First, let's have a cheery look at the end of the world.

Just why is it still even worth talking about? What 'end of the World?' Didn't all that nightmare disappear for good at the end of the 1980's?

Nuclear weapons are still, and have been ever since their large-scale deployments in the 1960's, about the end of pretty much everyone and everything, or at least of all that we, as distinct from an anaerobic bacterium, might consider to be useful, interesting, and valuable.

The end not only of civilisation but  of humans, as well as many other complex  land - based living things, which in 1982 was  a shocking seemingly new  possibility when Schell wrote the classic 'Fate of the Earth', is - astonishingly, bizarrely; - still on the agenda, as the US and Russia continue to maintain thousands of warheads on alert status, as the 2010 NPR,(Nuclear Posture Review) acknowledging squarely that they remain on alert, declines to lower their level of operational readiness, (1) and as progress toward the elimination of these instruments of global omnicide remains glacial.

They are not literally about the 'end of the world' as after their use, the world - this planet that is - will still be here, and rotating on its axis, notwithstanding some Hollywood disaster movies and the end of the Mayan calendar next year - which may signify the end of an aeon or may signify nothing at all. Even the coronal mass ejections predicted for 2012 will at worst (hopefully anyway) destroy no more than all global telecommunications, the net, and perhaps the global financial system (with luck).

The same result could be achieved by half a dozen to a dozen megaton-sized nuclear weapons exploding in outer space: The electromagnetic pulse, just like a coronal mass ejection, would destroy both satellite-based communication systems and black out electrical systems (not only delicate electronics but right up to high-tension switchyards) on earth, taking us back to a pre-electrical age.

This is a great deal less than the end of everything and some might even find the change attractive. (Though I have become addicted to the net, and if we were to return to medieval conditions, would miss it.).

However the explosion of a dozen or so nuclear weapons in space would be almost certainly the mere opening salvo in a far more comprehensive apocalypse, which remains to this day squarely on the global agenda. The awareness of this apocalypse has disappeared since 1990, but the apocalypse itself remains, with an occasional timely report such as that of the ICNND to bring it once more to our attention until we turn to more important things such as the sex - lives of footballers.. ICNND notes that:

"The problem of nuclear weapons is at least equal to that of climate change in terms of gravity - and much more immediate in its potential impact"(2)

The replacement at least for a few centuries, of technological civilisation by pre-1850 conditions, while it would ruin lives and would be the end of SOME peoples world, still does not -quite - qualify for 'the end of the world', though it does qualify as much more than a minor apocalypse.

Jonathan Schell notes that Nuclear weapons have been associated with the 'end of the world' or at least with the 'apocalypse' in some form, for many decades.. Writing back in 1983, he says that:

"The widespread belief that a nuclear holocaust would in some sense bring about the end of the world has been reflected in the pronouncements of both American and Soviet leaders in the years since the invention of nuclear weaponsŠ."(3)

and:

"The destruction of human civilisation, even without the biological destruction of the human species, may perhaps rightly be called the end of the world, since it would be the end of that sum of cultural achievements and human relationships which constitutes what many people mean when they speak of 'the world'. The biological destruction of mankind would of course be the end of the world in a stricter sense" (4)

Schell goes on to say that:

"As for the destruction of all life on the planet, it would be not merely a human but a planetary end-the death of the earth" (5)

However, I am forced to say that my friend and colleague Steven Starr a number of years ago hauled me over the coals over talk about 'the end of life', in an e-mail which I reproduce only from has and my fallible memory, thus:

"John, don't talk about the end of all life. It is complex life forms at the top of the food chain which are at risk, including most humans and large animals.  Simpler forms of life will likely survive."

I stand corrected. I'm sure I remember (But my memory is fallible) Steve saying something about  'might be mostly anaerobic bacteria.', but maybe I misremembered. (6) (7)

It has long been recognised that the large-scale use of nuclear weapons (ie more than 1000 warheads of 200Kt-1Megaton size) for their default function of 'city - busting' would:

1. Will kill between 1 and 3-4 billion people in 40-90 minutes;
    
2. Will in 40-90mins -Convert most large cities, mostly but not exclusively in the Northern Hemisphere, into firestorms that would burn until nothing is left to burn.(from whence comes the above body - count); (8)
    
3. Loft roughly 180 million tonnes of very black, sunlight-absorbing, soot into the stratosphere where it would seem likely to stay for a decade. A stable stratospheric smoke layer would form that would heat the upper atmosphere and block warming sunlight from reaching the earth.

