Australia and New Zealand: Sanctuaries in nuclear aftermath
The first moments following a nuclear attack would be utterly terrifying. Expert Annie Jacobsen explains that most people would perish in fires or from radiation poisoning. Only two countries might sustain life: Australia and New Zealand.
Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her latest book, titled "Nuclear War: A Scenario," explains what a nuclear war and the first moments after a nuclear attack in the world would look like.
The author appeared on Steven Bartlett's podcast, The Diary of a CEO, where she discussed what the world would look like if a nuclear bomb with a yield of one megaton hit the USA or the United Kingdom. The scenario presented by the journalist is terrifying.
In the first seconds of the attack, many cities would vanish from the face of the earth, burned by an unimaginable temperature of over 179 million degrees Celsius.
A burst of thermonuclear energy and extreme heat, soaring to around 180 million degrees Celsius, would engulf everything in a radius of about 14 kilometres. The forceful winds would bring buildings down, and the fires triggered in the aftermath would ignite even more flames, as noted by the American journalist.
Those who would survive the attack would slowly begin to die in agony. This is the effect of illness or the "megafire."
Those who initially survived would still face lethal radiation sickness, leading to a painful death within minutes, hours, days, or weeks. And even if they withstood that, the so-called "megafire" would ultimately claim their lives, as described by Annie Jacobsen.
The "megafire" would cover a surface area of hundreds of square kilometres. The expert explains that living organisms could observe the blaze.
It turns out that only the residents of Australia and New Zealand could survive a nuclear attack of such force.
In some parts of the world, farming could still continue, providing a slim chance of survival. Meanwhile, places like the USA and Ukraine would be buried under snow. Additionally, the nuclear assault would so drastically harm the ozone layer that living underground would become essential, according to Jacobsen.
