[nukkad] nuclear war consequences

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tip of the day:  Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal,
     if you are all thumbs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


As horrific as that death count might seem, Armitage and Rumsfeld will
stress that the number is low, because it doesn't include tens of
millions of Indians and Pakistanis who could die later from radiation
exposure, U.S. State Department officials say. 
Beyond such mind-numbing casualties, the first nuclear exchange in
history would decimate the economies of both nations and probably trigger
a collapse of world financial markets that could spur a worldwide
depression, experts predict. Destruction and famine would send millions
of refugees to neighboring countries. The U.S. war on terrorism in
Afghanistan and Pakistan would end. The world would face a humanitarian
crisis far greater than anything it has seen before.

On Monday, both sides played down talk of nuclear war. India said it does
not believe in the use of nuclear weapons. At an Asian summit in
Kazakhstan, Russia and China tried to broker a meeting between Indian
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez
Musharraf.

Around the world, however, governments still feared the worst. Experts
say no computer model can prepare the world for the nightmare it has
feared since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima 57 years ago.
"It's really a great unknown," says Tom Zamora Collina, an analyst for
the Union of Concerned Scientists. The average person "doesn't have a
clue what this would mean," he says.

To head off a nuclear war that might result from the conflict over the
disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, the Bush administration wants to
show Musharraf and Vajpayee how bad things could get.

"The problem is once the iron starts to be exchanged between the two
sides, then reason and logic seem to go out the window," Armitage said
Monday on CNN.

The U.S. government fears that citizens of both countries, which first
tested nuclear weapons in 1998, don't grasp the repercussions of a
decision to go nuclear. In the West, schoolchildren learn about the
devastating effects of the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.
"But that's not the case in South Asia," says Zia Mian, a nuclear expert
at Princeton University. "There's never been a major movie about what
would happen in a nuclear war. Even educated people often think about
this in the abstract."

In Islamabad, retired Pakistani army lieutenant general Naseer Akhtar
says both sides "don't understand the power of the bomb."

U.S. military and intelligence officials, along with private analysts,
have run detailed studies and war-game scenarios in recent years to
simulate a nuclear exchange in South Asia.

The degree of devastation depends on the number of weapons used, their
explosive power, where they are set off and climate conditions. But U.S.
officials say they hope the data they are bringing to India and Pakistan
will make the idea of nuclear war so chillingly real that both sides will
do anything to avoid it.

How it starts

U.S. officials say a war likely would begin in Muzaffarabad, a city on
the Pakistani side of the "Line of Control" that divides Kashmir. Indian
ground forces would attack Muzaffarabad, which is believed to be the hub
for Pakistan-backed Islamic guerrillas seeking independence from Indian
control in the region.

India, a largely Hindu nation, controls two-thirds of Kashmir, which is
predominantly Muslim, as is Pakistan. More than 30,000 people have died
in Kashmir since 1989, when Muslim guerrillas began seeking independence.

Pakistan's likely response would be to use mechanized units to
counterattack and try to keep Indian forces from overrunning Kashmir and
invading Pakistani territory, says Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. Air Force
colonel who has run more than 20 India-Pakistan war-game scenarios.

India would try to repel Pakistan's counterattack, Gardiner says, which
would bring the conflict to the point U.S. officials fear most.

India's military force of 1.3 million troops dwarfs Pakistan's 612,000
soldiers. At some point, Pakistan would retreat in the face of an
unstoppable Indian invasion. Musharraf might decide he could save his
nation only by striking the enemy with a nuclear bomb.

If Indian troops approached the Pakistani city of Lahore, near the
Kashmiri border, "then they have divided Pakistan," Gardiner says.
"Pakistan then might use a nuclear weapon in Pakistan against Indian
forces. Then India responds against Pakistani nuclear delivery forces.
Then things get very bad very quickly."

Making matters worse: Nuclear missiles launched by either country would
take only three to four minutes to hit major cities. Either side would
have seconds to react — and South Asia has nothing close to the fail-safe
mechanisms Washington and Moscow developed at the height of the Cold War.

Pakistan and India have set up a hotline between Islamabad and New Delhi,
similar to the one developed by the United States and Russia. But Maleeha
Lodhi, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, said on Fox News S
unday that the hotline isn't working.

Catastrophic damage

Both countries have small nuclear arsenals: Pakistan has about 50 nuclear
weapons, and India has about 100, Pentagon officials say. Most have the
approximate destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, where
100,000 people died instantly.

But Pakistan and India, which have cities packed with tens of millions of
people, would suffer far more casualties than Japan did in 1945.

The Pentagon study Rumsfeld and Armitage will be bearing predicts a range
of 9 million to 12 million deaths and 2 million to 7 million injuries in
the immediate aftermath of an attack.

Matthew McKinzie, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense
Council, has helped run two India-Pakistan nuclear war studies. In one,
five major Pakistani cities and five in India were targeted. Nearly 3
million deaths and 1.5 million injuries were predicted.

