Very few. The world war said is going to be the greatest calamity of this age, or of any age. And the immense destruction that will be caused by that world war is in reality unimaginable. At one time, when some scientists from England were visiting America, and I think they were accompanying some British, either prime minister or some other minister, and there was a dialogue on the future of atom bomb and how nuclear proliferation should be checked.
And one of the scientists who mentions this incident tells us that even the politicians of today, the modern world who are controlling these great powers, under whose noses the atomic bomb is being developed, don’t realize what the damaging power of this modern weaponry is. He says that when the question came up during the discussion, somebody mentioned that perhaps a few hundred bombs would be necessary to destroy a country like Britain or Europe. So, one of the scientists present pointed out that just seven bombs would be enough to obliterate life from all over England. Because this is the power of the energy which would be released for destructive purposes by the modern nuclear bombs. And they are counted nowadays in readiness in hundreds. And even thousands perhaps.
If you count all the atomic nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons available in the hands of Russians and Americans alone, they would be in thousands. And if they are all released, there is very little possibility of life surviving in many regions. But still, the whole of the world is a very big place. Even many, many thousands of atomic bombs or nuclear bombs, if they explode together, they will not be able to destroy the whole world as such. So, perhaps in poor regions, in areas where there is so much population and less development, in which they are not interested in throwing those bombs, those areas would survive. But life would revert to its earlier stages of many hundred years ago. In some cases, according to Einstein, in his view, the life would revert to thousands of years backward.
Because once somebody asked Einstein, what would be the nature of weapons with which the world war third would be fought? The answer was, that I don’t know. But what I know is this, that the nature of the weapons after the third world war, when the fourth world war takes place, would be staffs and stones. That is to say, all the human achievement in scientific fields would be totally lost to mankind. Because the developed nations would be destroyed and their scientific record and data and machinery, all would be perhaps put into a melting pot.
So, there would be very great setback. That’s what I can say. But certain regions, of course, I mean many regions of the world would escape this. Not entirely. Through radiation they would also be affected. But still life has some tenacity about it. It can’t be wiped out by man himself, even if he is bent upon it. The energy released by sun daily is immense. And you know how much energy is released daily by the sun? If I am right, it is about 80 tons. If you weigh light, which is without weight to you, the total energy which is being showered on earth would weigh about 80 tons per day. Atomic energy is much less than that.
So, although destruction would take place in the advanced countries more often than elsewhere, but still even people would survive here, I am quite certain.
