Newsweek has compared what different countries’ nuclear weapons’ impact would be on New York.
There is currently a lot of talk about nuclear war as conflict escalates between the United States and its NATO allies with Russia over its ongoing war in Ukraine.
The Russia-Ukraine war has raged on for more than two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022. Although Moscow aimed for a quick victory over its Eastern European neighbor, viewed as having a much smaller military, its spirited defense effort bolstered by the U.S. and its NATO allies, has blocked it from making substantial gains.
Putin recently signed an updated nuclear doctrine into law that emphasizes that Moscow will make “all necessary efforts to reduce the nuclear threat” and aims to prevent escalating tensions between states that could lead to “military conflicts, including nuclear ones.”
It also says that nuclear deterrence should also ensure “an understanding by a potential adversary of the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies.”
Ukraine used U.S.-made ATACMS missiles against a target inside Russia for the first time last month after President Joe Biden allowed such usage. This followed Moscow’s deployment of North Korean troops to the front lines in the Kursk region, an action described by the Biden administration as a significant escalation of the conflict.
On Tuesday, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, said the U.S. was “seriously discussing the consequences of transferring nuclear weapons to Kyiv”, however the White House told Newsweek that it is “not planning to equip Ukraine with nuclear weapons.”
Meanwhile, Newsweek has compared how different countries’ nuclear weapons compare, by using maps produced by Alex Wellerstein, a professor and historian of nuclear technology, to assess what the impact would be if a nation launched its nuclear weapon on New York.
The maps show the fireball radius (inner yellow circle), in which everything would be vaporized by intense heat rising to millions of degrees Fahrenheit and the more moderate blast damage radius (inner gray circle), which would destroy residential buildings and probably cause widespread fires.
It also covers the thermal radiation radius (wider orange circle), in which people would be at risk of suffering third-degree burns throughout the skin “often painless because they destroy the pain nerves”, which can cause severe scarring, disablement and require amputation.
