Spark

Spark
1NC
The narrative of nuclear extinction is a tale of the power of the
human psyche we are compelled to say that nuclear war will
be the end of human life in order to assuage our own fears and
guilts, when the reality is that theres just no basis for that
claim
Martin, 82 (Brian Martin, Professor of Science Technology and Society at the
University of Wollongon, International Director and President of the Whistleblowers,
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, Journal of Peace Research,
No 4, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82jpr.html)
Here I outline a number of possible reasons for exaggeration of the effects of nuclear war and emphasis on worst
cases. While the importance of most of these reasons may be disputed, I feel it is necessary to raise them for
discussion. The points raised are not meant to lay blame on anyone, but rather to help ensure that peace
movement theory and strategy are founded on sound beliefs. By understanding our motivations and emotional
responses, some insight may be gained into how better to struggle against nuclear war.(a) Exaggeration to justify
inaction. For many people, nuclear war is seen as such a terrible event, and as something that people can do so
little about, that they can see no point in taking action on peace issues and do not even think about the danger.
For those who have never been concerned or taken action on the issue, accepting
an extreme account of the effects of nuclear war can provide conscious or
unconscious justification for this inaction . In short, one removes from one's awareness
the upsetting topic of nuclear war, and justifies this psychological denial by
believing the worst. This suggests two things. First, it may be more effective in mobilising people against
nuclear war to describe the dangers in milder terms. Some experiments have shown that strong accounts of danger
- for example, of smoking[17] - can be less effective than weaker accounts in changing behaviour. Second, the
peace movement should devote less attention to the dangers of nuclear war and more attention to what people can
do to oppose it in their day-to-day lives. (b) Fear of death. Although death receives a large amount of attention
in the media, the consideration of one's own death has been one of the most taboo topics in western culture, at
Nuclear war as an issue raises the topic insistently, and unconsciously
least until recently.[18]
many people may prefer to avoid the issue for this reason. The fear of and
repression of conscious thoughts about personal death may also lead to an
unconscious tendency to exaggerate the effects of nuclear war. One's own personal
death - the end of consciousness - can be especially threatening in the context of others
remaining alive and conscious. Somehow the death of everyone may be less
threatening. Robert Lifton[19] argues that children who learn at roughly the same age about both personal
death and nuclear holocaust may be unable to separate the two concepts, and as a result equate death with
annihilation, with undesirable consequences for coping individually with life and working collectively against nuclear
war. Another factor here may be a feeling of potential guilt at the thought of surviving
and having done nothing, or not enough or not the right thing, to prevent the deaths of others. Again, the idea that
Exaggeration to
nearly everyone will die in nuclear war does not raise such disturbing possibilities. (c)
stimulate action. When people concerned about nuclear war describe the threat to others, in many cases this
does not trigger any action. An understandable response by the concerned people is to expand the threat until
action is triggered. This is valid procedure in many physiological and other domains. If a person does not heed a call
of 'Fire!', shouting louder may do the trick. But in many instances of intellectual argument this procedure is not
appropriate. In the case of nuclear war it seems clear that the threat, even when stated very conservatively, is
already past the point of sufficient stimulation. This means that what is needed is not an expansion of the threat but
rather some avenue which allows and encourages people to take action to challenge the threat. A carefully thought
out and planned strategy for challenging the war system, a strategy which makes sense to uncommitted people
and which can easily accommodate their involvement, is one such avenue.[20] (d) Planning and defeatism. People
may identify thinking about and planning for an undesirable future - namely the occurrence and aftermath of
nuclear war - with accepting its inevitability (defeatism) or even actually wanting it. By exaggerating the effects of
nuclear war and emphasising the worst possible case, there becomes no post-war future at all to prepare for, and so
this difficulty does not arise. The limitations of this response are apparent in cases other than nuclear war. Surely it
is not defeatism to think about what will happen when a labour strike is broken, when a social revolution is
destroyed (as in Chile) or turns bad (as in the Soviet Union), or when political events develop in an expected though
unpleasant way (as Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s). Since, I would argue, some sort of nuclear war is virtually
inevitable unless radical changes occur in industrialised societies, it is realism rather than defeatism to think about
and take account of the likely aftermath of nuclear war. An effective way to deal with the feeling or charge of
defeatism is to prepare for the political aftermath of nuclear war in ways which reduce the likelihood of nuclear war
occurring in the first place. This can be done for example by developing campaigns for social defence, peace
conversion and community self-management in ways which serve both as preparation to resist political repression
in time of nuclear crisis or war, and as positive steps to build alternatives now to war-linked institutions.[21] (e)
Exaggeration to justify concern (I). People involved with any issue or activity tend to
exaggerate its importance so as to justify and sustain their concern and involvement.
Nuclear war is only one problem among many pressing problems in the world, which include starvation,
poverty, exploitation, racial and sexual inequality and repressive governments. By concentrating on peace issues,
An unconscious tendency to
one must by necessity give less attention to other pressing issues.
exaggerate the effects of nuclear war has the effect of reducing conscious or unconscious
guilt at not doing more on other issues. Guilt of this sort is undoubtedly common, especially among
those who are active on social issues and who become familiar with the wide range of social problems needing
attention. The irony is that those who feel guilt for this reason tend to be those who have least cause to feel so. One
politically effective way to overcome this guilt may be to strengthen and expand links between anti-war struggles
and struggles for justice, equality and the like. (f) Exaggeration to justify concern (II). Spokespeople and apologists
for the military establishment tend to emphasise conservative estimates of the effects of nuclear war. They also are
primarily concerned with military and economic 'survival' of society so as to confront further threats to the state.
One response to this orientation by people favouring non-military approaches to world order and peace is to
assume that the military-based estimates are too low, and hence to exaggerate the effects and emphasise worst
cases. The emotional underpinning for this response seems to be something like this: 'if a militarist thinks nuclear
war will kill 100 million people and still wants more nuclear weapons, and because I am totally opposed to nuclear
war or plans for waging it, therefore nuclear war surely would kill 500 million people or everyone on earth.' This sort
of unconscious reasoning confuses one's estimate of the size of a threat with one's attitude towards it. A more
tenable conclusion is that the value structures of the militarist and the peace activist are sufficiently different to
favour very different courses of action when considering the same evidence. The assumption that a given item of
information will lead to a uniform emotional response or conclusion about its implications is false. The primary
factor underlying differences in response to the threat of nuclear war is not differences in assessments of
devastation, but political differences.
Exaggeration of nuclear extinction causes us to ignore rational

analysis we constantly exclude relevant factors like low
direct casualties, civil defense, and short conflict times in
order to justify our need to make extinction claims
Socol, 11 (Yehoshua (Ph.D.), an inter-disciplinary physicist, is an expert in
electro-optics, high-energy physics and applications, and material science and
Moshe Yanovskiy, Jan 2, Nuclear Proliferation and Democracy,
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/nuclear_proliferation_and_demo.html)
Nuclear proliferation should no longer be treated as an unthinkable nightmare; it is likely to be the future reality.
Nuclear weapons have been acquired not only by an extremely poor per capita but large country such as India, but
also by even poorer and medium-sized nations such as Pakistan and North Korea. One could also mention South
Africa, which successfully acquired a nuclear arsenal despite economic sanctions (the likes of which have not yet
been imposed on Iran). It is widely believed that sanctions and rhetoric will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons and that many countries, in the Middle East and beyond, will act accordingly (see, e.g., recent Heritage
report). Nuclear Warfare -- Myths And Facts The direct consequences of the limited use of nuclear
weapons -- especially low-yield devices most likely to be in the hands of non-state actors or irresponsible
governments -- would probably not be great enough to bring about significant geopolitical
upheavals. Casualties from a single 20-KT nuclear device are estimated [1] at about 25,000
fatalities with a similar number of injured, assuming a rather unfortunate scenario (the center of a large city, with
minimal warning). Scaling the above toll to larger devices or to a larger number of devices is less than linear. For
example, it has been estimated that it would take as many as eighty devices of 20-KT yield each to cause 300,000
civilian fatalities in German cities (a result actually achieved by Allied area attacks, or carpet-bombings, during the
Second World War). A single 1-MT device used against Detroit has been estimated by U.S. Congress OTA to result in
about 220,000 fatalities. It is anticipated that well-prepared civil defense measures, based on rather simple
presently known techniques, would decrease these numbers by maybe an order of magnitude
(as will be discussed later). There is little doubt that a nation determined to survive and with a strong
sense of its own destiny would not succumb to such losses. It is often argued that the fallout
effects of even the limited use of nuclear weapons would be worldwide and would last for generations. This is an
exaggeration. The following facts speak for themselves. -- In Japan, as assessed by REFR, less than
1,000 excess cancer cases (i.e., above the natural occurrence) were recorded in over 100,000
survivors over the past sixty years -- compared with about 110,000 immediate fatalities in the two atomic
bombings. No clinical or even sub-clinical effects were discovered in the survivors' offspring. -- In the Chernobyl
area, as assessed by IAEA, only fifteen cancer deaths can be directly attributed to fallout radiation. No radiation-
related increase in congenital formations was recorded. Nuclear Conflict -- Possible Scenarios With reference to a
possible regional nuclear conflict between a rogue state and a democratic one, the no-winner (mutual assured
destruction) scenario is probably false. An analysis by Anthony Cordesman, et al. regarding a possible Israel-Iran
nuclear conflict estimated that while Israel might survive an Iranian nuclear blow, Iran would certainly not survive
as an organized society. Even though the projected casualties cited in that study seem to us overstated, especially
Due to the extreme high intensity ("above-conventional") of
as regards Israel, the conclusion rings true.
nuclear conflict, it is nearly certain that such a war, no matter its outcome, would not last for
years, as we have become accustomed to in current low-intensity conflicts. Rather, we should anticipate
a new geo-political reality: the emergence of clear winners and losers within several days, or at most
weeks after the initial outbreak of hostilities. This latter reality will most probably contain fewer nuclear-possessing
states than the former.
The very question of nuclear war obscures the fact that the
march of technological progress makes the development of
more destructive weapons inevitable only future weapons
can cause total human extinction
Langford, 79 (David, Weapons physicist at Atomic Weapons research
establishment in Aldermaston, War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology, pp.
201-202)
So far the most appalling destruction we have properly considered has been conveniently
measurable in terms of the explosive force of TNT , one megaton approximating an energy
release of 10^18 calories (4-2 x 10^18 joules). More energy than this is released each second by human civilization
our total power consumption approaches 10^18 watts (joules per second). On a suggested scale for measuring the
energy controlled by super-civilization, a Type I civilization is one having power on this scale available for
communication or destruction. Earth doesnt quite make it as a Type I civilization, as much of our power use is tied
up and cannot be diverted into the torrent of raw power which we might theoretically produce. This refers to
20,000 megatons-worth of nuclear weapons might
continuous power-output; for example, some
be exploded in the worst versions of World War III now conceivable and if they were all
detonated in a single second the average power-output over that time would be close on 10^20 watts. But we
couldnt keep this up. The next major step up on the scale of technologies is the Type II
civilization, one able to deploy a power-output equivalent to that of a typical star
around 10^26 watts. Our own Sun releases some four times this power, continuously. Such a civilization, if it
used its available energy destructively, could manage a continuous destructive output of
one million times the intensity of the unthinkable nuclear spasm used as an
example above the equivalent of 20,000 million one-megaton bombs falling in each
successive second, for as long as necessary. If such an attack were directed against
a single planet, its hard to think that the necessary time would be very
long. In this example and in others to follow, the how remains obscure; if the writer knew how to acquire and
manipulate these gigantic energies, he might by now have won the Nobel Prize and/or conquered the world. Our
own technological expansion could take us to Type II status if unchecked. The expansion
from Type I to Type II capability means an increase in available power by a factor of 10^10; at an annual growth
Such a
rate of only 5% this could be achieved in 472 years, or 242 years at 10%, or 126 years at 20%.
pyramiding of compound interest demands that the growth rate be maintained
civilization must not crash through war or poverty and that no limits are encountered.
The alternative is to vote Negative only by accepting nuclear

war can we create a fundamental shift in human consciousness
towards non-destructive tendencies
Zimmerman, 87 (Michael E. Professor of Philosophy at Newcomb.
Anthropocentric Humanism and the Arms Race
Today we are faced with facts and evidence about the nuclear arms race that counsel despair. What can an
individual do in the face of such weapons in the hands of the superpowers? Each of us is called on to do at least
this: to be willing to experience the anxiety that is the gateway to vision and declaration. Only when we have gone
through that gateway can we make the declarations that open up the realm for an alternative to the given. We need
to let language speak through us in a new way. Further, we must be willing for the worst to
occur: all-out nuclear war. We must not be governed by fear; as long as we resist and
deny the possibility of nuclear war, that possibility will persist and grow stronger. So long as we cling to
whatever exists, including the order of things that now prevails, we cannot be open for
alternatives that do not yet exist. When enough of us choose to be open for vision,
the needed shift in human awareness may occur. Perhaps we will be able to create a
world beyond the old dichotomy of war and peace. Perhaps we will then be able to create a new game
for humanity, one in which we fulfill our highest possibility of bearing witness to the presence of all being. In
learning to dwell in harmony with all beings, human and nonhuman, we will become mature
daughters and sons of the Earth-co-creators of the cosmic order.
Future Weapons
FW => Extinction
Future weapons development is the most likely scenario for
extinction
Andersen, 12 (Ross, Forbes, March 6, Were underestimating the risk of
human extinction http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-
underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/)
In the short term you don't seem especially worried about existential risks that originate in nature like asteroid
the majority of future existential
strikes, super volcanoes and so forth. Instead you have argued that
risks to humanity are anthropogenic, meaning that they arise from human activity. Nuclear war
springs to mind as an obvious example of this kind of risk, but that's been with us for some time
now. What are some of the more futuristic or counterintuitive ways that we might bring about our own extinction?
Bostrom: I think the biggest existential risks relate to certain future
technological capabilities that we might develop, perhaps later this century.
For example, machine intelligence or advanced molecular nanotechnology could lead to the
development of certain kinds of weapons systems. You could also have risks associated with
certain advancements in synthetic biology. Of course there are also existential risks that are not extinction risks.
The concept of an existential risk certainly includes extinction, but it also includes risks that could permanently
destroy our potential for desirable human development. One could imagine certain scenarios where there might be
a permanent global totalitarian dystopia. Once again that's related to the possibility of the development of
technologies that could make it a lot easier for oppressive regimes to weed out dissidents or to perform surveillance
on their populations, so that you could have a permanently stable tyranny, rather than the ones we have seen
throughout history, which have eventually been overthrown.
AT: Wont Be Used
Social and economic pressures make global war inevitable
delaying it only guarantees extinction
Caldwell, 01 (Joseph George, Professor of Statistics. On saving the
Environment and the Inevitability of Global War
www.foundationwebsite.org/TheEndOfTheWorld.htm
The world political and economic system is committed to world peace and increased industrial production. The
United Nations and World Bank press for increased economic / industrial activity. When small wars break out, the UN
and other political / economic coalitions move quickly to suppress them. The result of this approach is that, when
the global industrial system finally collapses under the strain (mass population, mass
industrialization), it will collapse catastrophically. Every year that passes without a global
war means that when it finally occurs, it will be even more massive in size and more
nearly complete in its destruction.
Kinetic Energy Weapons
Kinetic energy weapons are almost here
Loeb, 10 (Lexi, Researcher for the Gravity Research @ University of Oregon
Nuclear Weapons May Already Be Obsolete-- New Space Based Weapons of Mass
Destruction Are Simpler and Just as Lethal
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2581739/nuclear_weapons_may_already_
be_obsolete.html?cat=)
Get high enough in the sky and drop a massive object or accelerate it in advance of having it hit the earth's
atmosphere and you have the awesome power of a guided asteroid that can pack the punch of a nuclear weapon
without much of any radiation contamination. If you wanted to blow off the top of a mountain on earth to make it
ready for mining purposes you could also use one of these tools to get an instant crater. These space based tools
could also be used for creating lakes or digging canals almost instantaneously. There is a possibility they could also
Nuclear
be used to prevent earthquakes by helping to release ground energy in advance by aiming along faults.
weapons as the weapons of mass destruction that give governments deterrence against war can quickly be
replaced with a space based kinetic gravity space based system possibly saving money on the
maintenance and disposal of weapons, the maintenance of nuclear fabrication plants, mining operations and
environment degradation perceived to go along with the nuclear weapons industry. The new system does however
have high maintenance expenses too which include lifting heavy massive objects into space and getting them and
their launch platforms into stable reliable orbits or somehow harvesting metals in space and fabricating the
weapons there. Very expensive at the moment but maybe not as expensive as making and maintaining nuclear
arsenals and ballistic missile delivery systems. With enough heavy mass sufficiently far away from the earth's
surface and the right design it is possible to make the ultimate bunker buster ground penetrating projectile
imaginable. Say you wanted to target a dam like the Aswan Dam in Egypt or The Three Gorges Dam in China to
decommission either one in the advent of war. A nuclear bomb might not do very much good at causing any
damage to these giant concrete/ steel structures because they are designed to take such forces. The best a military
planner could hope for might be to send the water damed up behind the dam over the top with a nuclear explosion.
Dropping a weapon with the force of an asteroid concentrated at a hard pencil point tip could not only take out a big
chuck of a concrete dam structure but it could undermine the rock on either side of such large dams. Calculations
by those doing the research shows that a fairly large object in the right shape to concentrate the kinetic energy at a
point of impact and not discharge much of that energy as it comes down though the earth's atmosphere in a fire
ball with heat treatment surfacing, could ruin cities just as much as a nuclear bomb can without all the radiation
contamination. That way after dust clears, days or weeks later, an invading army can march right into ground zero
without nearly as much hazard to the troops as a nuclear blast. This weapon can be sized up or down by the size of
the target to spare off limits monuments in cities with pin point accuracy that no bomb blast would be able to
Gravity provides
match. The whole thing is based on the physics of gravity and collisions due to acceleration.
enough acceleration if you have enough mass far enough off the ground to maximize kinetic energy
release at a point of collision at the surface. The guidance systems that bring a falling or a gliding ballistic
missile down to it's target is all that is required to pin point the selected targets. These weapons could easily be
lifted into space in various rocket payloads including in the space shuttle bays. Chances are some have already
been lifted up maybe even by foreign carriers that did not know they were transporting potential lethal weapons.
One way to build a platform to rev up the initial acceleration of the heavy rod like weapons would be to build
massive solar energy farms that would feed into some large fly wheel battery's that could be used to create an
electro magnetic field that could almost instantly accelerate a massive object before gravity took over. A magnetic
launch means that no fuel has to be lost in the trip so that momentum can be maximized. This weapon not only has
the power of a smart asteroid but it has amazing precision and a real simplicity that makes the nuclear weapons
trade seem silly and obsolete. There certainly would be dangers including human error, launch/ lifting accidents,
failing orbits. There is also an advantage of being able to scale down so that targets can be mapped and all
disposed of at once or in waves. Smaller weapon can be independently launched or dropped just to hit individual
factories, communication systems, power plants avoiding nuclear plants and just disabling the transmission lines
using the best of high resolution spy satellites and military grade GPS for targeting. Unlike a nuclear bomb attack,
here thousands of vary small targets and some large ones could be hit simultaneously with as much accuracy as pin
pointing places on satellite maps. So finally the space program really has paid off for the military. A single kinetic
gravity assist weapon could be put in space to target Russian targets if that is where the US still is doing the
targeting or just have a smaller one aimed at certain areas of the Kremlin. Hypothetically No reason to blow up all
of Moscow anymore if the US had to return the favor after a Russian nuclear strike on Los Angeles. The Russians
ruin Los Angeles. We can send them to live there and take Moscow as an uncontaminated city ready to occupy. That
is a military advantage that nukes don't have. It might be possible to aim an objects no bigger than a jack hammer
from space with some acceleration assistance and take down a fairly major target without having to fly though
hostile air space, risk a submarine becoming visible after firing a missile or being in any position to take fire back. It
is also possible to program the systems in space so the weapons could be automatically set to target weapons that
might target them by retracing the origin of the offending weapons. Or if the potential attackers are known pre-
program the weapons to hit pre-chosen targets in case the space platform is attacked. Systems like this are
probably already being tested. It would be a great way to eliminate underground Iranian nuclear testing
facilities without having to fly any planes or send missiles over Iranian air space or over neighboring country's air
space. The enemy would not really know what hit them because the delivery system is the projectile coming down
out of the sky. Made of hardened heavy metal these things would not be easily deflected with missile shields at
least not initially. Unlike a vulnerable missile that is hollow metal with fuel inside of it these are solid heavy metal
objects with a lot more momentum and possibly a redirecting guidance system operating flaps or louvers to correct
for deflection. Another more advanced system might have a number of objects accelerated to even faster speeds
by sending them around the sun or moon using gravity assistance and then keeping them in orbit at those high
speeds until ready to send down to hit a terrestrial target or a lunar target for that mater (perhaps for a mining
operation) The faster an object is moving before it's collision with a part of the earth landscape the more lethal it
can become. It is possible to accelerate a heavy piece of metal send it down to earth where it completely
annihilates itself , digs a huge crater proving it self as lethal as a nuclear weapon without the radiation
contamination and better reliable pin pointing of targets. One day in the near future the spaces
weapons race is probably inevitably on the verge of happening. It might take a war of some kind
for the technology to be tested. There are no shortages of wars. It was just 2009 that a similar bit of
technology was launched at one of the poles on the moon for a scientific experiment. This was a less
massive object not intended to maximize destruction but just to kick up a plume of dust and debris for remote
That may have been one of the first real tests of the real technology that will
analysis.
quickly come to make nuclear weapons obsolete. There are other uses too. An example would be to
send down bowling ball size "pellets" from space into large industrial smelting chambers to allow kinetic energy fire
to smelt masses of raw aluminum and other un processed metal without having to hook up giant electric grids.
Finally NASA would have a space industry that could pay for payloads of bowling ball size pellets that could
generate more heat at lower cost than burning coal or diesel to get the same results. If metals could be found in
space either from space junk debris or mining on some asteroid or the moon then kinetic energy from space could
beat using microwave beams to send solar energy back to earth. The technology has more peaceful uses than it
does for warfare. Those who really don't like nuclear weapons should probably prefer this system a little more. It will
never please anyone who believes that all weapons are bad.
KE Weapons will cause extinction

