Articles: "Nuclear Warfare 101".

[cosmicalstorm]

Are there even enough nuclear weapons in the world to knock out Europe, Asia, Aus/NZ, Indonesia, parts of Africa and North America?

If I'm not mistaken you could use 20-40 nukes to make the major river-systems and freshwater-lakes on all continents unusable for a very long time, that alone would be exceptionally damaging to our current civilization. And the US alone has something like 5000 nukes in active service.

[Stuart]

Why does the destruction of the US equate to the total destruction of the entire world? Why would survivors favour living in the 1600s in post apocalyptic USA when they could instead step back only 30 years and move to Mexico or Canada?

Because the world and its participants is an extremely complicated environment in which nearly all the various components are linked in subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways. It looks like a whole series of spider-webs superimposed on each other. Now, the situation we have been describing is one in which we have just picked up a sledgehammer and taken a swing right through that collection of superimposed spider's webs. By way of comparison, the 2008/09 financial crisis was the result of tapping one spider's web with a teaspoon. With the United States, Europe, Russia all out of the game and with a lot of other countries suffeing severe damage, the whole world economy will simply collapse. For example; take a walk around Wallyworld and check how much of those good come from abroad and calculate what percentage of a country's GDP is dependent on that trade and its equivalents. Now, all that market is gone. Literally.

Boeing and Airbus are both history. How long before air transport grinds to a halt from a lack of spare parts? Modern transport aircraft aren't like cars where they can be kept running using bandaids and pantyhose. We can't improvize spare parts for an Airbus 380 or a Boeing 767. Major ports are gone - nearly all merchant ships these days are container ships. Without specialized container ports, how do we shift things around? Like food for example.

The effect of a nuclear exchange would be to leave the world with gaping holes in its environment (here using the term in its widest possible sense) and no way of fixing them. The disaster would be worldwide regardless of whether a country got hit or not. How far we would get tossed back is a matter of debate and we could discuss for hours whether we would be pushed back to the 11th century, the 17th or the 19th. But, back the whole world would go with all the costs that implies.

[SilverHawk]

I fail to see any solid implication that a Northern Hemisphere nuclear exchange would cause the back-slide of the entire human race past anything by early 20th century. (Assumption could be variable if Australia is destroyed or not along with India.) I could see Brazil, Egypt and South Africa becoming the new world powers. (Again not accounting for the possible destruction of India/Australia)

Only a completely non-sensical utterly global nuclear war has any real presence in forcing a fast and hard technological back-slide past the 20th century.

[Guardsman Bass]

The effect of a nuclear exchange would be to leave the world with gaping holes in its environment (here using the term in its widest possible sense) and no way of fixing them. The disaster would be worldwide regardless of whether a country got hit or not. How far we would get tossed back is a matter of debate and we could discuss for hours whether we would be pushed back to the 11th century, the 17th or the 19th.

Unless they smear pretty much everyone else along with each other, I question as to whether or not a full nuclear exchange resulting in the devastation of, say, North America, Europe, Russia, and China would knock us back beyond the early twentieth century in terms of technology (although it would obviously be extremely devastating). I mean, look at Latin America: a lot of the basic industries underpinning industrialized societies are there (or were there recently), albeit in often inefficient form.

I suppose that's one advantage of partial nuclear disarmament (down to 1,000 warheads or so), particularly if you also have wide-spread ABM. It hopefully leaves you with enough weapons to annihilate an attacker and then tell any other nations tempted to go after your money, land, or resources to stay the hell away.

[cosmicalstorm]

The effect of a nuclear exchange would be to leave the world with gaping holes in its environment (here using the term in its widest possible sense) and no way of fixing them. The disaster would be worldwide regardless of whether a country got hit or not. How far we would get tossed back is a matter of debate and we could discuss for hours whether we would be pushed back to the 11th century, the 17th or the 19th.

