How Many Nukes Will It Take To Instantly Annihilate Humanity?

@Jesus Diaz: Indeed, because without INSTANT anhialation there's a possibility for a random mutation that might allow people to survive.

MrEvil

I dunno, I prefer the less nukes option. Fallout 3 is a pretty fun game.

Kev50027

Great, France is the world's third largest nuclear power. That means the next time they get taken over like a bitch, somebody's getting screwed.

HAZman27

Wow, way to disprove what I guess has been an urban myth (that we have the ability to blow up the world a hundred times over) that I was taught as fact in school. Makes me wonder what else I was taught in school [as fact] that isn't true at all and almost as easily disproven!

banmojo

Am I the only one more scared by the number of nukes WE and other "peaceful" countries have, than of the potential that Iraq is hiding just a couple "WMD's" or North Korea has "Yellow Cake"?
In what way are we any more trustworthy with a freaking nuclear warhead, let alone, 4000 of them???

@superberg: Mmmm... mutant sex...

BugDude10

@johncon3: Dude. What about zombies?

BugDude10

OK, first of all, you need to take into account that those who have the nukes presumably have the ability to point them with some degree of accuracy, towards population centers - most already have got the targeting worked out to take out not just people, but governments, power grids, dams, you name it. This ability, and the things pointed at, would of course vary by country. So an accurate representation would have to be weighted politically and technologically.

The 12.5% figure is almost useless in this equation, you would need the number of people living in population centers (factoring in the above mentioned political weighting) and the area in order to calculate how many bombs it would take annihilate humanity.

There's no way to calculate the exact number with any kind of accuracy, but offhand I'd say that if any significant percentage of the existing bombs were detonated in any sort of organized fashion, it would be he end of the world as we know it - our economy, governance, and infrastructure crippled beyond repair. And while there would certainly be some survivors, especially in rural areas, capable of adapting, and perhaps even repopulating the planet, it would not resemble the Earth we know - many species and habitats not wiped out directly, would be destroyed by the fallout and climate change, and the standard of living would revert back to the stone age, or maybe the bronze age.

It is an interesting concept, but even if the calculations were adjusted to account for all these things, I still don't think it's possible to accurately arrive at any sort of number. Think of it this way -- it's like playing Tic-Tac-Toe, the only way to win is not to play :)

@RogueWarrior: the flaws in the stats go deep in this one. it's basically a don't bother.

Yeah I could care less how many it would take all at once... How many would it take to ruin life on this planet period... long term.

bustedchain

It seems that "Instant Annihilation" isn't really the biggest concern about nukes. It's more of the "Slow, painful death by radiation" part that skeeves people.

@Nightsd01: Good call. Not to mention the fact that Antarctica is roughly 14 million square miles with maybe a few dozen people on it.

Real Solution. Call Michael Bay and Bruce Willis. Plant a bomb in the center of the Earth, steal Liv Tyler on Rocket and restart humanity on the moon.

Hey baby, I think you lost some weight.

@gibbleking: I spent 6 years in the USAF in North Dakota. Check and Mate, I believe.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. How do they figure that 12.5 percent? Number of people divided by square kilometers? How much you wanna bet that the figure doesn't take into account the fact that in the cities people live on top of each other. IMHO, that percentage should be about half what they are saying.

RogueWarrior

@FabronNimritch/Maya: I thought the issue with "salting" a nuke is with the byproducts having much longer half-lives (nuked area stay contaminated much longer).

DigitalPasture

You would have to send a nuke to the space station as well. And Antarctic and Arctic exploration bases. And submarines.

Just saying.

Nightsd01

Two problems...
1) Mad Max movies own
2) Fallout would be a lot worse than the actual blast providing you survive

DigitalPasture

@OMG! Ponies!: He knows about farming, you know?

Sabbatai

@jmortj5: Civilisation is the correct spelling too. In English. You know English, from that place where Shakespeare used to write from.

@Jesus Diaz: Even withe that many nukes first blast and even through fallout the task is impossible. At any given moment there are millions of humans occupying uninbabitable areas of the earth on land, sea, air and even in space (ISS) If you had enough nukes to cover 100% of the land mass in instantaneous destruction we would still survive. Considering you would have to know the exact position of every submarine, aircraft carrier, cruise ship, a million other random boats, planes, mines, and other underground dwellings in harsh climates. Considering all that its virtually impossible w/o destroying the entire planet.

Zomb

This is a question better answered by Gaius Balthar.

The current stockpile will easily obliterate most air breathing land-based mammalian life. The radiation "cloud" of dust will spread far and wide from each warhead, Random434's comment below might be a little conservative- the clouds could move hundreds of miles before falling onto other areas and regions. It is widely believed dust blasted into the upper atmosphere will cause a "nuclear winter" which would block out the sunlight from 6 months to several years. This would kill vegetation, killing hebivores, subsequently killing omnivores which pretty much covers everything but bugs.

@Andrew: I think that's now been disproven. They aren't as resilient as once thought.

xThadd

That's only for INSTANT death.. Slow lingering death goes out about a 40mi radius past original blast.

reminds me of something i did on youtube :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJb2Sb8DRfQ

makes war sound ridiculous really

MarthaSalamander

@JadusIV: I am going to (fucking) stay out of the whole importance of correct (fucking) interpretation of (fucking) language (fucking) data thing. ; )

Now that I've avoided getting involved in that, I must say that I find your statement about bunnies most curious....mainly because of 'Lost'.

kangaroo

It's the radiation and nuclear winter stupid.

@swimatm: No, his little student hovel is in Alabama.

