if a nuclear war starts all over the world, how long will it take to wipe out the whole planet?

Answer 1

a few hours for the initial catastrophe. then a few months for the lingering agony for those not wiped out at the first.

Answer 2

It is highly unlikely it could ever happen. There are thousands of nuclear weapons in the hands of responsible countries that would almost certainly never use them other than one or two as a strike against a rogue country. Even that is unlikely.

Israel has many weapons and has had them since the early sixties but even with all the wars has never even suggested it might use them.

Some countries like India and Pakistan are a little bit of an unknown quantity so there is a slight risk there but the likelihood is that sense will prevail.

That leaves countries like Iran and North Korea. Not just politically unstable but many would argue mentally unstable too. Iran in particular may use a weapon like a suicide bomber knowing full well they may be totally wiped out in retaliation.

That said the likelihood of nuclear retaliation in response to a rogue nation using a weapon is very slight. So the prospect of global nuclear war in negligable.

Even if the majority of the weapons were used it is still likely there would be many survivors. Modern nuclear weapons are a lot cleaner than the protesters would have you think. There is significantly less fall out with modern weapons and of course neutron bombs give an initial high energy pulse of radiation to kill humans with little blast damage and the area is totally safe in a couple of days.

People feared the advent of the bow and arrow, gun, bomb and many other weapons. True they all killed people but are all now more closely controlled. Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented so must be managed in the same way as other weapons.

Consider though that nuclear weapons forced the longest period of peace the world has known. They forced nation to speak to nation and you could argue that they have in fact done more to bring about peace than almost anything else!!

Answer 3

A whole decade. If a nuclear war starts, we wouldn't be targeting people in the mountains of Tibet or something. In a war, we only shoot people who are a threat to us, otherwise it's a waste of logistics.

Even if a full-scale nuclear war erupts, not all cities, much less villages or towns, will be hit. Nevertheless, everyone will be affected by the effects of radiation, health issues, and damage to the economy.

Also, nuclear attacks aren't exactly instantaneous. It takes for missiles to fly, bombers to get into the air, etc. Meaning the world won't be wiped out in a few minutes. Not in a few hours either because the world is just too darn big.

Answer 4

One RN Vanguard class Submarine (often mis-called Trident after the weapons system) can fire 16 Trident Missiles each with 3 individually targeting warheads. One of these could therefore launch a nuclear attack on 48 independant targets at once. We have 4 Vanguard class submarines with the ability to strike 192 targets. And we are but one country. Flight time less than 1 hour dependant upon launch position. So you would assume that whoever is firing or retaliating will have a large disposal of warheads at their command so you could assume all the world's major cities would be destoyed within 1 hour of the start of war assuming counter-measures were unsuccessful.

Answer 5

IT takes a nuclear missile 30 minutes to reach the USA from Russia, if you had to assume that all the countries used their nuclear bombs at the same time then perhaps 2 to 3 hours, but that is very unlikely, although they say that their is enough bombs to blow the Earth 3000 times over.!!!

Answer 6

In 6 days, the whole of the Australasia could be wiped out....in 30 days, the earth would vanish

Answer 7

4 to 5 minutes... Wait a sec, is this Kim Jong Il? lol

Seriously though it would only be 4 to 5 minutes...

Answer 8

what with all the nuclear powers out there i reckon about a few hours.

Answer 9

Not long, there are probably enough nukes still knocking about to vaporise most people...and you could nuke the icecaps and drown the rest.

Answer 10

when the ww3 start there r more than enough bombs to split the earht in half ,
so not too long after maybe 30 minutes