34 million of us will die in Putin’s madness, says nuclear war scenario
In reality, is Thatcher’s tattered survival book all we are left with if nuclear bombs fly?
Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Putin – we’ll just hide under our kitchen tables if you Nuke us!
- A simulation shows how a nuclear attack from Russia could trigger a war that kills 34 million people in just five hours.
- A four-minute animation highlights the ‘potentially catastrophic’ consequences of conflict between Russia and NATO.
- It was developed by Princeton University researchers associated with the Program on Science & Global Security (SGS), and was originally released in 2017.
Margaret Thatcher was a tyrant, a grocery girl who ate all the plums.
She chose Meringue for hair and adopted a shrillness that could make a blackboard screech.
But one day the Iron Lady took a step too far … she’d already killed industry, Northern cities were wastelands of boarded-up shops, teachers were banned from discussing LGBT. And the poll tax had just happened.
There were riots on our streets.
On the other hand Vladimir Putin is a working-class hero to millions, a boy-dun-good, the richest man in the world some say.
An action man too.
Most of us though see him as a murderous bare-chested horseman of the apocalypse.
Vlad isn’t very well either. Some say he is about to drop dead. Certainly, he does look a bit autocratically bloated.
Stress I guess.
After all, he has been waving rusty old nuclear popguns in the air and threatening mankind.
He has has taken on inhuman proportions.
And in a way has sent us back to a future as the Iron Curtains are twitching again.
Yep, it’s like we are back in the 1980s when Mrs T came up with her final cynical act.
Dear old Maggie rushed to print with the Protect and Survive government pamphlet. Designed to keep us alive in the event of a Russian nuke piercing the very heart of England.
World tensions were rising. In 1980, nuclear war seemed closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis 18 years earlier.
Then we read Protect and Survive! Get under the table, it said. Or hide in a ditch!
And, if you hear the air-raid klaxons clanking and wheezing out the four minute warning, then don’t forget to brick up windows. Oh! And remove handles from all toilet cisterns (to stop usable water being flushed accidently).
And as Putin bombs and maims the Ukraine and threatens the world, Protect and Survive, incredibly, is still probably the best we’ve got!
It’s just been rewritten a bit!
Latest government advice says: “Hand sanitizer does not protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible.
“Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask.”
The Government advice is, in essence, if Putin nukes us then you still have to get under the table, put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.
Back in the day they published 150,000 copies for a population of 65m people.
Now we have a population of nearly 80m and a myasma of languages and cultures.
In fact there seems to be so little information on how to survive that people like war prepper Yara Ghrewati, aged 39, are going it alone. She has a secret shelter, a car boot packed with essentials, and a bow and arrow to hunt squirrels.
The bushcraft instructor even suggests people should be willing to eat their pets if the worst happens and food supplies are cut. “Any vegetarians are going to have a really tough time,” she said.
It is of course far from certain that Putin would be prepared to be the first leader to use nuclear weapons in wartime since 1945.
U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a “precedent” for the use of nuclear weapons., The invasion of Iraq was a big PR mistake too.
Even if Putin did issue the launch order, there is no guarantee it would be carried out. Nor can he be absolutely sure either that the weapons and their delivery systems would work.
But given Putin’s crimes — from Syria to Crimea to Salisbury— surely this lack of public planning over the past 40 years is just jaw-droppingly complacent on the part of Europe’s leaders.
The annexation – and new bombings – brings the use of a nuclear weapon a step closer by giving Putin a potential justification on the grounds that “the territorial integrity of our country is threatened”.
Any nuclear use in Ukraine would be likely to involve non-strategic, or tactical, weapons. But on average they are far more powerful that the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates Russia has 2,000 tactical weapons for use on land, sea and air.
But Pavel Baev, a military researcher who once worked for the Soviet defence ministry, said that Putin cannot count on these weapons actually working.
“Most of these warheads are very old,” Baev, now a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said.
But for the Russian leader, detonation of even a rusty old a tactical nuclear weapon is entirely acceptable.
And so the West needs to do some quick thinking about how it will help us all to survive.
More than 40 years ago, the 30 page pamphlet advised householders to make a fallout room and an inner refuge, like the cupboard under the stairs.
Families would be in there for at least two weeks, so there were tips on what food to stock up on.
People were urged to store three-and-half gallons (16 litres) of water each, keeping it in the bath and basins.
If people were not at home during the nuclear strike, they were advised to “lie flat (in a ditch) and cover the exposed skin of the head and hands”.
Today, the aftermath of a nuclear war will be firestorms, a nuclear winter, widespread radiation sickness and the loss of much modern technology.
For years, crops from California to China will keep dying. Famine will set in around the globe.
Over the decades he total number of weapons has dropped by about 80 percent from an estimated 70,300 in 1986 to 12,700 in early 2022.
But the Ukraine does not have any – a brave and compassionate nation, it gave them up in 1994.
One Reply to “34 million of us will die in Putin’s madness, says nuclear war scenario”
As always a quirky, yet tellingly direct, look at the world’s reactions. Makes thought provoking reading – yet we smile at the frailty of human kind. In the same breath we choke on the violence of human kind.