S-Express

@TonyRockyHorror: The real question is, "do we even need those nukes? Or can we just annihilate ourselves by using up that small percentage of arable land?"

@Ben Zvan: I'm selfish. I'm very concerned about human life. These numbers are pertinent to my mindset. Stand aside.

(drunk post. I'm sure I'll care about other life forms tomorrow.)

You'd need even more nukes than that. Humanity isn't evenly distributed over that 12.5% of the earth's surface.
A missile in New York might kill several million people, a missile in the middle of the Sahara might kill one guy and his camel.

It's not a simple area division problem, you aren't trying to figure out how many circles of area X it takes to completely cover a circle of area Y, it's a packing problem, you have to figure out how many circles X it takes to cover every point where population density is 1 person per km or higher

EdgarJPublius

@Jesus Diaz: Oh zeus, you're so pretty when you're angry.....

@pete-01: Yeah, because obviously, as anyone who can read at a 4th grade level could see, nowhere on the chart did it say it was "land surface". You are so clearly correct in this, and I am ashamed in anyone that does not concede your point.

Edit: And now I realize how many people caught this because I just clicked "show hidden threads".

sandal-hat has kegers with Haku-men

really scraping the barrel today

PantheaValdorf

@The5thElephant: Since upper management never reads anything that isn't a chart or graph, it helps to make the best looking charts and graphs possible.

@ysirotin: His point is that life on earth will continue long after human life is gone.

@Jrsy Devil's Food Cake®: That and they have aluminium cans.

this calculation is grossly over simplified and completely asinine.....

tinkertank

@Jesus Diaz: But how can he carry on when he's been banned?

@orangesrhyme: Oh, that was retarded of me. Upon re-reading this after not being awake all night, I saw the first bit of the post about nuclear winter. This is why I should probably not use the computer after an all-nighter.

orangesrhyme

@Jesus Diaz: Well yes... but what most people mean by end of the world is the destruction of the environment capable of supporting human life (unlivable). Is your point that we are somehow not affected by environmental factors?

ysirotin

@LaurelKlient: OK. You get Tom Arnold.

For everyone who can't see the post above, LauralKlient said, "If it's hiding-in-a-bunker end-of-the-world-sex, count me in!"

Sidebar: Why can we see the red posts if we can no longer promote them? If the editors are the only ones who can do anything with these posts, just make them visible to the editors.

@jepzilla: If only we were that lucky. Alot of NORAD is up in Canada.

They really shouldn't because overpopulation has nothing to do with the area inhabited, it has to do with the sustainablity of the environment within and around it; arable land for grown foods, pollution, etc.

TorreyMarigold

@jmortj5: 'I find it interesting that the graphic it's self spells civilization, incorrectly. "civilisation"'

That's how the Europeans spell it. They're more civilized than the rest of us..

@jmortj5: I find it interesting that it is spelled correctly, mate.

@JadusIV: i thought it was cockroaches

BassalaMode

you CAN do it in less the 500 nukes. you have to get the worlds population into my county, cook county, and every one gets about 2 sq ft of space on the ground, and nuke the shit out of us

BassalaMode

@cletar: I find it interesting that the graphic it's self spells civilization, incorrectly. "civilisation"

@SQ3R method. Here, you could practice right now! Start at the top of my comment, then read the entire thing again.

Good luck!

@Jesus Diaz: Whoa dude, you gottta chill out a bit. We don't want you to pop an artery like Billy Mays or something.

Con Seannery

@JadusIV: Well, that's not exactly true. See, the way that goes is the radiation can only penetrate so far without losing energy. Small animals have smaller distances to their vital organs than large animals.

Con Seannery

@Jesus Diaz: BTW great article, pretty crazy to think about destruction on a large scale like that. Hard to wrap your head around it, the charts really put it into perspective.

@Andrew: Oops.. to clarify: cockroaches are obviously not mammals. But in general, they'd totally withstand all that radiation.

Andrew

@JadusIV: What about cockroaches?

Andrew

@cletar: agreed.

@Dallifornia: Delusional disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis denoting a psychotic mental disorder that is characterized by holding one or more non-bizarre delusions.

As in your previous comment.

Oh, and Medvedev says you're already programmed in - your ego was so big it could be seen on the radar all the way from Moscow.

S-Express

an absolutely meaningless calculation, even as a measure of instant annihilation. It assumes that all populations are contiguous, which they most certainly are not. Not to say that the simultaneous explosion of 1M+ nukes wouldn't kill everyone on the planet instantly (goodbye atmosphere?), but the number as calculated is completely useless.

DaphneEagleman

Nuke the whales....
"why?"
"well we gotta nuke somethin"

LazyLomax

@maven2k: Thanks Maven. And for the record, I went and built shelves in my garage today with my 8 year old. Garage got clean and he'll remember for the rest of his life the first day his Dad let him use the electric saw.

Please don't mistake my point here.

All I'm trying to say is that life is fragile and finite so make every day a good one, because nobody knows whether they will get another one after this.

johncon3

So.. then, were safe? hopefully? I mean numbers wise anyways..

--Core--

@Jesus Diaz: You should start writing headlines like that. "APPLE RELEASES (fucking) TABLET!"

It would get my attention.

aido2002

@LindsayWalsall: That's not exactly how radiation works.

let's ask Mr. Owl...

Mr. Owl: One....Two....Three....*BOOM*

drunk post.

@cletar: Yeah Tufte would definitely have a thing or five to say about the new chart graphics trend. However that doesn't mean you don't find a real gem of a chart every now and then.

