The Will to Prevent: Global Challenges of Nuclear Proliferation (To Predict and Prevent: GLOBAL CATASTROPHE‪)‬

Imagine that on September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, terrorists successfully executed a nuclear terrorist attack in New York City. On a normal working day, more than 500,000 people crowd the area within a half-mile radius of Times Square. The explosion of a Hiroshima-sized nuclear device in midtown Manhattan would have killed all of them instantly. Hundreds of thousands of others would have died in the hours thereafter. The blast would have generated temperatures reaching 540,000 degrees Fahrenheit, instantly vaporizing the Theater District, the New York Times Building, and Grand Central Terminal. The ensuing firestorm would have stretched from Rockefeller Center to the Empire State Building, and buildings from the Metropolitan Museum near 80th street and the Flatiron Building near 20th street would have looked like the Murrah Federal Office Building following the Oklahoma City bombing. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]