The United States are not ready for nuclear war
The specialists of protection against mass destruction center (the University of Georgia) have come to conclusion, that the USA is not ready to nuclear attack. The reason is the “bottlenecks” of hospital system.
This is one of the most detailed unclassified researches. The authors recognized that the probability of nuclear attack to the USA is constantly increasing. The center has assumed, that the nuclear charge can be blown up in the center of one of large American cities (the largest American cities -New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington -were used the so-called “guinea pigs”). Here there were also two variants - in the first one - the capacity of a charge “made” 20 kilotons, in the second one - 550 kilotons (for comparison: in 1945 to Hiroshima the bomb by capacity 12 kilotons, to Nagasaki - 20 kilotons) have been dumped.
The conclusions of the final research are the following. As Washington ProFile writes in case of explosion of the “small” (20 kilotons) charge, a half of population of the central part of the city will be humbled, and the majority of people will be killed by fragments of the destroyed buildings (houses above ten floors will fail at all). People, who would manage to survive at explosion, will receive fatal dozes of radiation. “Big” (550 kilotons) charge will cause even greater destructions - sharp rise in temperature in the zone of explosion will be especially dangerous. Everything will be practically burnt down on 6,3 km epicenter distance. The similar charge, which would be blown up in the center of New York, would kill more than 5 million people.
Nuclear explosion will destroy or will make impossible the use of local hospitals. As a result the majority of victims couldn’t receive medical aid in time. For example, if in Atlanta the “big” charge, there would be more than 300 thousand burnt people in the city, who would die without corresponding and urgent treatment. However the American hospitals don’t have enough places and 80-90 % hospital-rooms are constantly occupied. Moreover, the patients, suffering heavy burns, would be delivered to the hospitals very seldom owing to what the personnel would not be able to help them quickly and would not have necessary medicines, the equipment and etc.
Hence, even if the hospital would escape at explosion, it would not have an opportunity to accept all victims and, the worst of all is that not would not be able to save all dying people. As the result, ascertains research, up to 90 % of burnt people would die. In resechers’ opinion, if the system of the American hospitals functioning will be changed, the quantity of deaths could be considerably reduced, having led a death rate up to 20-30 %.
It is necessary to note, that 20 kilotons charges in Northern Korea have been already possessed and, theoretically, the terrorists (as this technology is already more 60 years old and all necessary information on the “know-how” has been opened for a long time) can create them. As MIGnews.com. marks much more powerful nuclear charges capacity can be theoretically stolen by terrorists from the Soviet arsenals.