Articles: "Nuclear Warfare 101".

[Iosef Cross]

There are semiconductor production in Brazil actually:

http://libdigi.unicamp.br/document/?code=vtls000406618
"Abstract: In Brazil, the sector of semiconductors components, the chips, remains restricted to a small group of companies, fact that has caused deficit increasing in the trade balance. Ahead of this fact, there are several discussions and studies in forms to increase the internal production of these activities in the sector of the country, beyond the recent debate on the necessity of the installation of a productive plant (foundry) realized by the government. Another element of prominence is that the segment was adopted as one of the priority sectors in the Industrial, Technological and Foreign Trade Policy (PITCE), launched in 2004. With this concern, the objective of this dissertation was examine the perspectives, with its possibilities and limitations, of the development of the semiconductor brazilian industry by means a specific segment - the companies of project of the circuits, called design houses. For in such a way, by means the bibliographical revision, the work was structuralized in three chapters: the first one deals with a discussion on the existing panorama and the recent trends in the worldwide industry of semiconductors; the second brings the analysis of a country with late development in this industry ? the Taiwan experience, and finally, an evaluation of the Brazilian industry of chips, beyond the examination of its possibilities of development of the sector by means the design houses. It was evidenced that with the trend of vertical specialization in worldwide industry, it had a separation between the project and manufacture activities, creating an ample market of circuit designs, particularly in less standardized and oligopolyzed, as the integrated circuits of specific application, propitiating new chances for incoming, as Brazil. Already the Taiwan experience showed that the state intervention is necessary for a trajectory of development in this sector, mainly to articulate mechanisms that guarantee the assimilation and learning from the technology transfer. Moreover, that the interaction between design houses and the companies of manufacture (foundries) allowed the generation of differentiaded technological capacities that had guaranteed the competitive insertion of the country in the worldwide industry. In the case of the Brazilian industry of semiconductors, which was verified that exist technological capacities in the area of projects, makes possible the development of design houses in Brazil: activities of circuit designs integrated in groups and centers of research, activities of human resources qualification and availability of equipment and tools for development of projects and softwares. However, the international experience of success, together with the obstacles identified in the national industry, had shown that only the development of the design segment is an limited trajectory, given that other elements are necessary, as a company of manufacture, so that a ?virtuous circle? can exist, capable to offer sustaintability in the development of the industry of semiconductors in a long period."

That an MA thesis about developing the country's semi conductors industry.

[Iosef Cross]

Historically the closest thing to a nuclear attack that happened to a country was the strategic bombing of Germany in WW2. In this episode, about 1.5 million tons of bombs were delivered over Germany. That was nearly 10 times the bomb tonnage delivered over Japan (160,000 tons) and 20 times the tonnage delivered over Britain (70,000 tonnes). Sources: United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) of the European and Pacific Wars.

Since the bulk of the mass of a bomb is composed of explosives assuming that half of the bomb tonnage would be composed of explosives is a reasonable estimate. Hence, Germany received 750,000 tons of explosives by air, or about 50 15kt atomic bombs in explosive power. Considering that conventional bombing doesn't produce radiation, however, that bomb tonnage would be less damaging that 50 atomic bombs of 15 kilotons by this aspect.

Germany only received help agaisnt this bombing barrage in the postwar years, around 1947 onward. Did the country collapse under this bombing effort? Well, second to the USSBS (http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/149/36/0), industrial production per year in Germany was:

(index 1939 = 100)
1941 - 116.6
1942 - 118.1
1943 - 131.8
1944 - 132.6

And what about bombing tonnage delivered over Germany?

1941 - 31,500 tons
1942 - 47,000 tons
1943 - 201,600 tons
1944 - 914,000 tons

Devastating, no? (sarcasm) The fact is that apparently, the bombing effort only managed to reduce the increase in industrial production.

Source: Humble, Richard (1975). War In The Air 1939–1945. London: Salamander.

Germany was isolated and at war on multiple fronts, industrial production only collapsed at the end due to the loss of access to natural resources to continue production. The fact is that machine tools proved to be very resistant to bombing, the 1.5 million tons delivered over Germany managed to destroy or damage only 6.5% of Germany's machine tool supply, while German annual production was equivalent to 10% of their machine tool stock. Even though factories lost their roofs, the machines inside were more resistant.

The bombing could only temporally disrupt production. After a few weeks of cleaning, the factories once bombed resumed production at full power.

In the case of an atomic attack, the atomic bomb would have to explode much nearer to an machine tool to destroy it than it would have to destroy a building.

The argument that an atomic attack would be devastating for the world economy is based on the idea of production bottlenecks, like the fact that most of the world's airplanes are produced in two aircraft plants, so if one lands one atomic bomb over each, global commercial aircraft production would come to an end, as some people argue. In WW2 the Allies tried to destroy Germany's aircraft industry from late 1943 to early 1944, bombarding most of their aircraft plants. The result? In May 1943, German aircraft production was 2,500 units, in July 1944, production was 4,200 units. While they managed to disrupt production temporarily, the long run result was to decrease total aircraft production by estimated 6,500 units, from a total historical production of 66,000 in 1943 and 1944.