They can provide a way of looking at things that our brain is not very good at unaided. For example looking at the federal budget (or other things with very large numbers) is much easier to understand visually than it is with just reading numbers. All the "illions" get mixed together and confused. Comparing a "million" to a "billion" is far easier when you can compare a shape's size rather than just the words.

But yes some more cooperation with real statisticians would make for much better charts.

The5thElephant

You guys are stupid if 100 nukes were to be set off next week the radiation cloud would kill everyone

LindsayWalsall

@ysirotin: The Earth doesn't give a shit about us launching 10,000 bombs. It crashed with giant objects before and life kept carrying on.

@loudambiance: Fallout is also a function of where the blast occurs. An airburst detonated over a city destroys more of the city with the blast, but generates less fallout than a proximity blast on the surface. Surface detonation generates a tremendous amount of radioactive particulate matter in the atmosphere, which both blots out the sun and spreads radiation over a large area as the dust gradually trickles down. The threshold for making the earth uninhabitable via nuclear winter is really surprisingly low.

cletar

If it's hiding-in-a-bunker end-of-the-world-sex, count me in!

LaurelKlient

@DangerousLiberal: Yay for the Tufte shout-out.

cletar

@Jesus Diaz: yes, but the graphic itself discusses how many nukes would be needed to "destroy civilization." Read it.

cletar

@Jesus Diaz:
Mastering the English language doesn't make this post any less silly and worthless.

Anyhoo, since when is Jesus out nuking the hell out of humanity?!

Watch out people, he's back, and he's angry.

crsh1976

@JadusIV: Can you READ english? If so, can you read the article from the top?

Here's a tip to help comprehension:

"How Many Nukes Will It Really Take to (fucking) INSTANTLY annihilate Humanity?"

"So how many nukes will it take to destroy every single human being in the planet, on FIRST (fucking) BLAST?"

There. Carry on.

This is surprisingly uninformed for a Gizmodo post. Come on people. Fallout is the deadliest part of a nuke. Especially if you used some dirty bombs. We aren't that resilient.

Also: did you know that rabbits are the animal that is most resistant to radiation poisoning? They would still die eventually, but they would live longer than any other mammal.

Do we really want to try and believe something like this when they can't even spell civilization correctly?

UrielLance

So two hundred little boys can match destruction caused by the world's most powerful nuclear warhead?

God help the enemies of Kennedy Elementary School.

The whole humanity thing is way overrated anyway.

PaddyDugan

Cobalt 'salted' nukes are a terrible idea.

It is not true that a thermonuclear weapon gets most of its energy from fusion(with a handful of exceptions, e.g. Tsar bomba). The purpose of the fusion stage is primarily to generate very fast neutrons that can fission U-238, which cannot sustain a reaction and is left over from enrichment.

The fission products from this U-238 are about as good a radiological hazzard as Co-60 so adding cobalt doesn't really do much except to significantly reduce the explosive yield.

FabronNimrit/Maya

@pete-01: Well, drinkable water that is...

dbaet

I suppose in the narrow scope of the headline (instantly annihilate) the data might be correct, but it is misleading.

It would take a lot less nukes than 1 million + to create enough fallout to kill people with radiation and the resulting famines and social breakdowns.

[DFX] Deimos

I think people need to read something about how the environment works. Its not like each spot on the earth operates autonomously.

If you destroy important environmental areas... the impact on every area they are connected to will make those unlivable too. Think of it like taking out power plants and feeling the effect in cities far away.

Cue Elton John's circle of life.

ysirotin

@LaneMedusa: Think: only some of that is arable land, has fresh water, etc.

I assume this is snark; I pray you're not serious.

DangerousLiberal

What is the deal with this latest "groovy graphics" fad? I've seen graphics "proving" that the "safest" place in airplanes is in the back, that some airlines are unsafe just based on the number of crashes, and all manner of other stuff that yields, as Tufte calls it, chartjunk.

And these graphics display some of the worst examples of chartjunk. I can use this chart for teaching, though: how to be fuzzyheaded with cool graphics.

It's so painfully obvious that the 12.5% of people on earth are not evenly distributed across its surface. Nor does this chart take into effect fallout effects, the impact on the food production and distribution system, etc. etc.

The problem: graphic artists are often not social or natural scientists. They just don't know what they are doing. I hope this "graphics" craze goes the way of the pet rock. Or, if you are prone to this sort of graphical nonsense, at least hook up with a statistician or a scientist to do it right.

DangerousLiberal

@stryder100: I think an anti-matter bomb might be more effective.

Luke Michael Timothy

@AustinAmphimachus: Fallout kills more people than the initial blast would... and the area of fallout would be determined by geographical and meteorological factors. I had an application at one point that would pull maps and weather data and would "estimate" fall out for a nuclear weapon of any given yield. Using the jet stream I was able to simulate a United States that was pretty much uninhabitable with (if memory serves) 2 Tsar sized bombs.

@pete-01: I'm sure you're aware that the statistic is a portion of LAND MASS, right?

Delano_J

@johncon3: That's such a nice fatalistic/optimistic approach to life. I like it!

maven2k

@pete-01: comment fail! promotion fail!

pete-01

Studies like this mean nothing and are just a way to play with statistics to reveal inaccurate information.

For example it only works if all people congregate in our 12.4% of the planet's surface for the most effecient exposure to the blasts. In reality people are spread all across the globe and there will always be survivors because it takes alot more nukes to instantly glass every inch of the whole planet.

As many people have mentioned radiation poisoning would kill many people outside the radius of vaporization further throwing off the calculation.

