Environmental Effects

Nuclear weapons have resulted in
harmful radioactive contamination
of water, land, and air

Even just a single nuclear explosion will add harmful nuclear radiation to the air, water and land, destroy local ecologies, and increase disruption of the climate. Yet if a number of nuclear weapons were ever launched, there would be a whole global environmental catastrophe, resulting in many millions of deaths and the upheaval of all life.

Any nuclear explosion, including a nuclear test, spreads nuclear radiation into the air, water, land, and food. It is incredibly toxic to the environment, and thus extremely harmful to all people. Other environmental dangers come from the wastes of nuclear-weapon processing and the leakages of nuclear waste storage.

Surely, if we consider the safety and security of nuclear weapons, along with the leakage problems of nuclear waste storage, there is no doubt that nuclear weapons are an extreme environmental danger, and as a result, they are a great threat to human health and human lives. In fact, there are no good uses of nuclear weapons. There is nothing positive in them at all. Their use, and even their very existence, is an extreme threat to humanity and the whole global environment.

Accidents and Lost weapons

Furthermore, with all of these drastic environmental and health dangers involved with nuclear weapons, we have mixed in here the possibilities of nuclear accidents, launch accidents, and lost or stolen nuclear weapons. Between 1950 and 1968, many hundreds of significant accidents occurred involving nuclear weapons. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never found.

A Threat to our Environment & Life

In a simulation study of the potential global impacts of nuclear blasts, even a small-scale regional nuclear war, using less than one percent of all nuclear weapons, would devastate regional ecosystems, disrupt the global climate, and cause a Global Famine, due to its impacts on climate, agriculture, food supplies, and health. And these dreadful impacts would last for many decades and generations.

What is a 'limited nuclear war'?

According to US Defense Policy, a 'limited' nuclear war can involve 100 nuclear weapons

Yet the Environmental Impacts from
100 nuclear bombs would be devastating
to humanity and all life on the planet.

Here are the estimated impacts
from this 'limited nuclear war' –

● 6.6 million metric tons of black carbon aerosol particles would go into the upper atmosphere.

● Global average surface temperatures would cool by 1.25°C initially, with greater cooling over large areas of North America and Europe, resulting in the coldest global temperatures of the last 1,000 years.

● Decreased global precipitation, especially over temperate grain-growing regions in North America and Europe, and a larger reduction in the Asian summer monsoon.

● Ozone losses of 20%-50% over populated areas.

● Devastating impacts on ecosystems and crop production – leading to a nuclear famine that would threaten around two billion people with starvation and disease.

A limited nuclear war?
Should that be part of our 'Defense' Strategy?

More information details...

Environmental Impacts from nuclear weapons and nuclear war

How a nuclear war would cause a Global Famine

Environmental Damages
from War & Militaries

Overall, any war will cause environmental damage; as for example, bombs will destroy ecologies and landscapes, and militaries will trample through and pollute natural areas. All militaries create a great amount of environmental pollution, emit large amounts of carbon and contribute to global warming.

For example, the U.S. military is one of the biggest polluters on Earth. It consumes about 17 billion dollars of oil per year, and in just one month in 2008 the U.S. military used over a million barrels of oil in its war with Iraq. It is also estimated that over the past 20 years the military has emitted over a billion metric tons of greenhouse gases. Moreover, a motivation behind some wars is to control the ownership and distribution of oil.

Here are some information webpages
on the Environmental Damages
from War & Nuclear Weapons →

● Wars threaten the Environment
● How Militarism Fuels the Climate Crisis
● War is Not Green
● Damages from war & nuclear weapons
● U.S. Military is World’s Biggest Polluter
● Fact-sheet on Cleanup and Waste
● Problem of Nuclear Waste Storage
● The negative effects of war & weapons
● Climate threat from nuclear bombs
● Video – Nuclear War & Climate-change
● Video w/Martin Sheen – War & Environment
● Video – Environmental damages from Wars
● Dangers of Chemical Weapons