We have another winner of the "Elvis Bin Laden" award.
Posted on 05/27/2002 5:57:43 PM PDT by Pokey78
An American intelligence report says a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could kill up to 12 million people and injure seven million.
The disclosure came as Pakistani nuclear experts bitterly criticised the armies of both countries for trivialising nuclear war and failing to educate their people about the consequences.
The US assessment said a limited nuclear exchange would have cataclysmic results, overwhelming hospitals across Asia and the Middle East and requiring vast foreign assistance, particularly from America, which would be forced to go in and clean up the radioactive mess.
Millions more people would die of starvation, disease and radiation. Most of the bombs would explode on the ground, spreading radioactive debris over a large area and destroying agriculture for years.
Between nine and 12 million people would die and another two to seven million would be injured. The contamination would spread far beyond India and Pakistan. US and British troops in Afghanistan and US troops in Pakistan and Central Asia would be affected.
Pakistan's leading nuclear war specialist, Dr Pervaiz Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, was among those who criticised both his homeland and India for failing to acknowledge the dangers of nuclear power.
He said: "The most frightening delusion is India's trivialisation of Pakistan's nuclear capability, while Pakistan is addicted to nuclear weapons."
Dr Hoobhoy, who also heads the country's anti-nuclear campaign, led a demonstration in Islamabad this month. Just a handful of people turned up to protest on the fourth anniversary of the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan.
Dr Hoodbhoy argues that by pouring scorn on Pakistan's nuclear capability or by claiming that America would never allow Pakistan to go nuclear, Indian strategic planners try to justify a limited war in Kashmir.
"After the upsurge of Kashmiri militancy, denying the potency of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has become more convenient [for India] because it clears the road to a limited war," said Dr Hoodbhoy.
Last week Bruce Reidel, a senior official of the former Clinton administration, admitted that the Pakistani military had mobilised its nuclear weapons during the Kargil conflict in Kashmir in 1999 without telling the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. Today's Kashmiri and Pakistani militants also shelter under the same nuclear umbrella while the population is being held hostage by the two nuclear powers.
According to Dr Hoodbhoy, most Indians and Pakistanis know little about nuclear war and believe that a nuclear explosion just gives a bigger bang than an ordinary bomb.
India and Pakistan have both claimed that they are as responsible as America and the Soviet Union were at the height of the Cold War.
The authorities do not welcome criticism of their nuclear programmes in their respective media.
Forced by who?
All of the countries of the world that hate us even when we are putting humpty-dumpty back together again, as usual.
We have another winner of the "Elvis Bin Laden" award.
Exactly. I know I am not gonna be going over there and cleaning up any radioactive messes. They couldn't pay me enough.
I am not to keen about paying for any clean up either. They make the mess, they can sit in it for all I care.
Second, I think the estimates of the target rich environment in India alone are WAAAAYYY to low. Looking at the India map and population figures there are roughly 177 million in the states closest to Pakistan (1-8 and 24 on the map.) Throw in the state of Uttar Pradesh (9 on map and easily in range of Pak missiles) and you are looking at more than 300 million people who are mostly packed into a few cities. I still haven't counted a single Pakistani. Not everybody will be killed but having the population concentrated in cities will make the kill rate enormous. Certainly more than 12m. It horrifies me to talk about 12 million dead and say that it is a drop in the bucket.
Found another interesting site. Blast Mapper. Statistics of a 1 megaton surface blast: At (a radius from blast center of) 1.7 miles, only some of the strongest buildings -- those made of reinforced, poured concrete -- are still standing. Ninety-eight percent of the population in this area are dead. How many people live in 9.01 square miles in Delhi India? How many buildings in Delhi India are made of reinforced concrete?
You never know though...
Seems to me the Russians would be the experts in this field.
I hear they work cheap, too.
| Location | Size | Count |
| Hiroshima | 12 kiloton | 1 |
| Nagasaki | 10 kiloton | 1 |
| India | 15-60 kilotons each | 20-60 |
| Pakistan | 15-25 kilotons each | 10-30 |
| Russia | 3-50 megatons each | 2,000 |
And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for Him. But they did not receive Him, for His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said "Lord, do you want us to comman fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?" But He turned and rebuked them, and said, "You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." And they went to another village.
Operation Cue (500kb) Beginning in 1953 the Federal Civil Defense Adminstration, working with the Atomic Energy Commission, set up an atomic test program to investigate the effects of nuclear weapons on typical American homes and their furnishings. |
Operation Castle (300kb) Operation Castle, a series of thermonuclear tests, was conducted in the Marshall Islands in the spring of 1954. The 15 megaton Bravo detonation was over 1,000 times larger than Hiroshima. |
Layer Cake Design (500kb) In Andrei Sakharov's Layer Cake design, several layers of light and heavy elements were alternated. High explosives surrounding the Layer Cake would be used to implode and ignite the atomic bomb at the center of the device. The atomic explosion would then set off a fusion reaction in the deuterium. |
Operation Cue (300kb) Each home was equipped with refrigerators, typical appliances, the kinds of food one would eat, from baby food to adult food, and were exposed to the blast. |
Operation Castle (100kb) Operation Castle yielded more fallout than any of the other U.S. thermonuclear tests, contaminating military personnel and civilians on nearby islands. |
Camp Desert Rock (900kb) Camp Desert Rock, Nevada - The U.S. military began using smaller blasts to learn how to fight a nuclear war. On April 22, 1952 approximately 2,000 Army personnel conducted maneuvers beneath the mushroom cloud of the 31-kiloton Charlie nuclear detonation. |
Which would, I suppose, be about equal to one year's population growth over there. No biggie....
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