People also only focus on the vaporization in a nuclear blast, however instant vaporization accounted for a relative few of the deaths in Hiroshima (one of our only two real examples of what would actually happen). The majority of deaths happened in the later hours and days due to burns from blast exposure and fire and damage from buildings.

All this does is make for a rather dark math problem with no connections whatsoever to any potential reality.

@LaneMedusa: Long story short, nuclear proliferation is still bad and always will be.

TonyRockyHorror

@LaneMedusa: Your argument fails, unless you have secret desires to be a crew member of SeaQuest DSV and forsee us moving underwater. Humans use 12.5% of total land surface area, but that includes inhospitable areas like high mountain ranges, Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, and the like.

Yes, humans can technically survive in those places, but I seriously doubt civilization would thrive in them. You also have to account for the production of food, which is still agrarian. All 7 billion of us can't also live on our farmland, and some farmland has to lie fallow for a season or two, or it falls into a cycle of diminishing returns until it can't be farmed usefully anymore.

You're also ignoring population growth. While the population grows larger, the amount of usable, spare space grows smaller.

So, the real question is then, how many nukes would it take to destroy the habitable areas of Earth? And that is a question this set of graphics doesn't answer.

TonyRockyHorror

@pete-01: You're right! Drinking water is available in very small quantities. Less than 3% of the available water is Freshwater and less than that is accessible and non polluted.

ins13

@S-Express: Oh, S-Express. Don't be mad because I handed you your ass on the Zune HD thread a week back.

Dallifornia

@pete-01: Didn't you read the graphic? It said percentage of land.

@LaneMedusa: If you want to go live in the middle of the desert, or in the rainforest, or in a swamp, be my guest. Until then, inhabitable land is still relatively sparse.

@aerospaceman: are you calling Albert Einstein a liar?

psychiccheese

Isn't it going to be more then that? I mean, since the explosion has a circular shape (and it sounds like you're talking only about the blast radius). There would have to be overlap between each circle, meaning a lot of double nuked space, and some triple nuked space too! I don't know what the most efficient packing of circles would be, but I would guess the number would have to be AT LEAST 2 times as big.

Awesome though, that means I have plenty of space to hide.

EventHorizon

@LaneMedusa: Yeah, because water covers such a small percentage of the surface of the earth.

pete-01

@LaneMedusa: some places are nicer to live in than others...or have you not noticed?

We cover 12%, eh? I really wish more people would see this just so they'd shut up about "overpopulation".

LaneMedusa

Yeah, that's what the dinosaurs said. Now look at them: a bunch of birds!

DennisLibo

@Acheron's Grief: You and said graphic are leaving out the whole nuclear winter part. We have plenty of nukes for that. Like someone said above, if you're looking to vaporize everyone, sure you'll need a lot of bombs, but wiping out civilization takes much less.

okidokedork

@psychiccheese: If we used all the nukes we had there wouldn't be anyone surviving the nuclear winter.

okidokedork

@cletar: Thank you! The only thing this graphic takes into account is blast radius. Blast radius is not the only concern when it comes to nukes. It's the friggen' radiation! This is almost as bad as those films back in the day that told you to duck and cover under your school desks if a nuke ever hit. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

okidokedork

Yeah, but nuclear winter could in fact wipe us out, so we have enough nukes to pull that off...

Can't wait for the Higgs Boson bomb. That'll do the trick for sure.

stryder100

Seriously people. Nukes are soooo 80's. Let me get some stone-washed jeans, and a mullet before you nuke me. What I REALLY want to know is: How many TWINKIES would it take to kill everyone in the world? And not just kill, but vaporize?

Theoretically you could wipe out all life on earth with a hand full of Tsar sized bombs. Take a few nukes, wrap them in cobalt, detonate said nukes, the detonation spreads cobalt 60 and kills everything in the area of the fallout, take 50-100 of these, voila... [en.wikipedia.org]

@johncon3: How depressing. I am so not inviting you to our next dinner party.

@The Squid: Not to mention the breakdown of the trading system.

Bioweapons > Nukes

UofITom

@CharitableNinja:
School is a joke, but that's one thing they don't teach you.

@Curves:
you cannot have a world war without a technologically and socially advanced civilization that supports large countries and industries. That is why there was no world war until after the industrial age.

@zwaldowski: choppin that meat. LOL

CharitableNinja

i thought we had enough nukes to like blow up the world 3 times or something? HA! I must have learned that fact in school... what a joke.

CharitableNinja

C'mon people, don't be afraid of nukes!

Be afraid of Germs. 50-100 Million people died of the Spanish Flu in 1918. The reason for the high mortality rate was the lack of sanitation and adequate medical treatment. It is estimated that 1/3 of the population of the world was at one time or another infected.

Then there are Asteroids. They come out of nowhere. We have nothing to stop them except Bruce Willis and we haven't a clue that they most of them are coming until we get hit.

Oh, let's not forget about Super Volcano's. I saw the show on the Discovery channel and one of those bad boys could hit any minute. Think of Volcano's as the equivalent of acne for the earth, we are one honking zit away from Dinosaurs 2.0

But wait, let's not forget about car wrecks, heart attacks, cancer and sharks.

Bottom line: If you are reading this, you are lucky enough to be alive right now. This planet is awesome, but nobody makes it out alive.

So hug your wife/kids/family/friends and try to do something good with your day, because once it's gone you will never get it back.

johncon3

I hope he isn't trying to say that little circle represents 12.5% of the LAND MASS visualized in the first picture. Anyone can see that clearly is far larger a circle then 12.5% would be.

