How long does this go on?
Some of the contamination lasts thousands of years. Below is a drawing showing how the body is affected by radioactively contaminated food and water. The arrow shows where the contaminant has its destructive effect, and the number shows how long the effect lasts, its half-life. A half-life is the amount of time it takes for something to be reduced by half. So, if you begin with one pound of carbon with a half-life of 5 thousand years, in 5 thousand years you will have half a pound. Five thousand years after that you would have a quarter of a pound, etc.
Even after the corpses and the debris are buried, radioactive contamination would make New York unsafe for at least twenty years.
In addition, there is the problem of sufficient quantities of suntan lotion and dark glasses.
Sunglasses! Don’t joke!
I’m not joking. Nuclear weapons have a profound effect on our atmosphere. The earth is blanketed by a delicate layer of charged oxygen, called the ozone layer. It functions to screen out the sun’s ultraviolet rays. It’s estimated that after a nuclear war much of the ozone layer will be destroyed. That means that being outdoors during the day would subject us to severe sunburn and blindness. The solution for humans is simple: suntan lotion and dark glasses. But animals, including birds and insects, will become blind, and disoriented and will die. This could mean the collapse of the entire ecosystem.
But Hiroshima.. .
True, Hiroshima is now a rebuilt city, but there’s no comparison. Today’s twenty-megaton bombs are 1500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb! Also, the one Hiroshima bomb was exploded high in the air with a minimum of fallout produced. At present, it’s estimated that up to fifty atomic bombs are targeted for the New York area alone.
The result will be unimaginable suffering. FEMA is prepared. They have stockpiled, in upstate New York, 70
