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Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
GLOBAL PUBLIC SCHOOL 2021
85
Shane Sarosh [ 9 CIE ]
Ignorable ? Certainly not . Imagine one morning , you , executing your usual monotonous routine , sit on your desk , oblivious of the fact that hell is coming right at you , ready to efface all marks of your existence and — whoosh — you ’ re gone . The very fact that nuclear bombs all are undergoing periodic maintenance hints that countries are ready to deploy them at any instant without hesitation and bothering to save time to check whether it ’ s just a misunderstanding . To really get an essence of the nuclear weapon destruction , let ’ s consider what ’ ll happen if a nuclear bomb were to be detonated in a major city today .
If you were to see the bomb en route and have a few seconds of forewarning , then fear not — you ’ ll never be able to see ever again . Seconds after its detonation , a 2km ball of plasma as hot as the sun expands at the speed of sound launching an intense lightwave which washes over the city , illuminating never-lit before grubby corners and rendering most animals and people blind . Treatment to a thermal pulse is next in line , which sizzles everything in a 600 000 000 m ² radius and those unlucky not to have been exiled to the heavens as dust will now have their eardrums rupturing due to a shockwave created due to the blast ’ s impact . Within that radius , everything and everyone is just gone — there is no better way to put it .
As the fireball travels at speeds of 1000 kilometers in an hour , it conjures up hypercanes that ’ ll blow out human infrastructure as if they were made of cards , even devastating regions hundreds of kilometers away . Suddenly , you ’ ll notice rain as if it were a gift from the gods consoling humanity , except for the fact that the droplets are jet black . This is no ordinary rain : it ’ s radioactive fallout taking its malicious turn , descending onto the rubble covering every “ nuke-and-cranny ” there is , even including your insides . A mushroom cloud covers the sky , paving way for the radioactive ash to collect and rain down and exposure to the slightest of this radiation equals certain death and those unfortunate to survive will suffer an agonizing couple of years and eventually will have to give themselves away to cancers .
During a nuclear attack , you ’ re on your own : most medical professionals in the area would be either dead or injured with lesions and the radioactive contamination will make it impossible for outside help to arrive . A nuclear attack is not an earthquake , a flood , tsunami , volcanic eruption , nuclear accident or a hurricane . It is all of it at once . The proliferation of nuclear weapons will not stop without public awareness and retaliation . They have the potential to be the cause for humanity ’ s extinction event and need to be eliminated forever . As the ICRC rightly puts it , the world really needs the promise of a future without fear of annihilation and let ’ s decide the future of nuclear weapons before they decide ours .