Additional policy implications come from the risk of permanent harm to human civilization. If society takes this risk seriously, then it should go to great lengths to reduce the risk. It could stockpile food to avoid nuclear famine, or develop new agricultural paradigms that can function during nuclear winter.
And it could certainly ratchet up its efforts to improve relations between nuclear weapon states. These are things that we can do right now even while we await more detailed research on nuclear winter risk.
Against that backdrop, I hope you’ll be entertained and informed by this fictional account of the world thrust into Nuclear Winter. God help us if it ever comes to pass.
Contents
Real-World News Excerpts
Epigraph
Nuclear Winter II
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part II
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part III
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part IV
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part V
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Part VI
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
THANK YOU FOR READING NUCLEAR WINTER: ARMAGEDDON!
What’s coming next from Bobby Akart?
Other Works by Amazon Charts Top 25 Author Bobby Akart
Real-World News Excerpts
INDIA SUFFERS WORLD’S BIGGEST BLACKOUT AFTER POWER OUTAGE
~ Associated Press, July 31, 1912
India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest-ever blackout.
Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde blamed the new crisis on states taking more than their allotted share of electricity.
"Everyone overdraws from the grid. Just this morning I held a meeting with power officials from the states and I gave directions that states which overdraw should be punished. We have given instructions that their power supply could be cut," he told reporters.
"The situation is very grave. We are doing everything to restore power," the Power Minister said.
TEXAS POWER GRID WAS MINUTES AWAY FROM TOTAL COLLAPSE
~ KHOU*11, Houston, Texas, February 24, 2021
Last week, the Texas power grid was “4 minutes 37 seconds away from a total collapse,” meaning a statewide blackout, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)officials said at an emergency board meeting Wednesday. Had it happened, Texas would have been in the dark for weeks if not longer.
“This was a devastating event," one official said in his opening statements. "Power is essential to civilization."
ERCOT officials said controlled outages were implemented to prevent a statewide blackout, saying the storm was unlike anything Texas has experienced before.
Three-hundred and fifty-six generators were knocked offline during the storm event.
ISRAEL IS PREPARING TO ATTACK IRAN’S NUCLEAR SITES
~ Fox News via American Military News, March 5, 2021
In his first sit-down interview with an American news outlet, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Friday that Israel has updated its target list and is preparing to strike Iranian nuclear sites if the world does not act to stop Iran’s nuclear development. Gantz said Israel has found numerous targets in Iran that would slow its nuclear development if attacked.
Gantz said Israel has identified thousands of rocket sites targets along the Israeli border with Lebanon, including many that are in civilian areas.
NUCLEAR WINTER WOULD THREATEN NEARLY EVERYONE ON EARTH
~ Science News, August 28, 2019
If the United States and Russia waged an all-out nuclear war, much of the land in the Northern Hemisphere would be below freezing in the summertime, with the growing season slashed by nearly 90 percent in some areas, according to a Rutgers-led study. Indeed, death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth's 7.7 billion people, according to a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.
Lead author Joshua Coupe and other scientists used a modern climate model to simulate the climatic effects of an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Such a war could send 150 million tons of black smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas into the lower and upper atmosphere, where it could linger for months to years and block sunlight.
"This means that we have much more confidence in the climate response to a large-scale nuclear war," Coupe said. "There really would be a nuclear winter with catastrophic consequences."
In both the new and old models, a nuclear winter occurs as soot (black carbon) in the upper atmosphere blocks sunlight and causes global average surface temperatures to plummet by more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit in some cases.
Epigraph
In any large-scale nuclear exchange between the superpowers, global environmental changes sufficient to cause the extinction of a major fraction of the plant and animal species on the earth are likely. In that event, the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens cannot be excluded.
~ Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Stanford biologist, 1983
If the greenhouse effect is a blanket in which we wrap ourselves to keep warm, nuclear winter kicks off the blanket.
~ Carl Sagan, Planetary Scientist and Author
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
~ Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
~ J. Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and Father of the Atom Bomb
Nuclear Winter II
Armageddon
In 1961, President Kennedy issued a letter to all American citizens, warning them about the threat of nuclear Armageddon. His solution was to build fallout shelters. The letter read, in part:
“We owe that kind of insurance to our families and to our country. The time to start is now. In the coming months, I hope to let every citizen know what steps he can take without delay to protect his family in case of an attack. I know you would not want to do less.”
Prologue
Friday, October 25
North American
