Nuclear Weapons : The Side Effects Of Nuclear Radiation

The nuclear bomb has been a weapon in the United States arsenal since the end of world war two, where the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From that day on the way wars were fought has changed forever. Soon after the bomb droppings on the two Japanese cities a race began between the United States and the Soviet Union named the cold war. The two major powers of the world at that time would threaten each other with nuclear war. The cold war ended because the Soviet Union could no longer economically support communism. Then latter on the United States invaded Iran under suspicion that they had nuclear weapons. Years later may people have wondered in nuclear weapons are necessity. Is it really beneficial to whatever nation that possess it, or is it a disaster just waiting to happen? Debates continue to this day on whether nuclear weapons should be against the Geneva Convention. Does the possibility of a nuclear winter with the annihilation of all mankind outweigh the reason for keeping them for protection and military dominance?

Atom bombs can stop a war before it even happens. Atom bombs can cause mass destruction in a blink of an eye. The air blast of the atom bomb can knock down houses, trees, and throw cars. The thermal radiation is released in a flash and instantly causes third degree burns. After all that, the radiation penetrates through the body and causes severe damage.

The use of the atomic bomb in world war 2 is probably one of the most controversial and infamous act of war that humanity has committed in its history. The weapon is so deadly that it hasn't been used in any war since. The nuclear weapon has caused so many problems after its creation and use. It has caused a nuclear scare which reached its pinnacle in the cuban missile crisis. Although the sacre is still prevalent today with America's recent involvement in the Syrian crisis. Some countries have even got rid of their nukes and encourage other countries to get rid of theirs to get rid of the fear. Nuclear deterrence is sucha big deal that countries are afraid of nukes, but don't want to get rid of theirs. These nukes can have devastating effects

As you can see from Chernobyl, and other places, nuclear explosives are no joke, and could back fire and explode at any moment. With the strength that they are built with, that could be a problem, especially if there are others nearby, which could cause a chain reaction, or total antihalation. The thing is, with more and more nuclear bombs being produced, and the more easy they are becoming to make, people like Isis could get ahold of them, and they could use nuclear bombs as weapons, which is a scary thought. This is why I think nuclear bombs should be left out of wars, and kept on 24 hour super secure lockdown.

The explosion of one nuclear bomb can cause mass devastation by increasing the radiation levels of our planet. There is a natural amount of radiation on earth that is in fact good for plant life, such as the radiation that produces light that allows plants to photosynthesize. However, radiation that occurs from nuclear warheads results in cellular mutations and the weakening of plants (Robock and Toon, 70). For example, in 1986, an uncontrolled release of radiation occurred at Chernobyl, a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. This radiation ended up destroying over half of the plant life in that region. Animals can also be affected by high levels of radiation. Animals can develop gene mutations, increasing the chance of developing cancer which

The initial attack of a nuclear weapon would be catastrophic. The blast of these bombs would cause massive destruction. City areas would be completely destroyed by overpressures of 5 psi. These explosions can produce around an overpressure of 50 psi. If an explosion occurs above ground, the blast wave is reflected off the ground, causing a second wave to follow the first. Behind the blast wave comes the thermal radiation; two pulses of thermal radiation emerge from the explosion. The first pulse consists of radiation in the ultraviolet region, and the second pulse carries around ninety-nine percent of the thermal radiation energy. Along with the thermal radiation is the fireball, an extremely hot and spherical mass of air, which occurs in less than one millionth of a second of detonation and continues to grow in size. The fireball will grow and cool down, then the vapors condense to create a cloud containing solid particles of the weapons debris. This cloud is widely know as “The Mushroom Cloud”. In some conditions, the many fires created by the explosion can turn into a massive fire known as a “Firestorm”.

Nuclear bombs cause victims of the attack more damage than is necessary, as significant locations, natural regions, and the physical and mental states of individuals would all suffer from the effects. All buildings caught in the blast, including those significant to the country’s history, religions, and people will be rendered unrecognizable. The surrounding

The instant a one megaton nuclear bomb is dropped everyone within a six mile radius of the drop site will be instantly vaporized. The people will literally not have known what hit them, because they will have vanished before the electrical signals from their sense organs can reach their brains. These are the people who are lucky, when it comes to a nuclear bombing. Those within a ten mile radius will have instantly become blind, and people even further away would become blind if they were looking in the same direction as the bomb. People thousands of miles away will die from gamma ray radiation, because the radiation will have destroyed their cellular structure, leading to painful bleeding from every orifice in their bodies (Hoffman). The

Although some might argue that nuclear weapons are good for the world, nuclear bombs have proven to be a problem because many countries choose to abuse them and neglect them.

