[dsq]

I can just see, shaking with horror, the image of missiles and anti missiles smashing into each other, raining immense radiation into the oceans poisining everything. And thats the best case, where the earheads are intercepted successfully.

[gus_massa]

Assumimg each warhead has 5kg of plutonium and each side launches 3500, that's 35 tones of plutonium.

The estimation is that the sea has 4E9 tones of disolved uranium.

I'd better not try, but there is already a lot of natural radioactive materialas in the sea.

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Acording to a ramdon Reddit comment https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/96oprs/comment/... a core of a warhead in your hand gives 0.5S.

That is like 5E6 bananas, that is like 3E3 tones of bananas.

Assuming 3500 warheads on each side, thats line 2E7 tones of bananas.

The anual production of bananas is 8E7 tones of bananas per year. So dropping all the warheads in the see is like dropping 3 months of the banana production.

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Anyway, most of the radioactivity of bananas is due to potasium, that is very soluble so it goes to the pee that goes to the river that goes to the sea. So it's not necesary to sink the ships, just eat the bananas and wait.

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Anyway, potasium is very soluble and does not accumulate too much in animals and plants. I'm bot sure about plutonium.

[rbanffy]

You can also think of the warheads detonating before it reaches the target but before it’s intercepted. A high atmosphere EMP is much better for the attacker than a couple kilograms of enriched fissiles being distributed over your target.