Thoughts on the Nuclear Holocaust Scenario
Motivation: I think I have been using my brain a lot these past few days so I have decided to spend an hour writing down my thoughts on this topic. This is based on a conversation I had with my good friend Andrew at 1AM last night.
The likelihood of a nuclear holocaust
The nuclear holocaust scenario is a scenario in which the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes global destruction. This would likely be caused by a nuclear war between nuclear-armed countries, the probability of which is becoming higher and higher as tensions between Russia and the West heat up. My mentor Max Tegmark suggests that there is about a one-in-six chance of an imminent global nuclear war. I disagree with him on the exact probabilities, but the sketch of the argument goes as such: Putin has about a 30% chance of going nuclear in Ukraine (I personally give this probability as ~10%), this will lead to an 80% chance of a non-nuclear NATO strike against Russia (I am inclined to agree with this number), which will then lead to a 70% chance of escalation to an all-out nuclear war (I would put this number slightly lower, maybe at 50%, since I’d like to believe that Putin and leaders in the West are concerned about the mutually assured destruction of multiple major world powers; although, my faith in humanity biases this figure). So, Tegmark puts the probability of a nuclear holocaust at about 30% x 80% x 70% ~ 17%, while I believe the number to be lower at about 4%.
The outcome of a nuclear holocaust
Although my 4% number may seem low, at about 1 in 25 odds, this is a bit horrifying when you realize that the expected value of human deaths in this scenario is extraordinarily large. If a nuclear holocaust happens, a recent article published in Nature Food suggests that more than 5 billion people may die from nuclear war between the US and Russia. In my conversations with Max, who is very interested in issues that affect humanity, he uses this to argue that the worst effects of nuclear war may not come from direct kills or radioactive fallout, but may instead come from stratospheric soot from burning cities that causes reduced terrestrial and aquatic food production. If we are to believe that 5 billion people may die from a nuclear holocaust, then with my estimate of a 4% chance of a nuclear holocaust, the expected value of number of people killed is 200 million. This absolutely shocked me when I calculated this number. We should perhaps expect 200 million people to die of a nuclear holocaust in the next few years.
These probabilities are bound to change as the scenario in Russia changes. Perhaps (I hope), we will find a reasonable off-ramp from escalating tensions in Ukraine and avoid a nuclear holocaust. In the case that the situation escalates into a nuclear holocaust, you and I are probably both dead.
The expected value number is absolutely horrifying. To give you some sense of scale of that number, 3000 people died from 9/11. About 7 million people have died from COVID. 50 million people died in WW2. 200 million dead people is probably at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than the city you live in.
In a given “normal” year, we could estimate the probability of a global nuclear war as having a 0.1% chance of occurring, and this is probably a great underestimate. If we were to run the expected value calculation on this number, we should expect five million people a year to die of nuclear war.
Humans are not very good at visualizing and understanding numbers that large. Each of those 200 million people are people just like you, with complex lives and friends and family. It is impossible to truly understand how many people that is. 200 million people dying would be perhaps the worst tragedy to ever befall mankind, and this is the expected value of the number of people that will die in the next few years to nuclear war.
What to do about it
On a long enough time scale with people kicking around and flirting with the nuclear football, the previous probability gets magnified and it is almost certain that there will be a nuclear holocaust at some point unless things change. It seems so absurd to me that we live in a world where people do not regularly talk of disarmament and working towards a more stable future for humanity. Climate change is a clear problem that is given lots of airtime, but even this does not threaten killing most humans like nuclear war does.
What we absolutely cannot do as a species is feel helpless about it, which leads to paralysis and the continuation of the status quo ante. We must always choose the most empowering narrative: we must have faith that humans can overcome the problems that they create. We must have difficult conversations and try to approach the problem with rationality rather than fear. I also think some people have become so entrenched into their narratives, for example the US emerging victorious over Russia, that they have forgotten that there are higher goals, like the future of humanity.
Max points out that de-escalation is not the same as capitulation. It is important to avoid pointless acts that raise the temperature without any real benefit. For example, the assassination of Darya Dugina or the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines seem to not be very helpful for Ukraine in winning the war, but are nonetheless provocations toward Russia.
Humanity’s terrible track record
There have been at least a few instances in history where it has been a single man standing in the way of nuclear annihilation. Perhaps surprisingly, it seems that most of the time it has been a Russian/Soviet man.
Vasili Arkhipov was a naval officer that single-handedly prevented nuclear war during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was given the order by his captain to launch nuclear torpedoes, and he used his veto power to stop the order.
Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces that judged the Soviet nuclear warning to be a false warning, and proceeded to not relay the warning to his superiors, which would have probably led to a retaliatory nuclear strike against the US.
It seems like a terrible idea to leave it to individual humans to have the burden of avoiding nuclear war.
Where things get strange
Max mentioned that there is a sort of “survivorship bias” when it comes to nuclear war; we probably would not have been around to have the discussion that day if the cold war went hot. Max would have been killed and I would have never been born. Yet, it is absolutely a terrible idea to keep letting these near-misses happen.
When I brought up this point to my friend Andrew, he showed me this really funny comic relevant to the topic.
In conclusion
Nuclear war is very bad, and we should be doing more to stop it. Humanity needs to get its priorities straight.
