Great Military Myths: Overkill

Myth: The US and USSR had (or at one point had) enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world seven (or any other number you want to pick) times.

Truth: This number is based on a calculation that involves dropping the most effective bomb on the biggest target, counting the projected casualties, dividing that number into the total population, then comparing this to the total mega-tonnage on hand. In reality, there were never enough bombs to kill everybody once because there are so many people living in small groups in remote areas. To be sure, a post-nuclear world would be pretty awful and it's questionable if a stable breeding population could have survived the following century.

Myth: While on the nuclear annihilation subject, we could mention the myth that Nuclear Winter would plunge the world into decades of sub-zero temperatures.

Truth: The study that proposed Nuclear Winter left a few things out of their calculations (oceans, rain, the rotation of the Earth, sunlight, among others). Several volcanic explosions had exceeded the "threshhold" for atmospheric dust. A study by the US National Academy of Sciences found that the real effects were a ten degree drop, that that only in the center of each continent, which would last for two years. The same study noted many other effects which would have made post-nuclear life extremely difficult and miserable.