Water Cooler Discussion Today

[resister]

It appears that you want a conservative echo chamber.

Can you possibly try participating in threads instead of immaturely dishing out insults and bad faith posts?

lol @ post 109

[Agent Zero]

I watched a beautiful talking head decry the upcoming NORK hydrogen bomb test somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. She was concerned about the enormous environmental damage and its impact on the West coast of the USA.

Unless the people were told there is a test they would not experience any impacts.

Another talking head talked about the thousands of additional cancer deaths. Rubbish. More people will die because they sit on their butts all day eating junk food and drinking beer than will die from all of the nuclear tests performed to date.

Coupla more questions...but first:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219166/


Table 2 indicates that cancer mortality owing to local fallout would be greatly increased among the survivors of a nuclear war.3 The increased risk of cancer would be far from being the most horrible consequence of the disaster. Depending on the risk model used and the method of projection beyond the 30 years of present follow-up, the excess mortality would be around 5 percent, or 17 percent of the normal cancer burden. In other words, if 15 percent of some present populations today could normally be expected to die of cancer, taking into consideration a 10-year latency period, about 16-18 percent of the surviving population would die of cancer.
Table 2

Estimated Cancer Deaths per Million Survivors, Using 1980 BEIR Risk Equations and Projection Models (all ages combined).


The most noticeable oncological effect would be that of leukemia. The excess risk would be relatively high compared with the normal risk, and it would occur within 2-30 years after nuclear war. However, the total number of deaths from radiation-induced leukemia would be large.
Radiation-induced solid tumors tend to occur at ages at which such cancers normally occur; that is, radiation causes more cancer deaths to occur, but not at earlier ages than usual. Because most cancer deaths occur among the elderly, the effect of a 5 percent excess mortality or 17 percent increase in cancer mortality would not have a marked effect on the average life span.3
Much less refined calculations (based on the risk factor estimated by UNSCEAR, 1.25 × 10-4 per rad) give practically the same increase in cancer risk, namely 4.3 percent excess mortality.
This calculation was made for the oncological effects of local fallout on the population. Other scenarios for other areas would produce different values. However, in view of the generalized character of the assumptions, it seems that there would be no major modifications in the conclusions drawn.
As far as the global fallout is concerned, the estimates have been based on the general assumption of a total bomb yield of 10,000 Mt. The mean effective dose equivalent to the population of the world would be 0.1 Gy per person. The collective dose could be found by multiplying the number of individuals exposed by the mean dose. The distribution of the fission products would be nonuniform and would result in the following doses: bone marrow, 17 rad; bone cells, 19 rad; lung, 16 rad; other sensitive organs, 10 rad.
The risk of cancer according to the ICRP data for an individual would be as follows: leukemias 3.5 × 10-4; osteosarcomas, 1.5 × 10-4; lung cancer, 3.0 × 10-4; cancer of other organs, 20.5 × 10-4.
The rate of natural occurrence of cancer in the population of an industrialized country is 15 percent. The global fallout of fission products from blasts of 10,000 Mt would increase the cancer rate in the surviving world population by slightly more than 1 percent.
Chazov and colleagues4 presented the estimates of late radiation consequences for the population in the form of the expected incidence of malignant tumors developed in various organs and tissues with a fatal outcome. As one can see from Table 3, local radioactive fallout can give rise to malignant tumors induced by ionizing radiation that is expected to kill 21 million; of these, approximately 3 million will die of leukemia, 3.6 million of mammary gland cancer, and more than 4.6 million of thyroid gland cancer.
Table 3

Expected Incidence of Malignant Tumors with Fatal Outcome as a Result of the Effect of Local and Tropospheric Fallout.


The risk factors normally used by the ICRP are based on fatal cancers only. In view of the reduction in the efficiency of health services to be expected in a postwar world, the inclusion of normally nonfatal cancers might be relevant. This leads to an approximate doubling of the risk, owing mainly to the large contribution from thyroid cancer. Note, however, that if the risk factors are used that include the normally nonfatal component—which might to some extent become fatal under postwar conditions—this is then at variance with the usual definition of effective dose, which refers to the induction of fatal cancer.
In summary, a general nuclear war would presumably expose populations of industrial and densely populated areas around the world to levels not less than 1.0 Gy.3 The rest of the world would be exposed to delayed fallout. Based on a total explosive force of 10,000 Mt, survival in the target areas would be about 50 percent. It might be expected that there would be 100 million survivors in each of the target areas of North America, Western Europe, the USSR, and various scattered smaller areas. About 400 million survivors would be irradiated with doses leading to a 17 percent increase of the present cancer incidence, from 15 percent to about 18 percent. This means that about 12 million cases of cancer due to radiation would arise in target areas. In the rest of the world an increase of about 1 percent from 15 percent to about 15.2 percent might lead to some 7 million extra cases. Cancer induction would thus add to the suffering of the postwar world. The general health detriment implicit in such an increase in cancer frequency would, under ordinary circumstances, be regarded as gravely significant.

