The truly intolerable risk of nuclear war

even if starting a war is unintentional, it could happen.

Experts Fear Nuclear Famine: “A Disaster So Massive in Scale that No Preparation is Possible” Peak Oil, Dec 20 13, At last count, there are eight countries in the world that have officially designed, developed and tested nuclear weapons. Another two (Israel and Iran) deny they have built or are building such weapons, but the probability that Israel has them and that Iran is building them is believed by members of the international community to be extremely high.

That being said, it’s only a matter of time before a madman at the helm in any of these ten nuclear-armed states decides to push the button. With the global economy in shambles, the world’s super powers mobilizing military assets, and hundreds of trillions of dollars in unservicable debt soon to be realized by the financial community, how long before history rhymes with previous large-scale events that culminated in the fall of the Roman empire or the World Wars that devastated tens of millions of lives in the 20th century?

War, it seems, is inevitable. Not just because of the many problems faced by mankind, but because of the nature of mankind itself……

With the vast majority of the world’s nations still unable to build the bomb, a blanket approach could work. ICAN pleads that the “very survival of humanity depends on nuclear weapons never being used.”

Fool.com via IPNNW Study

The nuclear-armed nations of the world didn’t just build these weapons so they can look at them. Sure, our leaders may claim these weapons are merely deterrents designed to prevent war, but the fact is, advanced weaponry has always been used for the purposes of conquering. Our modern era is no different.

We came dangerously close during the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960′s. Cooler heads prevailed that day.

And even if starting a war is unintentional, it could happen. On at least one occasion, in 1983, the United States and Russia were literally minutes away from a full-scale confrontation under both country’s policies of mutually assured destruction. It turns out that was a false alarm – but the world was almost destroyed as a result. This is one of the incidents we know about, and given the secrecy behind such military operations, it’s quite possible that there have been more.

The bottom line is that we must assume these weapons will be used at some point – that should be a given. What we don’t know is the scale of the nuclear engagement. It could be that Russia, the United States, Israel, China and North Korea just start lobbing intercontinental ballistic missiles by the hundreds, in which case we’re all pretty much toast. Or, it could be a limited war, with the conflict in India and Pakistan finally coming to a head.

Whatever the case, even if those dropped bombs detonate thousands of miles away from you, there is a strong likelihood that you will feel the direct effects in the form of an almost immediate climate change, food scarcity, extreme price rises, and the riots and looting that are sure to follow.

As with any disaster, whether its a nuclear war, global financial collapse, or a natural disaster, we can fully expect the worst of the worst. As the IPPNW report notes:

We would have to expect panic on a far greater scale following a nuclear war, even if it were a “limited” regional war, especially as it became clear that there would be significant, sustained agricultural shortfalls over an extended period.

It is probable that there would be hoarding on an international scale as food exporting nations suspended exports in order to assure adequate food supplies for their own populations…….

http://peakoil.com/publicpolicy/experts-fear-nuclear-famine-a-disaster-so-massive-in-scale-that-no-preparation-is-possible