Physical destruction can lead to fast recovery when the plans of individual agents are coordinated and adapt to repair the damage. This article has a good explanation for that:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Disa ... ttheauthor

Defeated in battle and ravaged by bombing in the course of World War II, Germany and Japan nevertheless made postwar recoveries that startled the world. Within ten years these nations were once again considerable economic powers. A decade later, each had not only regained prosperity but had also economically overtaken, in important respects, some of the war’s victors.

The surprising swiftness of recovery from disaster was also noted in previous eras. john stuart mill commented on:

What has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away nearly all the moveable wealth existing in it: all the inhabitants are ruined, and yet in a few years after, everything is much as it was before. (Mill 1896, book 1, chap. 5, para. I.5.19)

Still, successful recovery is by no means universal. The ancient Cretan civilization may or may not have been destroyed by earthquake, and the Mayan civilization by disease, but neither recovered. Most famously, of course, the centuries-long Dark Ages followed the fall of Rome.

Sociologists, psychologists, historians, and policy planners have extensively studied the nature, sources, and consequences of disaster and recovery, but the professional economic literature is distressingly sparse. As a telling example, the four thick volumes of The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (1987) omit these topics entirely. The words “disaster” and “recovery” do not even appear in the index of that encyclopedic work. Yet disasters are natural economic experiments; they parallel the tests to destruction from which engineers and physicists learn about the strength of materials and machines. Much light would be thrown on the normal everyday economy if we understood behavior under conditions of great stress.
The Historical Record

Although everyday small-scale tragedies like auto accidents and disabling illnesses are disastrous enough for those personally involved, our concern here is with events of larger magnitude. It is useful to distinguish between community-wide (middle-scale) calamities such as tornadoes, floods, or bombing raids, and society-wide (large-scale) catastrophes associated with widespread famine, destructive social revolution, or defeat and subjugation after total war. In community-wide disasters the fabric of the larger social order provides a safety net, whereas society-wide catastrophes threaten the very fabric itself. The former may involve hundreds or thousands of deaths; the latter, hundreds of thousands or millions. (As a special case, hyperinflations and great business depressions are society-wide events that do not directly generate massive casualties and yet still have calamitous consequences.)

Middle-scale community-wide disasters are relatively frequent events, making empirical generalizations possible. In such disasters, it has been observed, individuals and communities adapt. Survivors are not helpless victims. Very soon after the shock they begin to help themselves and one another. In the immediate postimpact period community identification is strong, promoting cooperative and unselfish efforts aimed at rescue, relief, and repair. After the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, for example, inhabitants of a poor neighborhood spontaneously helped rescue motorists trapped by a freeway collapse. And after the Anchorage earthquake of 1964, local supermarkets kept the prices of necessities low while consumers generally cooperated by self-rationing.

On the other hand, there have been some serious instances of antisocial behavior. Notably, while goodwill and cooperation predominated in New York City during the 1965 electrical blackout, a second blackout in 1977 brought major violence and looting. Similar bad experiences occurred after Hurricane Hugo struck the Virgin Islands in 1989. Nevertheless, as Russell Dynes and Thomas E. Drabek have shown, prosocial behavior has historically predominated in such situations. Instances to the contrary, while not rare, usually have fairly evident roots—where members of a community have a strong preexisting sense of grievance, for example. As an even more reliable generalization, a crisis almost always triggers a flow of support from outside the immediate impact area, a phenomenon that has become known as “convergence behavior.” Surprisingly often, recovering communities even surpass previous rates of progress, owing to the emergence of new leaders, enhanced social cohesion, and the abolition of outmoded attitudes and regulations.

As a specific instance, the fire-bomb raids on Hamburg in July and August 1943 were highly intense community-wide disasters. As normally occurs in such situations, people proved tougher than structures. The raids destroyed about 50 percent of the buildings in the city, whereas the 40,000 people killed were less than 3 percent of the population at risk. About half the survivors left the city. Some 300,000 returned in the recovery period, while around 500,000 were permanently evacuated to other areas throughout Germany. A “dead zone” of the city was closed off so that repairs could be concentrated in less seriously damaged areas. Electricity, gas, and telegraph services were all adequate within a few days after the attacks ended. Water supply remained a difficult problem, however, and tank trucks had to be used. The transit system recovered only partially because of serious damage and abnormally heavy traffic, but mainline rail service resumed in a few days. On the seventh day Hamburg’s central bank reopened and business began to function normally. Hamburg was not a dead city. Within a few months, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported, the city had recovered 80 percent of its former productivity.

Now consider a truly large-scale disaster: the Bolshevik attempt to impose “war communism” in Russia from 1917 to 1921, dispensing with markets and even the use of money. The Russian economy had already headed drastically downward during the preceding civil war. Industrial production fell to only 20 percent of the prewar level, and the cultivated area in agriculture to around 70 percent. But it was only after the final Red victory that the economy, instead of recovering, went into a total downspin. Alexander Baykov quotes Lenin in this regard:

On the economic front, in our attempt to pass over to Communism, we had suffered, by the spring of 1921, a more serious defeat than any previously inflicted on us by Kolchak, Denikin, or Pilsudsky. Compulsory requisition in the villages and the direct Communist approach to the problems of reconstruction in towns—this was the policy which . . . proved to be the main cause of a profound economic and political crisis. (Baykov 1947, p. 48)

The explanation appears to be that, initially, the Bolsheviks had established direct control only over the “commanding heights” of industry (i.e., over a relatively small number of large factories located mainly in the major cities). Elsewhere, a variety of private and cooperative arrangements kept industry and trade functioning, at least minimally. Military victory permitted the Communists to turn their attention to liquidating these remnants. In addition, many small capitalists who had stayed on in the hope of Soviet defeat finally decamped and abandoned their enterprises. Thus the paradox of economic collapse after political and military victory.