Humans exsist an a very very tiny portion of the entire surface area of the world. People worrying about us destroying the earth accidentally with our tiny output really need to take some time looking around google earth. Or even just driving accross montana for a few hours without seeing anyone..

screemname

The 12.5% circle should be in relation to the land surface. The circle should actually be much smaller.

Ayeco

What does that equate to in Holy Hand Grenades?

CrispyAardvark

Russia, has more nukes than the US...c'mon let's star building new ones, where's that uranium I left in my desk...

@e2drummer: ...and weed and bongs.

rfmd486

Wow, and here I thought we had the technology to do it now.

That's encouraging. :)

Chris, look it's Chris!

@CaptainSquishy: I fail to see how dying provides balance.

I also don't get what you mean by "consuming the Earth". I like to think the Earth is a little bigger than that. We humans have way less impact than we think we do in our over-inflated egos.

Possibility that we wipe out ourselves is of course there and not very small.

Yeah we poison the Ocean, torch the forests, and squash entire species, but if we actually manage to poison our own food supply we all die and 50 years later the Earth looks exactly the same as it did before humans.

So I think it's wrong to say we consume the Earth. What is correct is that humanity likes to play Russian Roulette - we are the biggest danger to ourselves. Killing ourselves can by definition not avert that danger.

orthorim

@Shada: never mind the notepad, I need to send my CV to DPRKs DoD, I think they could use people who think like me, for a good wage of course.

@Dallifornia: I'm sure the Russians could make a special exception for you and drop one on your doorstep - I'll have a quiet word.

S-Express

@e2drummer: WWIII will be fought with words.

psychiccheese

I did a lot of research on this back in the olden days, and you don't need a million nukes to "wipe out civilization." You could trigger a nuclear winter with something on the order of 100, IIRC.

Civilization is fairly fragile. If you just used the Russian arsenal, and nuked Earth's 5000 largest cities, you could put civilization on a pretty good hiatus.

cletar

@radiochief: from the 3rd slide, if you made it that far:
Conclusion: WE NEED MORE NUKES, NOT FEWER. Better die instantly than having to survive nuclear winter and another yet another horrible movie with Mel Gibson playing Mad Max.

psychiccheese

@SigmundTheSeaMonster: Neutron bombs kill everything down to bacteria.

@radiochief: True. This calculation is only for the immediate effects of the nukes, and doesn't take into account the fallout, particles blocking solar radiation, and contamination of our food supply and environment.

@[en.wikipedia.org]) forcible fluid-extraction "sex"?

MauriceCallidice

A far more interesting question would be how many nukes does it take before all reachable food and water supplies are so well irradiated they are beyond human consumption. You don't need to vaporize everyone on first blast to end the human race.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/nuclearfaq.asp

Also, how many nukes does it take to create a world like Logan's Run, that show was cool.

KaliaQuintus

I think we need considerably more than what this study said for the following reasons:

1. the destruction area for nuclear weapons extends the same distance in every direction. Therefore when we looked it from the sky we would have circular shaped area.
2. Human's don't populate the land in this convenient configuration.
3. Therefore if we detonate a bomb at the center of populated area some its energy would be wasted in areas were people don't exist.

AustinAmphimachus

@dragonlizard89:
Say no more!

Ssscorpion

russia and the usa are quite......WELL-ENDOWED. if ya know what i mean. *nudge nudge*

dragonlizard89

He forgot to consider the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!

pilotphil

This article should be titled: 'How many nukes does it take to vaporize ever last man, woman and child on Earth?'

You don't need 1,000,000 warheads. Even if we detonated all 11,000 warheads we do have- that would be over-kill. There might be a few pockets of humanity left but they certainly would not live that long.

If one were to devise an attack plan to kill 50% of human population... Essentially an LD50 of warheads for the human race- you probably need at most- 20% of what we have right now..

Nice infographics- what the idle mind can think of...!

honestly i think the world can't even handel 5 more nukes... cause i'm not talking about the global population but the world itself... do you really think the world can handel that much force being blasted in it.... it would be like an iphone in france... it would goooooo BOOOOMMM X-p

SunandiniBuzzard

@zwaldowski: I don't want to set the world on fire.....

The graphics made me think this was something coming to the Wii. Thanks Nintendo Marketing, you've done your magic.

Spiny Norman

Each morning, a missionary advertises with a neon sign
He tells the native population that civilization is fine
And three educated savages holler from a bamboo tree
That civilization is a thing for me to see

So bongo, bongo, bongo, I don't wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no
Bingo, bangle, bungle, I'm so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go
Don't want no bright lights, false teeth, doorbells, landlords, I make it clear
That no matter how they coax him, I'll stay right here

I looked through a magazine the missionary's wife concealed (Magazine? What happens?)
I see how people who are civilized bungle with automobiles (You know you can get hurt that
way Daniel?)
At the movies they have got to pay many coconuts to see (What do they see, Darling?)
Uncivilized pictures that the newsreel takes of me

So bongo, bongo, bongo, he don't wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no
Bingo, bangle, bungle, he's so happy in the jungle, he refuse to go
Don't want no penthouse, bathtub, streetcars, taxis, noise in my ear
So, no matter how they coax him, I'll stay right here

They hurry like savages to get aboard an iron train
And though it's smokey and it's crowded, they're too civilized to complain
When they've got two weeks vacation, they hurry to vacation ground (What do they do, Darling?)
They swim and they fish, but that's what I do all year round

So bongo, bongo, bongo, I don't wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no
Bingo, bangle, bungle, I'm so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go
Don't want no jailhouse, shotgun, fish-hooks, golf clubs, I got my spears
So, no matter how they coax him, I'll stay right here

They have things like the atom bomb, so I think I'll stay where I "ahm"
Civilization, I'll stay right here!

