Nuclear Weapons Use And The Ukraine War

Nuclear weapons have been very effectively used by Putin in the Ukraine War - to limit and circumscribe Western aid and its range of use, allowing Putin's forces the chance of reaching his goals.

The main thing stopping Putin from actually using tactical nukes in Ukraine - or now, Kursk Oblast - is that Ukrainian troops aren't concentrated enough to make their use make sense, militarily. The kill circle on a tactical nuke is pretty small, they'd be useful against large concentrations of troops and the Ukrainians tend to spread out. The other thing is that tactical nukes aren't a local weapon with effects limited to one location, they create radioactive fallout clouds which do get up quite high - about 20,000 feet - and travel long distances. The prevailing winds in Ukraine go from west to east, so the fallout is going to go straight east, more or less, and so there's the chance that Russian agricultural lands around Volgograd might get a good shot of it - and some of it could travel as far as China. The Chinese already import 80% of their food, they don't want to risk making that 100% - and the Chinese have communicated to Putin that they don't want this. So there's no tactical advantage and lots of liabilities. The threat of nuke use has been very effective in limiting Western aid to Ukraine and its areas of allowed usage, and so the threats will continue - that's the primary actual use of these weapons in this war.

If strategic weapons were used in Ukraine, say a 1 MT ground burst on Kiev to take out command and control structures, that would produce a much larger fallout cloud, contaminating lots of Russian agricultural lands - and posing a significant threat all the way to China. See this for details - https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/effects/ - and this text covers the effects of low yield tactical nukes as well.

Just for fun, here’s the Strangelove Slide Rule Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer so you can game things out in the privacy of your home/cubicle/SCIF: https://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc/

Finally, for those really concerned about these things, here’s a link to a PDF version of Nuclear War Survival Skills: https://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf - which is an exhaustive 317 page long book - they’re not joking. An excerpt:

“The purpose of this book is to provide Americans and other unprepared people with information and self-help instructions that will significantly increase their chances of surviving a nuclear attack. It brings together field-tested instructions that if followed by a large fraction of Americans during a crisis that precedes an attack, could save millions of lives. The author is convinced that the vulnerability especially for Americans to nuclear threat or attack must be reduced and that the wide dissemination of the Information contained in this book will help preserve peace with freedom.

Underlying the advocacy of Americans learning these down-to-earth survival skills is the benefit that if one prepares for the worst, the worst is less likely to happen. Effective American civil defense preparations would reduce the probability of nuclear blackmail and war. Yet in our world of increasing dangers. it Is significant that the United States spends much less per capita on civil defense than many other countries. The United States’ annual funding is about 50 cents per capita, and only a few cents of this is spent on war-related civil defense. Unless U.S. civil defense policies are improved, you are unlikely to receive from official sources much - if any - of the survival information given in this book.

Over 400.000 copies of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory original 1979 edition of Nuclear War Survival Skills have been sold by various private publishers [often at outrageous prices, for something available for free on the Web]. A few additions and modifications, some helpful and others harmful, were made in several of these private printings. This updated and expanded edition is needed because of changes in nuclear weapons and strategies between 1979 and 1987, and because of improvements in self-help survival equipment and instructions.

The 1987 edition provides current information on how the Soviet Union's [now Russia’s] continuing deployment of smaller, more accurate, more numerous warheads should affect your shelter-building and evacuation plans.” Nuclear War Survival Skills: https://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf

And they have instructions for a Kearny Fallout Meter, which can be made from a coffee can, aluminum foil, crumbled up drywall, monofilament fishing line, tape, saran wrap, and a sewing needle: https://web.archive.org/web/20121030174241/http://www.ornl.gov/~webworks/cppr/y2001/rpt/112538.pdf

And if you’re interested in Civil Defense, TACDA is a group I was part of during my grad school (PhD) days at the University of Florida in the 1980s:

“TACDA was formed in the early 1960′s in response to our nation's reliance on atomic weaponry as a centerpiece of foreign policy following World War II, up to and including the onset of the Cold War. During the Cold War, many feared a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union. In an attempt to protect American civilians, a civil defense (emergency relief by civilians) campaign emphasizing the use of fallout shelters commenced.

In response to the Soviet’s first atomic explosion and the Korean War, the Federal Civil Defense Administration was started in 1951. American citizens now had to imagine a new kind of war, and it was the Federal Civil Defense Administration’s job to encourage citizens to adapt to their nuclear present and future. Some doubted that physical protection from a nuclear explosion would be effective. Therefore, the Federal Civil Defense Administration received a small budget and was involved in only limited construction of shelters and the publishing of publicity materials.

In 1958, a report indicating the Soviet Union was nearing the nuclear arsenal held by the U.S. forced civil defense to be a priority. Spending increased. The Federal Civil Defense Administration became the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization under President John F. Kennedy, who believed in and advocated civil defense.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, in October of 1962, resulted in a rapid, three-month program to improve civil defense, but after the administration of President Kennedy abruptly ended, civil defense was once again regarded as unimportant or wasteful and not funded adequately by our government.

The American Civil Defense Association was organized in 1962 by several doctors and professors from the University of Florida, including a Nobel Prize winner (Eugene Wigner) that recognized our country’s continued need for civil defense and the importance of personal emergency and disaster preparedness.” https://tacda.org/about/

So now you have some light reading and a fun project to do for your weekend…