The shift in mid-1921 to the New Economic Policy (NEP), restoring monetary exchange and allowing considerable scope to private enterprise, led almost immediately to a substantial recovery. As a remarkable feature, this very recovery, by creating a demand for currency as a means of exchange, permitted the Soviets to use the printing presses to acquire resources through a vast inflation of the money supply. The NEP allowed the economy a breathing space before the introduction of the Stalinist five-year plans, with their forced drive toward collectivization and industrialization.
Factors Helping and Hindering Recovery

One factor favorable to recovery is the inevitable shift of demand from less essential wants, which then frees resources for urgent rescue, repair, and rehabilitation. On the supply side, resource imports (gifts, insurance proceeds, commercial loans, etc.) will flow into damaged areas from outside support zones. More important, especially in the long run, is reserve productive capacity. Workers put in more hours, children leave school, and the elderly return from retirement. Machines and structures can be worked harder. Resource substitution—such as tents in place of houses, or trucks for buses and trains—enlarges the availability of essentials. Finally, stifling regulation of commerce and industry can be relaxed or suspended, and socially dysfunctional activities such as crime and parasitical litigation can be placed under stricter rein.

For the middle-scale disasters the main problems have been technological and distributive (e.g., localized resource scarcities or the provision of fair compensation). But in large-scale calamities the survival of the social order itself is in question. Widespread famines, pandemics, destructive social revolutions, disastrous wars, and even severe business depressions and monetary hyperinflations all threaten the network of arrangements supporting the elaborate division of labor on which modern economies depend.

Historically, the most immediately vulnerable aspect of this division of labor has been the money-mediated exchange of food and manufactured goods between rural and urban areas. Correspondingly, the most visible symptom of breakdown is a movement of population from the cities back to the countryside, as illustrated in ancient times by the emptying of cities in the declining Roman Empire. In modern times the populations of Moscow and Petrograd fell by more than 50 percent between 1917 and 1920, during the Russian civil war. And similarly, though not to nearly so great a degree, the German and Japanese urban populations both declined substantially toward the end of and in the aftermath of World War II. And even in the United States, the 1929–1935 depression saw a pause, and to some extent a reversal, of the long-run trend toward urbanization.

Under Russian war communism this breakdown of monetary exchange was due to an ideologically driven attempt to smash the system of private incentives that had previously served to feed the cities. For Japan and Germany, a somewhat different “repressed inflation” process was at work, as had often occurred earlier—for example, during the French Revolution and in the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.

The process begins with military or economic stresses—such as territorial losses, transportation breakdowns, or inflationary war finance measures—that inevitably entail food scarcities. The crucial false step is the introduction of price ceilings on food, with the aim of “fair shares” or simply to hold down urban unrest. But the consequence is that farmers reduce their food deliveries to the cities. Unofficial mechanisms of distribution then emerge: black markets, barter, and trekking (day trips of city dwellers to the countryside), all involving losses due to higher transaction costs. As the cities begin to lose population, industrial production declines. The government may then attempt to confiscate the crops by military force. This threatens to cause a general breakdown of food production. At this point, if not earlier, governments have historically given way, for example when the Bolshevik government felt pressured to introduce the NEP. In postwar Germany and Japan, fortunately, the downward spiral had not progressed nearly so far before the Erhard (see german economic miracle) and Dodge reforms restored the functioning of the price system.
Policy Issues: The Role of Government

About the Author
Jack Hirshleifer (1925–2005) was a professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, until his death.

[K. A. Pital]

Devastating, no? (sarcasm)

Nations in total war. Germany was already totally mobilized in 1943 and so were other nations leading the protracted and destructive warfare in World War II. A nuclear attack will wipe out power centers, shut down economic activity in a massive shock.

Of course, some hardened tools will survive. Rebulding will be easier, but which nation is now mobilized and has dispersed industrial plants, like Germany and Japan did in late 1940s? DPRK, perhaps...

[Iosef Cross]

Let's debate the post WW3 scenario a bit more rationally. I haven't articulated my position with a decent level of detail I am am sorry for that. This forum requires a bit more of articulated argumentation than I have provided.

Here are the assumptions:

A nuclear war that destroys North America (including Mexico), Western Europe, Russia and Eastern Europe, China, India, Japan and South Korea. All the population of these areas is death, all their cities and infrastructure are in ruins.

All the people here, with the exception of me and one other poster, have argued that the rest of the world would devolve to 17th to 19th century levels of economic and social development. I would also note that the posters with have made these claims are all from countries in North America, Europe and Australia (if I am wrong, correct me).

These opinions are based on a biased and ignorant world view, that would be more correct for the world in the 1920's than the modern world. If North America and Europe were bombed to the stone age in 1930, the rest of the world would soon devolve to 17th to 19th century levels of development. That's mostly because the rest of the world was at 17th to 19th century levels of development in 1930.

How are doing today the countries outside the US-East Asia band?