@rrwakc: We'll get one extra, just for them. Because they're special.

@smackswell: Too bad. Zed's dead, baby.

AEchinoderm

I wonder who will push the button first?

@CaptainSquishy: YES, indeed.

Manve

@e2drummer: True Dat.

What doyou need nukes for? iPhones are exploding all over the world...

LaVacheQuiRit

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

--Albert Einstein

e2drummer

B83 only yields 1.2 Megatons, now i wonder, how many Tsar Bombas are needed for the destruction of mankind? according to my calculations the number is around 290,900!!!, still a crapload of nukes!

@kitsuneconundrum: It would take a couple of hours off the drive time to the coast from my house.

Rand

@snoop_dizzle: YEA, REASSURING that some people will die none the less, winter will screw us?

trontron

@HeathCabiri: Yes they do.

@gibbleking: I used to be involved in this kind of thing too, but then I remembered: Fallout 3 is just a game...

@ltethe: last time I checked, most of the areas within 5 miles of the testing area in the Bikini Atoll were still 5x normal rads.

Sure, like is returning to the area, just don't mind the 5 legged rats ;-)

thebear91

This is silly. The calculation assumes that all humans will be exposed to lethal radiation, all vegetable matter will be destroyed due to resulting atmospheric damage and loss of sunlight and solar radiation protection and all mutations caused by radiation would be lethal as well. None of those assumptions are true. And it implies there's no forewarning of this cataclysm. Humans will survive. They always have.

ishan

internatonal space station

Neutron Bombs will do it nicely, and the animals will have radiated meat-sticks to nibble on.

SigmundTheSeaMonster

@citizen024: We could Nuke oil tankers, Kind of a double whammie. Radioactive oil Sludge will wash up on the beach covering the wildlife and mutating them into flesh eating... shit where is my notepad i need to write this shit down

Shada

This method of calculation totally ignores small isolated communities, the only sure bet is to use the total land surface. Also, you might want to account for Steve Mobs and other underwater deviants and nuke the oceans.

1000 Nuclear Warheads
30 Mother ships from the Galaxy Zygorm
8 More years of Bush
1 Hadron Collider if your crazy
= Destruction of world

Shada

WHOOMPF!

Well great, we just fed Skynet the data.

Bye! *BOOM!*

@jepzilla: Thankyou. People seem to think that radiation poisons an area forever. They fail to research how the bikini islands and the Chernobyl area have rebounded in mankind's absence.

ltethe

@al12345: What's your definition of fucked? Cause by my definition, I bet you are wrong.

ltethe

@jepzilla: Could not agree more. I did the math myself years ago, and couldn't for the life of me see how we could "destroy the world" or "end life" or even the measly, "end humanity." Shit, even ending civilization is pretty far fetched with our modern arsenal. That's why I hold a similar skepticism with global warming. I agree that what we do to the air is bad, I agree that it should be regulated/controlled/improved upon, but the idea that global warming is doomsday I hold in the same vein as the nuclear armageddon alarmists.

ltethe

I'm pretty sure we have enough nukes to cause nuclear winter.

orangesrhyme

It's so awesome that I see an ad for 9 right below the post.

BUT I know this might sound bad, but humanity NEEDS to somehow destroy itself. Either that or nature somehow will.
At least partially, but a good amount of destruction is required.

The reason for me saying that is that even though we occupy such little % of the actual earth surface, we are still consuming all of the earth at a very rapid place. We're like a virus (the matrix) and we are growing and dying less.

We need a balance.

@Dearhaw: That's exactly what I was thinking. Of course, it would be kind of rad if we all lived in the Thunderdome!

darway

But how many doomsday devices would it take?

Brett Benedict

@hypnotoad1971: Patience, young apprentice. The Death Star will be completed shortly.

Brett Benedict

@cheyrou23: Hmm. Do you fear zees or zeds?

I've always had an affinity towards zed.

@appletoad: cause they give off an insane amount of energy at a very quick rate. Its hard to capture/convert the massive amounts of thermal energy and have a positive net yeild from the amount of energy expended to create the reaction.

[en.wikipedia.org]

That much to destroy humanity, huh? Well, back to my lunar hideout and break out the drawing board.

notlikeacat

@Jesustron, Now with more beer!: Extremely cheesy. But profound. I'd promote you if I knew how.

peter_kelowna

@Captain Nobody: You may just be trying to start trouble, but that's how it's spelt in the UK. We fear the 'z' and avoid it when we can.

cheyrou23

Boom.

I like this article. Nuclear war is horrible to contemplate, but I personally don't understand where this idea that 'nuclear war = end of humanity' comes from. The direct affect of a blast, the fallout and nuclear winter have all been massively blown out of proportion. Maybe it's a good thing that everybody overestimates the devastation that a nuclear exchange would cause, but personally I prefer truth and a sense of perspective.

It's fascinating to go back and read through the various manuals, handbooks and guides produced during the height of the cold-war. Working on a job a few years ago, I ran across one army manual from the 60s on the design of structures to resist nuclear weapons (TM 5-856-1 for any who are curious). 50 years ago, people watched the most destructive weapons ever conceived be aimed at them, and instead of cowering in fear figured out how to survive as individuals, and as a society. Case in point: the internet.

jepzilla

now if you want a GOOD bang for the buck..
There is a GAS bomb that uses Propane type fuel. The SHOCK wave alone destroys buildings and Kills anyone within its range.

ECAsh

For those who think fallout will destroy humanity, don't forget that radiation effects are completely related on probability. Exposure to radiation does not mean guaranteed effects. Intro physics.

