Robert Cringely reminds everyone why Putin is unlikely to use nuclear weapons:
The simple lesson here is that nobody is going to have time to move out of the way of tactical nukes.
Source: I, Cringely
If you are wondering what the damage of such a limited nuclear war would look like, the Chernobyl nuclear accident from 1986 provides a pretty good example, since that disaster site lies between Kiev and Russia and Belarus.[To the right] you’ll find a map showing the Cesium 137 fallout from Chernobyl. If you want to know what bombing Kiev would do, just move the Chernobyl spot down and a little to the right and see where the blotches fall.
But tactical nukes aren’t a nuclear accident, you say, the map would be different. Yes, it would be BIGGER. Chernobyl melted DOWN while bomb and missile and artillery fallout bounce UP into the atmosphere and spread much farther.
Most of the fallout of a Kiev attack, in fact, would land in Russia. The cities of Bryansk (427,000 population), Kaluuga (338,000), Kursk (409,000), Orel (324,000), and Tula (468,000) would all be hit, not by weapon strikes, but by fallout. That’s just under two million people exposed in those five cities, not counting folks in the countryside between.
The smear of toxic effects from a battleground is amplified by technology. The arrows and ballistae used at Masada are little more than desirable archaeological artifacts and collectors’ items, as are the bullets found on many American Civil War battlefields. Some categories may be reused, but they are not still in action, as it were, days, weeks, and even years later.
But do collectors try for today’s weapons? Only the foolish collector. Even those weapons from World War I, primarily hand grenades, are still found and are dangerous. World War II bombs dropped by the warring air fleets are still found in cities today and are a menace, as are certain of the shipwrecks.
The amplification of the nuclear age has made the dangers less obvious, more potent, and longer lived. Along with nuclear bombs there are also depleted uranium tank rounds littering battlegrounds, radioactive for how long? That link notes the US Army has lost its supplier of such ammunition. This all along side relatively mundane grenades and land and sea mines, waiting to kill decades into the future.
Hell, I wonder if there are drones being built to “crash” and then wait for a booby to come along and collect it. Don’t be a booby.
In a very real sense, even if Putin loses this war, he’s already inflicted decades of future pain, death, and suffering through his purification of those he’d prefer to think of as his people. “Putin’s War” will be, and is, a terrible curse. If he launches nukes, according to Cringely, then he’ll ensure his own people share the suffering.