The black soot will severely drop global temperatures both in northern and in tropical and subtropical regions, the extent of the effect being most marked in the north and gradually dropping in the southern hemisphere. Loss of warming sunlight at the surface of the earth would produce ice-age temperatures within a matter of days.. Minimum daily temperatures in the heartlands of North America and Eurasia would fall below freezing for one to three years. Growing seasons would be eliminated for a decade or longer. All food production would cease,  and most humans would perish from nuclear famine.  (9)(10)

In addition, massive destruction of the Ozone layer would take place even in the case of a regional (India-Pakistan) war involving 50-100 15-40Kt weapons. (11)

The best place to be is Antarctica or the South Sandwich Islands, the Falklands, Patagonia, or the South Island of NZ.

Toon and Robock of Rutgers University as well as my close friend and colleague Steven Starr have written extensively about this, with the latest computer simulations based on the most recent NASA climatic models, being done by Toon and Robock in 2006, showing that a possibly accidental use of 2000 warheads by the US and Russia would lead to global climatic effects that could last for decades.

These scientists have predicted that the detonation of 4000 x one hundred kiloton weapons would loft up to 180 million tonnes of smoke into the stratosphere, and that even a 'successful' nuclear first strike would be suicidal for the attacking nation because of the resulting environmental and climatic consequences.

This research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, but has attracted nowhere near the attention that it should have given the momentous, though hardly unprecedented, nature of the conclusions,  essentially a re-run and update of the old nuclear winter of the 1980s, which we now see got it dead right and even was a touch overoptimistic.  (12)  (13)

Toon and Robock summarise their more recent work on their website thus:

"Nuclear winter is a term that describes the climatic effects of nuclear war. In the 1980's, work conducted jointly by Western and Soviet scientists showed that for a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union the climatic consequences, and indirect effects of the collapse of society, would be so severe that the ensuing nuclear winter would produce famine for billions of people far from the target zones. This realisation led to the end of arms race and the end of the Cold War. Since that time, the number of nuclear weapons in the world has now decreased to 1/3 of the peak number of more than 70,000 in the 1980's, and is planned to be only 6% of that level by 2012.

There are several wrong impressions that people have about nuclear winter. One is that there was a flaw in the theory - that the large climatic effects were disproved. Another is that the problem, even if it existed, has been solved by the end of the nuclear arms race. But these are both wrong.

What's New.

Based on new work published in 2007 and 2008 by some of the pioneers of nuclear winter research, we now can say several new things about this topic.

• Nuclear arsenals with 50 nuclear weapons, such as currently possessed by India and Pakistan and 6 other nations, threaten more fatalities than in previous wars to any nation attacked. With global delivery systems any such nation is as dangerous as any of the superpowers.

• A nuclear war between any two countries using 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs, such as India and Pakistan, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. This is less than 0.05% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal.
   
• Nuclear arsenals with 50 nuclear weapons can produce a global pall of smoke leading to global ozone depletion. The smoke, once in the stratosphere, heats the air, which speeds up reactions that destroy ozone, and also lofts reactive chemicals by altering the winds.
   
• A nuclear war between the United States and Russia today, or even after reductions planned for 2012 under the SORT treaty, could produce nuclear winter, with temperatures plunging below freezing in the summer in major agricultural regions, threatening the food supply for most of the planet.
   
• The climatic effects of the smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than we previously thought. New climate model simulations, which have the capability of including the entire atmosphere and oceans, show that the smoke would be lofted by solar heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years.
   
