Bombs gone

[Magpie_Oz]

That's the old first strike defence thing. If you have a 1000's of nukes it is prohibitively expensive for an enemy to build enough nukes to take out all of yours so they risk retaliation.

Besides you ALWAYS have to have more and bigger than anyone else.

[flamingknives]

Wonder why we still need thousands of nukes... Surely a few hundred at most is enough to destroy the surface of the earth?

Not even slightly.

The earth is really big and the effects of a nuclear bomb are comparatively small. The complete arsenal of all countries on Earth would not destroy the surface of the major inhabited landmasses, much less all of it.

Wouldn't be pleasant, but it wouldn't be complete devastation either.

A bit of fun:

http://www.carloslabs.com/node/20

[Michael Emrys]

No, it would not destroy the landmasses. Hardly put more than a few dimples in them. You're quite right about that.

Thing is, anything like a major nuclear exchange, such as we were contemplating throughout the Cold War, could very well wipe out all advanced life forms, or at least drastically reduce their numbers and make life awfully hard on the survivors. Can't really say what would make it through and what would not. That's a game of Russian Roulette I'd rather not see come about.

Michael

[Affentitten]

Yeah it doesn't really matter if the Earth is slagged into glass if we don't see daylight for 12 months afterwards and are breathing in all those nasty isotopes to boot.