These are the GDP figures of these regions at market exchange rates (2008, 2008 dollars):

South America - 2.91 trillion dollars
Africa - 1.52 trillion dollars
Oceania - 1.17 trillion dollars
South Eastern Asia - 1.51 trillion dollars

At PPP rates (2008, 1990 PPP dollars):

South America - 2.73 trillion dollars
Africa - 1.73 trillion dollars
Oceania - 0.61 trillion dollars
South Eastern Asia - 2.70 trillion dollars

Compare:
Germany: 1.71 trillion dollars
Japan: 2.90 trillion dollars

World 1950: 5.335 trillion
South America + Africa + Oceania + Southern Asia 2008: 7.77 trillion dollars

Manufacturing production (2008, dollars):

South America - 444.4 billion dollars
Africa - 152.7 billion dollars
Oceania - 122.3 trillion dollars
South Eastern Asia - 400.51 billion dollars

top countries:
Brazil: 237.3 billion
Indonesia: 139.5 billion
Australia: 100.8 billion
Argentina: 70.9 billion
South Africa: 46.7 billion
Colombia: 35.9 billion

Compared to:
Russia: 256.2 billion
France: 306.3 billion
Britain: 323.0 billion
South Korea: 230.8 billion

Sources:
United Nations national Accounts database for market exchange rates GDP and manufacturing production
Maddison tables for PPP gdp

So, we can see that these countries that wouldn't be directly affected in your model posses a respectable economic size. However, each country would be affected differently by the end of the northern hemisphere.

Countries with greater level of economic dependence with the Northern world would suffer more from the collapse of the old world than other countries. While the pattern of imports and exports would be readjusted to meet the new global marketplace.

The degree that a country will be affected in the short run by the collapse of the old countries depends more on the volume of trade (imports + exports) in proportion of GDP than in any other factor. Let's see this factor:

Australia - 32.3%
Brazil - 18.7%
Indonesia - 27.4%
Argentina - 30.5% (note, the major trading partner of Argentina is Brazil, taking Brazil out of the equation, Argentina's volume of trade with the rest of the world is 20%)

South America is perhaps the most economically isolated of all the regions of the world. That's because the industrialization process of South America was based on import substitution processes. In Brazil, the history of the import substitution processes started in the 1930's, at that time Latin America was only an exporter of basic goods and imported everything that utilized some level of technology. The only domestic industries were of non durable consumer goods and raw material production.

With the great depression, this state of affairs came to an end. The international prices of the goods that Brazil exported (coffee, mainly) declined greatly. As result the country was forced to reduce imports and to supply it's domestic market with domestic manufactured goods, from machine tools, to equipment to spare parts. With WW2 the situation was even worse, isolated from the European market and from the American because of the war, as result Brazil had to produce spare parts for everything inside the country. They did, even though the country was much less advanced those days (the social and economic conditions of Brazil in 1940 were equivalent to Africa today).

From the 1940's to the 1970's the country pursued a path of industrialization thought import substitution policies. First, the sectors of durable and non durable consumer goods were strengthened, them the sectors of capital goods and intermediary goods were expanded. By 1975 Brazil had developed an almost complete industrial park for the technology of the day, as result the proportion of international trade to GDP was very small, around 10% of GDP. If WW3 broke out in 1975, Brazil could maintain existing living standards without importing capital goods.

However, today the country has started to integrate more with the global economy. Because of the technological isolation, Brazil's industry was not competitive and suffered from technological backwardness by the 1980's. Today the economy became more integrated with the global economy, and imports of capital goods increased. In the 1992-1994 period, Brazil supplied 76% of their machine tool demand (1.15 billion dollars out of a consumption of 1.54 billion dollars). (source: http://www.bndes.gov.br/SiteBNDES/expor ... set202.pdf)

However, the country doesn't have a developed semi conductor industry, and hence, would be hard pressed to supply electronic components to maintain the current industrial park with 21st century technology. However, the post WW3 world would have a much larger industrial park than only Brazil's, with will compose about 20% of global industrial production.

With the loss of the main semi conductors manufacturing countries, the world would be at a severe shortage of electronic components. Existing plans would have to be operated at maximum capacity and the prices of all computer chips would increase. As result, the existing cell phone/computer stocks would decrease in size and would be used to supply computer chips to the more important industrial equipment sectors, to maintain basic industry.

At worst, the world would have to return to 1960's technology levels. At best, the world would recover present technology levels in some decades. Australia, as the most high tech country in the southern hemisphere and the country with the greatest level of export/import volume in comparison to the other major powers, would be the country with the greatest loss in living standards. South America would suffer the least, thanks to the economic isolation of the region.

[Iosef Cross]

Devastating, no? (sarcasm)

Nations in total war. Germany was already totally mobilized in 1943 and so were other nations leading the protracted and destructive warfare in World War II. A nuclear attack will wipe out power centers, shut down economic activity in a massive shock.

Of course, some hardened tools will survive. Rebulding will be easier, but which nation is now mobilized and has dispersed industrial plants, like Germany and Japan did in late 1940s? DPRK, perhaps...

Strategic bombing had much greater effects on buildings than on machines. The 1.5 million tons of bombs dropped on Germany only destroyed and damaged 6.5% of their machine tool stock. However, 20% of the housing stock was destroyed.