Gettings, 01 (Paul, Professor of Geophysics at U of Utah, Weapons of Mass
Destruction)
Planetary K.E. Munitions.The current title-holder in pure destructive force is the planetary K.E.
munition. Consisting of a large rock (typically tens of cubic km of rock) with a full Shield drive, these weapons
are expensive. However, for a typical large asteroid (160 km3) at 0.5c (the limit of a standard Shield
drive), the impact energy is 42,464x1012 tons of TNT. This is more than 10 million times the
destructive potential of the entire 20th century Terran nuclear arsenal. The impact energy
of a planetary munition will exterminate entire continents. The direct blast can devastate
entire hemispheres. There is no report of any of these ever being deployed.
Nanoweapons
Nanoweapon development is easy, inevitable, and causes
extinction
Bostrom, 02 (Nick, Professor of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of
the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on Impacts of
Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R
Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a PH.D in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, Existential Risks March,
http://www.jetpress.org/volume9/risks.html)
In a mature form, molecular nanotechnology will enable the construction of bacterium-scale self-
replicating mechanical robots that can feed on dirt or other organic matter [22-25]. Such
replicators could eat up the biosphere or destroy it by other means such as by poisoning it,
burning it, or blocking out sunlight. A person of malicious intent in possession of this
technology might cause the extinction of intelligent life on Earth by releasing such nanobots
into the environment.[9] The technology to produce a destructive nanobot seems
considerably easier to develop than the technology to create an effective defense
against such an attack (a global nanotech immune system, an active shield [23]). It is therefore likely that there
will be a period of vulnerability during which this technology must be prevented from coming into the wrong hands.
the technology could prove hard to regulate, since it doesnt require rare
Yet
radioactive isotopes or large, easily identifiable manufacturing plants, as does production of nuclear
weapons [23]. Even if effective defenses against a limited nanotech attack are developed before dangerous
there will still be the danger of
replicators are designed and acquired by suicidal regimes or terrorists,
an arms race between states possessing nanotechnology. It has been argued [26] that molecular
manufacturing would lead to both arms race instability and crisis instability, to a
higher degree than was the case with nuclear weapons. Arms race instability means
that there would be dominant incentives for each competitor to escalate its armaments, leading to a runaway arms
Two roughly
race. Crisis instability means that there would be dominant incentives for striking first.
balanced rivals acquiring nanotechnology would, on this view, begin a massive buildup of
armaments and weapons development programs that would continue until a crisis occurs and war
breaks out, potentially causing global terminal destruction. That the arms race could have
been predicted is no guarantee that an international security system will be created ahead of time to prevent this
disaster from happening. The nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR was predicted but occurred
nevertheless.
Mindset Shift
Mindset Shift
Nuclear war causes a mindset shift that solves future weapons
development it would be a massive shock to the system that
would force human awareness to eliminate wars in order to
preclude the possibility of more horrors 6 reasons.
First, extend the 1NC Zimmerman evidence. Only the

acceptance of nuclear war will spark a shift towards non-
destructive tendencies
Second, nuclear war will teach us unconditional love solves

the impact
Kubler-Ross, 86 (Elisabeth, Professor of psychiatry, Ph.D in Science, Law,
Humanities, Human Letters, Pedagogy, Humane Science and Divinity, Voices of
Survival)
I truly believe that about five generations from now, we will have learned our lesson maybe the hard way, maybe
through some major, catastrophic events and we will finally learn that we are all
brothers and sisters, all people of all nations, of all colors and all creeds. When we
again remember our origin - that we are, in the most literal sense, all children of God we will learn
unconditional love and raise our children with that kind of love, combined with firm, consistent discipline.
Then our world will truly be a paradise.
Third, nuke war prevents real doomsday weapons

Lifton, 91 (Robert, Professor of psychology at Princeton University, The
Genocidal Mentality)
a good rousing World

Perhaps Robert Heinlein had a point after all, when he recently suggested that
War III would be a fine thing for the human race. It would at least reduce the numbers.
Better to have it sooner than later, of course, for there is no telling when a real
doomsday weapon will emerge. Better to suffer a nuclear holocaust now than total
annihilation in a few years or a few centuries.
Fourth, nuclear war sparks change

Katz, 82 (Arthur M. PhD in chemistry from U Rochester, Life After Nuclear War)
One neglected aspect of societys response to nuclear war is the philosophical

changes toward life and society. It represents a profound but intangible influence on the
course of posttattack society. The effects of the Black Death illustrate how these
changes could intrude into the philosophical and ideological framework of society.
The magnitude of the changes could reshape peoples perceptions of their world
and, concomitantly, their ideas and actions.
Fifth, nuclear war cause the individual to affirm their species

consciousness
Lifton, 91 (Robert, Professor of psychology at Princeton University. The
The shift in symbolic immortality, then, involves confrontation with absurd collective
death and, inevitably, with questions of ones own individual death. Indeed, one reclaims ones
own individual death from the grotesqueness and absurdity of collective nuclear destruction. At the same time,
one affirms ones larger human connectedness (or symbolic immortality) as bound up with
the continuity of the human species, and lives out the ideology of the species self.
Species consciousness solves extinction

Lifton, 91 (Robert, Professor of psychology at Princeton University. The
Species consciousness contributes to a sense of self that identifies with the entire
human species. But the self cannot live, so to speak, on the human species alone. Its traditional forms of
immediate identification other people, family, work, play, religion, ethnic group, and nation give substance to
the species identification and are necessary to it. As in many things, only by holding to the particular can one have
becoming
access to the universal as George Kateb (paraphrasing Nietzsche) means when he speaks of
attached to the particulars in ones life in a new way, without narrowness ,
exclusiveness, and obsession, in order to make room for a nonparticularist attachment to
existence as such. For existence as such is inseparable from survival of the human
species.
No Extinction
No Extinction
Nuclear war doesnt cause extinction 6 reasons
First, most recent evidence and better models prove that their
science is bad
Seitz, 11 (Russell, Harvard University Center for International Affairs visiting
scholar , Nuclear winter was and is debatable, Nature, 7-7-11, Vol 475, pg37,
accessed 9-27-11)
Alan Robock's contention that there has been no real scientific debate about the 'nuclear winter' concept is itself
This potential climate disaster, popularized in Science in 1983,
debatable (Nature 473, 275276; 2011).
rested on the output of a one-dimensional model that was later shown to overestimate
the smoke a nuclear holocaust might engender. More refined estimates, combined with advanced three-
dimensional models (see http://go.nature.com.libproxy.utdallas.edu/kss8te), have dramatically reduced the extent
and severity of the projected cooling. Despite this, Carl Sagan, who co-authored the 1983 Science paper, went so
Some regarded
far as to posit the extinction of Homo sapiens (C. Sagan Foreign Affairs 63, 7577; 1984).
this apocalyptic prediction as an exercise in mythology. George Rathjens of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology protested: Nuclear winter is the worst example
of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory, (see
http://go.nature.com.libproxy.utdallas.edu/yujz84) and climatologist Kerry Emanuel observed that the
subject had become notorious for its lack of scientific integrity (Nature 319, 259;
1986). Robock's single-digit fall in temperature is at odds with the subzero (about 25 C) continental cooling
originally projected for a wide spectrum of nuclear wars. Whereas Sagan predicted darkness at noon from a US
Soviet nuclear conflict, Robock projects global sunlight that is several orders of magnitude brighter for a Pakistan
the projected worst-case
India conflict literally the difference between night and day. Since 1983,
cooling has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree-days Celsius (a measure of the
severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term 'nuclear winter'
into question.
Second, counterforce targeting checks

Mueller, 09 (John, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor
of Political Science at Ohio State University. Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism
from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda p. 8)
To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify applying such extreme characterizations as societal
annihilation, a full-out attack with hundreds, probably thousands, of thermonuclear bombs
would be required. Even in such extreme cases, the area actually devastated by the
bombs' blast and thermal pulse effects would be limited: 2,000 I-MT explosions with a destructive radius of 5 miles each
would directly demolish less than 5 percent of the territory of the United States, for example. Obviously, if major population centers
were targeted, this sort of attack could inflict massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events sometimes
seemed uncomfortably likely, a number of studies were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive thermonuclear attacks.
One of the most prominent of these considered several possibilities. The most likely scenario--one that could be
perhaps be considered at least to begin to approach the rational- was a "counterforce" strike in which well over
1,000 thermonuclear weapons would be targeted at America's ballistic missile silos, strategic airfields, and
nuclear submarine bases in an effort to destroy the country's strategic ability to retaliate. Since the
attack would not directly target population centers, most of the ensuing deaths would be from radioactive fallout, and the
study estimates that from 2 to 20 million, depending mostly on wind, weather, and sheltering, would
perish during the first month.
Third, nuclear war doesnt cause extinction best data and

plausible scenarios prove
Ball, 06 (Desmond, prof at the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at the
Australian National Univ, The Probabilities of On the Beach: Assessing
Armageddon Scenarios in the 21st Century, Working Paper No. 401, Strategic and
Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University,
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers/sdsc/wp/wp_sdsc_401.pdf)
I argued vigorously with Sagan about the Nuclear Winter hypothesis , both in lengthy
correspondence and, in August-September 1985, when I was a guest in the lovely house he and Ann Druyan had
overlooking Ithaca in up-state New York. I argued that, with more realistic data about the
operational characteristics of the respective US and Soviet force configurations
(such as bomber delivery profiles, impact footprints of MIRVed warheads) and more plausible
exchange scenarios, it was impossible to generate anywhere near the postulated
levels of smoke. The megatonnage expended on cities (economic/industrial targets) was more likely to be
around 140-650 than over 1,000; the amount of smoke generated would have ranged from around 18 million
tonnes to perhaps 80 million tonnes. In the case of counter-force scenarios, most missile forces were (and still
are) located in either ploughed fields or tundra and, even where they are generally located in forested or
A
grassed areas, very few of the actual missile silos are less than several kilometres from combustible material.
target-by-target analysis of the actual locations of the strategic nuclear forces in
the United States and the Soviet Union showed that the actual amount of smoke produced
even by a 4,000 megaton counter-force scenario would range from only 300
tonnes (if the exchange occurred in January) to 2,000 tonnes (for an exchange in July)the worst
case being a factor of 40 smaller than that postulated by the Nuclear Winter
theorists. I thought that it was just as wrong to overestimate the possible
consequences of nuclear war, and to raise the spectre of extermination of human
life as a serious likelihood, as to underestimate them (e.g., by omitting fallout casualties).
Fourth, their authors assume worst-case scenarios that are

strategically unlikely to occur
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney 1988 Nuclear winter:
science and politics, Science and Public Policy)
Turning now to the actual research: does the science of nuclear winter embody in any way assumptions
about politics? The original TTAPS paper[20] and accompanying Ehrlich et al. paper[21] illustrate the way this can
make a series of assumptions which emphasize the worst
occur. I argue here that these papers
case for the effects of nuclear war. (1) Targeting. The TTAPS paper uses a baseline case of 5000
megatonnes (MT), supplemented by a wide range of other scenarios which also lead to nuclear winter effects.
Though in general terms some of the scenarios appear reasonable, no detailed strategic rationale is
offered for any of them [22]. A cynic might say that the key characteristic of the scenarios is that they produce
sufficient smoke or dust to produce nuclear winter. This is illustrated by the 100MT scenario, which is often
misinterpreted as 100 bombs on 100 cities. Actually it involves 1000 bombs and the burning of a vast number of
It is easy to misinterpret the results for this scenario as showing
cities each of just the right size.
that any 100MT war is enough to trigger nuclear winter, whereas any militarily
realistic targeting of 100MT would cause relatively few cities to burn and probably produce
little cooling according to present models . If the scenarios had been designed to produce a spread of
soot injections rather than a fairly constant soot injection for different megatonnages, the result of nuclear winter
would have seemed more sensitive to variations in targeting. Ehrlich et al. concentrate on a 10,000MT scenario
which generates more severe environmental effects than either the Ambio scenario[23] or the TTAPS baseline case.
They state that they take the TTAPS 10,000MT 'severe' case as their reference case because of policy
implications[24]. (According to Michael MacCracken, TTAPS in their draft paper presented a 10,000MT baseline.
After receiving comments, they corrected an error of a factor of 2 in the smoke density and also reset the baseline
to 5000MT. These two changes counteracted each other, leaving the baseline consequences unchanged. Ehrlich et
al. considered a maximum but to them plausible scenario which, after the factor of 2 adjustment, turned out to be
the TTAPS 10,000MT scenario[25].)
Fifth, small warheads mean no extinction

PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, 1988 Nuclear winter:
(4) Extinction. Ehrlich et al. itemize all sorts of disasters from nuclear war. For example, they
raise the issue of decreases in stratospheric ozone and resulting increases in ultraviolet (after the smoke and dust
not noting that changes in the size of warheads have made this threat much
clears),
less serious. They add up a set of hazards to conclude that human extinction may
occur, without explaining precisely how everyone could die [30-31].
Sixth, only a small fraction of warheads will actually explode

PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney December 1984 Current
Affairs Bulletin, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html)
What fraction of the 11,000Mt would be exploded in a major nuclear war? This is hard to
assess, but almost certainly much will not be exploded. Both the United States and the Soviet
Union place a high priority on targeting their opponent's military forces, nuclear forces in particular. A sizable
fraction of nuclear arsenals is likely to be destroyed before use (attacks on nuclear
be unavailable for use (submarines in port, missiles cut off from
submarines, airfields, missile silos),
or fail to perform properly.[47] One estimate is that one sixth to one third
communications)
of superpower arsenals will be used, depending on whether the war occurs suddenly or builds
up gradually.[48]
Evidence Indicts
Prefer our evidence their studies rely on politically influenced
research
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, 1988 Nuclear winter:
Political interests seem to

