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Fallout 3 - Clear & Present Danger - Page 5 - STEP Wiki[^4^]



In 1994, his close friend Peter Hardin and his family were murdered by members of the Colombian drug cartel. When Bennett learns that Hardin was connected to the cartel and skimmed $650 million, he informed his National Security Advisor, James Cutter, that the cartels represent a "clear and present danger to the United States". He instructs Cutter to use force against the cartel and later sends acting Deputy Director of Intelligence Jack Ryan to Colombia to investigate Hardin's cartel connection.




clear and present danger fallout 3



Both the local and worldwide fallout hazards of nuclear explosions depend on a variety of interacting factors: weapon design, explosive force, altitude and latitude of detonation, time of year, and local weather conditions.


All present nuclear weapon designs require the splitting of heavy elements like uranium and plutonium. The energy released in this fission process is many millions of times greater, pound for pound, than the most energetic chemical reactions. The smaller nuclear weapon, in the low-kiloton range, may rely solely on the energy released by the fission process, as did the first bombs which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.


Probably the most serious threat is cesium-137, a gamma emitter with a half-life of 30 years. It is a major source of radiation in nuclear fallout, and since it parallels potassium chemistry, it is readily taken into the blood of animals and men and may be incorporated into tissue. Other hazards are strontium-90, an electron emitter with a half-life of 28 years, and iodine-131 with a half-life of only 8 days. Strontium-90 follows calcium chemistry, so that it is readily incorporated into the bones and teeth, particularly of young children who have received milk from cows consuming contaminated forage. Iodine-131 is a similar threat to infants and children because of its concentration in the thyroid gland. In addition, there is plutonium-239, frequently used in nuclear explosives. A bone-seeker like strontium-90, it may also become lodged in the lungs, where its intense local radiation can cause cancer or other damage.


Three types of radiation damage may occur: bodily damage (mainly leukemia and cancers of the thyroid, lung, breast, bone, and gastrointestinal tract); genetic damage (birth defects and constitutional and degenerative diseases due to gonodal damage suffered by parents); and development and growth damage (primarily growth and mental retardation of unborn infants and young children). Since heavy radiation doses of about 20 roentgen or more (see "Radioactivity" note) are necessary to produce developmental defects, these effects would probably be confined to areas of heavy local fallout in the nuclear combatant nations and would not become a global problem.


Most of the bomb-produced radionuclides decay rapidly. Even so, beyond the blast radius of the exploding weapons there would be areas ("hot spots") the survivors could not enter because of radioactive contamination from long-lived radioactive isotopes like strontium-90 or cesium-137, which can be concentrated through the food chain and incorporated into the body. The damage caused would be internal, with the injurious effects appearing over many years. For the survivors of a nuclear war, this lingering radiation hazard could represent a grave threat for as long as 1 to 5 years after the attack.


A U.N. scientific committee has estimated that the cumulative per capita dose to the world's population up to the year 2000 as a result of atmospheric testing through 1970 (cutoff date of the study) will be the equivalent of 2 years' exposure to natural background radiation on the earth's surface. For the bulk of the world's population, internal and external radiation doses of natural origin amount to less than one-tenth rad annually. Thus nuclear testing to date does not appear to pose a severe radiation threat in global terms. But a nuclear war releasing 10 or 100 times the total yield of all previous weapons tests could pose a far greater worldwide threat. The biological effects of all forms of ionizing radiation have been calculated within broad ranges by the National Academy of Sciences. Based on these calculations, fallout from the 500-plus megatons of nuclear testing through 1970 will produce between 2 and 25 cases of genetic disease per million live births in the next generation.


Environmental degradation today is a clear and present danger across countries and communities. Public concern about this has spawned a whole new climate lexicon, aided by the media and the academia. Greenhouse effect and global warming have been part of the climate discourse for quite some time. So has been the association of green and greens with the environmentalist lobby, tracing their origin to campaigns in Germany in the 1970s against nuclear power stations.


