Wednesday, January 17, 2007

108 billion people

This is, roughly, the amount of people who would die if every existing nuclear bomb on planet Earth were to detonate. How do we know? Well, about 27,000 nuclear weapons exist on Earth, and, according to today's Board Statement from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 50 nuclear bombs in the modern world's arsenal would kill 200 million people.

Concerned, I did some further math, and, fortunately, our prospects are a bit more comforting: Only the Earth's entire population of just over 6 billion -- a number much less than 108 billion -- would die if we were to detonate every nuclear weapon in existence.

Phew.