• The spread of nuclear weapons to newly emerging states threatens not only the people of those countries, but the entire planet."(14)

Even a 'mini' nuclear war, say between India and Pakistan, involving a 'mere' 100-150 or so appx 15-40Kt weapons on each side, 0.3% of global nuclear arsenals, and 0.03% of megatonnage, would according to a recent article in Scientific American by Toon and Robock, and studies by Ira Helfand of IPPNW: (Who assume a total of only 100 15Kt weapons though I think that numbers are already likely to exceed these):

• Cause the complete destruction of both India and Pakistan as functioning societies;
• Bring about either 50 million,(according to Toon and Robock) or 150 million or  even up to 300 million,(according to a number of other estimates including both NRDC and US DoD using more pessimistic assumptions (and more than 50 weapons)) 'prompt' casualties (including my many Indian friends), depending exactly which horrible scenario you decide to model;
• Cause global climate change capable of killing up to a further one billion people. (15) (16) (17) (18)

A major US-Russian nuclear exchange of the kind that would have resulted (but for heroic and quick-thinking military personnel such as Colonel Stan Petrov) somewhere between a dozen and half a dozen times (but this can only actually ever happen once - there are no second chances) - from miscalculation, computer error and/or blind panic - the ultimate 'bad-hair-day' as it were, at Stratcom, Cheyenne Mountain, Serpukhov-15 or Kosvinsky Mountain - would certainly terminate what we call civilisation, and would indeed  lead to questions as to our survival as a species. In addition, the abrupt drop in temperatures, (possibly to as low as zero at the equator), would destroy tropical ecosystems completely, together with 95% of all land-based living species, even at current New START warhead levels, in a similar manner to the impact of a largish asteroid.

(There is a figure in a 1985 report by the then Soviet Academy of Science   complete with cover illustration by Albrecht Durer of the 4 Horsepersons of the Apocalypse, which appears to show below - zero temperatures at the equator, 90 days after a large nuclear exchange) (19) (20) (21) (22)

To get a feel for this kind of event, see 'The Road' or 'The Testament of Eli', two somewhat realistic post - apocalypse movies, noting that what makes movies such as this interesting - the continued survival of at least some humans - is not to be taken as a given. But without humans there is of course,  no movie.

Schell notes in'The Fate of the Earth , that:
"Up to now, every risk has been contained within the frame of life: Extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some (particular) purpose, but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time"  (23)

To put things in proper perspective there is the article in the October2008 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists whose title says it all, really: 'Minimising the risk of human extinction'. After noting that humans will anyway be lucky to survive beyond a million or so years, the article gives us a rather important 'to do' list to maximise our chances in the next century or so, which  apart from urging us to keep watching briefs on large incoming asteroids, experiments at LHC (Large Hadron Collider) that might possibly cause the entire solar system to disappear in a flash of gamma rays and exotic particles, on nanotech especially self-replicating 'grey goo', and on biotech, and of course to take action to mitigate and prevent climate change, places at the very top of that 'to do' list the lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons systems (number one) and the elimination of nuclear weapons (number two). (24)

UN and NPT Alphabet Soup

Now I've done the really cheery bits, so now for the mind-glazing alphabet soup. But don't glaze over just yet: Attention to this may be what gets humans off the hook at least for the moment, and the efforts of governments and NGOs worldwide through the UN and the NPT frameworks to maximise the chances of human survival seem inevitably to spawn more and more arcane acronyms.  Yet success in this arena could not be for any more important goals.

We've just had a series of high - level meetings on nuclear weapons, and of these the most consequential surely, has been the NPT Review Conference of May 2010 at which this author attended for week two of its four weeks, holding a workshop on operating status of nuclear weapon systems on 13 May which was addressed by the NZ and Swiss Ambassadors, Commander Robert Green, Nancy Gallagher of University of Michigan, Steven Starr of PSR and myself

An NGO representative (I cannot for the life of me remember who,  so this will be forever unreferenced), asked by media during an important nuclear weapons negotiation at the UN, back in 1996 or thereabouts,  'how it felt to be making history' gave a classic 'Schellian' reply: 'I am not making history. I am making history possible'. (25) This quote, even if it were to prove apocryphal, (and I am not clever enough to have made it up), shows beautifully what is at stake. Working for specific goals is making history. Making history possible is what makes the pursuit of any and every goal possible. Unfortunately making history possible turns out to involve the ingestion of much alphabet soup at UN meetings and diplomatic receptions.