Both science and politics have been involved in the debate over 'nuclear winter'.
have influenced the degree of scientific attention to the nuclear winter effect, some of the
assumptions underlying the models developed to study it, and the criticisms made of it.
Conversely, nuclear winter results have been used as tools to promote particular stands on
nuclear policy-making. In all this, most scientists involved with the studies have tried to define science as
separate from politics. The debate raises in acute form the contradiction involved in science
allegedly being objective and apolitical while at the same time it is intermeshed with policy disputes.
All of their evidence is based on selective research and flawed

conclusions nuclear extinction advocates are biased by
sensationalism
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, Nuclear winter: science
and politics, Science and Public Policy)
they do not mention factors which might

While listing many dangers from nuclear war,
ameliorate the problems. For example, food shortages due to crop failures are highlighted, plus difficulties
in transporting stored food to population centres. For the rich countries, there is no mention of changing from a
meat diet to a grain diet or of reducing caloric intake, which together would extend food reserves by a large factor.
For Third World countries, they emphasise dependence on imports of food from rich countries. They do not mention
the exports of food to rich countries, nor the high level of cash cropping for export to industrialised countries, which
The suggestion that extinction of
could be replaced by food crops for local consumption[32-34].
human life could occur is made without considering any counterexamples . For example,
consider Tasmania. As an island in the southern hemisphere, nuclear winter effects would be minimised. It has large
hydropower capacity for providing heat and power, and the large sheep population could help tide the modest
human population through a failed harvest. Such examples are not addressed by Ehrlich et al. The possibility of
extinction is not even discussed in the text of Ehrlich et al.'s paper. It is only raised in the summary and
conclusion[35] The combination of these assumptions leads to concentration on worst cases. The selection of
results for key diagrams and abstracts makes the drawing of certain policy
implications much easier. In other words, the TTAPS and Ehrlich et al. papers are not
'value-neutral' pieces of research, but 'push' certain conclusions on readers through
technical assumptions in model construction, selection of evidence and highlighting of
results. One response to these points is that the authors should have been slower to rush into print and more
careful in their presentation of results, given that portions of the media are well known for
sensationalism. But, as described later, some of the initial researchers were also active
in the media promotion of nuclear winter, certainly more so than in issuing qualifications
concerning media exaggerations. The above points have not been lost on critics of nuclear winter. They have
homed in on various assumptions and limitations of the research[36-47].
No scientific evidence for nuclear extinction

Hodder and Martin, 09 (Patrick Faculty of Arts, U of Wollongong, & Brian,
Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Climate crisis? The
politics of emergency framing, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 36, 5
September 2009, pp. 53-60, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/09epw.html)
At the time, many people believed that nuclear war meant the destruction of human civilisation or the end of
human life on earth (Martin 1982a). Therefore, it might seem, stopping nuclear war from occurring should have
been overwhelmingly important. What about the evidence? Strangely enough, there was little scientific
backing for the belief that global nuclear war would kill everyone on earth (Martin, 1982b).
Blast, heat and fallout would be devastating , but mainly in the areas targeted and
downwind, with the likelihood of killing tens or hundreds of millions of people, mainly in western Europe, the
Soviet Union and the United States. The majority of the world's population - in places such as Africa,
South America and South Asia - would be unscathed. Writer Jonathan Schell in his book The Fate of the
Earth argued that nuclear war could indeed lead to human extinction, something he called "the second death" - the
Schell's
first death being one's own death - and therefore the issue was of paramount importance (Schell, 1982).
argument relied on the effects of ozone depletion and was not supported by scientific
work at the time. In 1983, scientists reported on new studies of the effect of dust and smoke lofted into the
upper atmosphere by nuclear explosions and subsequent fires, blocking the sun and leading to lowered
temperatures, a consequence called "nuclear winter." Although once again the spectre of extinction was hinted at,
it was never likely that cold weather and darkness could kill everyone; it would affect
countries in the northern hemisphere most severely (Pittock, 1987).
Concentration checks extinction

Tonn, 05 (Bruce, UT political science professor, Human extinction scenarios,
August, http://www.budapestfutures.org/downloads/abstracts/Bruce%20Tonn%20-
%20Abstract.pdf)
The human species faces numerous threats to its existence. These include global climate change, collisions with near-earth objects, nuclear war, and
pandemics. While these threats are indeed serious, taken separately they fail to describe
exactly how humans could become extinct. For example, nuclear war by itself would most
likely fail to kill everyone on the planet , as strikes would probably be
concentrated in the northern hemisphere and the Middle East, leaving populations in South America, South Africa, Australia and New
Zealand some hope of survival. It is highly unlikely that any uncontrollable nanotechnology could ever be produced but even it if were, it
is likely that humans could develop effective, if costly, countermeasures, such as producing the technologies in space or destroying sites of runaway
nanotechnologies with nuclear weapons. Viruses could indeed kill many people but effective quarantine of healthy people could be accomplished to save
large numbers of people. Humans appear to be resilient to extinction with respect to single events.
AT: Nuclear Winter
Nuclear winter is a myth based on bad science
Seitz, 06 (Russell, Harvard University Center for International Affairs visiting
scholar, "The' Nuclear Winter ' Meltdown; Photoshopping the Apocalypse,"
adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2006/12/preherein_honor.html, accessed 9-25-11)
The recent winter solstice witnessed a 'Carl Sagan Blog-a-thon' . So in celebration of Al Gore's pal, the late author of The Cold And The Dark there follows
The Wall Street Journal's warmly cautionary Cold War reminder of how a campaign for the Nobel Peace prize on the Nuclear Freeze ticket devolved into a
joke played at the expense of climate modeling's street cred on the eve of the global warming debate :The Melting of 'Nuclear Winter' All that remains of
history is full of prophets of doom who fail

Sagan's Big Chill are curves such as this , Fig3tempprecip_4_2 but
to deliver, not all are without honor in their own land. The 1983 'Nuclear Winter " papers in Science were so politicized that even the eminently
liberal President of The Council for a Liveable World called "The worst example ofthe misrepesentation of science to the public in my memory." Among the
authors was Stanford President Donald Kennedy. Today he edits Science , the nation's major arbiter of climate science--and policy. Below, a case
illustrating the mid-range of the ~.7 to ~1.6 degree C maximum cooling the 2006 studies suggest is superimposed in color on the Blackly Apocalyptic
predictions published in Science Vol. 222, 1983 . They're worth comparing, because the range of soot concentrations in the new models overlaps with
cases assumed to have dire climatic consequences in the widely publicized 1983 scenarios --Meltdownofttaps " Apocalyptic predictions require,
to be taken seriously,higher standards of evidence than do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great." wrote Sagan in Foreign Affairs ,
Winter 1983 -84. But that " evidence " was never forthcoming. 'Nuclear Winter' never
existed outside of a computer except as air-brushed animation commissioned by the a PR firm - Porter
Novelli Inc. Yet Sagan predicted "the extinction of the human species " as temperatures plummeted 35 degrees C and the
world froze in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Last year, Sagan's cohort tried to reanimate the ghost in a
machine anti-nuclear activists invoked in the depths of the Cold War, by re-running equally arbitrary scenarios on
a modern interactive Global Circulation Model. But the Cold War is history in more ways than one. It is a credit to post-modern
computer climate simulations that they do not reproduce the apocalyptic

results of what Sagan oxymoronically termed "a sophisticated one dimensional model." The subzero 'baseline case'
has melted down into a tepid 1.3 degrees of average cooling- grey skies do not a Ragnarok
make. What remains is just not the stuff that End of the World myths are
made of . It is hard to exaggerate how seriously " nuclear winter "was once taken by policy analysts who ought to have known better. Many were
taken aback by the sheer force of Sagan's rhetoric Remarkably, Science's news coverage of the new results fails to graphically compare them with the old
ones Editor Kennedy and other recent executives of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, once proudly co-authored and helped to
publicize. You can't say they didn't try to reproduce this Cold War icon. Once again, soot from imaginaryPropaganda_penguin_1_1 software materializes in
midair by the megaton , flying higher than Mount Everest . This is not physics, but a crude exercise in ' garbage in, gospel out' parameter forcing designed
to maximize and extend the cooling an aeosol can generate, by sparing it from realistic attrition by rainout in the lower atmosphere. Despite decades of
progress in modeling atmospheric chemistry , there is none in this computer simulation, and ignoring photochemistry further extends its impact.
Fortunately , the history of science is as hard to erase as it is easy to ignore. Their past mastery of semantic agression cannot spare the authors of
Dark smoke clouds in the lower

"Nuclear Winter Lite " direct comparison of their new results and their old.
atmosphere don't last long enough to spread across the globe. Cloud
droplets and rainfall remove them, rapidly washing them out of the sky in a
matter of days to weeks- not long enough to sustain a global pall. Real world weather
brings down particles much as soot is scrubbed out of power plant smoke by the water sprays in smoke stack scrubbers Robock acknowledges this- not
even a single degree of cooling results when soot is released at lower elevations in he models . The workaround is to inject the imaginary aerosol at truly
Himalayan elevations - pressure altitudes of 300 millibar and higher , where the computer model's vertical transport function modules pass it off to their
even higher neighbors in the stratosphere , where it does not rain and particles linger.. The new studies like the old suffer from the disconnect between a
desire to paint the sky black and the vicissitudes of natural history. As with many exercise in worst case models both at invoke rare phenomena as
commonplace, claiming it prudent to assume the worst. But the real world is subject to Murphy's lesser known second law- if everything must go wrong,
don't bet on it. In 2006 as in 1983 firestorms and forest fires that send smoke into the stratosphere rise to alien prominence in the modelers re-imagined
world , but i the real one remains a very different place, where though every month sees forest fires burning areas the size of cities - 2,500 hectares or
how come these neo-nuclear winter

larger , stratospheric smoke injections arise but once in a blue moon. So
models feature so much smoke so far aloft for so long? The answer is simple- the
modelers intervened. Turning off vertical transport algorithms may make Al Gore happy- he has bet on
reviving the credibility Sagan's ersatz apocalypse , but there is no denying that in some of these scenarios human
desire, not physical forces accounts for the vertical hoisting of millions of tons of mass ten vertical kilometers into
the sky.to the level at which the models take over , with results at once predictable --and arbitrary . This is not
physics, it is computer gamesmanship carried over to a new generation of X-Box.
Zero risk of nuclear winter building materials arent
flammable enough
Cook, 10 (Nigel B. PhD Computer Programming BA Physics. The Effects of
Nuclear Weapons http://glasstone.blogspot.com/ (His blog, a tribute to Samuel
Glasstone, pioneer in nuclear research, is dedicated to articles on nuclear weapons)
2/13/10)
Anuclear winter can't happen because nuclear weapons can't burn brick, steel and
concrete buildings. The 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers were aircraft with a lot of aviation fuel, which burned
inside the buildings. A nuclear bomb doesn't deposit aviation fuel inside buildings, and anyway, buildings shadow
one another from the thermal pulse before the blast arrives (by which time the thermal pulse is generally over). If
you get immediate surface ablation which causes a smoke
the thermal pulse is strong,
screen that stops further heating and prevents fires. The only way you get ignition is by having
(1) large windows with a direct line-of sight to the fireball (no intervening buildings) with no blinds and rooms filled
with junk like old papers, magazines, and easily inflammable old-type furnishings (not banned by modern fire safety
standards) of the 1953 "Encore" nuclear test type, or rooms again with an unobstructed line of sight to the fireball
with black-colored World War II air raid "black out" curtains (which were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to stop
city house lights being used to guide American bombers to targets in night-time air raids, something no longer
done!) which can ignite easily, or (2) easily overturned charcoal cooking stoves inside thousands of wooden houses
filled with paper screens and bamboo inflammables, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the breakfast time and lunch
time attacks. The worst firestorm of WWI was in Hamburg in a medieval crowded part of wooden multistory
buildings and killed 5% of the population at risk, although CND and other propaganda from Ted Postol and
others claims that the entire population was killed. You can't have that happen again: the wooden buildings
were replaced with brick and concrete . Although it is possible for some fires to ignite inside buildings
containing some wooden furnishings and non-fire resistant bedding and sofas, the non-wooden buildings don't
cause anything like the same risks of either firespread or the intensity of burning required for firestorms that
wooden houses give. The firestorm in Hiroshima was lethal because the population was in shock from the explosion
and survivors outdoors (due to no "duck and cover", just watching the bomb fall and getting facial burns and blast
debris/displacement injury in addition to INR), and so were generally injured and unable to rescue people trapped
under easily-collapsed wooden buildings, before they burned, many taking 30 minutes to 2 hours to ignite! This
situation won't occur again. The centers of even American cities generally don't contain wooden houses
anymore: British and most European cities haven't had wooden houses built for centuries. American wooden houses
are generally now in suburbs on the periphery of cities and are unlikely to be within reach of the thermal effects of
modern MIRVed missile warheads (100-300 kt yield range). The TTAPS nuclear winter people including Sagan were
debunked in the 1980s. First, modern cities of brick and concrete can't be ignited or burn with the
intensity of predominantly wooden buildings in Hiroshima: so you don't get a firestorm. There's not
enough smoke to cause a nuclear winter. Sagan and another guy wrote another article and also
their 1989 book called "A Path Where No Man Thought", denying the debunkers by claiming that nuclear
weapons would all be used against oil refineries and forests, and the burning oil and trees would
produce the soot needed for nuclear winter. Again, there is evidence that this is a lie: the forests
imported to the Nevada test site and naturally on Bikini Atoll islands and Eniwetok Atoll islands were
filmed receiving massive thermal radiation and just "smoked" during the thermal flash. The smoke
shielded thermal radiation. There was no firestorm! The vegetation shadows and thus protects
the fine kindling underbrush from thermal radiation. I've blogged this in detail. Some British tests in Australia and
over Christmas and Malden islands caused isolated fires in dry vegetation, but this was the exception and not the
rule. Most of the data given for ignition in the 1957 edition of Glasstone's "Effects of Nuclear Weapons" was wrong
(as Glasstone acknowledged in the Preface to the February 1964 reprinted edition), because experimenters had
exposed dried forest kindling to thermal radiation. In fact, there is almost always some equilibrium moisture in it,
which dramatically increases the thermal energy needed for sustained ignition (not just temporary flaming/smoking
which only lasts for the duration of the thermal pulse). Oil and gas tanks were ignited by the Texas City ship
explosion in 1947, but that was from hot fragments of an exploding ship full of chemical explosive. Nuclear weapons
produce thermal flash and blast, and the thermal flash merely scorches the paint on the outside of the oil or gas
tank. When the blast arrives after the thermal flash subsides, it may damage the oil or gas tank, but doesn't ignite
it. This is confirmed by nuclear test data from 1955. In addition, Saddam's army ignited all of the oil fields in Kuwait
in the early 1990s, and we're still alive: in Hiroshima the soot from the firestorm fell out as the "black
rain" (which wasn't significantly radioactive, since the black rain from the firestorm fell an hour after the
detonation, when radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown miles downwind, leaving only trivial diffusive
soot in the
airborne activity in the target area). The "black rain" at Hiroshima tells you what happens to
rapidly gets washed out in rain. Even if that doesn't happen,
atmosphere after a firestorm: it
it won't form a stable, uniform cloud; turbulent instabilities will prevent soot from
freezing the whole planet. So there is no firestorm, no nuclear winter, and the whole
thing is a lie.
Oceans and counter-force targeting check

Zutell, 88 (Eugene, Arizona Dept. of Emergency and Military Affairs, Division of
Emergency Services 6-19-88. http://www.fortfreedom.org/s05.htm)
The cooling mechanism as Sagan and

