Destructive Power

Particularly, they have to do with the great power of nuclear weapons, the tremendous numbers that are on hand, and the sophisticated means that the nations have developed to deliver them to any target on earth. Consider the facts.

The words kiloton (1,000 tons) and megaton (1,000,000 tons) refer to the TNT equivalent of nuclear weapons. Thus the 13-kiloton Hiroshima bomb was only a small “firecracker” compared to modern multimegaton weapons. For example, bombs up to 60 megatons​—over 4,600 times as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima—​have been tested. Yet, in 1945, it took only that comparatively tiny bomb to incinerate 140,000 people, thousands horribly, and to devastate Hiroshima.

A modern weapon may typically be about a megaton​—some 75 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Since each bomb can wipe out a large city, try to imagine what a multimegaton bomb would do to a populated area such as greater New York, London or Tokyo. The nations have tens of thousands of powerful nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union and the United States possessing the vast majority. These weapons have the power to kill every human on earth so many times over that the figures become meaningless.

The frightening fact is that this destructive power can be used to destroy practically any target on earth, within minutes of its release. An American president was not joking when he said: “I could push this button right here and in 20 minutes 70 million Russians would be dead.”

Today’s missile launchers can deliver warheads accurately, within a few yards of a target thousands of miles away. Furthermore, a modern-type missile will carry a number of bombs. Once the missile reaches the general area to be destroyed, each bomb can be directed to a different target. Nor are missile launchers confined to stationary land positions; missiles can be launched from planes in the air or from vessels in the sea.

A single submarine, equipped with nuclear missile launchers, has a capability for destroying 224 separate targets, each as large as a big city! Both the Soviet Union and the United States have dozens of submarines equipped to deliver such destruction, and they are building larger improved ones. Soon the new U.S. submarine, the Trident, will be in service. Saturday Review explains:

“A Trident has built into it an undersea launching platform for thermonuclear bombs, some of which contain more explosive force than a thousand atomic bombs of the kind that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. . . . Trident officers have in their hands more power than had been accumulated by human beings in recorded history up through 1945.”

As a former U.S. congressman from Oregon said: “The cards are stacked now for vast destruction and death. . . . The facts can be stated in a few words. First, thousands of nuclear weapons, many of unthinkable power, exist today. Second, almost all of them are ready for instant detonation. Third, their custodians are human beings.”