The stakes for which nuclear weapons are rightly objects of concern truly don't get any higher. While forgotten by the wider public since 1990,  this has not been forgotten by governments,  and receives regular,  if ritualistic, repetition at nuclear-weapons-related conferences. While attending this years NPT Review Conference, at one point in the proceedings more or less at random I realised that in the space of about 15 minutes I'd heard three Governments say  that in one way or another,  the fate of humans depended on the elimination of nuclear weapons or that they are the number one short term threat to civilisation and survival. Such statements have become routine.(26)

The final declaration of the NPT 2010 Review Conference registers its concern - that is, the concern of every government in the world with the exceptions of India, Israel, Pakistan and the DPRK - thus:
"80. The Conference, while welcoming achievements in bilateral and unilateral reductions by some nuclear-weapon States, notes with concern that the total estimated number of nuclear weapons deployed and stockpiled still amounts to several thousands. The Conference expresses its deep concern at the continued risk for humanity represented by the possibility that these weapons could be used and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the use of nuclear weapons."(27)

The NPT Final Declaration was in the words of George Perkovitch, and Deepti Choubey, 'An incremental success'. Some commentators including early comments by ICAN were much more critical, and I confess I joined in that early criticism. I don't think this was entirely warranted (28) (29)  (Especially I don't think that it is true that the 2010 NPT Revcon final dec does not advance at all from the year 2000 final dec and is merely 'treading water'. This really is not fair.)).

I note that in fact my 'Slightly Heretical' evaluation of the NPT Revcon seems not to be far out of line of the bulk of comment made once the diplomatic dust had as it were, settled.  I am tempted to re-christen it 'Not even slightly Heretical', or 'Not very Heretical at all'.(30)

I would point to:

• The Language already quoted on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons use, that goes far toward de-legitimising the possession of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states tried hard to remove this but failed.
• more detailed language on operational status/operational readiness, albeit watered down (Partly at the behest of Russia) from earlier drafts.
• Two clear mentions of a nuclear weapons convention both on its own, and as an 'interlocking framework of agreements', and as part of the Ban Ci moon five - point plan.
• A clearer, more unambiguous commitment to going to global nuclear zero.

These are all significant advances on the Year 2000 final declaration and the 13 points.

Rebecca Johnson evaluates the NPT Review conference thus:

"That any substantive agreements were adopted at all is no small victory. The last successful review conference was in 2000. Taking place two years after the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan shocked the nonproliferation regime, the 2000 NPT Review Conference agreed on a final document that contained a 13-paragraph program of action on nuclear disarmament-the result of tough negotiations between the permanent five (P-5) nuclear weapon states and the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), which included Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden. Five years later, in an adversarial political environment compounded by the Bush administration's rejection of previous U.S. commitments, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the "13 Steps" agreed by NPT governments in 2000, the 2005 NPT Review Conference was an abject failure, with no agreements on implementing the treaty more effectively.

Much was therefore riding on the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

Almost all of the 190 NPT parties wanted this conference to be a success, but the debates demonstrated deep differences in their views about what is required to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons and carry forward an effective nonproliferation regime for the future." (31)

My own assessment of the 2010 NPT Review conference,  based on having attended one week of its four weeks as well as previous such conferences was that:
"The final declaration is   not a backward step, not a regression, but a modest (some will say a too modest) step in a vaguely positive direction. As the Nigerian Ambassador said to me:

'It's half a loaf of bread. We'd prefer the full loaf but its not starvation'.(pers comm)"(32) (33)

and:

"Many commentators have been highly critical of the adequacy of the document that was finally adopted. Those who criticise it most strongly from the disarmament side should perhaps, see what is being said about it from the side of the neocons. One gains a slightly different perspective by seeing how it is regarded (very unfavourably) by the Heritage Foundation and by Dr Chris Ford, former Bush administration disarmament ambassador, who both damn it as somehow hazardous to US security interests and who excoriate its mention of a nuclear weapons convention. Both also critique its 'unbalanced' 'overemphasis' on disarmament as against nonproliferation. One could make the perverse case that if the right finds so much wrong with it there must be something right with it!"

and further:

"unobservant people such as myself who may at times miss the subtler nuances,  might conclude that it does indeed support in some less definite way, both a nuclear weapons convention and the five-point plan. If an  unsubtle observer such as myself can conclude that after five or six readings of the final dec, it does indeed give the strong impression that it looks kindly on a nuclear weapons convention and the five point plan, what are we to assume of foreign ministers who may not have time to read it at all, or advisers who skim it?"