Unless they smear pretty much everyone else along with each other, I question as to whether or not a full nuclear exchange resulting in the devastation of, say, North America, Europe, Russia, and China would knock us back beyond the early twentieth century in terms of technology (although it would obviously be extremely devastating). I mean, look at Latin America: a lot of the basic industries underpinning industrialized societies are there (or were there recently), albeit in often inefficient form.

I suppose that's one advantage of partial nuclear disarmament (down to 1,000 warheads or so), particularly if you also have wide-spread ABM. It hopefully leaves you with enough weapons to annihilate an attacker and then tell any other nations tempted to go after your money, land, or resources to stay the hell away.

I think Stuart mentioned that Latin America and places like that would also be hit in a war, but I never understood why.

[Aaron]

So that they don't become the new power. Essentially "if we get fucked, everyone gets fucked."

[Stuart]

I fail to see any solid implication that a Northern Hemisphere nuclear exchange would cause the back-slide of the entire human race past anything by early 20th century. (Assumption could be variable if Australia is destroyed or not along with India.) I could see Brazil, Egypt and South Africa becoming the new world powers. (Again not accounting for the possible destruction of India/Australia)

The reason is quite simple; most country's industrial advancement depends on supplies of hi-tech equipment and expertise from one of the countries that would be decimated in a nuclear exchange. For example, machine tools. All the world's really good machine tooling comes from Germany. Lose Germany and there's a sudden gigantic hole in the world's industrial infrastructure. We went into this a bit in the TBOverse novel "Crusade". There's a whole worldwide industry involved with maintaining and upgrading German machine tools - but it depends on knowledge and spare parts from Germany. Any reputable engineering group would prefer a refurbished 1930s German machine tool to a brand new Swedish, American, British (or anybody elses) fresh-out-of-the-box any day. And so it is across the world and across the whole span of industry. Another example; airliners essentially come from Seattle or Toulouse. Lose either one and the world air transport fleet runs down and dies. All of the countries you list are quite viable candidates for world powerdom - provided they have a source for their advanced technology. Brazil has been trying for 30 years to build a nuclear reactor and has failed dismally. Their first product in that line is called the Firefly because it flashes on and off and nobody can work out why. Cut out the developed world (which is what a nuclear exchange would do) and the rest of the world is in a world of hurt.

I think Stuart mentioned that Latin America and places like that would also be hit in a war, but I never understood why.

Primarily because not only is advanced economic development concentrated in a relatively small number of countries, any economic development in most countries is very concentrated, usually around the capital (and there are good economic reasons for that). Typically, something like 80 percent of a less-advanced country's economic and industrial infrastructure is around the capital. So, a single well-placed warhead can do crippling economic damage. If one wants every country to start from a level playing field post-exchange, that one warhead looks a pretty good investment. Have you ever wondered why much of the Chinese strategic nuclear force is delivered by H-6 bomber?

I suppose that's one advantage of partial nuclear disarmament (down to 1,000 warheads or so), particularly if you also have wide-spread ABM. It hopefully leaves you with enough weapons to annihilate an attacker and then tell any other nations tempted to go after your money, land, or resources to stay the hell away.

The counter-argument is that as nuclear arsenals become smaller, it also becomes easier to take them out. Remember the ideal, "a secure and survivable nuclear deterrent". One of the bits developed from that is that a large excess of warheads is essential for security because it means we can lose most of them on the ground and still have enough to devastate our opponent. The latest treaty will mean that we will lose that position and we are beginning to enter the area where an enemy first strike could work

[adam_grif]

So, Stuart, you did write the article? And you're really a 600 year old anylist?

I mean, you aren't denying it.

[K. A. Pital]

I have to support Stuart here; the Northern hemisphere is industrialized. Destroy it (and China), and you'll have such a gaping hole in industrialized economies that nothing would be able to block it.

Certainly not a throwback to the 1600s, but it will be the XIX century all over again. Advanced tech will evaporate as soon as the last examples break down (a year or a few more). Hello primitive industrial capitalism of 18XX - at best.

