Vladimir Putin’s superpower sits on the largest nuke stockpile in the world and its most powerful missile is the SS-18 – better known as the Satan.
Russia is believed to have 55 of the weapons in service, but experts have warned as little as five could make ash out of the East Coast of the US.
These weapons are said to make the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War 2 look like “popguns”.
More than four million people would die if a Satan carrying its maximum payload was launched at central New York.
Dr Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, made the stark prediction of an apocalyptic nuclear strike launched on the US by Russia.
One of Putin’s Satan missiles would “wipe out three quarters of New York state for thousands of years”, he warned.
Satan missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads with payloads of up to 20,000 kilotons – more than one thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
At maximum payload a direct hit on New York would kill 4.5 million people, injure 3.6 million, and send radioactive fallout stretching more than 600 miles.
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The weapon can also be armed with 10 smaller nukes at 550 kilotons each which can spread across a huge area and are nearly impossible to intercept.
Dr Roberts wrote for the Centre for Research on Globalization: “The atomic bombs that Washington dropped on these helpless civilian centers while the Japanese government was trying to surrender, were mere popguns compared to today’s thermo-nuclear weapons.
“One Russian SS-18 wipes out three-quarters of New York state for thousands of years.
“Five or six of these ‘Satans’ as they are known by the US military, and the East Coast of the United States disappears.”
The economist previously warned Russia could “easily” annihilate NATO and trigger the total collapse of the Western alliance.
Russia’s nuclear targets across the East Coast would include major population centres such as New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Boston, Jacksonville and Washington DC – based on FEMA predictions from the Cold War.
World War 3 fears are looming as politicians warn a “global war” could erupt between the US and Russia over the conflict in Syria.
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US bosses are ramping up their nuclear arsenal in a bid to meet rising threats from Russia, China and burgeoning nuclear power North Korea.
Putin’s resurgent Russia is even developing a more powerful replacement for the SS-18 – dubbed by NATO as the “Satan 2”.
Pentagon bosses warned Russia could launch a “terrible attack” on a scale never before seen as relations between the White House and Kremlin reach levels “more dangerous” than during the Cold War.