Now thats if you can gather us into groups..like LARGE cities, where you also get collateral damage(a building falls on you).

Now comes the Rabbit hunt with grenades..
RUN rabbit RUN..
And also on the net is a small program that shows that SMALLER nukes work better and you dont need the tonnage.

ECAsh

@Whytookay - Pro Skub: In case of a nuclear conflict between America and Russia, something very interesting would be happening. You could look up and watch all the missiles fly overhead, and hope none malfunction and land short. Oops.

jepzilla

@negitoro: I don't know about how the weapons are targeted today, but back in the cold war neither the USA nor the USSR were wasting nuclear weapons on purely civilian targets. Most nukes were targetting military and governmental facilities, especially nuclear facilities, although major economic and industrial were secondary targets. Most of the Russian ICBMs were aimed at America's missile silos in the midwest, and vice-versa.

So yeah, if you live in New York or Washington, D.C. you're probably screwed. Everybody else has a decent chance of survival.

jepzilla

@Kaiser-Machead: Exactly.

@appletoad: I can see Russia from he....

oh shit I'm f'ed o_O

@havoks:

Protip: read your own advice before trying to insult someone.

I'm from BC, and right now our Provincial Government is trying to implement HST in our province.

@Stuart Bradley Newsom: The Metric System is the tool of the devil. My car gets four rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it.

Kaiser-Machead

@gcncl: Fallout only lasts a few weeks. After that it decays to a non-lethal level. That's why in the cold war everybody built bomb shelters. As for long-term life destroying impacts... the region around Chernobyl has a vibrant ecosystem today.

jepzilla

I guess cancer and genetic mutations were not considered...so this is pretty much 100% worthless. Evenly spread 10k nukes around the world and I bet we are 99(.99999?)% F-ed within 5-10 years.

al12345

@sharkync: that you should re-read the article

@superberg: both

@The Lab: Radiation poisoning isn't the end of the world. The more radioactive something is, the shorter its lifespan. The fallout from a nearby nuclear bomb is dangerous, but only for a couple of weeks. A makeshift fallout shelter that can be constructed in a day would be enough to keep you alive (if you have enough canned food). Obviously, the more time you have to prepare, the more comfortable you'll be.

Now, it is possible to build a nuclear bomb which is especially dirty and can poison an area for very long periods of time (i.e., cobalt bombs), but AFAIK nobody ever built one, because nobody is THAT stupid or insane.

jepzilla

I disagree. Mad Max is pretty entertaining.

@Stuart Bradley Newsom: I was being sarcastic, mocking the typical "uhh metric system?" american. I know what a square kilometer is.

now..what about hydrogen bombs..

wahrugene

@Zomb: That is one beautiful mushroom cloud. Amazing, 1.4% of the sun's power... why can't we use these reactions to create electricity instead of death?

@The Lab: Nuclear fallout is the cancer that's killing humanity.

@appletoad: Square Kilometer idiot.

Stuart Bradley Newsom

@Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo: I live in Chicago. They'll notice the missile coming in time for me to run/hide. Hopefully.

@e-friend: we should do it for lol's**

@Captain Nobody: and I don't know what to make of sq. km.

@wetworker: "many of the word's other countries"
uh... is it just me or does this make it sound like they think Africa is a country?

ice2097

@kitsuneconundrum: we should do it for science

e-friend

@Zomb: But the the strength decreases at an increasing rate as you try to make it more powerful. There comes a point where it just doesn't make any sense to add more reactive mass to get a slight increase in explosive yield.

I'm not sure how reliable this study is considering the researcher can't even spell civilization.

Don't feel that secure. How about the B53s, which still exist, and have a 9 Megaton of TNT yield compared to the B83's 1.2 Megatons. They are in storage, but still in condition to destroy the world. ([en.wikipedia.org])

greenwald3132

what if we nuked both artic and antartic poles and melted off all the ice?

kitsuneconundrum

@superberg: Mutant sex!

alowishus finally has his Miata

@Whytookay - Pro Skub: Typical Ontarian thinking "Canada" revolves around you.

havoks

@jayhawk11: Yeah, I live 9 miles away from the White House. I'm dead too

@The Lab: OK so we can respond to new commentors, which approves them, but we can't subsequently promote them?

@SanchitaVintersorg: I'd approve this comment but it seems like starred commentors can only promote comments and lost the ability to approve new commentors. Is that the case?

Forget building roads & bridges; Nuclear warheads it's where it's at

Just to be clear, this work estimates how many nukes are needed to INSTANTLY annihilate humanity. It would not take very many at all to annihilate humanity once the radiation poisoning sets in. That kills pretty damn quick, just not instantly. Then you have cancer...

Also what Sanchita Vintersorg said below.

@osiris73: I think it must be estimated since as far as official Israeli policy goes they have "none"

Weet

@hypnotoad1971: well they have made nuclear weapons that are 50 times strong than the b83. So yea we could.

[en.wikipedia.org]
guess how many of these it would take to destroy humanity. It is also said to have been detonated at only half strength.

Theoretically there is no limit to the amount of strength you can add to nuclear weapons through fusion.

Zomb

@snoop_dizzle: Poor Timmy O'Toole

@wetworker: Most maps are distorted because they're trying to map a curved surface onto a flat sheet. It's very difficult to get the exact proportions of the continents.

North Star

sure ok we don't have enough to kill everyone off but it's not how many you have but what you do with them setting of just a handful of those in key locations will not end humanity at least not immediately but it could change the world as we know it.

