Nuclear World (Infographics) - Who Should Have the Bomb ?

[C. Flower]

http://www.elistmania.com/artwork/nuclear_world/

Elist has published this global graphic information on nuclear weaponry.
Yesterday I read reports that Iranian passenger planes had been refused refuelling at some European airports, as part of the tightening sanctions regime driven by the US, as part of their "strategy of containment" of Iran.
Iranian planes have a high accident rate as the state finds it difficult to buy new aircraft and aircraft parts due to sanctions. Suspicion that Iran might want to develop nuclear weapons is given as the reason for the sanctions.

Israel, which is known to have nuclear weapons, is not subject of any sanctions.

This is the current state of play. For decades, we were told that "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) was keeping us safe. The idea was that no one would start a nuclear war without knowing it would be the last thing they every did. Since Reagan, and "Star Wars", the US has resumed devising "nuclear defence" that would theoretically allow a first strike, with responding missiles being knocked out of the sky.

Hard to see how we'll ever be able to get rid of this dangerous junk.



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[Mothball]

An interesting image that they didn't use is the comparison between the damage caused by the different types of devices is above. The current largest bombs stockpiled are less than 2MT and the ones North Korea have are much smaller than even the Hiroshima bomb.
As silly as it seems to say, nuclear weapons aren't as devastating as people are led to believe and the theory of MAD was just a political concept. The militaries didn't use it and were prepared to deploy nukes any time it was deemed necessary. If the Cold War was ever to go hot then it would either be an accident or local commanders using some of the thousands of tactical nuclears weapons such as those below. That had the power of the bombs dropped on Japan and could be used on the order of a Colonel. Madness




There is no such thing as a nuclear winter and all nations developed plans to win a nuclear war with the likely winner going to be the Soviet Union as they had the most nukes, largest military, best civil defense programme (10 million civilian deaths compared to the 150 million expected in the US). Also, the 99.9 percent of the radiation from a nuclear explosion is neutralised after two weeks so long term effects aren't as significant as one would think. Anyway.....pointless information about a possible pointless war.