> A "modern" nuclear weapon is much more powerful than the ones we recall. The nuclear weapons deployed during the 60s and 70s were far more powerful than the

> A "modern" nuclear weapon is much more powerful than the ones we recall. The nuclear weapons deployed during the 60s and 70s were far more powerful than the ones of today. Instead of multi-megaton yields being the default, now most warheads are in the 100-300kt range. (This is largely due to improved accuracy reducing the size of a warhead required to take out a target) That means 2-3x the damage radius of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at 10-15kt. (radius does not scale linearly with yield) > I was under the impression the US nuclear arsenal alone can wipe out humanity. Even if you assume 1 nuke = 1 city, the US only has ~5k warheads. According to [0], city number 3000 has 141k inhabitants. Now, indirect effects are going to kill a LOT more (no more industrialized agriculture or global supply chains), but that'll still only get you to 99% at most. (And that's in this extremely contrived scenario where it only takes one nuke to kill Beijing, and not a few dozen) 0: https://data.mongabay.com/cities_pop_03.htm https://data.mongabay.com/cities_pop_03.htm