Dear Tim:
100 warheads about 500 kilotons each would throw up enough dust to cause five successive crop failures. Those in marginal areas like Africa, India, China, and the Middle East, would lose almost everyone to starvation. The rest would either be the targets of a strike or under the more severe dust amounts. Thus, the strike would kill few hundred million directly (hits in the 30 to 40 major US cities would easily do this and you would include many major cities like Tokyo, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, etc.). Starvation would be less likely in the US and probably Europe, since we have the highest amounts of food in storage. Heck, we in the US, if 90% are killed in the first days, probably have enough canned goods in various places around the US outside of major cities to feed everyone here for five years. The situation elsewhere would be more demanding. 2% of 6+ billion is 120 million. That would be more than were living all told in the world just a few hundred years ago. During ancient times, less than 50 million was the total world population IIRC.
Yes, most of the people die because of starvation, not in the direct blasts and the firestorms afterward. The main cause is the dust kicked up, which causes not enough light to reach the ground, like Washington around Mt. St. Helens a while back or around the Kuwaiti Oil fields. This also causes rapid cooling to ice age type temperatures. The combination would cause a failure of about 80 to 90% the first year to a shortened and dark growing season. The next year, would be 50% damaged, then 30%, 20%, and finally 10%. But the first would cause 90% of the deaths. This is the oft quoted Nuclear Winter scenario.
Pete |
