The risks of ego and retaliation

In the increasingly heated war of words between North Korea's Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump the greatest danger for the world is for nuclear weapons to be used to settle the disagreements.

When evaluating the risk of a nuclear confrontation one factor to be considered is both men have fragile egos and respond inappropriately to criticism. That makes the direct and implied threats of nuclear war, which have been exchanged, a dangerous game of chicken. We cannot predict how Kim Jong Un will react to perceived threats, and he does not trust the U.S. to not attack North Korea.

Nuclear weapons cause enormous destruction, and the dirt and debris from the explosion become radioactive as they rise through the blast cloud. These radioactive particles rise into the atmosphere where they are carried away by wind currents far from the blast sites. The distance from North Korea to Japan is less than 650 miles, and wind current maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the Fukushima nuclear-plant explosion in March of 2011 show the region's wind currents have carried and spread nuclear radiation over the entire Pacific Ocean.

On Dec. 29, 2014, The Christian Science Monitor published an article about the Fukushima radiation in which it was predicted the cesium-137 radiation levels in California water would soon drop far below the danger level.

I don't know how knowledgeable Kim Jong Un or Donald Trump are about radioactive fallout drift or about danger levels of different radioactive particles, but I am sure they both have advisors who do. Unfortunately, both men seem to reject information that damages their egos, plans and future visions. I took a course in the Army about chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare and radioactive drift and half-lives were covered in depth. With the little knowledge I have, it scares me to think of the use of nuclear weapons because of someone's ego.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.