To enumerate some other problems with the nuclear winter mechanism: 1.
associates describe it, could only operate over land masses. Ocean surface water
is continually supplied with heat from below. Even if sunlight were blocked for
many months, the temperature at the ocean surface would remain virtually
unchanged. Consequently, weather patterns would continue, with warm moisture
laden air from the oceans sweeping over the land masses and as it cools,
rain clouds would form and even more of the sun blocking smoke and dust
particles would be washed out of the atmosphere. 2. Sagan et al indicated that at
the very least, 100 million tons of smoke particles would have to be injected
into the atmosphere if the nuclear winter mechanism were to be triggered. They
also indicated that cities are the primary source of that smoke . They therefore proposed a
nuclear war scenario in which cities are the primary targets. Since the mid
1960s, the primary targets for both U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles and nuclear bombs have not
been population centers or cities. They have been the other guy's nuclear
missile launch sites, nuclear bomber bases and other military targets. If those
can be eliminated, the cities will be held hostage. The current list of ten target classes ascribed to
Soviet planners by DOD and FEMA, does not specifically contain any population centers. The list does of course include target classes that in many
even in those instances, the nuclear

instances will be located in or adjacent to metropolitan areas. But,
weapons employed will not be the huge multimegaton area destruction

bombs of the late 1950s and early 1960s. ICBM systems and MIRVs are now so accurate that a
target may be pinpointed even within a metropolitan area, by a relatively
small weapon. This is not in any way to say that the effects will not be catastrophic. It is to say though that the city wide
firestorms necessary for the onset of nuclear winter as described by Sagan
and associates, are less than predictable. In fact, they are improbable.
Counterforce targeting means no nuclear winter
Kearny, 87 (Cresson H., received his PhD in Civil Engineering from Princeton,
summa cum laude. Major in the US Army, and worked at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, a research laboratory for US national defense. Nuclear War Survival
Skills.)
As long as Sovietleaders are rational they will continue to give first priority to knocking out our
weapons and other military assets that can damage Russia and kill Russians. To explode enough
nuclear weapons of any size to completely destroy American cities would be an irrational
waste of warheads. The Soviets can make much better use of most of the warheads that would be required
to completely destroy American cities; the majority of those warheads probably already are targeted to knock
out our retaliatory missiles by being surface burst or near-surface burst on their hardened silos, located
far from most cities and densely populated areas. Unfortunately, many militarily significant targets - including
naval vessels in port and port facilities, bombers and fighters on the ground, air base and airport facilities that can
be used by bombers, Army installations, and key defense factories - are in or close to American cities. In the event
of an all-out Soviet attack, most of these '"soft" targets would be destroyed by air bursts. Air bursting (see Fig. 1.4)
a given weapon subjects about twice as large an area to blast effects severe enough to destroy "soft" targets as
does surface bursting (see Fig. 1.1) the same weapon. Fortunately for Americans living outside blast and fire areas,
air bursts produce only very tiny particles. Most of these extremely small radioactive particles remain airborne for
so long that their radioactive decay and wide dispersal before reaching the ground make them much less life-
endangering than the promptly deposited larger fallout particles from surface and near-surface bursts. However, if
you are a survival minded American you should prepare to survive heavy fallout wherever you are. Unpredictable
winds may bring fallout from unexpected directions. Or your area may be in a "hot spot" of life-endangering fallout
caused by a rain-out or snow-out of both small and tiny particles from distant explosions. Or the enemy may use
surface or near-surface bursts in your part of the country to crater long runways or otherwise disrupt U.S. retaliatory
actions by producing heavy local fallout. Today few if any of Russia's largest intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs) are armed with a 20-megaton warhead. A huge Russian ICBM, the SS-18, typically carries 10 warheads each
having a yield of 500 kilotons, each programmed to hit a separate target. See "Jane's Weapon Systems. 1987-
1988." However, in March 1990 CIA Director William Webster told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that
".... The USSR's strategic modernization program continues unabated," and that the SS-18 Mod 5 can carry 14 to 20
nuclear warheads. The warheads are generally assumed to be smaller than those of the older SS-18s. Myth: A
heavy nuclear attack would set practically everything on fire, causing "firestorms" in cities that would exhaust the
oxygen in the air. All shelter occupants would be killed by the intense heat. Facts: On a clear day, thermal pulses
(heat radiation that travels at the speed of light) from an air burst can set fire to easily ignitable materials (such as
window curtains, upholstery, dry newspaper, and dry grass) over about as large an area as is damaged by the blast.
It can cause second-degree skin burns to exposed people who are as far as ten miles from a one-megaton (1 MT)
explosion. (See Fig. 1.4.) (A 1-MT nuclear explosion is one that produces the same amount of energy as does one
million tons of TNT.) If the weather is very clear and dry, the area of fire danger could be considerably larger. On a
cloudy or smoggy day, however, particles in the air would absorb and scatter much of the heat radiation, and the
area endangered by heat radiation from the fireball would be less than the area of severe blast damage.
"Firestorms" could occur only when the concentration of combustible structures is
very high, as in the very dense centers of a few old American cities. At rural and suburban building
densities, most people in earth- covered fallout shelters would not have their lives
endangered by fires.
AT: Ozone
Nuclear explosions help the ozone
Cook, 09 (Nigel B. PhD Computer Programming, BA Physics ,Radiation Effects
Research Foundation lumps data together to cover up benefits of low dose radiation
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Life Span Study (LSS)!
http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2009/04/radiation-effects-research-foundation.html
4/29/09)
One of several errors in the 1977 3rd edition of the U.S. Department of Defense book The Effects of Nuclear
the false claim on page 78 that air bursts like those over Hiroshima and Nagasaki damage
Weapons is
the ozone (O3) layer which exists at altitudes of 15-30 km: '... nuclear explosions are accompanied by the
formation [in the blast wave at high overpressures] of oxides of nitrogen [causing the red-brown colour to the rising
fireball before condensing water vapor turns it white]. An air burst, for example, is estimated to produce about 1032
molecules of nitrogen oxides per megaton of TNT equivalent ... hence, the nitrogen oxides from such explosions
would be expected to enhance mechanisms which tend to decrease the ozone concentration.' This is false
because: (1) the initial gamma radiation from both surface and air bursts produce a large
ozone layer around the early fireball, shielding the early thermal radiation from the fireball after nuclear
explosions, and this ozone production is not mentioned in the book. The mechanism for the production of ozone
naturally is the absorption by oxygen molecules (O2) of short-wavelength ultraviolet light, bordering the soft X-ray
spectrum. In addition to ozone formation by gamma radiation, nuclear weapons release typically 70-80% of their
energy as such soft X-rays in a blackbody distribution (Glasstone and Dolan, pp. 23-5) which is soon degraded by air
scatter into ultraviolet radiation which forms ozone. The reaction is: 3O2 + energy -> 2O3. The heat released by the
natural ozone-forming process is the reason for the increase in the temperature of the stratosphere with altitude.
The natural chemical reaction produces about 4,500 tons of ozone per second in the
stratosphere, which maintains equilibrium by being broken down at a similar rate by other natural chemical
reactions. (2) the nitrogen oxides, largely nitrogen dioxide, in the fireball soon reacts with moisture in the white
mushroom cloud to produce nitric acid, which is later precipitated in rainfall along with naturally produced nitric
acid from lightning storms, and has no effect on the ozone layer. A lightning storm is qualitatively like a nuclear
explosion in that it produces both ozone (from the electrical discharge air ionization) and nitrogen oxides (from the
shock waves formed around the extremely hot lightning bolts, which are later heard as thunder). Nitric acid (HNO3)
production from the mixing with nitrogen dioxide and water vapour in the fireball is described by the reaction: 3NO2
+ H2O -> 2HNO3 + NO then the nitrogen oxide, NO, itself gets oxidized into nitric acid by the reaction: 4NO + 3O2
+ 2H2O -> 4HNO3 It was a bigger hoax than Piltdown Man to suggest that nitrogen oxides from
nuclear bomb tests could break down ozone; they instead get oxidised into nitric acid by atmospheric
moisture and oxygen before they can reach the ozone layer. For a published discussion of the nitric acid production
in the air around the fireball from an atmospheric nuclear explosion, see Murray Scheibe, The Increased Attachment
Due to Ionization-Induced Smog in EMP Environments, Mission Research Corporation, California, MRC-R-532,
DNA5077F, ADA087850, 1979: 'The increased electron attachment due to HNO3 production in the EMP source
region is investigated. The HNO3 produced is found to be roughly linear with the total ionization up to an ionization
value of about 2 x 10 to the 16th power ion pairs. Above this, the HNO3 production is less than linear.' P. Goldsmith,
A. F. Tuck, J. S. Foot, E. L. Simmons and R. L. Newson, reported in their paper, 'Nitrogen oxides, nuclear weapon
testing, Concorde and stratospheric ozone' published in Nature, vol. 244 (1973), issue 5418, pp. 545-551: 'Although
amounts of nitrogen oxides equivalent to the output from many concordes were released into the atmosphere when
nuclear testing was at its peak, the amount of ozone in the atmosphere was not affected.' In total, the U.S.A,
U.S.S.R., U.K., France and China detonated 545.4 megatons in the atmosphere, the peak rate of testing occurring in
1962, see page 295 of Merril Eisenbud and Thomas F. Gesell, Environmental Radioactivity, Academic Press, 4th ed.,
for high altitude
1997 (the ten biggest atmospheric tests are listed on an earlier post, here). Finally,
explosions, there is no high pressure air blast wave, thus no production of nitrogen
oxides whatsoever, but the gamma radiation striking the atmosphere still produces ozone!
Therefore, such explosions have the exact opposite effect on the ozone layer to the
claims being made. This has some importance to the issue of holes in the ozone layer by CFCs, and the way
to repair such damage.
Ozone reductions are natural and inevitable, nuclear war
doesnt cause them, and the ozone layer is self-correcting
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, The global health effects
of nuclear war, Current Affairs Bulletin)
If significant ozone reduction did occur, the most important direct effect on humans would
be an increase in skin cancer. However, this is seldom lethal, and could be avoided by
reducing exposure to sunlight. Potentially more serious would be effects on crops.[32] Some of the important
grains, for example, are sensitive to uv. Whether the net effects on crop yields would be significant is hard to
estimate. But whatever the reduction in ozone, ozone levels would return pretty much to
normal after a few years. [9] It seems unlikely that in the context of a major nuclear war the changes in uv alone
would be of serious concern. In particular, the threat of human extinction raised by Jonathan Schell in
The Fate of the Earth,[33] based mostly on effects of increased UV from ozone reduction, seems
very small indeed. It is sometimes claimed that nuclear war could destroy ozone to such an extent that humans
and animals would be blinded by excess uv. Even if large numbers of high-yield weapons were exploded, this
Stratospheric
possibility seems very unlikely except for a contribution to snow blindness in the far north.
ozone can never be completely removed, but at most reduced greatly. Even if a 50 per cent
or more reduction in ozone occurred - and as noted this seems improbable with present nuclear arsenals -
protection from uv for humans could be obtained from sunglasses or just ordinary
glasses, which absorb uv. For animals, the following considerations are relevant. Ozone levels vary
considerably from place to place and from time to time , both seasonally and daily (sometimes by up
to 50 per cent). Sunlight at the equator typically passes through only half as much ozone as at the mid-latitudes,
yet animals at the equator are not known to go blind more often than elsewhere. Furthermore, most ozone
reductions from a nuclear war would be in the mid and high latitudes, where ozone levels are higher to start with
and where the 'path length' of sunlight through ozone is increased due to its oblique angle of incidence. But this
does not mean complacency is warranted, as the concerns of John Hampson illustrate.
Nuclear war does not cause ozone collapse or dramatically

effect ozone consistency
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, Extinction Politics,
Published in the Scientists Against Nuclear Arms Newsletter)
Schell painted a picture of human annihilation from nuclear war based almost entirely on effects from increased
ultraviolet light at the earth's surface due to ozone reductions caused by nuclear explosions. Schell's book was
the scientific
greeted with adulation rarely observed in any field. Yet by the time the book was published,
basis for ozone-based nuclear extinction had almost entirely evaporated. The ongoing
switch by the military forces of the United States and the Soviet Union from multi-megatonne nuclear weapons
to larger numbers of smaller weapons means that the effect on ozone from even the
largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to any major effect on human population
levels, and extinction from ozone reductions is virtually out of the question.
AT: Fallout
Fallout doesnt cause extinction
Nyquist, 99 (JR, Expert in IR, Specializing in Cold War Studies and Nuclear
Survivability, Writer WorldNetDaily, 5-20-1999, Is nuclear war survivable,
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19722)
Wouldn't the radiation from a

OK, so nuclear winter isn't going to happen. What about nuclear fallout?
nuclear war contaminate the whole earth, killing everyone? The short answer is: absolutely not.
Nuclear fallout is a problem, but we should not exaggerate its effects. As it happens, there are two types of fallout
produced by nuclear detonations. These are: 1) delayed fallout; and 2) short-term fallout. According to researcher
Peter V. Pry, "Delayed fallout will not, contrary to popular belief, gradually kill billions of people
everywhere in the world." Of course, delayed fallout would increase the number of people dying of lymphatic
deaths would probably be far
cancer, leukemia, and cancer of the thyroid. "However," says Pry, "these
fewer than deaths now resulting from ... smoking, or from automobile accidents."
The real hazard in a nuclear war is the short-term fallout. This is a type of fallout created when a nuclear weapon is
detonated at ground level. This type of fallout could kill millions of people, depending on the targeting strategy of
the attacking country. But short-term fallout rapidly subsides to safe levels in 13 to 18 days. It is
Those in affected areas can
not permanent. People who live outside of the affected areas will be fine.
survive if they have access to underground shelters. In some areas, staying indoors may even suffice.
Contrary to popular misconception, there were no documented deaths from short-term or
delayed fallout at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. These blasts were low airbursts, which produced
minimal fallout effects. Today's thermonuclear weapons are even "cleaner." If used in airburst
mode, these weapons would produce few (if any) fallout casualties.
Even maximum fallout wont kill everyone

Child, 86 (James W. received his PhD in history and philosophy of science from
Indiana U, Nuclear War: The Moral Dimension)
Not only does Schell exaggerate many times over the effects of a fallout maximizing attack, he completely ignores
the effects of shielding or shelter. Although it would save the lives of cast numbers of Americans, he simply does
not bring it up.A dosage of 1300 rems would be fatal to virtually all human beings who were
completely exposed (that is outside all the time during the full exposure period) But unlike Schells 10,000 rem
exposure, there are many things one could do to mitigate it. So called territorial masking being to the
leeward of a hill, for example, would cut exposure by 30 to 60 percent. By simply staying inside an ordinary
residence, one would reduce the exposure to 40 percent of the outside dosage. This could bring the
level of exposure below 50 percent the fatality level (450) rems. Taking shelter in a residential
basement would reduce the exposure to 5 to 10 percent of the outside level, which takes it under
the threshold for any form of manifest radiation sickness. Surprisingly, the dose rate for a typical apartment
house is 10 percent of outside exposure on the ground floor (a reduction of 90 percent) and as little as 1 percent in
All of this mitigation occurs without any sort of preplanned
upper floors (a reduction of 99 percent).
fallout shelter, merely staying inside or staying in a basement. In short, even in so theoretical a radiation
maximizing attack as schell postulates, a very large proportion of the population could and would
survive.
AT: Environment
Counterforce means that environmentally sensitive areas
wouldnt be targeted that was above
And, nuclear explosions empirically dont collapse the
environment
Cook, 10 (Nigel B. PhD Computer Programming, BA Physics, How weapons and
war effects exaggerations for disarmament forced Britain to collaborate with evil
racist thugs at Munich in 1938, in the name of peace
http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2010/03/lifeboat-analogy-to-civil-defence.html 3/1/10)
Stonier cites in his bibliography, but chooses to ignore completely in his text (without explanation) the rapid
recovery and lack of insect plagues on Bogombogo Island (codenamed " Belle
Island" by America) at the North-
was selected for detailed ecological studies
West of Eniwetok Atoll in the North Pacific, which
following two high yield nuclear weapons tests: Dr Ralph F. Palumbo, Radioactivity and Recovery of
the Land Plants at Eniwetok Atoll, 1954-1957, University of Washington report UWFL-66, July 1960 (PDF linked here),
see the recovery photos linked here. Bogombogo/Belle Island was 2.55 statute miles (4.10 km) from the centre of
Elugelab Island, ground zero of the 10.4 megatons IVY-MIKE thermonuclear weapon test of November 1, 1952, and
the 1.69 megatons 80% fission CASTLE-NECTAR test was detonated at the same spot on a barge over the IVY-MIKE
crater on May 14, 1954. It received heavy blast and thermal damage , water wave flooding, and
fallout radiation including extensive beta and gamma irradiation of plants (gamma of over 850 R/hr at 2 hours
after IVY-MIKE according to page 34 of of report WT-615, which - from the mean fallout arrival time and peak dose
rate time measured under the cloud - suggests an infinite dose of over 8,000 R, and then another 400 R to 6
months after CASTLE-NECTAR and beta doses near contaminated surfaces are about ten times larger, see Stonier p.
143). Dr Palumbo states in his article "Recovery of the Land Plants at Eniwetok Atoll Following a Nuclear Detonation"
(Radiation Botany, vol. 1, 1962, pp. 182-9): "The Mike detonation of 1952 had removed most of the plants and top
soil from Belle Island, resulting in the depletion of some of the elements essential for plant growth. In spite of these
deficiencies regrowth of the plants at Belle Island was rapid. ... A photograph of Belle Island taken [on May 22,
1954] eight days following the Nectar detonation shows the extent of the damage sustained by the plants. From the
air the island looked brown and desolate. On closer inspection it was found that most of the plants had been
Recovery of the
scorched by the heat wave and many of them had been blown over or broken by the blast. ...
plants was rapid. ... On the eighth day green buds, 1-3 mm in length, were observed on the stems of Scaevola
and Messerschmidia plants. On the thirty-fifth day the shoot leaves were 7-15 cm long, covering much of the old
many of the other plants had
stems and giving the plants a green and healthy appearance. By this time
formed new leaves and three species (Portulaca, Triumfetta, and Messerschmidia) had produced new flowers
and fruits. The island now had lost its scorched appearance; from the air it looked green rather than brown as it had
three months after the detonation, the plants were growing
one month earlier. "In August,
well and some species, such as Boerhaavia, had produced new flowers. The leaves of most of the species had
grown to maximum size, and the branches had grown almost to the pre-Nectar dimensions."
AT: Water
No risk of water contamination
Cook, 06 (Nigel B. PhD Computer Programming, BA Physics U.K. Home Office
Scientific Advisory Branch 'Protect and Survive' civil defence research
http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/08/nuclear-weapons-1st-edition-1956-by.html 7-
1-06)
'Water: Broadly the same principles apply as with food. Gamma rays have no effect upon water, but
certainly in the case of hydrogen bomb explosions the deposition of contaminated dust on catchment areas and
open reservoirs would constitute a serious hazard. A special version of the contamination meter has been designed
for testing water, and water undertakings are well aware of the problems which face them from this type of hazard
ordinary domestic water softener in good condition
should it arise. It is worth noting that an
completely removes the dangerous elements (strontium and barium) from contaminated water
[since fallout from surface bursts on silicate based soil is insoluble glassy spheroids, it doesn't
dissolve in water and the soluble activity hazards are trivial unless the detonation occurs on
coral, limestone or chalk].
AT: Agriculture
Counterforce means agriculture wouldnt be targeted that
was above
No impact to agriculture contamination
Kearny, 03 (Cresson, scientist recruited by Nobel Prize Laureate and Manhattan
Project Scientist Eugene Wigner as researcher for civil defense Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, Nuclear War Survival Skills, http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p904.htm)
If the fallout particles do not become mixed with the parts of food that are
Facts:
eaten, no harm is done. Food and water in dust-tight containers are not contaminated by fallout radiation.
Peeling fruits and vegetables removes essentially all fallout, as does removing the
uppermost several inches of stored grain onto which fallout particles have fallen. Water from many
sources -- such as deep wells and covered reservoirs, tanks, and containers -- would not be contaminated. Even
water containing dissolved radioactive elements and compounds can be made safe for drinking by simply filtering it
through earth, as described later in this book.
Adaptation solves the agriculture problem and their evidence

is exaggerated
PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Sydney, Extinction Politics,
Published in the Scientists Against Nuclear Arms Newsletter)
Opponents of war, including scientists, have often exaggerated the effects of nuclear war and
emphasized worst cases. Schell continually bends evidence to give the worst
impression. For example, he implies that a nuclear attack is inevitably followed by a firestorm or conflagration. He invariably
gives the maximum time for people having to remain in shelters from fallout. And he takes a pessimistic view of the potential for
in several of the scientific
ecological resilience to radiation exposure and for human resourcefulness in a crisis. Similarly,
studies of nuclear winter, I have noticed a strong tendency to focus on worst cases and to avoid
examination of ways to overcome the effects. For example, no one seems to have looked at possibilities
for migration to coastal areas away from the freezing continental temperatures or looked at people changing
their diets away from grain-fed beef to direct consumption of the grain, thereby
greatly extending reserves of food.
AT: Mutation
No mutation impact
Kearny, 03 (Cresson, scientist recruited by Nobel Prize Laureate and Manhattan
Laboratory, Nuclear War Survival Skills, http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p904.htm)
Myth: Most of the unborn children and grandchildren of people who have been exposed to
radiation from nuclear explosions will be genetically damaged or will be malformed, delayed
victims of nuclear war. Facts: The authoritative study by the National Academy of Sciences, A Thirty
Year Study of the Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was published in 1977. It concludes that the
incidence of abnormalities is no higher among children later conceived by parents who were
exposed to radiation during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of
abnormalities among Japanese children born to un-exposed parents. This is not to say that
there would be no genetic damage, nor that some fetuses subjected to large radiation doses would not be
the overwhelming evidence does show that the exaggerated fears of
damaged. But
radiation damage to future generations are not supported by scientific findings.
AT: Infrastructure
Infrastructure is decentralized it would rebound quickly
Karlin, 09 (Anatoly, UC Berkeley Graduate and Russian-American Philosopher,
Thinking About Nuclear War November 5, http://akarlin.com/2009/11/thinking-
nuclear-war/)
the complete destruction of

