First, the radiation risks were underestimated. Scientists continue to discover new lethal effects of nuclear war, so it is hard to be confident that we now know them all. How many people would all-out nuclear war kill? Plus, given the many near-misses that have already occurred, a nuclear war is more likely than many people realize. Nuclear war can potentially kill 1000 times more people than a nuclear terrorist attack (billions rather than millions), but it is certainly not 1000 times less likely than nuclear terrorism. Most experts agree that the average person is more likely to succumb to nuclear war than nuclear terrorism.

Some of these are hundreds of times more powerful than those that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they may be able to create a decade-long nuclear winter that could kill most people on Earth. Yet the superpowers plan to invest over a trillion dollars upgrading their nuclear arsenals, which many experts believe increases the risk of nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and accidental nuclear war.Ĭommon concerns span the spectrum from a nuclear terrorist attack against a single city, potentially killing millions of people, to all-out global nuclear war, potentially killing billions. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”ĭespite the end of the Cold War over two decades ago, humanity still has an estimated 13,410 nuclear weapons.

Rise of nations nuke