The Nuclear Threat

So  what has this got to do with nuclear threats?

Well, firstly, would you trust a leader who is facing corruption charges, who will do whatever it takes to avoid a reckoning, and who will form an alliance with anyone, no matter how extreme, to become Prime Minister again? And how about appointing a Security Minister who has been convicted of terrorist-related offences?

And secondly, and most alarmingly, these are the leaders in charge of a nuclear arsenal. Israel has never publicly acknowledged its nuclear capability, but it's the worst-kept secret in the Middle East that Israel has approximately 90 warheads at its disposal.

Israel's arch-enemy is Iran, and Iran is, itself, on the brink of a nuclear breakout. Israel regards Teheran as an existential threat because Teheran has frequently declard it wants to obliterate Israel. Accordingly, Israel has conducted at least two dozen targeted attacks against Iran's nuclear program, including cyberwarfare, assassination and military strikes .

Iran is widely considered to be capable of assembling nuclear warheads, with a production line of underground processing plants hard at work to produce many more. Iran's nuclear processing facilities are now thought to be so far underground that they're out of reach of bunker-buster bombs.

It's unlikely, but not impossible, that Israel and Iran might try to nuke each other. But what's much more likely would be an attack on each country's nuclear infrastructure.

It's sometimes overlooked that using conventional weapons to bomb nuclear facilities can cause some of the same results as detonating a nuclear weapon. The radioactive dispersion caused by bombing a nuclear power plant, or nuclear storage site, would create lethal fallout.

Iran has already threatened to hit Israel's nuclear infrastructure, starting with the Dimona reactor and waste storage site. Israel could then retaliate by striking Iran's much larger Bushehr nuclear power plant, 'risking radioactive fallout that could spread across the Persian Gulf. This would radically curtail oil exports, potentially triggering a global economic crisis'. 

Overall, the current instability of nuclear powers has never been so threatening.

Then there's North Korea. North Korea's nuclear capabilities keep growing and threaten not only neighboring countries, but even the west coast of the USA. What to do about North Korea is one of the big, unanswered questions of our time. How do you deal with an unpredictable dictator, with a nuclear arsenal, inside the sealed borders of the Hermit Kingdom?

And the USA? Is America's nuclear arsenal a bastion of stability and responsibility? Well, no. Definitely not. This is according to America's own Energy Department, in charge of nuclear weapon safety. The Energy Department has identified shortfalls in being able to prevent "insider threats". These are threats from 'lone wolf' dissidents that need to be identified, isolated and neutralised. Also, the department warns that America's nuclear guardians have not "identified and assessed" the resources necessary to implement its safety program.

And what about former Presidents who walk out of the White House with  top secret documents and then try to keep them? Are any of these documents about nuclear weapons? Might any of these, or copies of them, have been sold to wealthy Middle East interests, or otherwise peddled for influence? Which, of course, is not to suggest malfeasance or venality involving America's former leaders. But where are the guardrails at the very top of America's structure of command and control? And where is the transparency?

There are a lot of loose cannons around. Too many, for far too many different reasons.

So what do we do? This is now a critical question about our own survival, and that of our children, and the world we live in. Do we need to rush out and build a nuclear survival bunker? Maybe not. But at the very least, those living in South Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe might find it prudent to read the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) nuclear explosion fact sheet. This should be a priority for populations in NATO and Ukraine, now that Russia has announced it's moving tactical nukes into Belarus.

Finding out more about the worldwide effects of nuclear war might also be useful for the rest of us. Today's nuclear weapons are far more powerful and destructive than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki versions dropped during World War 11. A single statistic here is worth remembering. The temperature of a thermo-nuclear explosion (H-bomb) reaches the temperature at the interior of the sun - about 100,000,000 degrees Celcius.

This is just the initial blast. The radioactive fallout from stratospheric winds that circle each hemisphere, is another story. 

But other, less documented factors include the economic and environmental impacts, including refugee problems. Not to mention the ripple effect caused by destruction of food, transport and fuel supplies. And how far does contamination spread, and for how long, and how much will global climate be affected? A nuclear winter would change, if not threaten the existence of civilization.

It's difficult to come to a conclusion here that isn't alarmist.

And if anyone tries to claim that those currently in control of the world's nuclear arsenals are rational, responsible and restrained - well, would you believe them?

I wouldn't.