At worst, the ecological disaster would impact other nations and toss them into famine and collapse. Then - right, we're back in the Dark Ages.

[adam_grif]

I'm not so sure about Dark Ages. A second Dark Age perhaps, but not quite as dark as the first. There are still huge libraries of information and people versed in modern science everywhere in the world. If they make an effort, they can preserve a not-insubstantial amount of knoweldge for future generations, that will make rebuilding to where we are now a lot faster than it took to get here the first time.

[J]

I fail to see any solid implication that a Northern Hemisphere nuclear exchange would cause the back-slide of the entire human race past anything by early 20th century. (Assumption could be variable if Australia is destroyed or not along with India.) I could see Brazil, Egypt and South Africa becoming the new world powers. (Again not accounting for the possible destruction of India/Australia).

What are their imports, what are their markets, what's their tech base like? That's where the problems come from. Take Australia for example, their economy is heavily dependent on exporting various resources to China and other Asian countries, in a nuclear exchange their export customers are wiped off the map and Australia's income stream is now gone. That's not all, the trade income is used to buy various essential goods & expertise from other Northern Hemisphere trade partners; things such as high tech electronics & parts, heavy industrial equipment, machine tools, and various other things needed to support a modern economy. That's now gone.

Say you need to build a semiconductor fab to keep all the electronics in the factories running. This requires precision optics for the equipment used to burn the chip patterns onto the silicone wafers. Those optics come from primarily from Japan and Germany as did all the special glass used in the lenses, bit of a problem since both are now glowing craters in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Before they can build a semiconductor fab, Australia will need to develop a specialty glass industry, a precision optics industry, a precision machine tools industry, a specialized chemicals industry and a whole bunch of other industries before all the existing chips in their factories fail. Oh, and this will need to be done in the midst of the worst economic depression in human history.

Brazil doesn't have the tech base, Egypt certainly doesn't and neither does South Africa. All of them will see their industry degrade as their spares run dry. Productivity and living standards will fall as their high tech machines break down from lack of spare parts. They're going to have enough problems keeping their own citizens in order, nevermind taking over the world.

[Coyote]

Tech will degrade at different levels, too, depending on how scare it is or how difficult it is to sustain. Jet air travel will degrade rapidly, and probably within a year or so most remaining jets will be grounded, and a "powerful" nation or faction will be one that can secure a boneyard early on and keep a single, random patchwork 707 cobbled together for just a couple extra years.

Cars will be a different story, I suspect. Modern fancy stuff like Priuses and other computer-heavy types will last for awhile but break down quickly, while older stuff can be kept running by nascent local industry. They won't be efficient or pretty, but they'll run, and eventually we'll have people scratch-building new cars from parts and primitive engines will be made-- a Model-T for the 2050's. Probably run on pure alcohol-derived stuff. The only real advantage we'll have is that we know what a car is and what should be done, whereas the early inventors were stumbling in the dark towards a goal they could not see.

I suspect we'll have a 1900's leveling-out, with primitive cars being made and sustained, mixed with horses for the rural and poorer classes. Neo-Victorianism for the win! But it'll have anachronistic modern trappings-- developed weapons and concepts of flight and transport, and railroads will eventually make a comeback. The biggest wrench thrown into the works would be if post-war environmental problems (including disease) knock us down even further an dkill off the remaining people with knowledge.

But in those ignored bush towns in third-world nations that aren't hit, those town mechanic/smithy types that are left alone will have to shoulder the next industrial revolution. They'll have the advantage in that they are used to self-sufficiency, already know what they're trying to build, and will have a lot of scrap metal availabale to tinker with.

Large stocks of consumer goods will be liberated from warehouses, so we'll have Victorian era tech but everyone will have plenty of "Dora the Explorer" backpacks and stuff in towns that were located next to Wal-Mart distribution points, heh.

It's all "fun" guesswork, anyway.