However, the wooden buildings of Japan couldn't resist the 160,000 tons of bombs dropped on their major cities, Japan lost 40% of the buildup area of their major cities, with a rather small bombing effort.

Strategic bombing had a larger effect over houses than industrial production. So, to recover lost architecture is harder than to recover lost industrial capacity.

[Lonestar]

You jackass!

You dumbshit!

In the Post-WW2 Japanese/German analogy there are other major industrial powers still around! Get this through your idiot head: In a widespread nuclear power there would be NO major industrial powers left! None! Zero! Zilch! You posting a circle jerk about the paucity of semiconductor production in Brazil does NOTHING to change this fact.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Brazil CAN manufacture semiconductors(it can't, but oh well).

Brazil still:

(1)no one to trade with, as 5 of your top 6 trade partners are kaput
(2)Brazil is a service-sector driven economy, which NEEDS global trade to function. No one is going to give two shits about IT support or being a nation of shopkeepers if there's no one to sell the services too. 4 of your goddamn top ten companies are Banking! BANKING! The rest are resource extraction(whoops no giant consumer-based economies to sell to) and....more service sector! Your Goddamn Telephone company would be worthless because there wouldn't be any more routers and switches to maintain a modern telecommunications network!
(3)Your manufactured products, specifically your Embraer jets, have MAJOR components like engines built somewhere else(North America). Fuck! You wouldn't even be able to build Beetles because a lot of the parts come from elsewhere!

Germany and Japan, by contrast, both had major industrial powers that were propping it up through direct and indirect subsidies, as well as good old fashion trade.

Even if somehow a significant portion of the USA survives and there is continuity of government, the US is going to be more concerned about bring ITs quality of life up to snuff, not maintaining yours. And when several major cities have been toasted stuff like financial speculation is worthless.

[Iosef Cross]

I would expect that if a global war started in 2015 and resulted in the destruction of USA, Europe, Japan, China, India, etc, the rest of the world would lose 10-15% of their GDP (with is an enormous loss), then when it starts to recover, economic growth becomes smaller than before, due to the lack of cutting edge technology. Hence, marginal productivity of capital will decrease and rates of economic growth for Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, etc, would become smaller than they would be without WW3. Also, the world will need around 40 - 50 years before somebody could make a new processor better than existing processors, like 2065.

[MKSheppard]

You fucking idiot!

A global war resulting in effective destruction of the US, Europe, Japan, China, India.....woudl cause the fucking world to lose more than 10-15% of the GDP!

JESUS FUCK.

[Stark]

What does a) that have to do with anything or b) it to do with anything but your fanfiction?

[Iosef Cross]

You jackass! You dumbshit! Germany and Japan, by contrast, both had major industrial powers that were propping it up through direct and indirect subsidies, as well as good old fashion trade.

Dumbass, my arguments are directly related to the study with concluded that Australia would take "decades" to recover from a small nuclear attack, not about the end of the world, including australia.

Australia would recover from this attack, assuming the existence of outside trade, in some years perhaps.

[Iosef Cross]

You fucking idiot!

A global war resulting in effective destruction of the US, Europe, Japan, China, India.....woudl cause the fucking world to lose more than 10-15% of the GDP!

JESUS FUCK.

It would be the loss of the not directly affected countries (the rest of the world) your funking retard.

try to understand something...before vomiting opinions...

[Lonestar]

I would expect that if a global war started in 2015 and resulted in the destruction of USA, Europe, Japan, China, India, etc, the rest of the world would lose 10-15% of their GDP (with is an enormous loss), then when it starts to recover, economic growth becomes smaller than before, due to the lack of cutting edge technology. Hence, marginal productivity of capital will decrease and rates of economic growth for Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, etc, would become smaller than they would be without WW3. Also, the world will need around 40 - 50 years before somebody could make a new processor better than existing processors, like 2065.

People wouldn't be able to make a new processor at all once on-site reserves of tools and raw materials goes away. And it wouldn't be a high priority anyway, as the consumer-driven mega-economies will be gone. There will be no one to sell it to.

And let me tell you a secret: being a one-trick pony only works in a globally integrated economy. Those semiconductors you are latching on to don't mean shit if you can't build heavy industry related stuff like planes, trains, and automobiles.

Dumbass, my arguments are directly related to the study with concluded that Australia would take "decades" to recover from a small nuclear attack, not about the end of the world, including australia.

Australia would recover from this attack, assuming the existence of outside trade, in some years perhaps.

Boy, you haven't been reading this thread, have you? There are no "small" nuclear attacks. Any conflict that sees bombs popped over Australia is going to see weapons popped over East Asia, Europe, and North America. If anything the reason why there's a "small" attack is because all the other warheads are being expended on the bigger economies.

Those countries would not exist to help provide Australia with a recovery.

[MKSheppard]

try to understand something...before vomiting opinions...

No, why don't you fucking shut up and sit down before you open your fucking mouth. In such a large scale exchange as you postulate; guess the fuck what? Brazil gets it's capitol nuked along with a city or two, by at least one power in the global exchange, to prevent any possible post-war "superpower" in the brief period between The Day after Tomorrow and when industrial society breaks down.

[Simon_Jester]

Didn't "manufacture" computers; they assembled computers. The key bits were imported and the program was still a failure only supported by import restrictions. Protect the industry again post-laydown and you have a protected market for an abacus

Now, now, Stuart, I'm sure the fine minds of Brazil could manage an adding machine...

