Nuclear Wars cannot be won, and, thus, should not be fought – Ronald Reagan

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you – attributed to Leon Trotsky

Due to the recent escalation between India and Pakistan, all military options are in play. There may be a war between India and Pakistan. One topic that inevitably rears its head on any discussion about a military conflict with Pakistan is the possibility of a nuclear war. The fatalities of a nuclear war are indeed large. That’s why the human mind has an aversion to even contemplate the fallout of a nuclear war. Thus, there are many wild, cartoonish caricatures that the only survivor of even a limited nuclear war would be just a few cockroaches, life as we know it would cease to exist.

Many serious planners understandably also have concerns - what Ronald Reagan said is a very legitimate concern shared by many. But – to paraphrase Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in nuclear war, but a nuclear war is mightily interested in us. We have to “think about the unthinkable” – the seminal book by nuclear strategist Herman Kahn was named with this dilemma in mind. I shall discuss the numbers and look at the expected casualties, but in my view, nuclear wars can be fought, and India can win one also. The casualties would indeed be enormous, but a nation of 1.35 Billion should be able to absorb the losses – it would not mean the end of Indian civilization.

In the Indian context, the fatalities in a nuclear war may have been estimated, but it’s difficult to access such a paper or official study. In the US contexts, two studies have been done – one by the aforementioned Professor Kroenig. Another has been done at the Harvard Kennedy School, by Dr. Ashton Carter, et al., to judge the extent of damage that a nuclear weapon will cause in an American city. The tool that has been used to Professor Kroenig is an opensource tool called nukemap that estimates the likely fatalities in any city for nuclear weapons with 10 KT and above TNT. Though a more robust study is underway, for this article, I shall be using nukemap (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ ) – it has the option to estimate fatalities in many Indian cities for a range of yields.

It is important to have a debate nuclear posture and how it impacts India's war planning :

To assess the threat of a nuclear blackmail - we need unsentimental, fact based analysis. We need to estimate the likely number of casualties and then decide what would be the next step.

Simulations can be done using Nukemap. It has a number of Indian cities in option. With this tool we can assess the impact of a 50 KT yield fission bomb on the ten most populated Indian cities. In Chagai Hills last time Pakistan tested the yield ranged between10 – 40 KT TNT. So, I am taking 50 KT yield . I am taking the ten most populated Indian cities – the ranks are based on the 2011 census.

The Nukemap gives both number of deaths and the number of injuries. I am assuming 50% of those injured would die within a few days of the bomb of the bombs going off. With these assumptions, the number of fatalities in the nuclear attack in top 10 Indian cities with 50 KT weapons come to 10,304,900 – 10.3 millions.

Undoubtedly, that is a very high number of deaths. But we need perspective. 10 millionths of 1 crore is unlikely to mean the death of Indian civilization as we know it. It’s less than 1% of Indian population. Even if there is a more severe nuclear war, the toll may double. Let us suppose the death toll reaches 20 million. That is indeed large. But would that number be the end of India? The total is less than 2% of India’s population.

We need to understand that in WWII, Russia (then USSR) lost 27 million lives and still managed to win the war. Almost 15% of the entire Soviet population had perished. In the ongoing conflict in Congo, till date, 5 million lives have been lost. Congo’s population itself is 80 million – so that’s one-sixteenth or around 6% of the population.

When we debate nuclear war based on reliable data of actual death toll, the frame of reference shifts from emotional, knee jerk overreaction to a logical discussion based on facts. Many myths could be discarded.

After a nuclear war, the living will envy the dead – Herman Kahn had shown this scare tactic as false decades back. There is, of course, genuine concern about the fallout of radiation after a nuclear detonation. But how serious is it? The study by Ashton Carter et al. bears repetition in extenso: “The city center itself would remain too radioactive to rebuild for a year or longer,” “..further downwind from the detonation point, a plume of radioactive debris would spread. Its shape and size would depend on wind and rain conditions, but within one day, people within five to 10 square miles who did not find shelter or flee within hours would receive lethal radiation doses”, and, “For most people in the city struck, their best bet to avoid serious radiation exposure would be to find shelter below ground for approxi­mately three days until radiation levels had subsided and only then to evacu­ate the area”. Carter also says that citizens would have tradeoffs. Estimating the amount of radiation may be possible. In some areas, there may be small nonlethal dosages of radiation for the next few months. But cumulative exposure to such radiation over a prolonged period may mean an increased risk of cancer. So, we need detailed studies and assess policy options – perhaps, existing homes and structures in our metros can be retrofitted with low-cost underground shelters? The government can make it mandatory for new constructions to have underground shelters? The government can have real-time tracking and simulation to check in which areas people should stay in shelters and where people should immediately leave? Mutually Assured Destruction: This statement is rather casually used. The man who coined the term, former US defense secretary Robert Mcnamara, had a specific connotation in mind. We need to note the keyword is “destruction,” not By MAD, Mcnamara meant the destruction of 25% of a country’s population and 50% of its industrial capacity. Undoubtedly, 20 million death is no small matter. One has to be almost psychotic to underplay the gravity. But, again, tragic though the reality would be, it would not mean the end of India as we know it. Pakistan needs to drop just one nuclear bomb, so our military preparations do not matter – This is just another version of comic book peace rally statements such as “if there is a nuclear war, only cockroaches will survive.” There are other slightly more serious sounding but erroneous metaphors such as “two scorpions in a bottle.” As we see, though a nuclear war is tragic with enormous consequences, there is a lot of difference between one weapon going off and ten weapons going off; again, there are lots of differences between ten weapons and a hundred weapons.

Though it would be painful and tragic, India can absorb several nuclear weapons. When we look at the possibility in a clear-eyed manner, we can think of many policy options. We can develop our counterforce to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear complex. When we see the difference between ten nuclear weapons and a hundred nuclear weapons, we can look at our counterforce options and ballistic missile defense options rationally.

If we have a strong counterforce measure, which would strike at Pakistan’s nuclear complex, we may reduce Pakistan’s capability (believed to be 140 weapons at present) by 70-80%. Next, we can look at ballistic missile defense. As former US Undersecretary of Defense Jacques Gansler showed, a state of the art ballistic missile defense system can be built for $3 billion a year. With new developments in artificial intelligence algorithms such as support vector machines, low-cost satellite systems, almost real-time memory based computation - it may be possible to spot the incoming missiles and bombers at the take-off stage. These options may make much of Pakistani threat obsolete.

We can look at sophisticated alarm systems, driverless cars and robots to remove radioactive debris from 5-10 square miles around the ground zero, medical readiness to save as many lives as we can.

We should start thinking of the unthinkable. When we look at the “unthinkable” and see that it’s tragic but “thinkable”, many policy options will open up.

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