In his (in)famous book On Thermonuclear War, Herman Kahn calculated that
the US top 53 metropolitan areas would result in serious economic damage, but would
not terminate its industrial base. Substantial capacities would survive and will
be able to be rebuilt quickly, especially if there are prewar preparations and the postwar
government enforces savings on the population. Below is an edited table Im reproducing from the book, which
shows the 1954 output capacity of different sectors of the US economy, and the percentage of that capacity and the
existing capital stock located outside the top 53 metropolitan areas and (kind of) expected to survive a large-scale
nuclear war. Today,the spread of suburbia means that more of the strategic industries
will have migrated outside the inner-city cores. This is bad for the US environment and the
current account, but an advantage in surviving and rebuilding after a nuclear war. There is
also a huge and strategically significant IT industry, soon to be supplemented by biotech and nanomanufacturing
however, most of the key facilities would again be located on the peripheries of the big cities.
AT: Earth Explodes
The earth cannot explode and Chalko is a fraud
Thompson, 01 (Tim, Physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory focusing on
atmospheric physics, astronomy, and astrophysics, June 8, http://iidb.org/cgi-
bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=000329)
Highly unlikely to be worthy of consideration outside of the "lunatic fringe". The author,
Tom J. Chalko, is on the staff of the dynamics and Vibration group in the Department of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering, of the University of Melbourne. I assume that his background is in mechanical
engineering. However, he is also billed as "Head of the Geophysics Division" of "Scientific Engineering Research P/L,
which certainly apears to belong to Chalko in its entirety, and may be nothing more than an extension of himself. It
is significant that his position as a "geophysicist" appears to be one invented by himself. He is also evidently the
founder of "Thiaoouba Prophecy and The Freedom of Choice", which lists among Chalko's accomplishments "The
Amazing bioresonant Chakra Shirt. You can also explore the mysteries of self healing, astral travel and levitation. It
may be a less than totally reliable source of scientific arguments
would appear that Chalko
over the explodeability of the Earth. But, of course, we are obliged to consider the argument as well
as the source. In this case, the webpage is only a summary or introduction. So I followed the link at the bottom and
downloaded the paper in PDF format. The alleged justification is given as a mathematical argument, so that much
of the paper will not be accessible to those who don't at least recognize the basics of applied calculus. As one
might expect, it's a bogus argument. The premise is an alleged proof that there is a minimum possible
size for the central solid core of the Earth, but it's based on the false premise that the core must
remain at all times in equilibrium at the center . Furthermore, the argument that the central
equilibrium is unstable is based on the false condition that the pressure gradient and gravitational forces act in
A solid core displaced from the center sees only restoring forces, and thus
opposition, but they do not.
cannot be forced from its position as Chalko tries to show. And, if that weren't enough, the viscosity of
the liquid outer core and relatively sold mantle are ignored, which is a fatal flaw in any analysis of the dynamic
there is no thermodynamic analysis at all.
behavior of the core. And, if even that were not enough,
How can one argue that the Earth's interior will "overheat" if one does not even
consider basic thermodynamics? The sun irradiates the Earth's surface to the tune of
roughly 1370 Watts per square meter (W/m^2). Climate related changes in radiative forcing are on the order of 1
W/m^2. The average outward geothermal flux is about 0.06 W/m^2. It is hard to see how a change in radiative
forcing at the surface, on the order of 1/1000 would seriously affect the already miniscule heat flow from the Earth.
In any case, a proper treatment of the thermal conditions at the surface, and throughout the Earth is required to
The other issue is whether
make definitive statements, but there is no attempt at such in Chalko's paper.
or not a planet can "explode". As is the case for any explosion, one must demonstrate the
presence of an energy source, and a process that can generate energy very much faster than it can be
dissipated through radiative of hydrodynamic means. No such source has ever been identified for
the Earth or any other planet. There are vague references to radioactive material and fission explosions in
various "exploding planet" hypotheses (such as Tom van Flandern's), and evidently Chalko makes the same vague
argument (or shall we call it "hope"?). It is just "handwaving", as we say in the science biz. My conclusion is that
the argument is very bad, and that the source is not trustworthy.
AT: US-Russia
US-Russia war wouldnt cause extinction uneven population
density means their math is wrong
Kearny 03 (Cresson, scientist recruited by Nobel Prize Laureate and Manhattan
Laboratory, Nuclear War Survival Skills, orig. published 1987,
http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p904.htm)
Myth: Overkill would result if all the U.S. and U.S.S.R, nuclear weapons were used meaning not only that the two
superpowers have more than enough weapons to kill all of each others people, but also that they have enough
Statements that the U.S. and the Soviet Union
weapons to exterminate the human race. Facts:
have the power to kill the worlds population several times over are based on
misleading calculations. One such calculation is to multiply the deaths produced per kiloton exploded
over Hiroshima or Nagasaki by an estimate of the number of kilotons in either sides arsenal. (A kiloton explosion is
one that produces the same amount of energy as does 1000 tons of TNT.) The unstated assumption is
that somehow the worlds population could be gathered into circular crowds , each a few
miles in diameter with a population density equal to downtown Hiroshima or Nagasaki ,
and then a small (Hiroshima-sized) weapon would be exploded over the center of each crowd. Other
misleading calculations are based on exaggerations of the dangers from long-lasting
radiation and other harmful effects of a nuclear war.
Answers To
AT: Framework
No link the alternative is to vote Negative in order to allow
nuclear war its just an impact turn to the Aff
AT: Perm
The alternative is just to vote Negative to allow nuclear war
theres nothing to permute and the plan still prevents nuke
war so it links to the future weapons disad
AT: Nuclear Rhetoric Good
Were impact turning this argument if their rhetoric prevents
nuclear war, then it allows future weapons development the
impacts extinction
[Read AT: Wont Be Used]
AT: Unethical
Preventing human extinction justifies nuclear war the value
of future generations is incalculable
Bostrom, 13 (Nick, Professor of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of
the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on Impacts of
Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R
Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a PH.D in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, Existential Risk Prevention as
Global Priority http://w.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf)
Holding probability constant, risks become more serious as we move toward the upper-right region of figure 2. For
any fixed probability, existential risks are thus more serious than other risk categories. But
just how much more serious might not be intuitively obvious. One might think we could get a grip on how bad an
existential catastrophe would be by considering some of the worst historical disasters we can think of such as the
two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic, or the Holocaustand then imagining something just a bit worse. Yet if
we look at global population statistics over time, we find that these horrible events of the past century fail to
What makes
register (figure 3). But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk.
existential catastrophes especially bad is not that they would show up robustly on a plot like
the one in figure 3, causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life.
Instead, their significance lies primarily in the fact that they would destroy the future. The
philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the following thought experiment: I believe that if we destroy
Compare three outcomes:
mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think.
A nuclear war that kills 99% of the worlds existing population. (3)
(1) Peace. (2)
A nuclear war that kills 100%. (2) Would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which
is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I
believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very much greater. The Earth will remain habitable for at least
another billion years. Civilization began only a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind, these few
thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized The difference between
human history.
(2) and (3) may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of
this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a
second. To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must
consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the
ultimate potential for Earth-originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. One gets a
large number even if one confines ones consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth.
If we suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume
that at least one billion people could live on it sustainably, then the potential exist for at least 1018 human lives.
These lives could also be considerably better than the average contemporary human life, which is so often marred
by disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological limitations that could be partly overcome through continuing
technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but
how many descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human life-years in
the future accessible universe (based on current cosmological estimates) is 1034 years.[7] Another estimate, which
assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal
wetware, produces a lower bound of 1054human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1071 basic
computational operations).(4)[8] If we make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations could
eventually press close to the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get
radically higher estimates of the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the
number of years of subjective experience that could be realized.[9 Even if we use the most conservative of these
estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that the
expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1018 human lives. This implies that the
expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one
percentage point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives. The more
technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054 human-brain -emulation subjective life-years (or 1052 lives of
ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the
cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct, we find
that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point
is worth a hundred even
billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that
the tiniest reduction of existential risk has an expected value greater than
that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct benefit of saving 1 billion
lives.
Inherent equality of all beings requires utilitiarianism

Cummiskey, 96 (David, Associate Professor of Philosophy @ Bates College & a
Ph.D. from UM, Kantian Consequentialism, Pg. 145-146)
In the next section, I will defend this interpretation of the duty of beneficence. For the sake of argument, however,
let us first simply assume that beneficence does not require significant self-sacrifice and see what follows. Although
Kant is unclear on this point, we will assume that significant self-sacrifices are supererogatory. Thus, if I must harm
one in order to save many, the individual whom I will harm by my action is not morally required to affirm the action.
I am faced with a
On the other hand, I have a duty to do all that I can for those in need. As a consequence
dilemma: If I act, I harm a person in a way that a rational being need not
consent to; if I fail to act, then I do not do my duty to those in need and
thereby fail to promote an objective end. Faced with such a choice, which horn of the
dilemma is more consistent with the formula of the end-in-itself? We must not obscure the issue
by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some
abstract social entity. It is not a question of some persons having to
bear the cost for some elusive overall social good. Instead, the question is
whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of
other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that to use a person in this way does
not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he [or she] is a
separate person, that his is the only life he [or she] has. But why is this
not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to
act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we
fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate
persons, each with only one life , who will bear the cost of our inaction. In
such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of
rational beings, choose?A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all
particular duties is the principle that rational nature exists as an end in
itself. Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes
that all rational beings have an equal value then the rational solution to such a
dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many
rational beings as possible . In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-
consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. As we saw in
chapter 1, however, even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered
constraints require a non-value based rationale. But we have seen that Kants normative
theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end. How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a
refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings? If
the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale for prohibiting a
moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake of
others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional
value of rational beings. Persons may have dignity, that is, an unconditional
and incomparable worth that transcends any market value, but persons
also have a fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes
give way for the sake of others. The concept of the end-in-itself does not
support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in
order to benefit others. If on focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal
consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many .
Their argument is moral tunnel vision which is complicit with

the evil they criticize
Isaac, 02 (Jeffery C., Professor of political science at Indiana-Bloomington,
Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale,
Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, Ends, Means, and Politics, p. Proquest)
As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It is assumed that U.S. military intervention
is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The
status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted
by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that
most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam
Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice?
Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized
ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how
diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such
account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here
what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty word or an
unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world.
Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To
accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are
necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say
this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not
reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt
have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political
responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from
three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one
intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may
seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view
them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters (2) it
fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of
powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice . This is why, from the standpoint of
politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence,
it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as
much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of
action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of
"good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's
goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to
judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this
undermines political
judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it
effectiveness.
AT: Must be 100% Sure
Theres no reason to use a different risk analysis for this
argument every argument is about tradeoff, its always about
maximizing the net-benefit
Turn you should be 100% sure that future weapons wont be
developed and wont cause extinction before you vote Aff if
we win that nuke war doesnt cause extinction, then its a
justified measure to prevent everyone from dying
Heuristics cause us to undervalue the threat of extinction you
should err Neg, not Aff
Yudkowsky, 06 (Eliezer, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence,
Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks, forthcoming in
Clobal Catastrophic Risks, August 31, http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf)
Biases implicit in the availability heuristic affect estimates of risk. A pioneering study by Lichtenstein et. al. (1978) examined
absolute and relative probability judgments of risk. People know in general terms which risks cause large numbers of deaths and
which cause few deaths. However, asked to quantify risks more precisely, people severely overestimate the frequency of rare causes
of death, and severely underestimate the frequency of common causes of death. Other repeated errors were also apparent:
Accidents were judged to cause as many deaths as disease. (Diseases cause about 16 times as many deaths as accidents.)
Homicide was incorrectly judged a more frequent cause of death than diabetes, or stomach cancer. A followup study by Combs and
Slovic (1979) tallied reporting of deaths in two newspapers, and found that errors in probability judgments correlated strongly (.85
People refuse to buy flood insurance even when it is
and .89) with selective reporting in newspapers.
heavily subsidized and priced far below an actuarially fair value. Kunreuther et. al. (1993) suggests underreaction
to threats of flooding may arise from "the inability of individuals to conceptualize
floods that have never occurred... Men on flood plains appear to be very much prisoners of their experience...
Recently experienced floods appear to set an upward bound to the size of loss with which managers believe they ought to be
concerned." Burton et. al. (1978) report that when dams and levees are built, they reduce the frequency of floods, and thus
apparently create a false sense of security, leading to reduced precautions. While building dams decreases the frequency of floods,
people do not
damage per flood is so much greater afterward that the average yearly damage increases. It seems that
extrapolate from experienced small hazards to a possibility of large risks; rather, the
past experience of small hazards sets a perceived upper bound on risks. A society
well-protected against minor hazards will take no action against major risks (building on
flood plains once the regular minor floods are eliminated). A society subject to regular minor hazards will treat those minor hazards
Risks of
as an upper bound on the size of the risks (guarding against regular minor floods but not occasional major floods).
human extinction may tend to be underestimated since , obviously, humanity has never
yet encountered an extinction event.2
AT: Nuke War is Racist
This is equally true of future weapons use any war between
superpowers would unfairly affect other people, its just a
question of survivability
Counterforce means that only countries with nukes would be
targeted that was above
AT: Spark
Spark 2AC
General
Aff isnt key
a) Other limited nuclear wars are inevitable

< Insert Favorite Scenario >
b) Well still have a unique advantage Our wars are worse,

and well have non-nuclear war based add-ons
You should default aff if we win any risk nuclear war causes
extinction, kills a lot of people, or fails to spark a mindset
shift, you shouldnt be willing to intentionally let billions die
for a risk of stopping their scenarios.
Their authors are crazy this is self-evident, but you should be

willing to call out their authors as crackpots with no
qualifications or warrants. Just because Exit Mundi said it
doesnt make it true
Extinction
Nuclear war causes extinction
George M Woodwell, PhD From Duke, Director of the Ecosystems center at the
Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole Mass. , Nuclear Winter, Deterrence, and
the Prevention of Nuclear War, Edited by Sederberg, 19 86 p. 20
The primary concern, I suppose, is the direct effects on people. Many of the same uncertainties that apply to the
induction of climatic changes apply as well to inferences about human mortality. The size and characters of the
war are important: Are cities the targets? The analyses from previous studies range widely up to the recent
WHO analysis that suggests a total mortality of 1.1 billion for a 10,000 MT war. No estimates in this study dealt
with the effects of a climatic crisis. Systematic efforts at estimating the additional mortality due to dark and
prolonged cold in the weeks following such a war are beyond the limits of this discussion and, when developed,
any estimates will prove as tenuous as virtually all other assumptions concerning the effects of a hypothetical
war. Survivors of the immediate effects of the weapons will emerge into a
radioactive environment that is likely to be perpetually dark and frozen with 10-20C or
more of frost. On first analysis it would seem difficult to exaggerate the difficulties of
accumulating the resources required for survival under those conditions . All
supplies of fresh water would be frozen. Plants and animals , left unprotected, would be
frozen and dead. Agriculture would be paralyzed transportation, normal communications of all
types, sources of fuel, power supplies, and the normal machinery of govemment, including normal conventions
established in law or in manners will have been destroyed or suspended: under those circumstances mere
survival will be a major challenge and it is well within the realm of probability that few or none
would survive in areas as large as continents, possibly in the northern hemisphere itself.
We dont need to win escalation -- five nuclear weapons

destroy the planet
The Guardian, July 14, 1993
But we understand, or ought to understand, some things better now that the East-West confrontation is no
more, and our knowledge of ecology and the fragility of planetary systems has advanced One is that the nuclear
war fighting scenarios were not just optimistic but totally ludicrous We now know or ought to know and that
one nuclear
we includes Arabs, Iranians. South Asians, Chinese, and Koreans as well as Westerners that
weapon discharging might be enough to push an entire region, say a vulnerable region
like the Middle East, into an irreversible ecological, economic, and political decline Two
or three could thrust the world into a long term crisis, compounded by the
degradation of other dangerous facilities including nuclear power stations. Five or 10 could
wreck the planet
Even if some people survive, civilization will collapse, causing

