Although NATO claims there is a “low chance” that Russia uses nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine, the fear of a world war with this type of weapon remains latent.
The United States would be one of the targets and although cities on the West Coast, including Hawaii or Alaska, have been mentioned, the cities of Washington, DC, and New York would be among the points of attack.
In fact, last July, faced with the escalation of attacks by Russia, the New York City Emergency Department released a video with three tips against a possible nuclear attack.
“Get in. Fast. He enters a building. Stay away from the windows,” says the narrator of the video. “Stay inside. Close doors and windows. Stand in the center of the building. Clean up right away. Take off your clothes and bathe with soap or shampoo.”
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute, told the Daily Mail he made estimates of the extent of nuclear bomb damage in Washington, DC, and New York.
The flight time from Russia to the United States is half an hour says the expert, who mentions the cities of London and Paris as points of attack.
If it were to impact New York, the city’s Emergency Department video advice would be of little help to those living in Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn, and much of Queens. That’s not counting Jersey City.
In other words, the World Trade Center would be destroyed again, as would the Brooklyn Bridge.
In a hypothetical case that the impact is in Lower Manhattan, everything that is there would be destroyed instantly, with 710,360 dead and more than 1.1 million injured with consequences due to radiation.
In the case of Washington, DC, a possible impact would be in the area near the White House, resulting in 365,650 deaths and 317,710 injuries, according to estimates of the population living in the impacted regions.
Dr. Lewis indicates that in London the coup could be Westminster, that would mean that the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, St Thomas’s Hospital and Westminster Abbey would be completely destroyed.
In the case of an attack on Paris, it would be the Elysée Palace, the Place de la Concorde and most of the Champs-Elysées.
At the beginning of October, the White House had to clarify the expressions of the president Joe Biden about a possible nuclear attack, noting that there was an “Armageddon” situation in the face of a threat from Russia.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called Vladimir Putin a “dangerous” enemy.
“I think what nuclear threats remind us of is that Russia is an important and seriously dangerous adversary, not only for the United States, but for a world”, he expressed in a conference with journalists.