For your information, the DHS made the following estimates of damage from terrorist attacks on the USA...
A nuclear explosion in a major urban center using a 12.5 kiloton device
• 52,000 immediate deaths from heat and blast.
• 238,000 people exposed to direct radiation, of which 10,000 would die and 44,000 would suffer acute radiation sickness.
• 1.5 million people would be exposed to radioactive fallout in the following few days – in the absence of effective evacuation or sheltering this could kill an additional 200,000 people and cause hundreds of thousands to suffer acute radiation sickness...

Wow. I assume the extreme fallout casualties would be partly due to a terrorist attack being a ground burst?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

There are semiconductor production in Brazil actually:

http://libdigi.unicamp.br/document/?code=vtls000406618
"Abstract: In Brazil, the sector of semiconductors components, the chips, remains restricted to a small group of companies, fact that has caused deficit increasing in the trade balance. Ahead of this fact, there are several discussions and studies in forms to increase the internal production of these activities in the sector of the country, beyond the recent debate on the necessity of the installation of a productive plant (foundry) realized by the government. Another element of prominence is that the segment was adopted as one of the priority sectors in the Industrial, Technological and Foreign Trade Policy (PITCE), launched in 2004. With this concern, the objective of this dissertation was examine the perspectives, with its possibilities and limitations, of the development of the semiconductor brazilian industry by means a specific segment - the companies of project of the circuits, called design houses. For in such a way, by means the bibliographical revision, the work was structuralized in three chapters: the first one deals with a discussion on the existing panorama and the recent trends in the worldwide industry of semiconductors; the second brings the analysis of a country with late development in this industry ? the Taiwan experience, and finally, an evaluation of the Brazilian industry of chips, beyond the examination of its possibilities of development of the sector by means the design houses. It was evidenced that with the trend of vertical specialization in worldwide industry, it had a separation between the project and manufacture activities, creating an ample market of circuit designs, particularly in less standardized and oligopolyzed, as the integrated circuits of specific application, propitiating new chances for incoming, as Brazil. Already the Taiwan experience showed that the state intervention is necessary for a trajectory of development in this sector, mainly to articulate mechanisms that guarantee the assimilation and learning from the technology transfer. Moreover, that the interaction between design houses and the companies of manufacture (foundries) allowed the generation of differentiaded technological capacities that had guaranteed the competitive insertion of the country in the worldwide industry. In the case of the Brazilian industry of semiconductors, which was verified that exist technological capacities in the area of projects, makes possible the development of design houses in Brazil: activities of circuit designs integrated in groups and centers of research, activities of human resources qualification and availability of equipment and tools for development of projects and softwares. However, the international experience of success, together with the obstacles identified in the national industry, had shown that only the development of the design segment is an limited trajectory, given that other elements are necessary, as a company of manufacture, so that a ?virtuous circle? can exist, capable to offer sustaintability in the development of the industry of semiconductors in a long period."

That an MA thesis about developing the country's semi conductors industry.

You do realise that a majority of the semiconductors in the world are made in China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea and not only is there nothing you can do about it, this situation will not change in the near and far future? These countries are leagues ahead of Brazil, and there is no way Brazil can match their capabilities in the near future unless they all collectively sit on their laurels for a decade?

[Kuroji]

Australia would recover from this attack, assuming the existence of outside trade, in some years perhaps.

a global war started in 2015 and resulted in the destruction of USA, Europe, Japan, China, India, etc

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong.

[bz249]

You do realise that a majority of the semiconductors in the world are made in China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea and not only is there nothing you can do about it, this situation will not change in the near and far future? These countries are leagues ahead of Brazil, and there is no way Brazil can match their capabilities in the near future unless they all collectively sit on their laurels for a decade?

After a global nuclear war the existing high-tech industry gives no real benefits. With external trade nullified and internal trade seriously cut back the economy would behave somehow different than today. And in that environment the manufacturing plants designed to produce stuffs at continental level would worth shit since there is no way to rescale them to the current needs. Every industry have to redesigned to produce on local levels.

Not that it would help Brazil or Australia, because that means their labour productivity would fall like a stone. To the levels of current day Cuba or North Korea (small, mostly isolated countries) at minimum.

[Stuart]

[Brazil today produces about 80% of their machine tools. So, they can maintain a basic industrial infrastructure. Brazil's machine tool industry started in the 1930's. So, we have been producing machine tools since your father was a child. The industry started in the 1930's because of the great depression.

Actually my father was a British Army officer in the 1930s. I don't think you understand what is meant by "machine tools" in this context. We don't mean the simple bits of kits like lathes; those are reasonably available and take no particular skill in their production. We're talking about highly complex tools that are used on production lines. These are rare, their production lead time is measured in years (one reason why it takes so long to convert production lines from one product to another) and they are blindingly expensive. The best such machine tools come from Germany. Bar none. The second-best come from Sweden, the United States and Japan. Anybody far prefers a refurbished German tool from the 1930s to a Swedish, Japanese or American machine that's NIB. Sure Brazil might produce 80 percent of its machine tools; they;re the simple things anybody can produce. It's the 20 percent they can't that are the problem

Today Brazil has the largest industry of the southern hemisphere and the most complete industrial plant of the Americas second to the US. Only the US, Japan, Germany, China, Italy, France and Britain have a larger industrial park (and I would guess than Britain has a less complete industrial park). This industrial park was mostly build between 1930 and 1980. In the period from 1950 to 1980 industrial production increased at the average rate of 8-9% per year. With the development of capital goods industry, intermediary goods industry, non durable and durable consumer goods

Utterly irrelevent to the point under discussion. More to the point, I would again refer you to the Brazilian nuclear program as an excellent example of why Brazilian industry can't survive without somebody else to hold its hand. Or to the quality control problems with the Taurus line.