4. Evidence of the immediate and longer-term impacts of the use and testing of nuclear weapons has been the subject of scientific investigation ever since. In a major 1987 report, the World Health Organization (WHO) summarized existing research into the impacts on health and health services of nuclear detonations. The report noted inter alia that the blast wave, thermal wave, radiation and radioactive fallout generated by nuclear explosions have devastating short- and long-term effects on the human body, and that existing health services are not equipped to alleviate these effects in any significant way.[3] Since then, the body of evidence of the immediate and longer-term humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons use and testing, and of the preparedness and capacity of national and international organizations and health systems to provide assistance to the victims of such events, has been growing steadily.[4]


5. In 2013 and 2014, three international conferences were organized by the governments of Norway, Mexico and Austria to comprehensively assess existing knowledge of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.[5] The evidence presented at the three conferences demonstrated inter alia the following:


[25] Masaki Koyanagi, presentation to the Second International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, 2014: -fora/nayarit-2014/statements/Hibakusha-Koyanagi.pdf, giving the perspective of a third-generation hibakusha. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) is currently carrying out a research programme on the children of atomic-bomb survivors.


[34] Wilfred Wan, presentation to the ICRC and IFRC expert meeting in Geneva on 2 March 2020; Wilfred Wan (ed.), Nuclear Risk Reduction: Closing Pathways to Use, 2020, chapter one: -risk-reduction-closing-pathways-use.


There is no doubt that TikTok plays a central role in enabling surveillance networks inside and outside China. The avenues that these technologies can access our lives are almost unlimited. This is a clear and present danger and a national security issue.


Detonating nuclear weapons above ground sends radioactive materials as high as 50 miles into the atmosphere. Large particles fall to the ground near the explosion-site, but lighter particles and gases travel into the upper atmosphere. The particles that are swept up into the atmosphere and fall back down to Earth are called fallout. Fallout can circulate around the world for years until it gradually falls down to Earth or is brought back to the surface by precipitation. The path of the fallout depends on wind and weather patterns.


Even though there is very little fallout that still exists in the environment, it is important to remember that fallout can be very dangerous. This section talks about the different ways we can be exposed to radiation if a nuclear detonation occurs.


When a nuclear detonation occurs, people, plants, and animals can be exposed to the fallout in several ways. Livestock may eat contaminated plants or drink contaminated water. People who then eat this livestock will then still experience internal contamination, in which radioactive material ends up inside of our bodies, despite not consuming contaminated plants or water directly.


Teaching with Documents: Photographs and Pamphlet About Nuclear FalloutThis webpage contains a brief description of the nuclear arms race of the 1950s and 1960s. It also provides a 1950s pamphlet about fallout and several pictures related to nuclear weapons testing and fallout shelters.


The CDC website provides information about radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests conducted in the atmosphere around the world (global weapons testing) during the 1940s and 1950s. The CDC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have studied whether it is possible to estimate the health effects to Americans from this global fallout. In the process, the CDC and the NCI were able to make some estimates of how much fallout exposure people received, what some of the possible effects might be, and how frequently the effects might occur.


Radioactive Fallout from Global Weapons TestingThis webpage provides information about radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted during the 1940s and 1950s. It also provides some estimates of how much fallout exposure people received, possible effects, and how frequently the effects might occur.


Based on the estimated total costs of managing nuclear waste, many countries require that the operators of nuclear power plants set aside funding to cover all costs. Different mechanisms exist in different countries. Although the sum already deposited in dedicated funds is high, the costs of waste management do not drastically increase the price of electricity. Typically the spent fuel management and disposal costs represent about 10% of the total costs involved in producing electricity from a nuclear power plant. Thus, although the absolute costs of waste management are high, they do not render the nuclear fuel cycle uneconomic, because of the high ratio of revenue earned to waste volumes produced. 2ff7e9595c


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