Nuclear war expert shares 'terrifying truth' about what happens if missile is launched

If you’re looking for something to pair up the blues of the end of the Bank Holiday, how about a spiral over nuclear war?

Because while going back to work tomorrow might seem sh*t, a nuclear missile being launched at the UK would be a whole lot worse.

And while only ‘two countries’ would apparently survive if this hypothetical war did break out, the first minutes of it would be absolutely horrifying.

That’s as a nuclear war expert shares the ‘terrifying truth’ about what would happen is a missile was launched.

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist who released her most recent book last year, entitled Nuclear War: A Scenario. She previously told Steven Bartlett, while promo’ing the project, that most of the world ‘would be covered in sheets of ice’ for years following an attack.

It'd pretty much be game over for a lot of people and places. (Getty Stock)

The expert also previously told Politico that it takes ‘26 minutes and 40 seconds for a ballistic missile’ to get from a launchpad in Russia to the US’s East Coast.

But she said that it would still be a matter of minutes that a leader has to react.

"Part of the terrifying truth about nuclear war, or if a nuclear exchange were to unfold, is the insane time clock that was put on everything from the moment nuclear launch is detected,” she explained.

"And so is the fact that the president has only six minutes, that's the rough time to make this decision. And in that time, the 'Black Book' gets opened; he must make a choice from a counterattack list of choices inside the 'Black Book'."

Talking further about her nuclear war book on Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast, Jacobsen explained she used documents from the defence department to build her ‘painstakingly horrific’ details.

So, with her fountain of knowledge on it, the host asked what the ‘visuals’ would be if he was a ‘fly on the wall’ (presuming there would still be one) in the minutes after a nuclear strike.

The journalist 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.”

So, essentially, if you were somehow still able to watch, you’d see the place becoming a ‘conflagration of fire’.