[loomer]

I actually think Australia would survive fairly well in such a scenario. We'd backslide, sure, and our economy would plummet, but we're self sufficient in food production and most of our population is near enough to the production regions that, after the initial starvation, we should be able to adapt the consumer rails that go up and down the coasts back to coal fired freight systems.

I figure we'll run out of roos and fish, though, and a lot of the interior towns are going to be completely fucked - as is anywhere that gets hit by a severe drought 'after the fall'. But, with our net-export coal, iron, food, cloth and machinery industries, we'd be able to rebuild well, I think. Right there you have the necessities that a lot of nations don't have after such a disruption.

We'd probably do no better than a lot of places - back to early 20th century levels in some regions, lower in others. There could be a 'civil war' - if you can call a pretty amicable split between East and West a civil war - of sorts if transportation and communications aren't re-established between the Coasts fast enough, but it'd be a lot less bloody than most such conflicts by virtue of sheer distance and meaningless terrain.

[Stuart]

An examination of the likelihood for an attack using nuclear weapons against Australia came to some alarming conclusions. The study postulated that three nuclear devices would be initiated in Australia, each of around 50 kilotons nominal yield. For the purposes of the study, the targets were Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. The results indicated the attack would:

• kill, injure, and/or displace about half the population;

• damage or retard about 40 percent of the economy;

• take out most of the federal government;

• take out nearly all of the intelligence agencies;

• sink one-third to one-half of the Australian Navy;

• destroy about 40 percent of the Army;

• destroy about 30 percent of the Australian Air Force; and

• take out nearly all of the ADF commands.

Regardless of other considerations, the study concluded that, at best, Australia would take decades to recover. Three 50kt is a very light attack. Australia would get hit a lot harder than that.

[loomer]

Christ, that's worse than I figured. My cheerful optimism is withdrawn - though it is nice to know I had the targets roughly right when I started my own hobby targeting exercises.

[cosmicalstorm]

The Australian scenario is utterly depressing. I wonder what would happen to Sweden?

[Bluewolf]

Out of interest, what would be the effects of such a nuclear attack on the UK, Stuart. I suspect it'd be worse given how centralised we are.

[loomer]

Wouldn't the UK also take a heavier pounding than the theoretical Australian strike, on account of their own nuclear capacity? I mean, we're a pretty insignificant force when it comes to a major war - we could provide a valuable strike asset of conventional forces in the Pacific but our numbers are just too low to be hugely important these days, and since we don't have nukes we wouldn't take hits designed to deprive us of second-strike capability like the UK, right?

[Simon_Jester]

An examination of the likelihood for an attack using nuclear weapons against Australia came to some alarming conclusions. The study postulated that three nuclear devices would be initiated in Australia, each of around 50 kilotons nominal yield. For the purposes of the study, the targets were Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. The results indicated the attack would:

• kill, injure, and/or displace about half the population;

Excuse me. By this do you mean half the population of Australia, or half the population of those three cities? Australia has about 21.4 million people at the moment; the cities targeted here have a combined population of roughly nine million, so either is credible.

[Zixinus]

Excuse me. By this do you mean half the population of Australia, or half the population of those three cities? Australia has about 21.4 million people at the moment; the cities targeted here have a combined population of roughly nine million, so either is credible.

I can't say what he means by that number, but I wouldn't find it surprising if a good deal of the non-attacked countries would be devastated too. They rely a lot for supplies from the capital (drinking water comes to mind) so those people would start dying off fairly quickly.

[Teleros]

Wouldn't the UK also take a heavier pounding than the theoretical Australian strike, on account of their own nuclear capacity?

I'd assume the UK gets thoroughly screwed over, given how centralised everything is around London. Be interesting to hear the details though.

[adam_grif]

Regardless of other considerations, the study concluded that, at best, Australia would take decades to recover. Three 50kt is a very light attack. Australia would get hit a lot harder than that.

Yes, but those 3 warheads are obviously going to be the best placed 3 of the lot. Obvious targets like Pine Gap get hammered as well, but overall, Australia has a LOT of B country, and all of it is very widely spread out.

