[The following material is cited from "Nuclear Weapons- The Facts" by New Internationalist. You may find more information here.]
There are over 13,500 nuclear weapons in the world. Thousands are deployed on land, at sea, and in the air, posing the constant threat of nuclear war and radioactive contamination.
The 15 kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 destroyed 13 square kilometers of the Japanese city—killing everyone within half a mile of the center of the blast zone and destroying or damaging 92 percent of the city's structures. Around 75,000 people died immediately, but many more died from radiation poisoning. By the end of 1950, the death toll from the Hiroshima bomb was 200,000. The Nagasaki bomb dropped three days later killed 40,000 immediately, rising to 140,000 by 1950. Even today, more babies are born dead or deformed in these areas.
Current nuclear weapons are much more powerful than those dropped on Japan. Just 50 could kill 200 million people – or the combined populations of Britain, Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/NZ, and Germany.
There have been at least 2,053 nuclear test explosions in the atmosphere, underwater and underground. The bombs had a combined explosive yield equivalent to 40,000 Hiroshima bombs and resulted in 50 times more radioactive contamination than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Exposure to the radioactivity produced by atmospheric tests will eventually cause the death of about 1.5 million people.
There is no adequate response capacity in light of a nuclear explosion. Even a single nuclear detonation in a modern city would strain existing disaster relief resources to the breaking point; a nuclear war would overwhelm any relief system we could build in advance. Displaced populations from a nuclear war will produce a refugee crisis that is orders of magnitude larger than any we have ever experienced.
Apart from the 9 nuclear weapon countries, there are 26 ‘umbrella states’ who have accepted a ‘security guarantee’ under the US nuclear shield, and who lend infrastructure to the nuclear war machine. Belgium, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Turkey have several hundred US nukes on their soil as part of their membership of NATO. There are uranium mines in 24 countries supplying the ‘fissile’ materials to make warheads. The biggest are in Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, Russia, South Africa, and the US.
Spending on nuclear weapons detracts limited resources away from vital social services. As hundreds of millions of people across the globe go hungry, the annual expenditure on nuclear weapons is estimated at US$105 billion – or $12 million an hour. The World Bank forecast that an annual investment of US$40–60 billion, or roughly half the amount currently spent on nuclear weapons, would be enough for universal access to basic education, healthcare, adequate food, clean water, and safe sewers for the world’s population.
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