DEEP CUTS ARE NECESSARY TO ESCAPE THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WINTER. Carl Sagan Professor of Astronomy @ Cornell University, ʻ83] Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe Some Policy Implications Foreign Affairs Vol. 62, No. 2 (Winter, 1983), pp. 257- 292 Very roughly, the level of the world strategic arsenals necessary to induce the climatic catastrophe seems to be somewhere around 500 to 2,000 warheads, an estimate that maybe somewhat high for airbursts over cities, and somewhat low for high-yield ground bursts. The intrinsic uncertainty in this number is itself of strategic importance, and prudent policy would assume a value below the low end of the plausible range. National or global inventories above this rough threshold move the world arsenals into a region that might be called the "Doomsday Zone" If the world arsenals were well below this rough threshold, no concatenation of computer malfunction, carelessness, unauthorized acts, communications failure, miscalculation and madness in high office could unleash the nuclear winter. When global arsenals are above the threshold, such a catastrophe is at least possible. The further above threshold we are, the more likely it is that a major exchange would trigger the climatic catastrophe.
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