The Nuclear Arms Race

The nuclear arms race was central to the Cold War. Many feared where the
Cold War was going with the belief that the more nuclear weapons you
had, the more powerful you were. Both America and Russia massively built
up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The world greatly changed when USA exploded the H-bomb in 1952. This one bomb
was smaller in size than the Hiroshima atomic bomb but 2500 times more
powerful. The Russians produced an H-bomb in 1953 and the world became a much
more dangerous place.

However, it is possible that the sheer power of these weapons and the fear
that they evoked, may have stopped a nuclear war.

USA produced a bomber - the B52 - that could fly 6,000 miles and deliver a nuclear
pay-load. Such a development required massive financial backing from the
government - something which America could afford to do and which Russia could
not. Russia concentrated on producing bigger bombs - a far more cost effective
procedure.

In October 1957, the world was introduced to the fear of a missile attack when
Sputnik was launched. This was to lead to ICBM’s : Inter-continental ballistic
missiles. As a result, America built the DEW line around the Artic - Defence
and Early Warning system.

At the end of the 1950’s, American Intelligence estimated that in a Russian missile
attack, 20 million Americans would die and 22 million would be injured.

During the 1960’s, the Russians put their money into producing more missiles
regardless of quality while America built fewer but better quality missiles - the Atlas
could go 5,000 miles at a speed of 16,000 mph. By 1961, there were enough bombs
to destroy the world.

Despite this, great emphasis was put on new weapon systems - mobile missile
launchers were built, missiles were housed underground in silos and in 1960 the first
Polaris submarine was launched carrying 16 nuclear missiles. Each missile carried
four warheads which could targeted on different cities; hence one submarine
effectively carried 64 nuclear warheads.

In 1967, China exploded an H-bomb. China was a communist country. In the west,
NATO felt out-numbered as the table below shows and so had to place her faith in
nuclear missiles.
The Nuclear Winter
One of the real fears in the later years of the Cold War was the impact of a 'Nuclear
Winter' on Mankind. The whole concept of a 'Nuclear Winter' only became publicly
apparent in the 1980’s and had its supporters and its detractors. However, for a short
time the whole idea of a nuclear winter caught the public imagination to such an
extent that the BBC produced a television programme based around a nuclear attack
on the city of Sheffield and what happened to the area around the city once a
nuclear winter had set in.

By 1985, the total explosive power of all the nuclear weapons held by countries was
estimated to be between 12,000 and 20,000 megatons. The superpowers of the USA
and the USSR kept their actual nuclear strength secret but various bodies such as
the International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded that the world’s stockpile of
nuclear bombs was in the range of 12k to 20k megatons. To give some idea of what
these figures represent, the explosive power of ‘Little Boy’ – which devastated the
city ofHiroshima in August 1945 – was dwarfed by nuclear weaponry. A one-
megaton bomb would have produced the explosive power of 80 ‘Little Boy’ bombs.
Therefore 12 thousand megatons would have been the equivalent of 960,000 ‘Little
Boy’ bombs and 20 thousand megatons would have been 1,600,000. Some
scientists believed that just a fraction of these bombs would have thrown up enough
dust and detritus after an explosion that would have blocked out the light of the sun.

The estimated figure was that at 10 miles above the Earth’s surface, 74% of the
Sun’s light would be blocked.

In 1983, a conference on the issue of a nuclear war was organised by American

scientists. The conference was titled ‘The Long-Term Worldwide Consequences of
Nuclear War’. It concluded that a nuclear war would involve the use of 5,000
megatons of nuclear bombs. These bombs would produce 225 million tons of smoke
alone. The darkness created by these explosions would last for weeks and even
months. Without the rays of the Sun penetrating through to the Earth’s surface, daily
temperatures away from the coast would fall to –15 to –25 degrees Celsius. This
was the ‘nuclear winter’; crops would not grow; farm animals would die from radiation
poisoning as would people. Areas throughout the world unaffected by actual bomb
explosions would be affected by the ‘nuclear winter’ as the winds would carry
radiation worldwide. Once the dust had settled the Sun’s rays would once again get
to ground level. However, the ozone layer would have been so weakened that much
higher ultra-violet radiation would cause severe damage to the immune system to
those humans who had survived.

Scientists at the conference estimated that just 8 days after a nuclear attack, world
temperatures would have collapsed with even sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon
Basin experiencing daytime temperatures that would hover around the 0 degrees
Celsius mark.

The conference concluded with the following conclusion:

“In the aftermath of a 5,000 MT nuclear exchange, survivors would face extreme
cold, water shortages, lack of food and fuel, heavy burdens of radiation and
pollutants, diseases, and severe psychological stress – all in twilight or darkness. It
is clear that the ecosystem effects alone resulting from a large-scale thermo-nuclear
war would be enough to destroy civilisation as we know it in at least the Northern
Hemisphere. These long-term effects, when combined with the direct casualties from
the blast, suggest that eventually there might be no human survivors in the Northern
Hemisphere. Human beings, other animals, and plants in the Southern Hemisphere
would also suffer profound consequences.”