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Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
The number of deaths among the survivors attributed to radiation-induced cancer is less than 500. No genetic effects (i.e. mutations in offspring) have yet been seen, but animal studies suggest that they typically don't appear until several generations after the initial exposure, so the jury is still out on that count.
A single bomb capable of killing that many in one stroke would be unreasonably large. The cancer risk is definitely there, but highly overblown. I'd accept a major disruption to the global economy.
But "[un]inhabitable for centuries"? No way. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are obvious indications to the contrary.
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Taken from
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2001/0...s/08060003.htm
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Studies on 1600 children who were irradiated while they were in their mother's womb during the atomic bomb explosions in the two cities revealed that 30 of them suffered clinically severe mental retardation.
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There was no detectable threshold dose below which the effect was zero.
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From
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~copeland/atomicbomb.html
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On the other hand, leukemia, a non-tumor type cancer, is remarkably different. An excess risk of leukemia was one of the earliest delayed effects of radiation exposure seen in the victims, and today, more than 50 years after the bombs, this excess is reflected as the most widely apparent long-term radiation effect
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What I was trying to say with the cancer argument was that nuclear bombs cause very harmful medical problems, including cancer.
With the advancement of technology, i'm sure that soon a relatively small bomb will soon be able to have that amount of destructions.
And yes, it was uninhabitable...
EDIT: I'd just like to say I know nothing about the science of nuclear weapons, but rather i'm basing my "calculations" on what has happened in the past and the huge leap in technology that we've had in the past century.