By Future of Life Institute and Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, July 10, 2023
Future of Life Institute
Theme: Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: Nuclear War

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable.

All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped.

It should be understood, that there are powerful financial interests behind the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) which are tied into America’s $1.3  trillion nuclear weapons program initiated under President Obama.

Although the Ukraine conflict has so-far been limited to conventional weapons coupled with “economic warfare”, the use of a large array of sophisticated WMDs including nuclear weapons is on the drawing board of the Pentagon.

Dangerous narrative: The NPR proposes “increased integration of conventional and nuclear planning”, which consists in categorizing tactical nuclear weapons (e.g. B61-11 and 12) as conventional weapons, to be used on a preemptive basis in the conventional war theater (as a means of self defense)

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the total number of nuclear warheads Worldwide is of the order of 13,000.  Russia and the United States “each have around 4,000 warheads in their military stockpiles”.

Under Joe Biden, public funds allocated to nuclear weapons are slated to increase to 2 trillion by 2030 allegedly as a means to safeguarding peace and national security at taxpayers expense.

Biden does not have the foggiest idea regarding the potential impacts of nuclear weapons.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 10, 2023

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Electromagnetic pulse modeling:
U.S. Army unclassified report AD-A178230 (1994)

Blast modeling:
Prof. Alex Wellerstein, Stevens Inst. of Technology, https:/www.nukemap.org

Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan: "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons", published by U.S. Dept. of Defense & Dept. of Energy; Although the video mainly shows ground bursts to simplify visualization, most urban strikes are likely to instead be airbursts to destroy a greater area.

Atmospheric modeling of global smoke spread and lofting:
Dr. Charles G. Bardeen (National Center for Atmospheric Research) assuming 150 megatons of black carbon smoke

Smoke modeling methodology:
Joshua Coupe, Charles G. Bardeen, Alan Robock & Owen B. Toon 2019, J. of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124, 8522-8543
Owen B. Toon, Charles G. Bardeen, Alan Robock, Lili Zia, Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, R. Peterson, Cheryl S. Harrison, Nicole.Lovenduski & Richard P. Turco 2019, Science Advances 5: eaay5478

Nuclear winter temperature modeling:.
Alan Robock, Luke Oman & Georgiy L. Stenchikov 2007, J. Of Geophysical Research 112, D13107

Famine modeling:
Lili Xia, Alan Robock, Kim Scherrer, Cheryl Harrison, Benjamin Bodirsky, Isabelle Reindl, Jonas Jägermeyr, Charles Bardeen, Owen B. Toon & Ryan Heneghan 2022, Nature Food, 3, 586-596. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0