The concept of state wars has become antiquated since the invention of nuclear weapons. No major state will go to war with any other major state for the simple fact that they don't want to be wiped off the face of the planet for doing so. Like it or not, mutually assured destruction works as long as the person with the button isn't batshit insane. Which I think in all current cases, they are all sane.
<p> </p> <p> </p> <p><img title="How Many Nukes Will Destroy The World?" src="http://infobeautiful2.s3.amazonaws.com/nukes_550.gif" alt="How Many Nukes Will Destroy The World?" height="2053" width="550" /> </p> <p><strong>Ah but we all live in cities now</strong> </p> <p>I tried to recover a eye-popping stat with another quick calc. 50% of us live in densely populated cities now. Maybe we could wipe out all city-dwelling humanity. YES! </p> <p>Nope. Still no good. </p> <p><img class="alignnone" src="http://infobeautiful2.s3.amazonaws.com/nukes2_550.gif" /> </p>In the largest study ever done about what the consequences of a full scale nuclear war might be. <br /> <br /> They estimated that 14,000 weapons would be used. <br /> <br /> That it would cause a nuclear winter that would last 3 years before the atmosphere cleared. <br /> <br /> That 40% of the worlds population would die from direct effects of the nuclear weapons, starvation or disease. <br /> <br /> That study was done at the height of the cold war, when the US and the Soviet union had over 30,000 nuclear weapons. <br /> <br /> Today the world combined only has around 6,000 operational nuclear weapons. And we do not have the delivery capability to use all of them.
I'm not sure if anyone living in major cities are concerned too much about all of human civilization being wiped out... just their city. Luckily the same logic applies to the leaders of nuclear powers, where having most of your major cities being wiped out / left uninhabitable is tantamount to complete destruction.
here is a good thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=207305&highlight=doomsday
Which radical Islamic state has nuclear weapons? And to be completely honest about it, a Christian government is just as dangerous with nukes as an Islamic government, the problem comes from believing in an afterlife and divine cause. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not radical, and would be as fearful of having its cities turned to ash as any Christian majority state. Individual threats of a radical getting their hands on a single nuke is just as bad with people like Timothy McVeigh as it is for people like Osama Bin Laden. But luckily of most, even terrorist events like that wont trigger a war between nuclear powers.
The psychological damage of a single nuke hitting your country is enough to cause massive unemployment. A mass exodus from the cities will further hurt productivity as everyone wonders who's city is next. A nuke could collapse an economy and cause starvation. A couple nukes hitting our farmlands will cause us all to starve.