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Before reading this article, I must admit that I was not closely familiar with many of the consequences of nuclear warfare. I knew a little about its long-lasting
impacts because I grew up in a town not too far from remote nuclear testing sites in Nevada, a town where some peers’ grandparents suffered rare forms of cancer
and mental problems decades later from the downwind nuclear waste. Other things I learned for the first time, like the existence of an aftershock for the blasts
from atomic missiles. The presentation of the material was very engaging. I think the graphic novel-esque form of the article helped create a visualization of the
end of the world that is different from ones we may have seen before in fiction. This separation is important because the average American media consumer may feel
desensitized to this type of imagery, the dystopian, destroyed cities of modern television. Even with all of this media exposure, I did not know the science behind
atomic weapons until reading this article. The spectacle of the explosion is what makes it to television, not the nitty gritty of the scientific calculations.
The prospect of nuclear war — especially the small-scale nuclear war now possible with Russia’s modern atomic weapons — is a lot like bringing a gun
to a knife fight. It would up the warfare ante in a way that hasn’t been seen in a long time, at least not to the average citizen. I am interested to know more about the
mutual disarmament between Russia and the U.S. The article says that the weapons were mutually agreed to be “simply destroyed”, but what does this really
mean in the case of atomic weapons? That the uranium was stabilized and thrown out? How are these things safely disposed of, or are they just dismantled for
potential reuse later? I am also glad the article addressed how the amount of nuclear weapons is reported country to country, because I was curious about that.
I wonder how much trust exists in this arena, if the U.S. intelligence actually believes the numbers most countries are reporting — or if the U.S. itself is reporting
accurate numbers to others.
I was interested that the article brought up historic diseases — cholera, dysentary, typhoid. I had never considered that diseases like this would flourish in a
post-nuclear landscape, but I suppose it makes sense. Two trillion dollars freshly pledged to build up defenses and offenses with such devastating consequences.
Sounds worth it to me! More seriously, although I understand the “necessary” intimidation tactics used between countries to keep each other in check,
it does disgust me to think that there is any possibility that people would do these kinds of things to each other, especially for something as fickle as
capital. You would hope that “world superpowers”, if that’s what you want to call them, would use their GDP not only to the benefit and protection of their
own citizens via social programs, but the positive (NON-COLONIAL) development of other countries as well. Instead, we are in a race to the bottom for
who can blow up the planet first. God bless the USA!