UPDATE: Aug – I’m in the process of revising this diagram in light of all the comments (and flames!). Thanks all. If you can help me research the data, please email
I felt alienated from The Guardian’s graphic about stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
I felt the use of abstract figures made most of the data meaningless. Russia has 5192 warheads. America 4102. France 300. What does that mean? Is that a lot? I can’t relate to that.
There’s a single way I relate to nuclear weapons. By their destructive capability. I grew up watching Threads and The Day After. We were even made to watch those nuclear horror films at school. Those films branded our minds with the idea that nuclear weapons could destroy the world. They are Doomsday devices. They kill everybody. Nuclear War = End Of The World.
So, I thought of a better way to understand the data. Dump the raw totals. Instead visualize the stockpiles by how many times over they could destroy the world. Yeah cool! And that would actually expose the ludicrous stupidly of nuclear weapons at the same time. *So clever*.
However, the idea rapidly unravelled. Here’s why…
I wasn’t expecting that. We only actually have 0.83% of what’s required to completely wipe out civilisation. We couldn’t do it if we wanted to.
10 years ago we had 32,512 nuclear weapons. That’s a much better 2.6%. God damn you Non Nuclear Proliferation Pact!
Ah but we all live in cities now
I tried to recover a eye-popping stat with another quick calc. 50% of us live in densely populated cities now. Maybe we could wipe out all city-dwelling humanity. YES!
Nope. Still no good.
Unexpectedly, in making this image, the data forced me to change my mind.
In this case, it exposed the myth in my head, scorched long ago into my childhood imagination. The scene of many nightmares. That nuclear weapons could kill everything. Could wipe out civilisation.
No doubt, nuclear weapons are crazy devices. In the hands of mad people and mad regimes, they have a nightmarish potential for devastation. But they are not the end of humanity.
As the data reveals, we simply don’t have enough of them.
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108 Comments
@CBM, lost of American testing was done mostly nevada. but then you have to look at the soviet union, china, india, pakistan, france, the UK, etc. who didn;t have access to nevada as a nuclear test site.
And most of our(American) thermonuclear(the big/modern kinds of nukes) testing was done in the south pacific.
Contrary to these graphs, the fact of the matter is that it would only take ONE (1) bomb to kill both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The fallout from such an event would unravel society as we know it. Those who don’t immediately kill themselves would certainly die in the anarchy that ensued.
Next time, try factoring in Brad and Angelina, Mr. Smartypants graph maker!
This is FASCINATING! Beautiful work. Really awesome.
I just have to ask, tho… what about fallout and nuclear winter?
Or is nuclear winter just counterbalanced by climate change? (ha ha).
I think the environment would be rather polluted from the radio active fallout if all 10.227 nukes was brought to explosion. It would not be the end of the world, but I´m afraid it would be the end of the world as we know it.
The Nuke that destroyed Hiroshima is not by any means the most powerful bomb in service.
So if you’re using that as a reference for your data, you’re not going to get accurate forecasts for our possible demise.
There are plenty of nukes way more destructive than the B83.
The best example I can think of would be the ACTUAL most powerful nuke ever detonated…
The AN602 also known by many other nicknames such as “Tsar Bomba” or “King of Bombs”.
It used a nuclear weapon yield of 50 megatons. This is equivalent to 1,400 times the combined power of the two nuclear explosives used in World War II; Little Boy (13-18 kilotons) and Fat Man (21 kilotons), the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In fact, when the soviet union decided to test it, they only used HALF of it’s explosive capabilities for fear that using it at maximum capacity would result in radioactive fallout.
The initial three-stage design was capable of approximately 100 Mt, but would have caused too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage and possibly the second stage had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction). This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from fusion alone.
Even after deactivating it’s fullest potential, it was still the most powerful bomb in the world.
And the effect was felt from around the world.
Here’s a video on youtube I just found with all of the fact in the video description.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxD44HO8dNQ
Did you have a look at any *authoritative* studies or just rely on your (impressive) native wits?
Your illustrations are great but I’m thinking that there might be more to this than just some simple calculations…
Think about the damage and cost inflicted by the 9/11 attacks. The total area destroyed was relatively tiny, but the consequences for the world were profound.
Or think about the ‘crisis’ caused by electricity blackouts, or internet failures that happen from time to time and destroy no real estate.
Do you really think that life in the UK, for example, would continue in any meaningful sense if every City was partially destroyed by even a small nuke each? No electricity, almost no communications, no water or sewage, no news, almost no surviving doctors, few deliveries of imported or domestic food, radiation pollution, vast numbers of injured people, barely any law and order….
Your other visualisations are great but this one needs to go back to the drawing board.
Like you, I grew up under the ‘nuclear cloud’, so I am interested to see you do it again with more sophisticated thinking, that captures the impact of a nuke on the complex systems that sustain our cities.
While insightful, this illustration only shows what it would take to destroy the inhabitable landmasses of Earth. But you completely ignore the environmental impact a nuclear warhead has. You’ve heard of a nuclear winter yes? It would only take a fraction of the nukes we currently have to make the surface of our planet uninhabitable through, not a massive explosion, but by radiation, and the effect of massive amounts of dust and debris being thrown into the atmosphere.
It’s a relief to know that we can’t destroy the world!
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