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Interactive Edition of the Nuclear Notebook
Lasrick writes The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just launched a very cool interactive graphic to go with their famed Nuclear Notebook, the feature that tracks the world's nuclear arsenals. Now you can see at a glance who has nuclear weapons, when they got them, and how those numbers compare to each other. A short introductory video gives some background on the success of the Notebook, which has been tracking nukes since 1987.
The tiny fraction can still wipe out the human race
They could certainly wipe out many urban population centers, and kill billions of people. They would also cause major economic disruption, and a collapse in trade that may kill billions more. But wipe out? No way. There are plenty of people living self sufficient lives in remote areas. There are many more people that have food reserves that they can live on until agriculture is revived. Many areas of the world, including most of the Southern Hemisphere, would not even be targeted in any reasonable scenario. Nuclear arsenals are much smaller than they were decades ago. There are far fewer warheads, and they are smaller and cleaner. A nuclear war with today's arsenals is not going to wipe out the human race.
Ban nuclear weapons, and you bring back the World Wars. WWI left some 38 million dead, WWII killed around 70 million. As grim and pointless as the proxy wars of the Cold War were, they pale in comparison to those numbers. The Korean War left maybe 3.5 million dead, Vietnam maybe 4 million. I won't pretend to offer statistics for the various other third world conflicts between 1945 and the 1990s, but at least those two wars should show that they're on a completely different scale, even with the technological advancements over WWII. There was a lot of dumb, unneccessary fighting going on during that time period, but that's pretty much true of any time period.
I like nukes. They end and prevent world wars. We currently live in the most peaceful time in human history, despite having a larger population than any other time. That's got to tell you that we're getting better. Ban nukes, and we lose all that progress.