In the year 1983, the Cold War was approaching its climax. The Soviets had put more than 400 SS-20 “Saber” missiles into service since the mid-1970s, nicknamed the “Terror of Europe”. Two thirds of the modern rockets were aimed at Western Europe, at places such as London, Paris, Bonn and Vienna. Each rocket had an explosive power of up to one megaton, which was 50 times more than the atomic bomb “Fat Man” dropped over Nagasaki in 1945. The West reacted to the SS-20 threat with an upgrade and had Pershing II missiles deployed in Europe. Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States wanted to bring the Soviet Union – the realm of evil – down to its knees in an unprecedented arms race.
Tensions have been high, Moscow was expecting a surprise attack by the United States, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov was convinced that America was planning the first strike. What seems to us today as a feverish dream of a distant past suddenly turned into a real nightmare on September 26th 1983. It was shortly before midnight when in the Serpukhov-15 control center, headquarters of the “Oko” satellite-based missile warning system the sirens starting howling and red letters flashed on the 30-meter-wide screen: START. The system had registered the launch of a nuclear missile from a US base. Spy satellite Kosmos 1382, in space for a year, announced the beginning of the apocalypse. 25 minutes remained until impact, somewhere in Russia. In the Serpukhov-15 control center, the pairs of eyes of 200 employees turned on Colonel Stanislaw Petrow, the commanding officer that night. Petrow mistrusted the system, after all he was a studied engineer, it had to be a false alarm. No one is going to start the apocalypse with a single missile, surely a nuclear attack would take place with the destructive power of hundreds of missiles at the same time. Petrow called his superior and reported a false alarm. Shortly after a second and then a third missile launch was picked up by the same Russian spy satellite. And again, Petrow mistrusted the system, we are smarter than computers. We created them, he said to himself. Of all the incidents in the cold war, (at least of those which we know of today), this was the closest the world ever came to the nuclear apocalypse, said Bruce Blair, a US disarmament expert and head of the world security Institute. If Petrow would have believed the reports and the top Soviet leadership had been informed of an attack and had to make a decision within minutes, they would have decided to retaliate. But it did not come to that, the radar was confirming Petrows suspicion it was a false alarm after all.[1]
But what if?
Dire warnings of the possible outcome of nuclear war have been made at the highest level of the Soviet- and US-Leadership. In 1954 Georgi Malenkov, member of the Politburo and chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers warned that nuclear conflict meant the destruction of world civilization itself. This assessment followed up a similar statement by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which he made in his speech before the united nations assembly on December 8, 1953.[2]
In the early 1980s, quantitative studies of the catastrophic climactic impacts of a global nuclear war were conducted. A scenario that came to be known as “nuclear winter”.[3]
The nuclear winter hypothesis speculates on long term outcomes of nuclear warfare and describes the outcome in a chain of events. In addition to the death and destruction as direct effects of nuclear war, the bombing will cause widespread fires that last for several days or longer, resulting in large quantities of smoke being ejected into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere layers of the atmosphere. A large portion of the smoke will consist of sub micron-sized or elemental sized carbon particles which are excellent absorbers of solar radiation, that due to their small size and weight have long residence times in the atmosphere. A sufficient widespread smoke coverage will result in a widespread lowering of surface temperature. In extreme scenarios the smoke induced cooling will trigger a global climatic shift that will take years or possible centuries to recover. As a result, major crop losses will lead to famine and death.[4]
The nuclear threat – a pressing issue
Given the importance of the issue, the prospect of nuclear winter was investigated by numerous organizations in the 1980s. However as more recent studies show, the effects may be longer lasting and therefor more severe than previously thought.[5] According to the chemistry-climate model devised by Mills et al. (2008) the reduction of ozone predicted on a global scale caused by relatively small injections of smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere indicate an unexpected sensitivity. The depletion of ozone may impact living organisms, which are usually adapted to local UV radiation levels. The damage to the ozone layer in such an event would persist for at least five years which would lead to a drastic increase in UV radiation that causes DNA damage to both animals and plants. This suggests that events such as a regional nuclear conflict or geoengineering potentially pose an unprecedented hazard to the biosphere worldwide.[6]
In a nutshell the implication of nuclear winter as a result of a full-scale nuclear attack would lead to climatic effects which would in turn disrupt the food supply that it would impact non-combatant countries as well as the attacker himself.[7] Since the end of the cold war, the United States and Russia have been reducing their strategic nuclear arsenals. In accordance to the 1991 Start Treaty the number of strategic nuclear warheads was limited to 6.000, which was again lowered to 1.550 in the New Start Treaty in 2010.
While substantial progress has been made to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the nuclear arms control deal is at a crossroads. Not only are we approaching the deadline of the present treaty, but also because china plans to expand its nuclear arsenal and therefor threatens the status quo which was kept for decades[8]. As of 2020 negotiations between Russia and the United States in Vienna on a „New START“ (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)[9] are being held. The outcome of the latest nuclear contract hanging by a thread, like the sword of Damocles the threat of nuclear winter is still looming above the world.
References:
Cotton, William R. and Pielke, Sr, Roger A. (2007): Human Impacts on Weather and Climate. Cambridge University Press.
Goure, Leon (1985). “Soviet exploitation of the ‘nuclear winter’ hypothesis”, Defense Nuclear. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-02-23. Retrieved 2016-02-15. https://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a165794.pdf
Spiegel (2010): Der Mann, der den dritten Weltkrieg verhinderte. https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/vergessener-held-a-948852.html (20.07.20).
Mills, Michael, Toon, Owen B., Turco, Richard P., Kinnison, Douglas E. and Garcia, Rolando R. (2008): Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105 (14).
New York Times (2020): China’s Arms Buildup Threatens the Nuclear Balance. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/opinion/russia-china-nuclear-weapons.html (27.08.2020).
ORF (2020): Letzter großer Atomvertrag auf der Kippe. https://orf.at/stories/3170604/ (22.06.2020).
Robock, Alan, Oman, Luke and Stenchikov, Georgiy L. (2007): Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences. JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112.
[1] Spiegel (2010)
[2] (Goure 1985, S. 12)
[3] (Mills, Toon, Turco, Kinnison & Garcia 2008)
[4] (Cotton & Roger 2007)
[5] (Toon, Raback & Turco 2008, S. 41)
[6] (Mills et al. 2008)
[7] (Robock, Oman & Stenchikow 2007)
[8] (NYT 2020)
[9] (ORF.at 2020)