Experts said what would happen in a nuclear strike six months into the war.
A nuclear bomb could cause third- degree burns and wipe out the whole city.
The strength of a blast is dependent on the size of the bomb and how it explodes.
Russian forces attacked Ukraine with missiles and shelling on Februar. A senior US defense official said at a Friday news conference that Russia has launched thousands of missiles.
According to the latest count from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 5,500 people have been killed in the fighting.
Six months after Russia invaded the country, Ukrainians marked the anniversary.
Security experts hope the conflict doesn't turn into a full-blown world war. President Joe Biden said in a speech on Tuesday that the US had no intention of fighting Russia, but that the US and its allies would defend NATO territory. NATO is a military alliance consisting mostly of European countries, butUkraine does not.
Experts told Insider that a nuclear strike is not completely implausible.
"I hope it doesn't escalate, and I think there's a good chance that it doesn't, but the risk is real whenever nuclear-armed states are engaged in conflict with one another."
"Ukraine doesn't have nuclear weapons, so the risk of nuclear war in this scenario is if the conflict escalates to NATO countries or the US," she said. Some of the NATO countries have nuclear weapons.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the US has over 5,000 nuclear weapons. Russian nukes ranged from 50 to 100 kiloton to 500 to 800 kiloton, while US nukes ranged from 300 to 300 kiloton.
If the US and Russia launched everything that they had, it could potentially be a civilization-ending event.
An entire city can be wiped out by a single nuclear weapon, according to a professor of nuclear science.
It is difficult to say that this city will survive and that that city will not. "It's very, very dependent on weapon size, what the terrain looks like, where they blow it up, who's upwind, who's down."
A flash of light, a giant orange fireball, and building-toppling shockwaves are set off when a nuclear bomb is dropped. The people at the center of the explosion are within half a mile of a 300- kiloton bomb. A 1,000- kiloton nuclear blast could cause third-degree burns up to 5 miles away, second-degree burns up to 6 miles away, and first- degree burns up to 7 miles away, according to one estimate. It is possible for people up to 53 miles away to have temporary blind spots.
If you don't get a lethal dose of radiation, you are very likely going to be injured by a falling building or have third-degree burns over a large portion of your body.
Nuclear blasts produce clouds of dust and radioactive particles that are dispersed into the air. Exposure to this can cause radiation poisoning, which can lead to death.
It can cause temperatures to drop and the growing season to be shortened. Drozdenko said that crop production could be altered for a long time.
Many residents wouldn't survive and some nearby residents would face terrible injuries if a 300- kiloton nuclear weapon were to hit the city.
Most of the city would be covered by a lethal dose of radiation. The heat will go all the way out into parts of Maryland, a little farther into Virginia, and all those people will have third- degree burns.
About 300,000 people in the Washington area could be killed by a single nuclear weapon, according to Drozdenko. Depending on how many bombs were dropped and how powerful they were, the death toll could be millions.
She said that the bigger the weapon, the bigger the circle.
The consequences of a nuclear bomb are dependent on how a country chooses to blow it up.
Dirt and other materials would be thrown into the atmosphere if the weapon hit the ground. Drozdenko said that if a country exploded the bomb midair, the shockwaves would bounce off the ground and amplify one another, which would cause a bigger area of destruction. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, radioactive materials could be as high as 50 miles into the atmosphere.
It's hard to know how a modern-day nuclear attack would play out in real life because countries rely on simulations and weapon tests.
"Nuclear weapons have never been used in a conflict before," Drozdenko said.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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