[MisterVeritis]

Coupla more questions...but first:

What questions did you have?

[Agent Zero]

Oh. I forgot the questions. @MisterVeritis

a. If Trump drops a nuke on North Korea, won't it still kill all of South Korea? Does he, or you, care?

b. Regardless, doesn't this shoot your entire made up theory down?

https://www.nap.edu/read/11282/chapter/8

Radiation has both acute and latent health effects. Acute effects include radiation sickness or death resulting from high doses of radiation (greater than 1 sievert [Sv], or 100 rems) delivered over a few days. The principal latent effect is cancer. Estimates of latent cancer fatalities are based largely on results of the long-term follow-up of the survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan. The results of these studies have been interpreted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP)¹ in terms of a lifetime risk coefficient of 0.05 per sievert (5 × 10⁻⁴ per rem), with no threshold.² For the present study, acute radiation effects were estimated by both DTRA and LLNL; latent cancer deaths were estimated only by LLNL.

The computer models used by DTRA and LLNL were developed primarily to estimate effects on military personnel rather than for civilian populations. Thus, there is no consideration of the presumed greater sensitivity to radiation of the very young and the elderly. Also, there is no consideration of the sensitivity of the fetus. From the experience in Japan, it is known that substantial effects on the fetus can occur, and these effects depend on the age (stage of organogenesis) of the fetus.³ One such effect is mental retardation. The transfer of radio nuclides to the fetus resulting from their intake by the mother is another pathway of concern. Radiation dose coefficients for this pathway have been published by the ICRP.⁴
Another long-term health effect that is not considered here is the induction of eye cataracts. This effect has been noted in the Japanese studies and also in a study of the Chernobyl cleanup workers.⁵
Compared to the fatalities from prompt, acute fallout and latent cancer fatalities, the absolute number of effects on the fetus is small and is captured within the bounds of the uncertainty. The number of eye cataracts, based on the experience of the Chernobyl workers, is not small. The occurrence of eye cataracts in the now aging Japanese population is several tens of percent among those more heavily exposed.
Finally, there has been a recently confirmed finding that the Japanese survivors are experiencing a statistically significant increase in the occurrence of a number of noncancer diseases,⁶ including hypertension, myocardial infarction, thyroid disease, cataracts, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, and, in females, uterine myoma. There has been a negative response in the occurrence of glaucoma. A nominal risk coefficient for the seven categories of disease is about 0.9 Sv⁻¹ (0.009 rem⁻¹). The largest fraction of the risk is due to thyroid disease.

Thermal Radiation from Underground Bursts

Thermal radiation may make fire a collateral effect of the use of surface burst, airburst, or shallow-penetrating nuclear weapons. The potential for fire damage depends on the nature of the burst and the surroundings. If there is a fireball, fires will be a direct result of the absorption of thermal radiation. Fires can also result as an indirect effect of the destruction caused by a blast wave, which can, for example, upset stoves and furnaces, rupture gas lines, and so on. A shallow-penetrating nuclear weapon of, say, 100 to 300 kilotons at a 3 to 5 meter depth of burst will generate a substantial fireball that will not fade as fast as the air blast.
Detonation of a nuclear weapon in a forested area virtually guarantees fire damage at ranges greater than the range of air-blast damage. If the burst is in a city environment where buildings are closely spaced, say less than 10 to 15 meters, fires will spread from burning buildings to adjacent ones. In Germany and Japan in World War II, safe separation distance ranged from about 30 to 50 feet (for a 50 percent probability of spread), but for modern urban areas this distance could be larger. This type of damage is less likely to occur in suburban areas where buildings are more widely separated.

Page 75Suggested Citation:"6 Human and Environmental Effects." National Research Council. 2005. Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11282.×


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Once started, fire spread continues until the fire runs out of fuel or until the distance to the next source of fuel is too great. Thus, fire caused directly by thermal ignitions, fire caused indirectly by disruptive blast waves, and spread of fire are all potential, but uncertain, effects.

c. Trump promised to "totally destroy" North Korea; ostensibly by nuclear weapon. That leaves out the MOP, right?

[MisterVeritis]

Oh. I forgot the questions. @MisterVeritis
a. If Trump drops a nuke on North Korea, won't it still kill all of South Korea? Does he, or you, care?

No. Not even if we used a hundred weapons or so.

You need to determine your assumptions. I cannot imagine you know how.

You had another question but you failed to ask it.

[Tahuyaman]

It appears that you want a conservative echo chamber.

Can you possibly try participating in threads instead of immaturely dishing out insults and bad faith posts?

Are you a real adult human being?

[Tahuyaman]

Oh. I forgot the questions. @MisterVeritis

a. If Trump drops a nuke on North Korea, won't it still kill all of South Korea? Does he, or you, care?

Did all of Japan die when they were nuked twice?

[Kalkin]

.
It appears that you want a liberal echo chamber.

He already has one: his skull. Lots of empty space for the echos to reverberate there.