extinction
Nick Bostrom 2002 Prof of Philosophy at Yale university
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html - last updated April 15, 2k2
The US and Russia still have huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. But would an all-out nuclear war really
exterminate humankind? Note that: (i) For there to be an existential risk it suffices that we cant be sure that it
wouldnt. (ii) The climatic effects of a large nuclear war are not well known (there is the possibility of a nuclear
winter). (iii) Future arms races between other nations cannot be ruled out and these could lead to even greater
arsenals than those present at the height of the Cold War. The worlds supply of plutonium has been increasing
steadily to about two thousand tons, some ten times as much as remains tied up in warheads ([9], p. 26). (iv)
Even if some humans survive the short-term effects of a nuclear war, it could
lead to the collapse of civilization. A human race living under stone-age
conditions may or may not be more resilient to extinction than other animal
species.
Half the world population would die from immediate effects
Carl Sagan is David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and
Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University Foreign Affairs
1983/1984
Recent estimates of the immediate deaths from blast, prompt radiation, and fires in
a major exchange in which cities were targeted range from several hundred million to 1.1
billion people -- the latter estimate is in a World Health Organization study in which targets were assumed
not to be restricted entirely to NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. n7 Serious injuries requiring
immediate medical attention (which would be largely unavailabe) would be suffered
by a comparably large number of people, perhaps an additional 1.1 billion. n8 Thus it is possible that
something approaching half the human population on the planet would be killed or
seriously injured by the direct effects of the nuclear war. Social disruption ; the unavailability
of electriaity, fuel, transportation, food deliveries, communication and other civil services; the absence of
medical care; the decline in sanitation measures; rampant disease and severe psychiatric
disorders would doubtless collectively claim a significant number of further victims. But a range of
additional effects -- some unexpected, some inadequately treated in earlier studies, some uncovered only
recently -- now make the picture much more somber still.
Even limited war is catastrophic Radiation, Water

contamination, Agriculture loss, regional conflagrations, forest
fires and nuclear winter
Beres, Prof of Political Science Purdue, Security or Armageddon 19 86, p 11-12
Even the most limited nuclear exchange would signal unprecedented catastrophe. The
immediate effects of the explosions - thermal radiation, nuclear radiation, and blast damage-
would cause wide swaths of death and devastation. Victims would suffer flash and flame bums.
Retinal bums could occur in the eyes of persons at distances of several hundred miles from the explosion.
People would be crushed by collapsing buildings or tom by flying glass. Others would fall victim to raging
firestorms and conflagrations. Fallout injuries would include whole-body radiation injury, produced by
penetrating, hard gamma radiation; superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations: and injuries
produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body. In the aftermath, medical facilities that might
Water supplies would be come unusable as a
still exist would be stressed beyond endurance.
result of fallout contamination. Housing and shelter would be unavailable for survivors.
Transportation and communication would break down to almost prehistoric levels. And
overwhelming food shortages would become the rule for at least several years. Since the
countries involved would have entered into war as modern industrial economies, their networks of highly
interlocking and interdependent exchange systems would now be shattered. Virtually everyone would be
deprived of a means of livelihood. Emergency fire and police services would be decimated altogether. Systems
dependent upon electrical power would cease to function. Severe trauma would occasion widespread
disorientation and psychological disorders for which there would be no therapeutic services. In sum, normal
society would disappear. The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry would augment the pestilence of
plague and epidemics. With the passage of time, many of the survivors could expect an increased incidence of
degenerative diseases and various kinds of cancer. They might also expect premature death, impairment of
vision and a high probability of sterility. Among the survivors of Hiroshima, for example, an increased incidence
of leukemia and cancer of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary, and ute~ne cervix has been widely documented.
the
Such a war could also have devastating climatic effects. It is now widely understood that even
explosion of a mere 100 megatons (less than 1 percent of the worlds arsenals) would
be enough to generate an epoch of cold and dark nearly as severe as in the 5,000-megaton
case. As we have learned from Carl Sagan, the threshold for the nuclear winter is very low.
Even limited nuclear war kills everyone
Alan Robock, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September, 1989, p. 35
use of nuclear weapons would be suicide for

The implications of nuclear winter are clear: the
all the peoples of the planet. A first strike would kill the aggressors , even if their
victims could not retaliate. And the threat of nuclear retaliation, even for a conventional attack, is
meaningless if it will also kill the retaliators. Even a limited nuclear war would
produce these effects.
AT: Shelters
Shelters dont work everyone still dies
Harold Freeman, Prof. Emeritus MIT, IF You Give a Damn About Life 19 85 p. 25-26
In a nuclear war, occupants of family shelters will die in assorted ways: by crushing if
the shelter is vulnerable to bomb blast; by incineration if the shelter is reached by
the firestorm(at five miles from burst, shelter temperature could reach 1,500 degrees F); by
asphyxiation if the firestorm absorbs all available oxygen; by Starvation or
dehydration in the likely absence of radiation free food or water ; or by initial
radiation if the air within the shelter cannot be continuously filtered . MIT physicists
estimate that appearance outside a shelter for more than three minutes will produce
fatal third-degree burns from intense ultraviolet light; this is the consequence of ozone layer
depletion. For those at a greater distance from burst, protection in a fallout shelter could provide a small
improvement in chances for survival. But it will be small indeed. Living mostly in darkness, unable
to communicate with others attempting to survive, with radiation gradually penetrating
the shelter, occupants might gain several extra weeks or months of what could arguably be
called life. Lacking means, they will not be able to determine the level of radioactive
contamination of stored food: one choice will be between hunger and radiation sickness. Toilet
refuse and vomit from those gradually being afflicted with some degree of
radiation sickness will add extra stench to the stale air of the shelter. Any early exposure
to radiation will have weakened or destroyed the immune system: even minor
infections will take hold and bring death. Any injuries or burns of those who were late reaching the
shelters will be far beyond the range of any first aid kit. With five or more people in the space of a bathroom,
emotion eruption, alternating with demoralization and apathy, is virtually guaranteed. At best, many occupants
of family shelters will find themselves alive in what will turn out, in short time, to be their coffins. The delay will
be shorter for children.
Shelters dont work -- Pentagon study proves nuclear winter

causes extinction
UPI 9-4-85
Civil defense plans fall far short of dealing with a nuclear winter and its
environmental effects may be so devastating that human survival could not be
assured, a new Pentagon study said Wednesday. The possibility of a nuclear winter makes the
obstacles to survival in a postwar environment appear even more formidable than
earlier foreseen, the 66-page report said. Prepared by Palomar corp. of Washington for the Defense
Nuclear Agency in June and released following its publication in The Los Angeles Times, the report looks at the
implications of a nuclear winter on u.s. strategy, arms control and civil defense measures. For purposes of
analysis, the study embraces the nuclear winter theory put forward by a group of scientists nearly two years ago
-- that the explosions of major nuclear weapons would create enough dust, smoke, soot and debris to blot out
the sun, creating months of darkness and cold temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere. The unstated
little could be done to avoid the onset of a nuclear
theme of the studys conclusions was that
winter or to protect populations against its effects in the event of a maior exchange of
nuclear weapons, even if they did not hit U.S. territory. In a worst-case scenario envisioned by the nuclear winter
theorists, the study said, The
long-term biological and environmental effects would be
so devastating that even such exorbitantly expensive measures as building vast
underground shelters might not ensure human survival. The reguirements for sheltering,
feeding and otherwise caring for survivors of a nuclear conflict faced with a nuclear winter would be far more
extensive than those anticipated under current civil defense plans, which focus on protecting the population
from the initial blast, fire and fallout of a nuclear attack, the study said. Moreover, the report said, the
necessary preparations for coping with worst- case nuclear winter conditions might involve the peacetime
expenditure of an unacceptably hi level of resources.
AT: Southern Hemisphere
Shockingly, the effects of nuclear war spread the south isnt
safe
1983/1984
the effects do not seem to be restricted to northern mid-

Unlike many previous studies,
latitudes, where the nuclear exchange would mainly take place. There is now substantial
evidence that the heating by sunlight of atmospheric dust and soot over northern mid-
latitude targets would profoundly change the global circulation. Fine particles would be
transported across the equator in weeks, bringing the cold and the dark to the
Southern Hemisphere. (In addition, some studies suggest that over 100 megatons would be
dedicated to equatorial and Southern Hemisphere targets , thus generating fine particles
locally.) nil While it would be less cold and less dark at the ground in the Southern Hemisphere than in the
Northern, massive climatic and environmental disruptions may be triggered there as
well.
Countries dont need to get directly hit theyd just starve

UPI 10-3-85
A nuclear war hitting 100 cities could create a nuclear winter effect in which
billions might die of mass starvation, astronomer Carl Sagan said Thursday. Sagan told the Senate
Armed Services Committee the nuclear winter effect of lowered temperatures, less sunlight and crop failures
might deter a first strike because it would be an elaborate way to commit national suicide. Assistant Defense
Secretary Richard Perle, who also testified before the panel, conceded it was almost certain that a nuclear
winter would result from a very large-scale nuclear war. But he said there was tremendous uncertainty at
what point the threshold between no effect on the atmosphere and a nuclear winter is crossed. The hearing was
the second of two called by Chairman Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., to explore the issue before his influential panel.
Sagan noted previous testimony to the panel said that massive
global starvation is a very likely
consequence of a widespread war that would drive down global temperatures
because of smoke thrown into the atmosphere . He said the loss of crops means that
people in other countries ... are now fundamentally threatened even if no
nuclear weapons fall on them.
AT: Hiroshima/Nagasaki
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are irrelevant examples the bombs
were smaller and detonated in the air
Online version of: Nissani, M. Ph.D., Genetics, University of Pittsburgh, 1 975.B.A.,
philosophy, psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1972. 19 92. Lives in the
Balance: the Cold War and American Politics, 1945-1991.
http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isplmnissanj/PAGEPUB/CH2.html
Yet grim as these experiences were, they offer only a partial picture of a future nuclear war between two
nuclear-weapon states. As an air burst, the Hiroshima bomb generated little local fallout.
So, unlike the prospective victims of an all-out nuclear war, the people of
Hiroshima were spared the devastating impact of lingering high levels of
radioactivity. The explosion in Nagasaki-the only other nuclear bombing during the war-was an air burst
too, so no fallout from other surface bursts drifted to Hiroshima. In contrast, in an all-out nuclear war,
many areas, regardless of whether they are hit directly, will have to contend with
such radioactive imports. And by todays standards, the Hiroshima bomb- with only
one-thirtieth the destructive power of humanitys average warhead 14-is
comparable to a mere battlefield weapon . We must also keep in mind the enormous
number of nuclear bombs which might be used in an all-out war. Beyond a certain point, their
overall impact-especially on such complex entities as the biosphere, world economy, and human societies-may
be qualitatively different from a mere sum of the constituent parts (see below). Also, many bombs are
more destructive than one bomb. So a town the size of Hiroshima then, or of Madison, Wisconsin
today, would be hit by more than just one bomb. How many then? The following story throws some light on this
question. In 1960, President Eisenhower sent a few people to the appropriate headquarters to inquire about
Americas war plans. One of his messengers picked a Hiroshima-sized Soviet town. Unlike Hiroshima, nothing
about this town made it stand out as an attractive military target. Yet the plans allotted it one bomb with 320
times, and three bombs each with 80 times, the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb.2c Hiroshima
survivors were also comparatively fortunate in the amount and quality of help they
received. True, Japans rulers did not rush to their aid but help did eventually come. After an all-out
war, it will be too dangerous to walk about. There will be too few people able to
help and too many needing help, so most victims will receive no help at all.
Escalation
Nuclear war will escalate -- high alert guarantees
DR Alan Phillips Oct. 2000. http://www.peace.caInuclearwinterrevisitedhtm
With thousands of rocket-launched weapons at launch-on-warning, any day there could

be an all-out nuclear war by accident. The fact that there are only half as many nuclear bombs as there
were in the 80s makes no significant difference. Deaths from world-wide starvation after the war
would be several times the number from direct effects of the bombs, and the
surviving fraction of the human race might then diminish and vanish after a few
generations of hunger and disease, in a radioactive environment .
Nuclear war will escalate -- Russian Dead Hand

Pavel Feigenhauer, chief defense correspondent of Segodnya Moscow limes 11-
26-98
Russia also has a fully operational dead hand nuclear command machine. Using special
communication rockets launched high into space, this dead hand can issue computer-
produced attack orders to Russian nuclear submarines, bombers and surviving silo missiles if special
sensors detect shock waves from nuclear explosions on Russian territory and all
Russian commanding generals have been killed or are unavailable because all conventional command-and-
control communication lines have been destroyed by surprise enemy attack. As one top Russian general at the
time in charge of Russias nuclear arsenal once told me: You and I could be sitting drinking vodka, Pavel. while
this dead hand machine fights a nuclear world war on ~s own. If all these technical gadgets and Joint
operational nuclear staffs already exist, why does Sergeyev need yet another? To economize? But, there is no
talk of disbanding the general staff itself, for it is considered a sacred cow, the backbone of Russias military
machine. So Sergeyevs new united command will simply overlap existing joint operational departments,
creating additional discord, If the strategic forces of the navy, the air force and SRF are merged, then Russian
nuclear strategic and attack submarines will receive operational orders from different masters.
Nuclear war will escalate alliances, proliferation, and

accidents
Louis Rene Beres, Prof. @ Penn, Apocalypse, 1974 p 161
If either one or both of the combatant countries had been party to a major alliance
system, special tensions would develop throughout that system and within its opposite number.
At a minimum, military forces of alliance countries would be Placed on high-alert status
and a good deal of saber rattling could be expected . After a time, such saber rattling could
have a self-fulfilling effect, bringing about the very conditions of extended nuclear
conflict it was designed to prevent. If it is generally believed that the two-country nuclear
war had been initiated because the attacking party perceived vulnerability on the part of the victims
retaliatory forces, we could expect that other developing nuclear powers in the system
would accelerate their construction of hair-trigger launch mechanisms and
adoption of launch-on-warning measures. It follows that we could then expect an increased
probability of additional strategic exchanges as a consequence of the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear
weapons.
There would be political pressure for escalation
Arthur M Katz, PhD in chemistry from Rochester, MS in meteorology at MIT, Life
After Nuclear War 1982 p. 50
On a national scale, the most serious aspect of a counterforce or limited nuclear attack, even
one restricted to ICBM silos, is its potentially severe consequences for short- and midterm
food production, if the U.S. food production and distribution system is significantly
disrupted (not necessarily destroyed), the attack creates the potential to unleash tremendous
political pressure for retaliation.
Extinction only takes half an hour Early Warning Systems

ensure escalation
The American Prospect, 2/26/01
The bitter disputes over national missile defense (NMD) have obscured a related but dramatically more urgent
issue of national security: the 4,800 nuclear warheads -- weapons with a combined destructive power nearly
100,000 times greater than the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima -- currently on "hair-trigger" alert. Hair-
The missiles carrying those warheads are armed and fueled at all
trigger alert means this:
times. Two thousand or so of these warheads are on the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) targeted by
Russia at the United States; 1,800 are on the ICBMs targeted by the United States at Russia; and approximately
1,000 are on the submarine-based missiles targeted by the two nations at each other. These missiles would
launch on receipt of three computer-delivered messages. Launch crews -- on duty every second of every day --
In no more than
are under orders to send the messages on receipt of a single computer-delivered command.
two minutes, if all went according to plan, Russia or the United States could launch missiles
at predetermined targets: Washington or New York; Moscow or St. Petersburg. The early-warning
systems on which the launch crews rely would detect the other side's missiles within tens of
seconds, causing the intended -- or accidental -- enemy to mount retaliatory strikes. "Within a
half-hour, there could be a nuclear war that would extinguish all of us ," explains Bruce
Blair. "It would be, basically, a nuclear war by checklist, by rote."
Firebreak
Even if they win nuclear war doesnt cause extinction, one use
destroys the firebreak, causing more nuclear wars
Richard Betts, Professor and the Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies
at Columbia, Universal Deterrence or Conceptual Collapse? Liberal Pessimism and
Utopian Realism, The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World
Order, ed. Utgoff, 2000, p. 82
Quite opposite reactions are imaginable. The shock might jar sluggish statesmen into taking the danger
seriously, cutting through diplomatic and military red tape, and undertaking dramatic actions to push the genie
shock might prompt panic and a rush to stock up on WMD, as
back in the bottle. Or the
the possibility of use underlines the need for deterrent capability, or the
effectiveness of such weapons as instruments of policy One seldom-noticed danger is that
breakage of the taboo could de mystify the weapons and make them look more
conventional than our post-Hiroshima images of them. It helps to recall that in the 1930s, popular
images of conventional strategic bombing were that it would be apocalyptic, bringing
belligerent countries to their knees quickly. The apocalyptic image was fed by the German bombing of Guernica,
a comparatively small city in Spain. When World War II came in Europe, both British and Germans
initially refrained from bombing attacks on cities. Once city bombing began and
gathered steam, however, it proved to be far less decisive than many had
expected. British and German populations managed to adjust and absorb it. Over time, however, the
ferocity of Allied bombing of Germany and Japan did approach the apocalyptic levels originally
envisioned. In short, dire assumptions about the awesomeness of strategic bombing deterred its
initiation, but once initiated did not prevent gradual escalation to the devastating
level originally envisioned. Nuclear weapon inventories of countries like India and Pakistan are likely to
remain small in number and yield for some time. According to press reports, by some U.S. estimates the yields
of the 1998 tests were only a few kilotons. If the first weapon detonated in combat is a low-yield device in a
large city with uneven terrain and lots of reinforced concrete, it might only destroy a small part of the city A
bomb that killed 10,000 to 20,000 people would be seen as a stunning catastrophe, but there are now many
disaster
parts of the world where that number would be less than 1 percent of a citys population. The
could seem surprisingly limited , since in the popular imagination (underwritten by the results in the
small and flimsy cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), nuclear weapons mean one bomb, one city Awful
destruction that yet seems surprisingly limited could prompt revisionist reactions among lay elites in some
countries about the meaning of nuclear ordnance.
No Mindset Shift
No mindset shift psychological effects of nuclear war are too
devastating
Arthur M. Katz and Sima R. Osdoby THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF
NUCLEAR WAR April 21,1982 http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/paO09.html
The experience of nuclear war is likely to have devastating psychological effects ,