[Iosef Cross]

Boeing and Airbus are both history. How long before air transport grinds to a halt from a lack of spare parts? Modern transport aircraft aren't like cars where they can be kept running using bandaids and pantyhose. We can't improvize spare parts for an Airbus 380 or a Boeing 767. Major ports are gone - nearly all merchant ships these days are container ships. Without specialized container ports, how do we shift things around? Like food for example.

The effect of a nuclear exchange would be to leave the world with gaping holes in its environment (here using the term in its widest possible sense) and no way of fixing them. The disaster would be worldwide regardless of whether a country got hit or not. How far we would get tossed back is a matter of debate and we could discuss for hours whether we would be pushed back to the 11th century, the 17th or the 19th. But, back the whole world would go with all the costs that implies.

Well, that depends on the country that got hit. If only Europe the US and Asia are directly hit, there will still be modern civilization left.

I think that any large industrialized country (in the broad sense) can support itself isolated with at least the basic industrial goods. Brazil for example, has industrialized thought import substitution policies, hence has developed an industrial infrastructure that can exist isolated from the rest of the world.

Of course, technological progress will be much slower, without the centers of learning of the northern hemisphere.

[Iosef Cross]

An examination of the likelihood for an attack using nuclear weapons against Australia came to some alarming conclusions. The study postulated that three nuclear devices would be initiated in Australia, each of around 50 kilotons nominal yield. For the purposes of the study, the targets were Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. The results indicated the attack would:

• kill, injure, and/or displace about half the population;

• damage or retard about 40 percent of the economy;

• take out most of the federal government;

• take out nearly all of the intelligence agencies;

• sink one-third to one-half of the Australian Navy;

• destroy about 40 percent of the Army;

• destroy about 30 percent of the Australian Air Force; and

• take out nearly all of the ADF commands.

Regardless of other considerations, the study concluded that, at best, Australia would take decades to recover. Three 50kt is a very light attack. Australia would get hit a lot harder than that.

I would think that this study has exaggerated conclusions.

How Japan had only 2% of it's population killed in 1945 and recovered very fast from two 15 kiloton bombs? And Japan in 1945 was a very poor country by today's standards.

[Iosef Cross]

Brazil doesn't have the tech base, Egypt certainly doesn't and neither does South Africa. All of them will see their industry degrade as their spares run dry. Productivity and living standards will fall as their high tech machines break down from lack of spare parts. They're going to have enough problems keeping their own citizens in order, nevermind taking over the world.

Brazil has 3 million undergraduate university students, there is the potential for maintaining the existent technology. For comparison, the US in 1939 had 1.4 million university students and managed to get by without much trade during WW2, they also managed to get by without importing German machine tool during the war, and instead manufactured most at home. If the US managed to get by isolated in the 1940's, Brazil can get by today.

Historically, during the import substitution years, Brazil produced most of their machinery at home. The quality of it was inferior to the ones produced at Germany, of course, but it worked well enough to make the country running. With the collapse of world trade from nuclear exchange, the country would return to it's old ways of the import substitution policy of industrialization.

The reason of why countries trade is because of the benefits of the international division of labor. If we cut this trade, these benefits cease, and the country suffers. However, it doesn't mean that civilization would end if the country is large enough.

However, there isn't the potential to continue technological progress at remotely comparable rates to the existing rates today. The computers that we currently have will be better than anything that we could develop in a decade, perhaps. Historically, Brazil had developed an independent computer systems in the 1980's, called "Cobra", the problem was that it cost several times the price of imported computers and was worse. But, if the outside world collapsed, we could produce computers again.

Considering that outside Brazil, the southern hemisphere doesn't have much civilization left, Argentina, South Africa and Australia stands out, the international situation would be like in 1946, when the US was the only real economic power in the world. However, these countries would become integrated into a mini world economy.

So, assuming that the northern hemisphere destroys itself, the (remains of the) world would be run by Brazil. Technology would regress to the 1980 or 90's level, however.