Even though nuclear power plants threaten the health and safety of many people, nuclear energy is being used in other ways as well, which may be even more dangerous. In 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in order to end World War II. This event was the only time a nuclear weapon was used in the history. During the first two to four months, approximately 90,000 to 166,000 people died as a result. Wilfred Burchett quoted, “When you arrive in Hiroshima, you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can neither see hardly a building nor a standing human. All of them are collapsed on the ground.” Yet, having seen the destructive effects of nuclear weapons, the United States currently still owns more than 7000 nuclear weapons, in which half of them could be launched in less than ten minutes. Russia is believed to be a holder of the same number or more nuclear weapons as well. The United States and Russia are the two countries with the most nuclear weapons, but in total, the number adds up to around 19,000 worldwide. Many people do not give a thought about this dangerous situation, since these weapons are

The last World War (WW2) was the only war that actually used nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are categorized into two major types of bombs. The first is called an atomic bomb and it can kill thousands of people, but the hydrogen bomb is even worse and can kill ten times the number of living things. When a nuclear bomb explodes, it either releases uranium or plutonium atoms, smoke, dust, and soot. As this happens, the bombs pollute the ground, food, water and air. When the chemicals get into large and small bodies of water, it can destroy the ecosystem and hurt people who eat food grown or raised in the area. Even when there is wind, it is still dangerous. The wind can carry the chemicals which travel for miles and can be destructive to habitats. Nuclear bombs can kill living things almost instantly, but if the people near the explosion don’t die, they usually suffer from radiation, very severe burns, flying glass and deadly debris. When the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan and Nagasaki, Japan in

An explosion is known to cause cancer in nearly everyone present for the explosion, and the cancer can affect almost every part of the body. “Dose responses are significant for cancers of the oral cavity, esophagus, stomach, colon, liver, lung, nonmelanocytic skin, female breast, ovary, urinary bladder, brain/central nervous system, and thyroid.” (Douple) Use of the atomic bomb to give thousands upon thousands of people cancer is completely unjustified, and cannot be condoned now that scientists know the extent of the cancer associated with atom bombs. The bomb can also cause a host of health conditions other than cancer as well, such as “cataracts… Thyroid Diseases and Hyperparathyroidism… cardiovascular issues… [and] anxiety.” (Douple) In addition, children in utero can develop neurological diseases, a high risk of cancer, and genetic mutations. Not only does the bomb cause cancer, it causes all of these other conditions that are apparent even before signs of cancer begin showing up. Recently, North Korea has threatened to nuke the U.S. and/or North Korea’s other enemies multiple times. If they were to attempt a bombing, the U.S. would most likely not bomb them with nuclear weapons, but with classic war strategies instead, because we have learned our lesson from the first use of the atomic bomb. "I think that's

The Nuclear Weapons are not bad. It is the people who use them that are the real evil! The Nuclear weapon is just a tool (Rethinking). This is partly true, but we live in a world where not everyone has the same morals. There are corrupt and bad people in powerful positions in the world. To some people firing a nuclear weapon for their personal gain is the easy thing to do. But if the person did not have access to them, then the problem would never arise. But unfortunately there are 9 countries in the world with at least 10 nuclear weapons. This world rarely faces a problem that has the potential to kill off humanity. But Nuclear weapons have this potential. There are currently 17,000, known bombs (How). If for some reason, whether if it were WW3 or something else, if the world fired all these off strategically at big cities, easily over half of the world’s population would be killed off almost instantly. And the pandemonium wouldn’t stop there. Governments would collapse and without rule the survivors would soon be on their own. The spread of soot would be so drastic it would change climates, and drastically speed up global warming (Jha). The radiation from the bombs explosion would be in higher concentration and would slowly diffuse across continents to areas of low radiation. This would cause dead zones where most animals, humans being one,

As previously stated, the reason two superpowers like Russia and the United States long for nuclear weaponry is down to the fact that frankly, they are paranoid. If you can stockpile most of the nuclear warheads in the world then surely nobody could ever harm your country. This is certainly not the case. By having so many dangerous weapons you are not only a bigger threat to terrorists but also a huge threat to your countries morality. If the leaders of a country say that it is ok to use nuclear weapons to threaten enemies then what’s to say that civilians do not do the same thing to a smaller scale? In the beginning atomic bombs were created to end the war and to save numerous amounts of lives. By this, I mean that multitudinous lives were saved due to the fact that when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima the Japanese surrendered straight away. If they hadn’t surrendered then the war possibly would have gone on for a lot longer. In contrast to this, look at what has become of the nuclear weapons now. Instead of saving lives, atomic bombs are now kept with the intention of unnecessary mass murder. What makes the monsters that enforce the use of nuclear weaponry any different from Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin? Even though the atomic bombs are not in use at this moment, anyone or any government in possession of these weapons have the intention to inflict large amounts of pain on vast

In August 1945, two atomic bombs ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and over 200,000 people were killed immediately (ctbot.org, 2013). The principle of atomic bomb is based on the nuclear fission, which is the process that generates huge amount of energy. The modern development of nuclear technology enables fission weapons to be more powerful with a smaller size, and much easier to deliver than earlier types. However, the nuclear radiation produced by fission weapons are highly radioactive and long-lived. This would negative impact humans and the environment. Furthermore, the purposes of the uses of fission weapons in different countries will be considered and discussed.