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A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature that occurs at the center of the Earth’s sun.
The localized electromagnetic pulse of the bomb obliterates all radio, internet, and TV. Cars with electric ignition systems in a several-mile ring outside the blast zone cannot restart. Water stations can’t pump water. Saturated with lethal levels of radiation, the entire area is a no-go zone for first responders. Not for days will the rare survivors realize help was never on the way.
“Parts of the bodies were missing,” she realized. “The skin and flesh were hanging from the bones. Some were carrying their own eyeballs.”
The year 1952 saw the invention of the thermonuclear bomb, also called the hydrogen bomb. A two-stage mega-weapon: a nuclear bomb within a nuclear bomb. A thermonuclear weapon uses an atomic bomb inside itself as its triggering mechanism. As an internal, explosive fuse. The Super’s monstrous, explosive power comes as the result of an uncontrolled, self-sustaining chain reaction in which hydrogen isotopes fuse under extremely high temperatures in a process called nuclear fusion.
It was decades later that Rubel confessed that this U.S. plan for nuclear war he participated in reminded him of the Nazis’ plans for genocide.
The number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile today is smaller than it was in 1960, but there still are 1,770 deployed nuclear weapons, a majority of which are on ready-for-launch status, with thousands more held in reserve, for a total inventory of more than 5,000 warheads. Russia has 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons, a majority of which are on ready-for-launch status, with thousands more in reserve, for a total inventory that is roughly the same size as the U.S.’s.
And yet, in the fog of war, uncertainty remains. “When you’re looking for things that are abnormal,” Colonel Brunderman warns, “a lot of things appear abnormal.”
The speed at which nuclear war will unfold, and then escalate, all but guarantees that it will end in nuclear holocaust.
Six minutes. How is that even possible? Six minutes is roughly the amount of time it takes to brew a ten-cup pot of coffee. As former president Ronald Reagan lamented in his memoirs, “Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope and decide whether to release Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?” Nuclear war, we are about to learn, robs man of reason.
The intention of the interceptor missile system is to shield the continental U.S. from a limited nuclear attack. “Limited” is the key word here because the total number of interceptor missiles is forty-four. As of early 2024, Russia has 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons, the majority of which are on ready-for-launch status. (China has a stockpile of more than 500; Pakistan and India each have around 165; North Korea has around 50.) With forty-four missiles in its entire inventory, the U.S. interceptor program is mostly for show.
But as history demonstrates, mad rulers disobey rules of war. In words often attributed to Adolf Hitler, “If you win, you need not have to explain.”
An ICBM can be launched—meaning the time it takes from the moment a launch order is received, to the weapon’s physical launch—faster than any other weapon system in the arsenal, including those on submarines. “They weren’t called Minutemen for nothing,” wrote former ICBM launch officer Bruce Blair. “The process of arming and targeting and firing the missiles [happens] in a grand total of 60 seconds.”
Four years later, fifteen of the people who were playing that simulated war game were killed in the 9/11 terror attack at the World Trade Center, when two commercial airliners were flown into the two tall towers there. The Windows on the World restaurant, and both of the towers, were reduced to rubble and ash. After nuclear war, much of twenty-first-century humankind will be just the same. There one moment, then gone.
