Lawrence Badash
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262012720
- eISBN:
- 9780262258531
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262012720.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Nuclear war analysts often compared nuclear detonations to volcanic eruptions. The connection between volcanic eruptions and climatic changes, suggested long ago by Benjamin Franklin and others, ...
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Nuclear war analysts often compared nuclear detonations to volcanic eruptions. The connection between volcanic eruptions and climatic changes, suggested long ago by Benjamin Franklin and others, received serious interest from researchers only in the early twentieth century. Today, however, a direct comparison between volcanic eruptions and nuclear war is deemed inappropriate owing to the different absorption properties of sulfuric acid and silica dust than dark smoke. Furthermore, the distributions of particle sizes are different, and warfare would give rise to fine particles from a variety of sources rather than a single location. This chapter examines scientific disciplines with less obvious connections to nuclear war, including volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, planetary studies, dinosaur extinction, and the asteroid impact hypothesis.Less
Nuclear war analysts often compared nuclear detonations to volcanic eruptions. The connection between volcanic eruptions and climatic changes, suggested long ago by Benjamin Franklin and others, received serious interest from researchers only in the early twentieth century. Today, however, a direct comparison between volcanic eruptions and nuclear war is deemed inappropriate owing to the different absorption properties of sulfuric acid and silica dust than dark smoke. Furthermore, the distributions of particle sizes are different, and warfare would give rise to fine particles from a variety of sources rather than a single location. This chapter examines scientific disciplines with less obvious connections to nuclear war, including volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, planetary studies, dinosaur extinction, and the asteroid impact hypothesis.