Well, you said that "australia would take decades to recover" from a nuclear attack of 3 50kt bombs. I would say that you are talking about something that you don't know as well. Nations are quite robust to physical destruction, in some ways economic problems produce worse economic effects than total war in the long run development of civilization.

As it happens I've been dealing with the effects of nuclear weapons on targets societies for thirty years (since the early 1980s in fact. I've worked with companies that specialize in exactly that sort of detailed analysis for that long. You might reflect on this. In one corner stands the ADF, the DHS, the nuclear targeteering industry, the people on this Board who live in Australia and pretty much the rest of the world. In the other corner stands you. On your own. That's a pretty good indicator that you don;t know what you are talking about. You have already demonstrated this with your comments about Chinese nuclear production. They proved you have no idea whatsoever concerning the subject under discussion.

Everybody always talks about what they don't have a PHD on. Here in this topic I have seem absurd ignorant statements like that the world would return to the 17 century without Europe, US, China and Russia. These statements are based on a great deal of ignorance and stupidity, and to call me an idiot because I disagree with them is to be an idiot.

Actually, the comments concerning regression are the results of a very detailed analysis of what a country would look like several years after a nuclear exchange. They reflect the loss of production assets, the loss of fuel supplies and power generation and the near-impossibility of long-distance transport within a society due to fallout plumes and hotspots. They also reflect the degeneration of communications and political control and coordination. Once again you are simply arguing from complete ignorance as everything you post is proving. I'll say what I said before. We are trying to have an intelligent debate here; I suggest you concede defeat, shut up and learn.

My notions that this study is a bit exaggerated have foundation on my readings of cataclysmic events like WW2.

WW2 was hardly cataclysmic in comparison with the effects of a full-blooded nuclear strike.

The world today is much more industrialized than people living in Western Europe and the US appear to think.

Sure it is. it is also vastly more inter-dependent. This is what you will not get into your head. All countries in the world, bar none, are dependent on international trade. Sever those links (not just the ones between north and south or east and west but worldwide) and everything goes down. Factories may exist but they can't get the equipment, spare parts, raw materials and fuel to keep going. They run down and stop. Some areas are rich in food, some are starving but no means exist to get supplies from the former to the latter. Oil is a critical commodity; it exists where it isn't really needed and doesn't where it is. Moving it around is a lost capability. The more you look at the situation, the more apparent it is that the world is so interdependent that swinging an axe at the links will be catastrophe in its own right. As a yardstick for the disaster, the best estimates are that after a nuclear exchange, world population will drop from its present level of 6.7 billion to 3.3 billio - at best. And that is the most favorable estimate based on a concerted targeteering effort to keep long-term effects to a minimum. The nuclear exchange itself is responsible for only a proportion of the loss. Epidemics, starvation etc will bringa bout far more. So will wars as nations try to raid others for supplies. Another figure for you; US agricultural production will be down to 2 percent of its pre-war level. That's simple to explain. The missile silos are in the bread basket.

Once again, we're trying to have an intelligent debate here. I suggest you stop derailing it and learn.

[Stuart]

Now, now, Stuart, I'm sure the fine minds of Brazil could manage an adding machine...

Hmm. I wonder. A hand-cranked one perhaps (I first calculated the death toll from a nuclear strike on a major city using one of those. It was done by dividing the city up into cells, working out the population in each cell then calculating the likely casualties based on that population. Then adding up all the cells, that's where the hand-cranked adding machine came in. It's more complex than it sounds because the city in question was to be hit by three 200kt warheads). Anything more than that, well, I wouldn't trust the product. It might explain how their nuclear industry got so screwed up though.

Wow. I assume the extreme fallout casualties would be partly due to a terrorist attack being a ground burst?

Exactly. The real problem is that a lot of that crap gets thrown up into the stratosphere and then carried around by high-altitude winds before it drops - well, anywhere. So, fallout really is a global problem (something people like Cross seem to forget). The radioactive consequences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki laydowns are still with us as a result (those devices should have been initiated a lot higher but still, we didn't know that then). The three Australian initiations are all ground bursts for a number of reasons (once again, I stress that if I'd been planning that attack, I wouldn't have used just three warheads. I'd have taken out the JORN network with one (yes, there is one place you can hit JORN that takes the whole thing down. It's possible to do a workaround but not under these conditions). I'd also give Perth a seeing-to. No need to worry about Darwin or Alice Springs, without the rest of Australia they die by themselves.

The real problem with fallout though isn't the effect it has directly. That's accommodatable. It's the indirect effect on transportation and communications. Essentiall, fallout plumes are like razor slashes across the face of a country, they divide it up into isolated segments and the damage never quite heals within the lifetime of the victim. Those fallout plumes effectively prevent goods and services getting from one part of the country to another if by doing so, one would have to cross said plume (which is a death sentence for several years). It's this discombobulation of a society that causes most of the problems. Again, we come back to how interconnected everything is. For example, it's really sad if an iron ore mine is on one side of a fallout plume and a steel plant is on the other. That makes both effectively useless. Australia is peculiarly vulnerable to this sort of thing because of its geography.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

After a global nuclear war the existing high-tech industry gives no real benefits. With external trade nullified and internal trade seriously cut back the economy would behave somehow different than today. And in that environment the manufacturing plants designed to produce stuffs at continental level would worth shit since there is no way to rescale them to the current needs. Every industry have to redesigned to produce on local levels.

Not that it would help Brazil or Australia, because that means their labour productivity would fall like a stone. To the levels of current day Cuba or North Korea (small, mostly isolated countries) at minimum.

The post was more a counter to the idea that Brazil's semiconductor industry is worth anything. Way to miss the target.

[Stuart]

Not that it would help Brazil or Australia, because that means their labour productivity would fall like a stone. To the levels of current day Cuba or North Korea (small, mostly isolated countries) at minimum.

North Korea, Myanmar and a couple of other countries are actually very relevent in this discussion because they show what happens when a country is cut off from the international trading web. It's worth noting that neither country is completely cut off (Myanmar trades with China and some parts of the rest of the world while the Norks do the same) so their use as an example is limited. Following a nuclear exchange, everybody would be cut off completely since the international web would no longer exist. So the problems those countries face are a pointer to the worldwide problems that would be facing us post-exchange. Intriguingly both countries actually make that precise point in their political stance; a nuclear exchange wouldn't make things worse for them since they already live in a post-exchange world. Or so they think. (Yes, Myanmar does have a nuclear weapons program - it's been known for about four years but it's beginning to come into the open).

[bz249]

The post was more a counter to the idea that Brazil's semiconductor industry is worth anything. Way to miss the target.

That´s for sure.

But after a nuclear exchange there is no current day industry (apart from local level car mechanics and such) worth anything, since it is designed for something way different. So even if Brazil would have world class semiconductor industry (which they don´t) that would help them absolutely nil.

[bz249]

North Korea, Myanmar and a couple of other countries are actually very relevent in this discussion because they show what happens when a country is cut off from the international trading web. It's worth noting that neither country is completely cut off (Myanmar trades with China and some parts of the rest of the world while the Norks do the same) so their use as an example is limited. Following a nuclear exchange, everybody would be cut off completely since the international web would no longer exist. So the problems those countries face are a pointer to the worldwide problems that would be facing us post-exchange. Intriguingly both countries actually make that precise point in their political stance; a nuclear exchange wouldn't make things worse for them since they already live in a post-exchange world. Or so they think. (Yes, Myanmar does have a nuclear weapons program - it's been known for about four years but it's beginning to come into the open).

Of course, those place shows what is the maximum achievable with a mostly broken international trade network. In reality labor productivity would be even less and one has to give up more and more industries (the overgrown service sector is one source, although administration and military/police must inflate) to provide the workforce required for the essential one (primarily agriculture). And till that point the administration is well functioning and no natural resource are lost and no effects from inexperience (apart from those places noone had the remotest clue how to organize a self-sufficient economy or work with way outdated tools and methods). Simply playing against the economics of scale would cripple Random Third World Would Be Superpower´s economy.

The chaos and long term effects of a nuclear exchange come on the top of it.

[Kane Starkiller]

You have already demonstrated this with your comments about Chinese nuclear production. They proved you have no idea whatsoever concerning the subject under discussion.

Speaking of China's nuclear arsenal how many warheads do they have that they can put on Moscow or St.Peterburg or wherever will hurt Russia most? I know they have about 20 missiles that can reach US but have no idea how many they could unleash on India or Russia.

[Stuart]

Land-Based Missiles
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) reports that China has more than 140 land-based nuclear ballistic missiles. China is reported to possess 24 DF-5A intercontinental ballistic missiles organized in three brigades and eight DF-31s in one brigade that form the backbone of the PRC's nuclear deterrent. Estimates of nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missiles run to 110 or more

Actual nuclear force
DF-31/31A (CSS-9) ICBM: 36 - 108 warheads
DF-5A (CSS-4) ICBM: 20 - 20 warheads
DF-21 (CSS-5) IRBM: 50 - 50 warheads
DF-4 (CSS-3) IRBM: 20 - 20 warheads
DF-3A (CSS-2) IRBM: 32 - 32 warheads
DF-15 (CSS-6) SRBM: 225 - 225 warheads
Strategic cruise missiles: 10 (10 warheads)
Total = 465 warheads ranging from 4 megatons down to 150 kilotons

JL-2 (CSS-N-3) SLBM: 48 - 48 warheads
Total = 48 warheads of 1 megaton

Bombers
Xi'an H-6E: 122 (armed with gravity bombs, one per.) Total -122 warheads
Xi'an H-6H: 28 (armed with stand off missiles, two per) Total = 56 warheads
Total = 178 warheads.

Grand total of strategic warheads = 691 warheads (call it 700 to allow for a couple of spares or gone missing)

China holds approximately 400 tactical nuclear warheads.

Absolute total, around 1,100 warheads. This gives them a production rate of around 140 per year assuming a life of 8 years between production and need to remanufacture.