especially for Americans, whose homes and institutions have essentially escaped the ravages of recent wars.
The very short period required to carry out highly destructive nuclear attacks
would intensify the emotional impact, particularly those reactions associated with denial
of the true extent of the damage or fostering flight from and resistance to
reentering damaged areas. Robert J. Lifton, in his study of Hiroshima survivors, described the
psychological effect as a sudden and absolute shift from normal existence to an overwhelming encounter with
death.[20] The reaction, as reported by a witness to the disaster, Father Siemes: Among
the
passersby, there are many who are uninjured . In a purposeless, insensate manner,
distraught by the magnitude of the disaster, most of them rush by and none
conceives the thought of organizing help on his own initiative. They are concerned only
with the welfare of their own families .[211 In some cases even families were abandoned. The
result of this experience was, as Fred IkIe described it 25 years ago, a deep aversion to returning to the cities to
rebuild the economy. And thus a very different situation will exist from that envisaged in
most civil defense plans (in the 1 950s).[221 The economic implications of this type of withdrawal would
be serious. A high incidence of abnormal behavior , ranging from the nonfunctional to the
antisocial, could be anticipated. Specific psychological effects would include disorientation, fear, doubt,
apathy, and antipathy toward authonties. The effects on Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors
provide ample evidence to support these concerns .
No chance of mindset shift any nuclear attack would create
feelings of isolation and individualism
NUCLEAR WAR April 21, 1982 http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/paO09.html
The massive and simultaneous destruction of economic and human resources

would result in an inability to provide immediate and sufficient human and material aid to
damaged areas. There will be no time to adapt and to innovate as nations did in World
War II (U.S.S.R. as previously cited is an example). More important the lack of outside aid would
create a sense of individual and communal isolation. Aid symbolizes a reconnection with
a larger, normal world. This connection helps provide the impetus for rebuilding the
damaged society, creating a sense of vitality and competence to dispel the continuing perception of isolation. It
also has an important function for binding together society, restating a common
thread of hope and shared aspirations that are the essence of national life. The post-attack
situation could be like Japan near the end of World War II. There could be a drift
toward accomplishing personal and private aims rather than those which are national..
farmersgrowing little more than is required for their own subsistence ,[1 7] or more
likely, the complete demoralization seen in an earlier tragedy: Survivors of the Black Death in growing
helplessness fell into apathy, leaving ripe wheat uncut and livestock untendedno one had any inclination to
concern themselves about the future.f181 More pertinent, a panel of experts in a study of social consequence
of nuclear war for the Office of Civil Defense concluded: One
month after the attack, less than
half the labor force could be expected to work without immediately beneficial
potential
compensation. and that, of these, one in five would be able to function only at a level greatly
degraded from his normal abilities. 19]
Even a limited nuclear war causes states to go authoritarian,

escalating future conflicts
Brian Martin Published in Journal ef Peace Research, Vol. 19, No. 4,19 82, pp. 287-
300. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82jpr.html
Limited nuclear war in the periphery. A war breaks out in the Middle East, and resort is made to nuclear
weapons, killing a few hundred thousand people. The United States and the Soviet Union place their nuclear
forces on the highest alert.As the tension continues to build up, a state of emergency is
declared in the US. Normal democratic procedures are suspended, and
dissidents are rounded up. A similar process occurs in many countries allied
militarily to the US, and also within the Soviet bloc. A return to the pre-crisis state of affairs
does not occur for years or decades. As well as precipitating bitter political
repression, the crisis contributes to an increased arms race, especially among
nonnuclear and small nuclear powers, as no effective sanctions are applied to those who used
nuclear weapons. Another similar limited nuclear war and supemower crisis becomes likely ... or
perhaps the scene shifts to scenario b or c.(b ) Limited nuclear war between the superpowers .
A limited exchange of nuclear weapons between the US and the Soviet Union occurs either due to accident or as
part of a threat-counter threat situation. A sizable number of military or civilian targets are
destroyed, either in the US or the Soviet Union or in allied states, and perhaps 5 or 10 million people are
killed. As in scenano a, states of emergency are declared, political dissent repressed
and public outrage channelled into massive military and political mobilisation to prepare
for future confrontations and wars. Scenario c becomes more likely.(c) Global nuclear war. A
National
massive nuclear exchange occurs, killing 200 million people in the US, Soviet Union and Europe.
governments, though decimated, survive and apply brutal policies to obtain economic and
military recovery, brooking no dissent . In the wake of the disaster, authoritarian civilian or
military regimes take control in countries relatively unscathed by the war , such as
Australia, Japan and Spain. The road is laid to an even more devastating World War IV .
Even if they win theres a shift, it wont last resource
problems and preexisting conflicts
NUCLEAR WAR April 21,1982 http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html
Significant interpersonal, intergroup, and inter-regional conflicts would probably arise.

Ethnic, racial, regional. and economic conflicts present in the pre-attack society, while
minimized in the period immediately after an attack, would be heightened after
only a limited time by the extent of the deprivation and the resulting tensions . New
antagonisms would develop between hosts and evacuees or refugees over the
possession and use of surviving resources . These phenomena were observed both in
Britain and in Japan during World War II. The Allnutt study predicted these conflicts would be so
serious that they would necessitate the imposition of martial law or other authoritarian system in many
localities, and the widespread use of troops to maintain order. r231
Immoral
Nuclear war is immoral, even if it doesnt cause extinction its
the ultimate in dehumanization, stripping even death of all
meaning
Peter Beckman, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, et al, The Nuclear
Predicament: Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century, 3 rd edition, 2000, p.
296-297
Individual death is not the only death that affects the way people live. Since humans are social
beings who define themselves naturally as parts of families, societies, kinship groups, religions, nations, and
humanity as a whole, how they view themselves will depend largely on whether they
anticipate the continuing existence of these social entities. In the prenuclear age,
the individual obviously dies, but the social unit, the nation, the family, the species, was
understood as outliving death. But in the nuclear age, we must anticipate nuclear
death as a collective experience, what Norman Cousins called irrational deathdeath of a new
kind, a nondiscriminating death without warning, death en masse. While all deaths are individual, in the mass
deaths of the twentieth century, be they at Auschwitz or at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the individual is lost
in a faceless, mindless, random destruction. Writer Norman Mailer described the transformation
as follows: For the first time in civilized history, perhaps for the first time in all history, we have been forced to
live with the suppressed knowledge that the smallest facets of our per sonality or the most minor
projections of our ideas ... might be doomed to die as a ci pher in some vast statistical
operation in which our teeth would be counted, and our hair would be saved, but our death itself unknown,
unhonored and unrewarded, a death which could not follow with dignity as a possible
consequence to serious actions we have chosen, but rather a death in a gas chamber or a radioactive city; and
so ... in the midst of civilization ... our psyche was subjected itself to the intolerable anxi ety that death being
causeless, life was causeless as well, and time deprived of cause and effect had come to a stop. If the type of
death we anticipate is important because it affects how we view ourselves in the world, then the pervasive fear
of nuclear annihilation does not necessarily tell us anything about death per se, but rather it reveals something
Nuclear weapons challenge a
about the perception humans have of their place and worth in the world.
challenge possibly the most central tenet of
basic belief in the importance of the individual. They
the Judeo-Christian world view: Each in dividual is unique and important and created
in the image of God. If you save one life it is like saving the entire world, the Talmud teaches. God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten son, John says. Now, we are haunted with the image of human beings as
objects, as matter, to be burned, radiated, turned into ashes or vapor.
Dehumanization is the worst impact

Berube, professor of speech communication, Nanotechnology Magazine June/July
1997, http://www.cla.sc.edu/ENGL/faculty/berube/prolong.htm, accessed, 5/17/04
this entire resultant worldview
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans,
smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would involve valuing people as
means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the current ones, humans would
never be able to escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends
dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: " its
destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural
calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric
of civilized society is beyond calculation . For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be
called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a
dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of
America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be
possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the
When we calculate the
foundations of humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone.
actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value
greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it.
Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international
genocide. When people become things, they become dispensable. When people
are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they
seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most
powerful weapon.
Space
Nuclear war stops space colonization
Sylvia Engdahl, professor at New Yorks New School for Social Research, former
computer systems specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System and author. Space
and Human Survival, 2000 http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/survival.htm
I have called this stage in our evolution the Critical Stage. Paul Levinson [the Director of Connected Education]
uses different terminology for the same concept. He says that we have only a narrow window to get into space,
a relatively short time during which we have the capability, but have not yet run out of the resources to do it. I
Expansion into space demands high technology and
agree with him completely about this.
full utilization of our worlds material resources (although not destructive utilization). It also
demands financial resources that we will not have if we deplete the material resources
of Earth. And it demands human resources, which we will lose if we are reduced
to global war or widespread starvation . Finally, it demands spiritual resources, which we are not
likely to retain under the sort of dictatorship that would be necessary to maintain a sustainable global
civilization. Because the window is narrow, then, we not only have to worry about immediate perils. The
ultimate, unavoidable danger for our planet, the transformation of our sun, is distantbut if we dont expand
into space now, we can never do it.
Extinction
James Oberg, space writer and a former space flight engineer based in Houston, 19 99,
Space Power Theory, http://www.jamesoberg.com/books/spt/new-CHAPTERSw_figs.pdf
We have the great gift of yet another period when our nation is not threatened; and our world is free from
opposing coalitions with great global capabilities. We can use this period to take our nation and our fellow men
into the greatest adventure that our species has ever embarked upon. The United States can lead, protect, and
help the rest of [hu]mankind to move into space. It is particularly fitting that a country comprised of people from
all over the globe assumes that role. This is a manifest destiny worthy of dreamers and poets, warriors and
conquerors. In his last book, Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan presents an emotional argument that our species must
venture into the vast realm of space to establish a spacefaring civilization. While acknowledging the very high
Sagan states that our very survival as a species
costs that are involved in manned spaceflight,
depends on colonizing outer space. Astronomers have already identified dozens
of asteroids that might someday smash into Earth. Undoubtedly, many more remain
undetected. In Sagans opinion, the only way to avert inevitable catastrophe is for
mankind to establish a permanent human presence in space . He compares humans to the planets
that roam the night sky, as he says that humans will too wander through space. We will wander space because
we possess a compulsion to explore, and space provides a truly infinite prospect of new directions to explore.
Sagans vision is part science and part emotion. He hoped that the exploration of space would unify humankind.
We propose that mankind follow the United States and our allies into this new sea, set with jeweled stars. If we
lead, we can be both strong and caring. If we step back, it may be to the detriment of more than our country.
We cant get off the rock if theres a war that depletes
resources
Sylvia Engdahl, professor at New Yorks New School for Social Research, former
computer systems specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System and author. Space
and Human Survival, 2000 http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/survival.htm
I have called this stage in our evolution the Critical Stage. Paul Levinson [the Director of Connected Education]
uses different terminology for the same concept. He says that we have only a narrow window to
get into space, a relatively short time during which we have the capability, but have
not yet run out of the resources to do it. I agree with him completely about this. Expansion
into space demands high technology and full utilization of our worlds material
resources (although not destructive utilization). It also demands financial resources that we will not
have if we deplete the material resources of Earth. And it demands human
resources, which we will lose if we are reduced to global war or widespread
starvation. Finally, it demands spiritual resources, which we are not likely to retain under the sort of
dictatorship that would be necessary to maintain a sustainable global civilization. Because the window is
narrow, then, we not only have to worry about immediate perils. The ultimate, unavoidable danger for our
planet, the transformation of our sun, is distantbut if we dont expand into space now, we can never do it.
Bioweapons
Nuclear war causes CBW use and extinction
The Preperation 2002, http://thepreparation.net/Chap6.html
Mankind has been faced with the threat of nuclear war for some time now, and despite what some people think,
the threat hasnt gone away. The threat has shifted somewhat though, towards a threat of nuclear terrorism and
nuclear exchanges between lesser military powers. Nuclear war in and of itself never did pose a threat of
eliminating all of humanity. A full scale nuclear war in which every nuclear weapon on Earth is used could wipe
out around 30% of the Earths human population (most fatalities in a nuclear war result from after effects of the
nuclear exchange such as: radiation poisoning, environmental changes, starvation, ... and social upheaval) and
nuclear weapons will
set human technology back 40 years. The larger problem with nuclear war is
almostnever be used alone. Nuclear weapons will be used together with chemical,
biological, and conventional weapons, and this combination of weaponry would
have the potential of eradicating all human life , if the conflict were world wide.
Even one use of bioweapons can cause extinction

Steinbrunner, Foreign policy 12-22-97
That deceptively simple observation has immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular
event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be. decay rapidly over time
and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is
possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such
The use of a pathogen , by
predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning.
contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely
controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly
or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a
decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately
hostile use -the risk runs in the other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently
spread from one victim to another would be capable of initiating an intensifying
cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population . The
1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its
outer limit.
Environment
Nuclear war destroys ecosystems
John Birks, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado, and
Anne Ehrlich, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Biological Sciences
at Stanford University, Hidden Dangers Environmental Consequences of Preparing
for War, 1990, p. 135
Each nuclear winter effect by itself sharply reduced and unpredictably fluctuating light levels and
temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, air pollutants, acid deposition,
radioactive fallout, and increased UV-B--would have severe consequences on many
forms of life and, both directly and through differential effects on species, for ecosystems. Combined, the
results would be devastating. Damage to plants from cold and lack of light would be exacerbated by
drought and exposure to air pollutants, acidity, radioactivity, and UV-B radiation, each of which can cause direct
Animals that survived the cold would face
damage to plant tissues and/or inhibit photosynthesis.
starvation as well as assaults from radioactivity, UV-B, and air pollutants. In severe drought or
freezing conditions, lack of water could be a n additional problem. The ability of
ecosystems to function and provide life-support services for civilization would be heavily
compromised by such conditions. Populations of many vulnerable organisms would certainly
perish, with repercussions throughout food webs . Herbivorous food specialists would
disappear in the wake of their food-plants; their predators would also soon find slim pickings. Bees and other
insects that are essential for pollination of numerous plants (including dozens of crops) would be vulnerable to
cold weather, loss of light for navigation, and the failure of many plants to flower and produce nectar. Later,
they could be disoriented by increased ultraviolet light, which is visible to many insects. As normal food supplies
for many organisms in natural ecosystems vanished,surviving animals would soon devour
whatever remained destroying seed banks, seedlings,
that could provide nourishment, thereby
eggs, and young animalsthe wellsprings of recovery . Insects and other hungry animals would also
naturally turn to the most abundant source of food in target regions: crops, which probably could no longer be
protected by pesticides. And human survivors, whose stored food and crops were damaged beyond use and
undefendable against pests, would turn to natural ecosystems to hunt and gather whatever they could find. The
organisms that would most easily survive such difficult conditions would be the opportunistic species that
people generally regard as pests or weeds. The combined effects of decimated seedbanks and animal
populations, soils degraded by erosion, and continued abnormal weather would retard regeneration of
ecosystems. The plant and animal communities that eventually appeared would be
impoverished in species diversity and often dominated by undesirable opportunists
very different from the natural communities of coevolved organisms they replaced. The typical consequences of
destroying natural ecosystems and impairing their services to humanity would follow a nuclear war, but on a
grander scale. These would include accentuated floods and droughts (in part depending on the disturbance of
rainfall patterns induced by nuclear clouds), increased soil erosion, silting of streams and reservoirs, outbreaks
The
of pests and diseases, loss of pollination services, accumulation of wastes and reduced crop yields.
ability of nature to provide sustenance and absorb abuse would be substantially
reduced, just when human survivors were in dire need.
Extinction evidence is gender modified

MAJOR DAVID N. DINER, Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army, Military
Law Review Winter 1994 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161
Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist

species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less
diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can
resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric
can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a
whole." n79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As
biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and
the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be
each new animal or plant extinction, with all its
expected if this trend continues. Theoretically,
dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse
and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a
mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings , n80
[hu]mankind may be edging closer to the abyss . ([ ] = correction}
Ozone
Nuclear war causes ozone depletion
DR Alan Phillips aphil@cuio2.icom.ca Oct. 2000.
http://www.peace.caInuclearwinterrevisited. htm
The reduction in
Another bad environmental thing that would happen is destruction of the ozone layer.
the ozone layer could be 50% - 70% over the whole northern hemisphere - very
much worse than the current losses that we are properly concerned about. Nitrogen oxides are major
chemical agents for this. They are formed by combination of the oxygen and
nitrogen of the air in any big fire and around nuclear explosions, as they are on a smaller scale
around lightning flashes. So after the smoke cleared and the sun began to shine again,
there would be a large increase of UV reaching the earths surface. This is bad for people in
several ways, but dont worry about the skin cancers? not many of the survivors would live long enough for that
bad for many other living things, notably plankton, which are the bottom
to matter. UV is also
layer of the whole marine food chain. There would likely be enough UV to cause
blindness in many animals. Humans can Protect their eves if they are aware of the dancier. Animals do
not know to do that, and blind animals do not survive. Blind insects do not pollinate flowers , so
there is another reason why human crops and natural food supplies for animals would fail.
Extinction
The Independent 4-12-92
the
These are the products, doubling in output every decade, that have contributed to the destruction of
ozone layer, the thin, unstable veil in the stratosphere which protects earths
creatures and plants from, at best, disease, and, at worst, extinction.
Nuclear war destroys the ozone layer, threatening all life on
earth
1983/1984
Nuclear explosions of more than one-megaton yield generate a radiant fireball that
rises through the troposphere into the stratosphere. The fireballs from weapons
with yields between 100 kilotons and one megaton will partially extend into the
stratosphere. The high temperatures in the fireball chemically ignite some of the nitrogen
in the air, producing oxides of nitrogen, which in turn chemically attack and
destroy the gas ozone in the middle stratosphere . But ozone absorbs the biologically
dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Thus the partial depletion of the stratospheric
ozone layer, or ozonosphere, by high-yield nuclear explosions will increase the flux of
solar ultraviolet radiation at the surface of the Earth (after the soot and dust have settled
out). After a nuclear war in which thousands of high-yield weapons are detonated, the
increase in biologically dangerous ultraviolet light might be several hundred
percent. In the more dangerous shorter wavelengths, larger increases would occur. Nucleic acids and
proteins, the fundamental molecules for life on Earth, are especially sensitive to
ultraviolet radiation. Thus, an increase of the solar ultraviolet flux at the surface of
the Earth is potentially dangerous for life.
Monoculture
Nuclear war causes crop mutations, destroying plant genetic
diversity
Louis Rene Beres, Prof. @ Penn, Apocalypse, 1974 p. 155 Effects on Managed
Terrestrial Ecosystems
In the wake of a worldwide nuclear war, the technology base for modern agriculture
would disappear, foods would be contaminated by radionuclides to unacceptable
levels, and ionizing radiation could cause disease epidemics in surviving crops and
domesticated animals. Direct genetic effects on crops would include chromosome
breakage and gene mutations, resulting in altered expressions of genes and loss of
chromosome material from the cells nucleus upon division of the cell. The effect of these
changes would be yield reducing sterility in seed crops. Moreover, according to the NAS report: There
is the possibility of mutations in subsequent generations of the exposed plants causing abnormal plants or
genetic or whole-plant lethals. These would not be important in most agricultural situations because man
mutations to disease susceptibility or inactivation of pathogen
intervenes. However,
inhibitors in these plants might increase susceptibility to pathogens and affect agriculture. Indirect
genetic effects on agricultural plants could arise from mutations in plant Pathoaens that would increase their
virulence.
Extinction
Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, Rural Advancement Fund International, Shattering:
Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, 19 90, p. ix
While many may ponder the consequences of global warming, perhaps the biggest single environmental
catastrophe in human history is unfolding in the garden. While all are rightly concerned about the
possibility of nuclear war, an equally devastating time bomb is ticking away in the fields of farmers all over the
world.Loss of genetic diversity in agriculture silent, rapid, inexorableis leading us to a
rendezvous with extinction to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine. To simplify
the environment as we have done with agriculture is to destroy the complex
interrelationships that hold the natural world together . Reducing the diversity of life, we
narrow our options for the future and render our own survival more precarious . It is
life at the end of the limb. That is the subject of this book. Agronomists in the Philippines warned of what
became known as southem com leaf blight in 1961. The disease was reported in Mexico not long after. In the
summer of 1968, the first faint hint that the blight was in the United States came from seed growers in the
Midwest. The danger was ignored. By the spring of 1971 the disease had taken hold in the Florida con crop. But
it was not until corn prices leapt thirty cents a bushel on the chicago Board of Trade that the world took notice;
by then it was Augustand too late. By the close of the year, Americans had lost fifteen percent of their most
important cropmore than a billion bushels. Some southern states lost half their harvest and many of their
farmers. While consumers suffered in the grocery stores, producers were out a billion dollars in lost yield. And
the disaster was not solely domestic. U.S. seed exports may have spread the blight to Africa. Latin America and
Asia.
Disease
Nuclear war causes mass disease outbreaks destroys medical
infrastructure
Online version of: Nissani, M., Ph.D., Genetics, University of Pittsburgh, 1975.B.A.,
http://www.cll.wayne.edulisp/mnissani/PAGEPUB/cH2 html
These remarkable differences between us and our ancestors, and between us and many of our less fortunate
contemporaries in poor nations, are not for the most part attributable to better cures. They spring from
advances in our understanding of the causes of diseases and, consequently, in our ability to combat them
effectively by preventing their occurrence. Prevention strategies include such things as sanitation, widespread
immunization, nutritional supplements, chlorination of drinking water, and drying or spraying swamps as part of
the fight against malaria. In contrast, in past centuries people were more susceptible to disease because of poor
nutrition, poor education, and inadequate shelter. No complex infrastructure for controlling epidemics existed.
Owing to poor sanitation, typhoid, cholera, plague, and many other epidemics spread unabated. In the absence
of antibiotics, deaths from diseases like pneumonia and syphilis were commonplace. It follows thatmodern
advances in health are ascribable to new knowledge and to the development of a
complex infrastructure of prevention and health-care delivery. After a nuclear war
the knowledge may remain. But much of the infrastructure will be destroyed,
precisely at the point when it is most sorely needed by the irradiated, starved , and
emotionally and physically stressed survivors. At least for a few years, survivors of warring nations might
revert to the good old days of their forebears, or to the good contemporary days of their less fortunate brothers
and sisters in the Third World. Epidemics of all sorts might break out . Many people who depend for
survival on medical help (like diabetics and regular users of dialysis machines) will be dead in a short time.
Extinction
Steinbruner, 12/22/1997 [Foreign Policy, lexis]
It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines of defense against
this threat have not depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the long course of evolution, the
human body has developed physical barriers and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and
evolution is a sword that
effectiveness exceed anything we could design or as yet even fully understand. But
cuts both ways: New diseases emerge, while old diseases mutate and adapt .
Throughout history, there have been epidemics during which human immunity has
broken down on an epic scale . An infectious agent believed to have been the plague bacterium killed
an estimated 20 million people over a tour-year period in the fourteenth century, including nearly one-quarter of
20 variations of
Western Europes population at the time. Since its recognized appearance in 1981, some
the HIV virus have infected an estimated 29.4 million worldwide, with 1.5 million people currently
dying of AIDS each year. Malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera - once thought to be under
control - are now making a comeback. As we enter the twenty-first century, changing
conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion. The rapid growth
rate of the total world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across
international borders, and scientific advances that expand the capability for the deliberate
manipulation of pathogens are all cause for worry that the problem might be greater in
the future than it has ever been in the past. The threat of infectious pathogens is not just an issue of
public health, but a fundamental security problem for the species as a whole.
Nuclear war causes disease weakens immune systems and
kills natural predators
Carl Sagan is David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and space Sciences and
Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell university Foreign Affairs
1983/1984
Each of these factors, taken separately, may carry serious consequences for the global ecosystem: their
interactions may be much more dire still. Extremely worrisome is the possibility of poorly understood or as vet
entirely uncontemplated synergisms (where the net consequences of two or more assaults on the environment
are much more than the sum of the component parts). For example, more than 100 rads (and possibly more
than 200 rads) of external and ingested ionizing radiation is likely to be delivered in a very large nuclear war to
all plants, animals and unprotected humans in densely populated regions of northern mid-latitudes. After the
soot and dust clear, there can, for such wars, be a 200 to 400 percent increment in the solar ultraviolet flux that
reaches the ground, with an increase of many orders of magnitude in the more dangerous shorter-wavelength
radiation. Together, theseradiation assaults are likely to suppress the immune systems
of humans and other species, making them more vulnerable to disease . At the same time, the
high ambient-radiation fluxes are likely to produce, through mutation, new varieties
of microorganisms, some of which might become pathogenic . The preferential
radiation sensitivity of birds and other insect predators would enhance the
proliferation of herbivorous and pathogen-carrying insects. Carried by vectors with high radiation
tolerance, it seems possible that epidemics and global pandemics would propagate with no
hope of effective mitigation by medical care, even with reduced population sizes
and greatly restricted human mobility. Plants, weakened by low temperatures and low light levels, and
other animals would likewise be vulnerable to preexisting and newly arisen pathogens.
Even a limited attack overwhelms medical infrastructure,

causing major disease outbreaks
NUCLEAR WAR April 21,1982 http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html
What would this level of destruction mean? If in the most heavily contaminated and damaged regions, all the
doctors survived and hospitals were usable, there would be one doctor for every 50 or 100 injured, and between
10 and 30 patients per available hospital bed. Even if the entire national health care system
was used, the patient-doctor ratio would be between 25 and 50 to 1 and patients
per hospital bed between 10 and 20 to 1 . Care for patients suffering from other
medical problems, such as heart attack and cancer, would be significantly degraded
for an extended time because of the competing and continuing demands of those
injured by fallout, the loss of physicians and hospitals (because of contamination) in
specific regions, and potential reductions in the manufacture and distribution of
medical supplies (about 30% of all drugs are manufactured in the regions most
affected by fallout). For a more specific example, to treat a single patient exposed to substantial
levels of radiation (200 Radiation Equivalent Man -- REMS -- or more) would require massive medical
resources -- intensive care, bone marrow transplants, blood transtusions and antibiotics. In this type of
attack hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- would require complex bone
marrow transplants to assure survival. Because of reduced resistance to
infectious diseases, all clinical cases (a radiation dose exceeding 50 REMS) would need
continuous protection against infection , involving high doses of antibiotics, etc. Treating
large numbers would rapidly drain existing supplies and professional energy. As
antibiotics supplies dwindled and immunization proved ineffective in this
radiation-weakened group, a huge reservoir of potential disease carriers would
develop. Diseases such as polio might reappear. Other key elements of medical
care support systems, such as medical insurance and records, would be disrupted and in
chaos after evacuation.
Environment
Nuclear war instantly kills 50 percent of the worlds species,
causes climate oscillations and destroys the ozone layer
Online version of: Nissani, M. Ph.D., Genetics, University of Pittsburgh, 1 975.B.A.,
http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isplmnissanj/PAGEPUB/CH2.html
There will be fewer people and less industrial and commercial activity long after the war, hence some serious
environmental threats will be ameliorated. By killing billions and destroying industrial infrastructures, nuclear
war might, for instance, halt or slow down the suspected trend of global warming. On balance, however, the
wars overall environmental impact will almost certainly be on the negative side.
Radioactive fallout will contaminate soils and waters . We shall probably learn to adjust to these
new conditions, perhaps by shunning certain regions or by carrying radioactivity meters everywhere we go the
this will lower the quality of human life. Nuclear
way our ancestors carried spears. Still,
explosions might create immense quantities of dust and smoke . The dust and smoke
might blanket, darken, and cool the entire planet. Although the extent of the damage is unclear,24 it
would be far more severe during the growing season-late spring and summer in the northern latitudes. One
Cassandran and controversial prediction sounds a bit like the eerie twilight described in H. G. Wells The Time
Machine. This nuclear winter projection forecasts freezing summertime temperatures,25
temporary climatic changes (e.g., violent storms, dramatic reductions in rainfall) lower efficiencies of
plant photosynthesis, disruption of ecosystems and farms, loss of many species , and
the death of millions of people from starvation and cold. However, even these pessimists
expect a return to normal climatic conditions within a few years.26a.27 To appreciate the next environmental
effect of nuclear war, we must say a few words about the ozone layer. Ozone is a naturally occurring substance
made up of oxygen atoms. Unlike an ordinary oxygen molecule (which is comprised of two atoms and is fairly
stable) an ozone molecule is comprised of three atoms and it breaks down more readily Most atmospheric ozone
is found some 12 to 30 miles above the earths surface (in the stratosphere). Stratospheric concentrations of
ozone are minuscule, occupying less than one-fifth of one-millionth the volume of all other gases in the
stratosphere. If all this ozone could be gathered somehow at sea level to form a single undiluted shield around
the earth, this shield would be as wide as the typical cover of a hardcover book (one-eighth of an inch).28
However, minuscule as its concentrations are, the ozone layer occupies a respectable place in natures scheme
of things. Some chemicals which are produced routinely by modern industnal society may react with
stratospheric ozone, break it down, and lower its levels. Such depletion may have two adverse conseguences.
First, stratospheric ozone selectively absorbs sunlight in certain portions of the ultraviolet and infrared
spectrums, so its depletion will cause more of this radiation to reach the earth and change global temperature
and rainfall pattems. Second, by absorbing more than 99 percent of the suns ultraviolet radiation, stratospheric
ozone shields life on earth from its harmful effects (some scientists feel that terrestrial life could not evolve
Ozone depletion might allow more ultraviolet
before this protective shield took its place).
radiation to reach the earths surface, thereby disrupting natural ecosystems,
lowering agricultural productivity, suppressing the human immune system , and
raising the incidence of skin cancer and cataracts.28 Since 1985, extensive temporary reductions of the ozone
layer have been observed in polar regions, but their causes (man-made or natural) and implications remain
uncertain.29 From 1981 to 1991, the ozone shield over the Northern Hemisphere has been depleted by 5
The connection
percent, thereby allowing a 10 percent increase in ultraviolet radiation on the ground.
between nuclear war and the ozone layer is simple: the heat created by nuclear
explosions produces huge quantities of nitrogen oxides in the surrounding air .25 In
addition, the launch of solid-fuel missiles may release huge quantities of chlorine
and nitrogen compounds. 30 These in turn, are precisely among the chemicals that
could cause significant depletion of the ozone layer and lead to the two adverse consequences
described above. In the first days and weeks after the war, smoke and dust will prevent the increased ultraviolet
radiation from reaching the earths surface. But ozone levels will reach their nadir in 6 to 24 months, long after
most of the smoke and dust have settled back to earth.2926b Ozone levels will probably be restored to above
90 percent of former levels within five years after the war.26b Hence, nuclear winter and ozone depletions are
not expected to appreciably offset each other. Under the altered conditions created by a
nuclear war, as many as 50 percent of the earths species might become extinct ,26c
some Pest populations might temporarily increase,26d and most natural communities might undergo radical
transformations.
Nuclear winter obliterates ecosystems
John Birks, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado, and
Anne Ehrlich, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Biological Sciences
at Stanford University, Hidden Dangers Environmental Consequences of Preparing
for War, 1990, p. 135
Each nuclear winter effect by itself sharply reduced and unpredictably fluctuating light levels and
temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, air pollutants, acid deposition,
radioactive fallout, and increased UV-B--would have severe consequences on many
forms of life and, both directly and through differential effects on species, for ecosystems. Combined, the
results would be devastating. Damage to plants from cold and lack of light would be exacerbated by
drought and exposure to air pollutants, acidity, radioactivity, and UV-B radiation, each of which can cause direct
Animals that survived the cold would face
damage to plant tissues and/or inhibit photosynthesis.
starvation as well as assaults from radioactivity, UV-B, and air pollutants. In severe drought or
freezing conditions, lack of water could be a n additional problem. The ability of
ecosystems to function and provide life-support services for civilization would be heavily
compromised by such conditions. Populations of many vulnerable organisms would certainly
perish, with repercussions throughout food webs . Herbivorous food specialists would
disappear in the wake of their food-plants; their predators would also soon find slim pickings. Bees and other
insects that are essential for pollination of numerous plants (including dozens of crops) would be vulnerable to
cold weather, loss of light for navigation, and the failure of many plants to flower and produce nectar. Later,
they could be disoriented by increased ultraviolet light, which is visible to many insects. As normal food supplies
surviving animals would soon devour
for many organisms in natural ecosystems vanished,
whatever remained that could provide nourishment, thereby destroying seed banks, seedlings,
eggs, and young animalsthe wellsprings of recovery . Insects and other hungry animals would also
naturally turn to the most abundant source of food in target regions: crops, which probably could no longer be
protected by pesticides. And human survivors, whose stored food and crops were damaged beyond use and
undefendable against pests, would turn to natural ecosystems to hunt and gather whatever they could find. The
organisms that would most easily survive such difficult conditions would be the opportunistic species that
people generally regard as pests or weeds. The combined effects of decimated seedbanks and animal
populations, soils degraded by erosion, and continued abnormal weather would retard regeneration of
ecosystems. The plant and animal communities that eventually appeared would be
impoverished in species diversity and often dominated by undesirable opportunists
very different from the natural communities of coevolved organisms they replaced. The typical consequences of
destroying natural ecosystems and impairing their services to humanity would follow a nuclear war, but on a
grander scale. These would include accentuated floods and droughts (in part depending on the disturbance of
rainfall patterns induced by nuclear clouds), increased soil erosion, silting of streams and reservoirs, outbreaks
The
of pests and diseases, loss of pollination services, accumulation of wastes and reduced crop yields.
ability of nature to provide sustenance and absorb abuse would be substantially
reduced, just when human survivors were in dire need.

Spark

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Spark

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Spark

Exaggeration of nuclear extinction causes us to ignore rational

The alternative is to vote Negative only by accepting nuclear

KE Weapons will cause extinction

First, extend the 1NC Zimmerman evidence. Only the

Second, nuclear war will teach us unconditional love solves

Third, nuke war prevents real doomsday weapons

a good rousing World

Fourth, nuclear war sparks change

One neglected aspect of societys response to nuclear war is the philosophical

Fifth, nuclear war cause the individual to affirm their species

Species consciousness solves extinction

Second, counterforce targeting checks

Third, nuclear war doesnt cause extinction best data and

Fourth, their authors assume worst-case scenarios that are

Fifth, small warheads mean no extinction

Sixth, only a small fraction of warheads will actually explode

Political interests seem to

All of their evidence is based on selective research and flawed

they do not mention factors which might

No scientific evidence for nuclear extinction

Concentration checks extinction

likely fail to kill everyone on the planet , as strikes would probably be

history is full of prophets of doom who fail

computer climate simulations that they do not reproduce the apocalyptic

Dark smoke clouds in the lower

how come these neo-nuclear winter

Oceans and counter-force targeting check

The cooling mechanism as Sagan and

even in those instances, the nuclear

weapons employed will not be the huge multimegaton area destruction

Nuclear war does not cause ozone collapse or dramatically

Wouldn't the radiation from a

Even maximum fallout wont kill everyone

Adaptation solves the agriculture problem and their evidence

the complete destruction of

Inherent equality of all beings requires utilitiarianism

Their argument is moral tunnel vision which is complicit with

a) Other limited nuclear wars are inevitable

b) Well still have a unique advantage Our wars are worse,

Their authors are crazy this is self-evident, but you should be

We dont need to win escalation -- five nuclear weapons

Even if some people survive, civilization will collapse, causing

Even limited war is catastrophic Radiation, Water

use of nuclear weapons would be suicide for

Shelters dont work -- Pentagon study proves nuclear winter

the effects do not seem to be restricted to northern mid-

Countries dont need to get directly hit theyd just starve

With thousands of rocket-launched weapons at launch-on-warning, any day there could

Nuclear war will escalate -- Russian Dead Hand

Nuclear war will escalate alliances, proliferation, and

Extinction only takes half an hour Early Warning Systems

The experience of nuclear war is likely to have devastating psychological effects ,

The massive and simultaneous destruction of economic and human resources

Even a limited nuclear war causes states to go authoritarian,

Significant interpersonal, intergroup, and inter-regional conflicts would probably arise.

Dehumanization is the worst impact

Even one use of bioweapons can cause extinction

Extinction evidence is gender modified

Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist

Even a limited attack overwhelms medical infrastructure,

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi