TTAPS and overestimation of nukes

[Rye]

Someone told me recently that according to TTAPS, one third of the UK's nuclear armaments would be enough to bring about an "end of humanity" scenario. Is this true?

I find it distinctly hard to believe that a global nuclear war would bring about the end of humanity, let alone one third of britain's stockpile. Am I wrong? There seems to be a bit of controversy about it on the net, with a lot of opinion and no definitive refutations of TTAPS.

Or perhaps my google fu is just weak. Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

[Darth Wong]

TTAPS was based not on an overestimation of nukes themselves, but of their collateral effects (such as the assumption that every nuke will start wildfires, and all wildfires will spew all their soot into the upper atmosphere, etc).

[Admiral Valdemar]

Not even the US can do that with its whole arsenal. Unless every nuke is jacketed in Cobalt-60 or something equally nasty and detonated in the atmosphere, you'll simply have a load of big bangs and little else. Even the fiercest firestorms die out eventually and a lot of areas would probably be unpopulated anyway to any real degree.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Effects of a Global Thermonuclear War
4th edition: escalation in 1988

That essay remains the best easily available description on the internet of the real effects and aftermath of a nuclear war with full-scale Soviet, American, and other arsenals, in the year 1988, which is digestable by a person without any specialist education.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That is always a favourite (that and watching Threads). Though it shows that it takes a full scale conflict to cause serious ecological harm which will last years. A third of the US nuke supply won't do much of anything unless special circumstances apply, so the modern UK arsenal which is based on limited deterrance won't do anything.

[Ma Deuce]

Someone told me recently that according to TTAPS, one third of the UK's nuclear armaments would be enough to bring about an "end of humanity" scenario. Is this true?

That one can be refuted by a few easy figures: The UK currently has 200 nuclear warheads, each of which has a yield of 100 kilotons, giving an aggregate yield of 20 megatons. As most of us know, the Soviet Tsar Bomba test yielded 50 megatons, and a single bomb is much more likely to cause climatic changes than a bunch of smaller bombs of the same aggregate yield, since the bigger bomb will throw dust and debris much higher into the atmosphere. There were at least 3 US atmospheric tests (Mike, Bravo, and Romeo) whose yield exceeded the aggregate yield of 1/3 of the UK's current arsenal.

As for TTAPS, Sagan and his group of "concerned scientists" didn't merely overestimate the collateral effects of nukes, they commited deliberate scientific fraud to make the TTAPS study yield the results they wanted.

Stuart Slade explained in detail how they did this in a post on Marina's board, and he also outlined the likely effects and aftermath of a no-holds-barred global nuclear conflict in the early-mid 1980s.

Linky

[CoyoteNature]

Depends on the side effects, it might might not, again depends on how much it disrupts the ecosystem and how much it works synergistically with other factors like current overconsumption of fishery stocks, or mutations such as new viral or bacterial elements(again sygergistically with regard to antibiotic resistant strains).

Or radioactive concentration increases up the food chain which would stay in effect for many years.

Or groundwater contamination, or a number of other things that aren't considered.

The article was interesting, but well it shows the ozone recovering after a few years, the damage we've done now would take a century at least to repair fully. Of course technically that is because CFCs continue to destroy the ozone layer in the atmosphere even after the release has been stopped.

The truth, we don't know, never been tried; one or the other side will shade things to present a particular emphasis on it being survivable or not, truth most people are talking out their asses.

Whether or not it could destroy the human species is irrelevant, it certainly could send us back to the stone age.

And considering the resources we have spent just to reach our current level of tech, its doubtful anything but a wood burning civilization would rise from the aftermath.

[Darth Wong]

You are obviously confusing "repair fully" with "sustain life". The TTAPS nuclear winter scenario claimed that the biosystem would be devastated, and that just wouldn't happen.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The biosphere has survived far worse, but a full out nuke slinging contest would ruin a good chunk of it on the main continents. Really, to take out all life on Earth, you need to have a nuke war down the Marianas Trench like depths and even then, microbes can survive.

[CoyoteNature]

Biosphere or Humanity survival hmmm there is a difference isn't there?

Biosphere will undoubtedly survive, question is it would it be disrupted severe enough for humanity to have a problem?

Bear in mind I am aware of the Biosphere's innate survivability, I am not aware of Humanity's innate survivability in the face of changes in the biosphere.

But regardless, I never said it it would cause the extinction of man, I just said we don't know, we don't know about a lot of the effects of what would happen, we don't about this and this and this, and how these would enter together to produce one or another situation.

We can only make the best guess we can, and we shade these guesses depending on what emphasis we like on the facts.

I actually said it could certainly send us to the stone age, but left the whole extinction thing open, because we do not know.

[wolveraptor]

Even if you boiled the world's oceans off and melted the surface of the continents, there would still be microbes living deep in the mantle leaching minerals from the rock. It's pretty much impossible to destroy all life on earth. Granted, you can make it so nothing ever returns to the surface again, but I doubt we could do that with our present level of technology.

[Braedley]

I could see this scenario setting us back a century and throwing us into chaos, but not much else. Sure there would still be loss of life, but it wouldn't be enough to destroy all (human) life on earth.

[kheegster]

I'm not familiar with the TTAPS report, but I would be surprised if they claimed that all life (or large portions of it) would be eliminated from all-out nuclear war. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if large portions humanity would not be able to survive for long even if they lived through the initial exchange. The disruption to the global food supply would certainly be a catastrophic event for humanity even if it does not wipe it out completely.

[Darth Wong]

TTAPS claimed the "nuclear winter" scenario, in which the world would literally freeze from the effects of a nuclear war, which they believed to be capable of causing such upper-atmospheric dust loading that the effect would be similar to the K-T extinction asteroid impact.

Of course, that asteroid hit with 100 million megatons yield, while a full-bore nuclear exchange would only be a few thousand megatons, so they had to use a shitload of generous and in many cases downright absurd assumptions to make this work. What's annoying is that people have tried to use this as proof that scientists work to agenda rather than fact, but they ignore the fact that the scientific community has made numerous analyses of the underlying conditions and these analyses were used to disprove the TTAPS study, thus proving that scientists are NOT collectively working to an agenda.

[CoyoteNature]

I don't know, it might be within our capabilities to deflect large asteroids onto collision courses with the Earth, if we were suitably malicious enough that is.

Enough asteroid impacts might do it.

And yes I am aware this would take some development time, but it is not that far beyond us.

But otherwise, nahhhhhhhhh.


Biosphere does not equal people, microbes could be Biosphere; we might still be extinct and the planet would live on. Take a few million years to evolve upwards, but still live on.

Frankly I don't give a shit if the Biosphere survives and I ain't around to appreciate it.

The Biosphere is only important in how it determines human survival and happiness and nothing else. Because we are the only ones who would give a shit if we were extinct.

Preach mode off.

[phongn]

But regardless, I never said it it would cause the extinction of man, I just said we don't know, we don't know about a lot of the effects of what would happen, we don't about this and this and this, and how these would enter together to produce one or another situation.

The effects should be largely predictable at least on a macro scale.

We can only make the best guess we can, and we shade these guesses depending on what emphasis we like on the facts.

Or, we look at the available data on what nuclear weapons actually do and how the atmosphere works and a host of other factors and make some predictions. Personal bias need not enter the equation.

I actually said it could certainly send us to the stone age, but left the whole extinction thing open, because we do not know.

I doubt we'd be back to the stone age, but we could be knocked up a few hundred years technology-wise. Extinction is certainly a possibility but one I think unlikely.

[Kitsune]

TTAPS claimed the "nuclear winter" scenario, in which the world would literally freeze from the effects of a nuclear war, which they believed to be capable of causing such upper-atmospheric dust loading that the effect would be similar to the K-T extinction asteroid impact.

Of course, that asteroid hit with 100 million megatons yield, while a full-bore nuclear exchange would only be a few thousand megatons, so they had to use a shitload of generous and in many cases downright absurd assumptions to make this work. What's annoying is that people have tried to use this as proof that scientists work to agenda rather than fact, but they ignore the fact that the scientific community has made numerous analyses of the underlying conditions and these analyses were used to disprove the TTAPS study, thus proving that scientists are NOT collectively working to an agenda.

I no longer have the book (I loaned it out and it never came back) but I had a book which stated that the Tambora explosions was 1000 times more powerful than every nuclear waeapon during the height of teh cold war

[Ariphaos]

The Effects of a Global Thermonuclear War
4th edition: escalation in 1988

That essay remains the best easily available description on the internet of the real effects and aftermath of a nuclear war with full-scale Soviet, American, and other arsenals, in the year 1988, which is digestable by a person without any specialist education.

I had some friends who inspected the Soviet nuclear arsenal after the fall, and the general comment was that there was no way even 50% of those missiles were in suitable condition to leave the launch site, much less reach the United States.

The bottoms of the missiles had been allowed to rust through, amongst other maintenance issues. Hearing them talk about it I wonder how many would work even if they did hit.

[CoyoteNature]

But they aren't largely predictable, they can be if separated off into separate categories, but when combined they enter a whole different region of complexity that is not, at least so far predictable.

Should be does not enter into the equation, fact is we do not have at least yet the knowledge to address how the combination of these factors would affect what happens.

How would say the ozone layer reduction affect global warming, would it amplify or reduce it?

How would the citizenry react to destruction of infrastructure and would this trigger civil war or not?

How badly would agriculture, or ground water contamination be and would these trigger other problems like a full scale war in the Middle East or in other water poor areas?

How many deaths would occur from a combination of these factors?

How badly would disease affect the situation, particularly since much of our current medical infrastructure is dependent on antibiotics, which would be in short supply?

How badly would worldwide infrastructure collapse affect the non hit areas?

In terms of hit areas, where would be the easily available resources for rebuilding? Keeping in mind the hit areas are likely to also be the resource rich areas.

How badly would this affect the oceans (another area that is at present not well understood)? Would this cause changes in fishery stocks (which incidently in many areas are already in collapse just from consumption)



"Or, we look at the available data on what nuclear weapons actually do and how the atmosphere works and a host of other factors and make some predictions. Personal bias need not enter the equation."


Ah but because we do not know how all these available factors enter in, and work together, at least for now personal bias does enter into it. Keep in mind that just with global warming we do not know how well the atmosphere would react or what the effects would be locally, saying you know how well the climate would react in response to thousands of nuclear warheads detonating is equally superfluous. We know it would be bad, but how bad is open to question.

Because we have little data on what the combined global effects would be, keeping in mind that events do not happen by themselves, that in the global environment they happen in conjunction with a host of other factors. Not saying it is impossible to predict, just that now at least we do not know. That for now it is a complex question nobody has bothered to try to take into account.



"I doubt we'd be back to the stone age, but we could be knocked up a few hundred years technology-wise. Extinction is certainly a possibility but one I think unlikely. "


Perhaps, perhaps not; don't really know; haven't really tried it, right now it is just prognosticating anyway, everybody knows how accurate that is when predicting the real world.

[Darth Wong]

But they aren't largely predictable, they can be if separated off into separate categories, but when combined they enter a whole different region of complexity that is not, at least so far predictable.

Don't be ridiculous; there have been volcano eruptions during geologic history which were more powerful than all the world's nuclear weapons combined, and while they created global climactic effects, these were (relatively) short-lived, as per the models in question. Weeks or months, not years.

If you have some criticism to make of the models, then make it. Show how the models are oversimplifying something or failing to take something into account. Because so far you're just spouting vague generalities without any specific criticisms or pieces of evidence to bring to the table.

The problem here is not that TTAPS predicts global effects, but that it claims absurdly exaggerated global effects: freezing conditions worldwide for extended periods of time.

[Darth Wong]

It's also noteworthy that the TTAPS model relied upon firestorms pushing dust up into the upper atmosphere, but firestorms occur on a regular basis even without nuclear weapons, and they don't do that. Worse yet (for the TTAPS model), nuclear tests show that firestorms do not necessarily occur after a nuclear blast anyway.

[Admiral Valdemar]

A lot of nukes would likely blow out any fires started from the radiation part of the blast, and some areas won't have enough combustibles to really start any major firestorms.

[Sea Skimmer]

TTAPS was based not on an overestimation of nukes themselves, but of their collateral effects (such as the assumption that every nuke will start wildfires, and all wildfires will spew all their soot into the upper atmosphere, etc).

They also assumed for the purposes of there model, that the earth was a barren ball of rock without such peasky things as oceans.

[Tiriol]

Don't be ridiculous; there have been volcano eruptions during geologic history which were more powerful than all the world's nuclear weapons combined, and while they created global climactic effects, these were (relatively) short-lived, as per the models in question. Weeks or months, not years.

One good example of a major volcano eruption more powerful than any man-made weapon is the eruption of Krakatoa. The explosion was "equivalent to around 200 megatons of TNT" (a direct quote from Dr Chris McNab's The World's Worst Historical Disasters book). That Soviet "Tsar Bomba" released less than one fourth of that energy (if I remember correctly, it was estimated to yeild 50 megatons, but was reduced in strength for some reason, but I'm not sure). Even it didn't cause years-long cooling effect, despite its colossal strength (but it did cause a major headache to people living near the hapless isle of Krakatoa in forms of tsunami and erathquakes and so on).

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Tsar Bomba was rated for 100 MT output. The later stages, however, were replaced with lead for fear of the explosion being capable of igniting the atmosphere and other fanciful pie-in-the-sky risks. So it only achieved around the 50 MT mark, the exact yield was hidden for some time by the Soviet gov't.