The Cost of a Nuclear Bomb vs. The Cost of a Human Life
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This analysis calculates the cost per death for a modern nuclear weapon. Then it uses that figure to estimate the potential human cost of the $2.69 trillion military budget that would remain AFTER redirecting 1% to pragmatic clinical trials.
Spoiler: Even after giving 1% to pragmatic clinical trials, we’d still have enough money to end civilization 20 times.
This is not a defense strategy. This is a hobby.
On The Price of a City-Destroying Weapon
How much does one nuclear bomb cost?
This is harder to calculate than you’d think, because the military bundles warhead costs into “modernization programs” and “delivery systems” to hide the individual price tags.
But we have the B61-12 Life Extension Program as a benchmark:
- Unit Cost: $27.5 million per bomb
- Program Cost: $11 billion for 400-500 bombs
So: $27.5 million per city-destroying weapon.
For context, that’s less than one F-35 fighter jet costs. You could buy 3-4 nuclear warheads for the price of one plane.
On How Many People One Bomb Kills
How many people die when you detonate a modern nuclear warhead?
This depends on:
- Weapon yield (how big the explosion is)
- Population density (how many people are there to kill)
- Detonation type (airburst vs. ground burst)
Modern strategic warheads are many times more powerful than the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ve gotten very good at this.
The Simulation
NUKEMAP (created by historian Alex Wellerstein) simulates nuclear detonations. If you detonate a single, modern 300-kiloton W87 warhead over Manhattan:
- Estimated Fatalities: 1,619,570 people
That’s immediate deaths from the blast, heat, and initial radiation.
It doesn’t include long-term deaths from fallout, disease, starvation, or the collapse of medical infrastructure. Those numbers are much higher. But this is a conservative estimate.
On The Math That Makes You Uncomfortable
Now you can calculate the cost to kill one person with a nuclear weapon:
- Cost per Bomb: $27,500,000
- Deaths per Bomb: 1,619,570
- Cost per Death: $27,500,000 ÷ 1,619,570 = $16.98 per person
Translation
For the price of a Starbucks latte, our military can kill one human being.
We’ve industrialized death to the point where killing you costs less than caffeinating you.
On What Happens After We Give 1% to Pragmatic Clinical Trials
A 1% treaty redirects 1% of military spending to fund pragmatic clinical trials.
This leaves $2.69 trillion for killing people.
Let’s calculate how much killing that buys:
Step 1: How many bombs?
$2,690,000,000,000 ÷ $27,500,000 per bomb = 97,818 bombs
Step 2: How many deaths?
97,818 bombs × 1,619,570 deaths per bomb = 158,421,000,000 people
Translation
After giving 1% to pragmatic clinical trials, the remaining 99% of military spending could still buy enough nuclear weapons to kill 158.4 billion people.
Earth’s population: 8 billion
Overkill capacity: 20× Earth’s population
We could kill everyone on Earth twenty times.
Not “once, but thoroughly.” Not “twice, to be safe.”
Twenty times.
This illustrates why a 1% treaty is a modest proposal. The treaty asks militaries to keep enough firepower to end civilization 19 times instead of 20.
Nobody needs to end civilization 20 times. That’s just showing off.
On The Summary (In Case You Skipped The Math)
What Nuclear Weapons Cost
- Cost per death: $16.98 (less than coffee)
- B61-12 unit cost: $27.5 million per bomb
- Deaths per W87 warhead (Manhattan): 1,619,570 people
What A 1% treaty Changes
- Current military budget: $2.72 trillion/year
- After 1% redirect: $2.69 trillion remaining (99%)
- Potential deaths with remaining budget: 158.4 billion people
- Earth’s population: 8 billion
- Overkill capacity after treaty: 20× Earth’s population
Even after redirecting 1% to pragmatic clinical trials, we’d still have enough destructive capacity to kill everyone on Earth approximately twenty times.
A 1% treaty doesn’t disarm anyone. It just reduces overkill from “absurd” to “slightly less absurd.”
On Comparing Different Ways to Kill People (The Efficiency Rankings)
Now that you know nuclear weapons cost $16.98 per death, you can compare them to other weapons.
This is the darkest optimization problem in human history. But here we are.
Small Arms (Rifles/Machine Guns)
In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces fired approximately 250,000 bullets for every insurgent killed.
- Cost per bullet: $0.40
- Bullets per death: 250,000
- Cost per death: $100,000
Artillery (155mm Howitzer Shells)
- Typical fire missions use 10-50 rounds per target
- Cost per shell: $8,000-$14,000
- Assuming 20 rounds per casualty at $10,000 per shell
- Cost per death: $200,000
Precision-Guided Munitions
Excalibur GPS-Guided Artillery
- Cost per round: $176,624
- Higher accuracy, fewer rounds needed (1-2 rounds)
- Cost per death: $177,000-$350,000
Air-Launched Missiles
- AMRAAM: ~$1 million
- AARGM-ER: ~$6.1 million
- Cost per death: $1-6 million+
Nuclear Weapons (The Winner)
- B61-12 cost: $27.5 million
- Deaths per detonation: ~1.6 million
- Cost per death: $16.98
The Leaderboard (Most to Least “Efficient”)
| Weapon Type | Cost per Death | What This Says About Us |
|---|---|---|
| Nuclear warhead | $16.98 | We optimized genocide |
| Small arms | $100,000 | Inefficient but personal |
| Artillery | $200,000 | Impersonal and wasteful |
| Precision artillery | $177,000-$350,000 | “Precision” is expensive |
| Missiles | $1-6 million+ | Very expensive, very deadly |
The Math That Proves We’re Insane
Nuclear weapons are 5,900× more “cost-effective” at killing than small arms.
They’re 10,000-350,000× more “cost-effective” than precision missiles.
This explains why $2.69 trillion in military spending has such enormous destructive capacity: We’ve optimized for maximum death per dollar.
The Point
This grotesque “efficiency” calculation exists to illustrate one thing: We’ve industrialized human destruction to a degree that would make assembly line manufacturers jealous.
We can calculate a “cost per death” metric. We’ve optimized it. We’ve competed on it.
Meanwhile, humans spend almost nothing on pragmatic clinical trials.
A 1% treaty redirects 1% of this death budget to the not-dying budget.
That’s it. That’s the whole proposal.