A second scenario targeted 12 Indian and 12 Pakistani cities. McKinzie
concluded that such an exchange would kill 30 million people.

McKinzie's studies factor in the three main ways a nuclear bomb kills:
shock waves from the explosion, the resulting fireball and fallout
affecting an area as far as 125 miles from the blast. McKinzie's data
also track immediate deaths. Experts lack reliable models for predicting
longer-term radiation-caused cancers and sickness that would plague South
Asia for decades.

India and Pakistan are entering the monsoon season, which analysts say
would make nuclear fallout worse because a heavy cloud cover would trap
radiation and return it to earth through a process called rainout.
"You're looking at a very devastating impact on both countries," McKinzie
says.

Many experts say radiation fallout from any nuclear exchange probably
would not pose an immediate danger beyond South Asia.

Two days after a nuclear explosion, the initial radiation from the blast
would be 1% of its original strength and take weeks or months to settle
elsewhere around the globe, analysts say.

Other nuclear experts are less certain about long-term international
fallout effects. Scientists are still studying the impact of the nuclear
accident at Chernobyl in 1986. That accident, in the former Soviet Union,
spewed fallout over much of Europe. Among the lingering effects: a much
higher rate of thyroid cancer in children in the affected area. Thyroid
cancer throughout Ukraine, for example, increased tenfold.

Computer models have predicted that neighboring Bangladesh, Afghanistan
and Nepal would see long-term agricultural and health effects from
fallout, as might nearby countries China and Iran.

Humanitarian crises, geopolitical fallout

The larger crises affecting the world would be humanitarian, agricultural
and economic, experts say. Refugees would overwhelm the region. "Once
people get afraid of what they can't see, will they burn the food because
they can't eat it? Then a famine will result," says Mian, the Princeton
researcher.

The world would soon witness the worst humanitarian crisis ever. "You've
got highly dense populations in just a few places, and if they choose the
obvious places to hit, then it's really bad," Collina says. "I would
think the health response, disaster relief effort would have to involve
the entire world."

"It would make any humanitarian disaster in the history of the world pale
in comparison," says Roy Farrell, president of Physicians for Social
Responsibility. "There is no effective medical response to a nuclear
explosion."

The destruction of Pakistan's and India's agricultural systems — which
experts say would last a generation — also could trigger an economic
swoon across Asia.

An India-Pakistan war game conducted by the U.S. Naval War College in
1998 found that a nuclear exchange would cause world markets "to go into
a tailspin, driving capital out of emerging markets to seek safe haven in
the United States. Leading governments and international financial
institutions would be pressed to resolve the resulting financial crisis."

A paper on the game by former assistant deputy secretary of State Paul
Taylor predicted "severe shortages of food and potable water could exceed
the capacity of relief organizations to respond and might even stress
international markets."

A conference of international donors would be required to mobilize the
billions of dollars needed for relief. The prices of certain commodities,
especially foods, could skyrocket and could trigger a global recession."

Rumsfeld and Armitage will stress that India and Pakistan would become
international pariahs for using nuclear weapons. State Department
officials have told both sides that the billions in economic aid they've
received in recent years would halt. Both countries would likely be
shunned by international political and financial organizations. Tourism
and business travel would end.

Another immediate effect: an end to the U.S. war on terrorism in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Radiation likely would make the region
uninhabitable for U.S. troops.

Worse, U.S. officials worry that the resulting chaos of a nuclear war
would turn South Asia into the kind of lawless societies in which
terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda thrive. In addition, a nuclear war
would almost certainly result in a breakdown in security for India's and
Pakistan's remaining nuclear stockpiles and make them prime targets for
terrorist raids.

Will the countries listen?

To avoid that crisis, the Bush administration is praying that Indian and
Pakistani leaders will hear their grim predictions this week for what
they are — an outline for their countries' virtual demise.

But South Asia experts worry that the passionate dispute over Kashmir,
which has prompted two India-Pakistan wars in 55 years, could lead to
irrational acts.

There is a sense in both nations that they can survive a nuclear
exchange: Life would go on. Many ordinary citizens seem relaxed and
unafraid. In India, there are few preparations for nuclear war. "There's
no concept of nuclear shelters," says Vikram Misri, political officer in
the Indian Embassy in Islamabad.

In Pakistan, the nation's newfound nuclear capability is a source of
pride. Camouflage-painted dummy missiles are planted at some major
intersections around the country. At least one bus in Islamabad has a
large missile painted on its side with the Urdu-language message, "I love
Pakistan."

U.S. officials hope they can change that attitude but fear that it is too
ingrained. Gardiner said he recently got an e-mail from an Indian
acquaintance that read, "If we want to have a nuclear war — let us."

Contributing: Mannika Chopra in India; Chris Woodyard in Pakistan




------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, use the form at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/#options
This list is archived at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html