

Today, we may not face an imminent nuclear threat, but the weapons are still there. And Trump, unlike Reagan, is a man who is just unstable, egotistical, and hateful enough that he might goad the other nuclear powers into new confrontations.

Who Remembers Nuclear Winter?

 

In the early 1980s, a lot of us were worried about what would happen if the United States and the Soviet Union did, in fact, begin a nuclear war. The policy of both the US and USSR was “mutual assured destruction,” the acronym of which was, appropriately, MAD. Both countries enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over. And with Ronald Reagan as president, a man who had a reputation for war-mongering and saber-rattling, it seemed like there was no way to avoid the End of the World. Reagan even announced the SDI, or “strategic defense initiative,” as a way to destroy Soviet missiles in Earth orbit before they had a chance to land on our soil. Maybe, then, nuclear war would be something that we could survive: just get out the lemonade and lawn chairs and watch the light show in the sky.

As it turned out, most of Reagan’s statements were saber-rattling. Perestroika and glasnost were the 1980s Soviet terms that reflected Henry Kissinger’s détante, French for relaxation. Both sides should just relax a little. This is what Gorbachev believed, and it led to the crumbling of the Soviet empire before the end of the decade. Nuclear holocaust remains possible, especially as Trump single-handedly pulls out of denuclearization treaties, but nobody seriously expects it, even with a president who makes Reagan look like a flower child.

In the early 1980s, everyone was worried about the direct effects of explosions and radiation. The explosion would kill people for miles around, but the radiation would kill people for hundreds of miles around, especially since by that time the nuclear bombs were far larger than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But in the background, a brilliant scientist was thinking about other possible effects. Carl Sagan was a planetary scientist and knew that planetary atmospheres worked as interacting systems. He did some calculations—simple at first then more complex—about how much smoke would enter the atmosphere from the nuclear holocaust. He concluded that there would be enough to plunge the Earth into darkness. The dust would settle, but not before the Earth had frozen beyond any hope of recovery. Ice would be everywhere. By the time the soot absorbed sunlight and melted the snow, life would already have become extinct. Sagan and colleagues supported this view in a famous paper published in Science. It was the Christmas issue—Merry Christmas, everybody! A paper immediately followed it in which many prominent scientists, headed up by the famous eco-alarmist Paul Ehrlich, explained all the ways in which the cold temperatures would cause the collapse of natural ecosystems. Owen Greene and two other writers published a book in Britain, simply titled Nuclear Winter: The Evidence and the Risks, in 1985.

This was also right about the time that events of global cooling were being recognized in the history of the Earth. Three periods of almost total glaciation of the Earth (“Snowball Earth”) were recognized during the Precambrian time, the most recent one ending just before the explosion of multicellular life at the beginning of the Cambrian period. Earth almost became a permanently ice-bound planet on three occasions. This was also a few years after the initial publication of the theory, now universally accepted, that an asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago and plunged the Earth into temporary darkness, from which it recovered. This resulted from one asteroid impact; what might have happened from a planetary-scale nuclear war?

 

The nuclear winter hypothesis was never summarily disproved. However, it slipped gradually from the attention of scientists and the electorate. Even though nuclear winter was based on complex mathematical modeling, the model was not complex enough. It assumed that the smoke would spread uniformly, and the little clear patches would be spots of warmth that would keep the Earth from falling to the low temperatures Sagan had predicted. Also, the oceans would freeze, but not fast enough to prevent them from being a source of heat to the land areas of the Earth. Nuclear winter moved from being a dead certainty (really dead) to being a possibility. Meanwhile, nuclear war itself became less and less likely.

This is why nobody talks much about nuclear winter anymore. But it does illustrate one important point. In trying to predict the (catastrophic) future, we should think not only about the direct effects (e.g. blasts and radiation) but the indirect ones as well. In estimating the likely effects of global warming, we need to think not only about the warming but the indirect ecosystem effects.

Welcome Back to the Cold War

Today, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has the capability to destroy the United States, not just because of its nuclear weapons but because of enhanced delivery systems. The Cold War has returned. Those of you who were born after about 1990 have grown up in a world in which mutual assured destruction has always been a possibility but nobody ever thought about it much. The reason for this was because the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia focused more on its own economic development than on wanting to destroy America. Also, at that time, we had a president who was a moderate and thoughtful Republican (George H. W. Bush). But now, narcissistic egomaniacs are in control of both America (Donald Trump) and Russia (Vlad).

I grew up with the threat of nuclear destruction of the world. It didn’t happen. While it is unlikely to happen now or ever, the imminent possibility has returned. All that either Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin have to do is have a conniption fit and press the button.

Actually, it is not quite that simple. Only the president can authorize a nuclear strike. He broadcasts an encoded message to missile crews (the message, conveniently enough, is about as long as a tweet, Trump’s beloved form of communication). After that point, there is probably no chance to stop total nuclear annihilation. The five missile crews open safes to verify that the launch code sent by the president matches the one in the safe, to make sure that the order is not from a hacker. According to this report the five crews have to turn their keys at the same time. Then the report says, “There are five different keys, but only two need to be turned to launch the missiles.” Therefore, the president cannot launch a nuclear strike if everyone thinks he is crazy. But Trump has enough people who believe everything he says that it is not at all unthinkable for two keys to be turned to release The End of the World. And the Russian chain of command is even more mindlessly worshipful of Vlad than the American chain of command is of The Donald.

Evolution has given us brains that respond to imminent threat with quick and thoughtless attack. Not until the 1950s was it possible for such instinctual reactions to endanger the entire planet. For a few brief years, from 1990 until March 1, 2018, it remained possible but very unlikely. Now we are back to the panic mode. Living in a constant panic mode can erode your health. But in the evolutionary past, nobody lived long enough for this to be a problem.

We owe a big thanks to Trump and Putin for bringing the world back to the point in which the end of the world could begin at any moment.