@jojo13jojo233: indeed, the only thing I have to be concerned about right now is the goddamn HST.

this makes me sad. i would think by now science would have come up with a way to wipe us out in one shot with one bomb. what a waste to have to make all those bombs. come on scientists get to work. one world one bomb!!!!

hypnotoad1971

@puffnstuff: One, without a dong?

dragon:ONE

@Jesustron, Now with more beer!: Nah, we've got good wind. That's blow the fallout away.

@snoop_dizzle: The Kenny Rogers part is my favorite.

@Jesustron, Now with more beer!: Then there will be peace!

*Cue one of the corniest songs ever*

Everybody sing! ;)

@wetworker: Wait... Africa is larger than China?

@Mike:

Your proximity to Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington DC certainly does not bode well for your entire state.

@Dallifornia: Sacramento?

How many human beings will it take to destroy every single nuke on the planet, is the real question

@camron9989: Well you could always bomb that island with a smaller nuke, you don't need a heavy duty one.

Living in Delaware, aka the most boring state ever created, I know nobody will bomb us because there is nothing good here. Except we have the largest Wal-Mart on the East Coast. Bomb that!

The REAL question is, how many exploding iPhones will it take to end humanity?

xBawBx

@snoop_dizzle: Depends: is this mutated-from-the-blast end-of-the-world-sex or hiding-in-a-bunker end-of-the-world-sex?

Only the best minds can unravel this mystery that we ALL want solved. Personally, I think it would be better if we didn't know how many nukes we needed. Crap, I can't think of anything witty!

Can we start using a real map of the globe please. Africa is way bigger then that.

@jayhawk11: Ground zero's the way to go, baby. Vaporized before your brain knows your skin's gone.

dingus

@gcncl: They are referring to the initial blast. But that's good! More time for end of the world sex! And who doesn't want that? ;)

Inaccurate.

Mad Max is a masterpiece.

Dearhaw

@Dallifornia: Must be nice. I live less than 10 miles from STRATCOM. I'll be the first to go.

Don't worry, I'll order a round of beers for you guys when I get to heaven so you have something to drink when you meet me there.

@camron9989: Its not completely inaccurate, it just assumes perfect conditions where all humans are indeed gathered inside the perimeter of the nuclear explosion. So this number describes the low estimate. A more realistic estimate would definitely be much more than that.

Maybe the moron that came up with this could figure out how many nukes it would take to to produce enough radioactive fallout to wipe out humanity. It's a whole lot less than his number. it's probably equal to the number of active warheads that exist today. Feel better now?

gcncl

@Whytookay - Pro Skub: Hooray for our boring canadian politics! (also canada is huge, so all we have to do is move up even norther.

jojo13jojo233

@Dallifornia: I'm glad I live in Canada where nothing important/interesting happens.

The problem with this statistic is that the 10,000 nukes we do have, have a much greater chance of wiping out anyone who reads this blog (who I assume mostly live in highly populated, urban areas).

Meanwhile, the millions upon millions of people living in rural Africa and Asia will be fine.

negitoro

Most of the planet you can't live in - so what's the point?

sharkync

Keep in mind though... if that's how many each government is ADMITTING to having then the actual amount would be much, much greater.

osiris73

Well, this is good news?

bizzo98

Think of cookie dough rolled flat. If you punch out a bunch of circular pieces with a cookie cutter you're left over with a lot of excess dough between the spots where you cut. This guy's method of approximating the amount of warheads it would take does not take this into consideration.

Additionally, humans aren't crammed all into one tray of cookie dough, they are clustered (read: you'll have to use 1 warhead to get the loner who lives on a remote island).

I know I'm taking it too literally but there's no point in creating this data if it's completely inaccurate.

camron9989

1.2 million nukes or 1 engineered super-virus.

trs

Kim Jong il: I bet you cannot guess how many I have

@snoop_dizzle: ya i agree! it is nice to know we have no where near the amount of nuclear bombs to totally destroy ourselves!

Corey Alexander

Yeah, it's nice to know that, living near a state capital, even if it was bombed I wouldn't get any ill medical effects. Until the wind blew north, of course...

Dallifornia

Woah...thinking about that makes me feel so small...maybe I should get one of those pumps.

jedimaster0103

Wow, that was kinda reassuring in a strange kind of way....

I'm going to postulate a few theories and scenarios that have been bouncing around the 'net and scientific circles and let you decide.

First of them; poisoning the well using cobalt jackets. It's the ultimate act of spite towards an enemy, denying resources or land to them to rebuild or even survive. I agree that the jackets tamper the yield, but the fallout will contaminate the land for decades, or even centuries depending on the material's half-life. One speculates that the Israelis had LITTLE BOY type devices that could be sleeved with the jackets, inciting "scorched earth" policy. Nasty stuff.

Second and this one's even worse. the destruction of the ozone layer by ANY nuclear device that throws debris into the upper atmosphere could damage the layer to the point it would not protect us. The Pakis and Indians were taken and a scenario was created with them exchanging their current arsenal. Once they got done, the rest of the world and all life on it would be forfeit due to UV energy unleashed upon us.
Something I really don't want to dwell upon.

The third is really nasty, the use of nuclear weapons to deny the world their oil supply. Strategically aimed weapons could shear off well heads on both land and water, causing massive ecological disasters and the radiation itself would hamper repair efforts. I'm certain the Sovs thought about it, but they were also eying the Alaskan North Slope and the Pipeline as possible key points for capture and use as strategic chips at the table. Now they got their own massive Siberian strikes they really don't have much inspiration to come across the Bering Sea for our oil. They got the Arabs chewing their nails down to the nubbins anyway.

Nighthawke