Expert reveals what the first minutes of a nuclear attack look like and it’s absolutely ‘horrifying’

An expert revealed what the first minutes of a nuclear attack would look like, as she said it’s absolutely ‘horrifying’ when that first bomb drops.

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist and released her most recent book last year, entitled Nuclear War: A Scenario. And it’s now being adapted into a screenplay by Dune’s co-producer and co-writer, Denis Villenueve.

But while that’s going to be a work of fiction, Jacobsen spoke to Steven Bartlett in 2024 about what would really happen if the UK or US experienced a nuclear attack.

Appearing on The Diary of a CEO podcast, the American explained she used documents from the defence department to build her ‘painstakingly horrific’ details in the book.

Bartlett asked what the ‘visuals’ would be if he was a ‘fly on the wall’ (presuming there would still be a wall) in the minutes after the strike.

She says survivors would probably envy the dead. (Getty Stock)

Jacobsen explained that, in her book, it’s a ‘One Megaton thermonuclear bomb’ that strikes the Pentagon which would do ‘horrifying’ things to humans.

“But on top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light which is 180 million degrees which catches everything on fire in a nine-mile diameter radius,” she said. “On top of the bulldozing effect of the wind and all the buildings coming down, and more fires igniting more fires.

“On top of the radiation poisoning people to death in minutes, and hours, and days, and weeks – if they happen to have survived on top of all that, each one of these fires creates a mega fire.”

Jacobsen says this ‘mega fire’ is a hundred or more square miles and so essentially, what the ‘fly on the wall’ would see is the place becoming a ‘conflagration of fire’.

Having spent years researching the possible effects of nuclear war, she claims there are only two countries where people might survive – heavy on the ‘might’.

Once those burning fires have raged, the nuclear attacks would subsequently cause a thick smoke, contributing to the wipe out of billions of people across the planet within days. This would then lead to a mini ice-age like scenario.

Jacobsen went on to say that Professor Brian Toon, a leading expert on climate and atmospheric science, told her that only two countries could potentially survive a nuclear winter - New Zealand and Australia, as they can 'sustain agriculture'.

She also explained: “Most of the world, certainly the mid-latitudes would be covered in sheets of ice… places like Iowa and Ukraine would be just snow for 10 years.

“Agriculture would fail, and when agriculture fails people just die.

“On top of that you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that you couldn’t be outside in the sunlight – people will be forced to live underground.”