NUCLEAR WAR!!! Or how bad are those pesky nukes.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Alright. I'm currently in the middle of a debate with my friend. He's somewhat of a liberal libertarian (if there even can be such a thing) who believes that first off centralized governments will eventually become authoritarian and kill off massive amounts of people yada yada yada. Now we're on the topic of nuclear weapons and he's saying that we have the capability of wiping out all life on the planet, at the very least killing all human life and wiping our no species out forever. I contend that while yes, nuclear war would suck, that A) It's not going to happen and B) the yield of all the weapons in the world put together wouldn't wipe us out C) You'd literally have to try and kill as many people as possible to get the worst effects. I've been using the search function in the forum but she just crapped out on me and I was wondering if anyone had anything on hand they could throw so I don't have to dig so much.

[Mr Bean]

Ask him why America, China, Europe, North Korea or the Russians would nuke Uganda or any African Country. Same thing goes for Australia or South America. Greenland/Iceland and much of Canada/America. The old adages about being able to destroy all life on earth only applies if all life on earth agrees to bunch up in nice wide open areas. Even if we set off the worlds entire nuclear arsenals the climatically effects would be minimal, the wild fires that result from those explosions are a much different story but again unless you set out to deliberately kick up as much shit at possible it won't happen.

[Singular Intellect]

All out nuclear war would indeed kill hundreds of millions people, possibly billions. However, the vast majority of those deaths would not be inflicted by direct nuclear effects, but the vast destruction of civilized infrastructure required to support the current population. Starvation, disease, lack of shelters, lack of sanitation, limited medical supplies and knowledge and fighting over the limited resources left would be the real horror of the situation.

As I understand it, the populations used to living well outside of cities and not heavily dependent upon non local technologies and resources would survive the armageddon fairly well, assuming they are safe enough from fallout effects.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Alright. I'm currently in the middle of a debate with my friend. He's somewhat of a liberal libertarian (if there even can be such a thing) who believes that first off centralized governments will eventually become authoritarian and kill off massive amounts of people yada yada yada. Now we're on the topic of nuclear weapons and he's saying that we have the capability of wiping out all life on the planet, at the very least killing all human life and wiping our no species out forever. I contend that while yes, nuclear war would suck, that A) It's not going to happen and B) the yield of all the weapons in the world put together wouldn't wipe us out C) You'd literally have to try and kill as many people as possible to get the worst effects. I've been using the search function in the forum but she just crapped out on me and I was wondering if anyone had anything on hand they could throw so I don't have to dig so much.

There really aren't enough weapons to wipe out humanity. A nuclear war isn't an Exterminatus or a Base Delta Zero. It's a war, and the way the nukes are targeted will (if I recall) fall into the following order.
A) Your opponent's ICBM sites.
B) Your opponent's air bases (which have the unfortunate habit of being located near major cities.)
C) Your opponents air ports and sea ports (see above.)
D) Your opponent's transportation infrastructure, rail hubs and highway interchanges (see above.)
E) Your opponent's war manufacturing capabilities (see above.)
F) Your opponent's government organs (see above.)

That pretty much fucks over all the cities, but it leaves the countryside (except for the ICBM fields) intact. Moreover, most of the weapons will rain on the principal combatants in a nuclear war. Though in a general nuclear war, some warheads are targeted at the centers of infrastructure of second and third world nations (to prevent them from trying to capitalize on the sudden power vacuum too soon.) But, again, the farmland and countryside are unaffected.

The nukes themselves won't kick up enough dust to affect anything, but they will start a lot of fires. These fires will take a while to put out (what, with many urban fire stations having to first dig out of the rubble and debris.) The cumulative effects of this won't trigger a "nuclear winter." In fact, the simulations that suggested a nuclear winter were, apparently, heavily weighted to produce the outcome desired by those doing the studies. More recent simulations suggest a "nuclear autumn."

Fallout won't be quite the problem some "ZOMG nukular war = END OF WORLD!!!!11" people think it'd be either. Nuclear weapons are generally set to initiate several thousand feet above ground level, since a nuclear initiation at ground level tends to be mostly wasted vaporizing the ground directly under the nuclear warhead, whereas a nuclear weapon initiated at 10,000 feet up will expend at least a full third of its energy knocking down shit and setting fires (and over half of it vaporizing the clouds above the fireball.)

That's not to say that you'd want to be anywhere near, say, an ICBM field; where the warheads are going to go off at, or below, ground level. As for the rest of it, the nuclear material within a nuclear weapon is a small fraction of what's contained inside a nuclear reactor. The most radioactive radionuclides have short half-lives. And you will lose some leafy vegetable crops grown downwind of any major urban fires (since they'll take up the radioactive iodine and cesium.) You can even feed the radioactive plant matter to dairy cattle, so long as you direct all their milk output into cheese-making (so long as it's the kind of cheese you age for several months, to allow any radionuclides to decay to lower levels.)

But, as has been said, most of the deaths from an all-out nuclear exchange won't come from the actual nukes themselves, but the ensuing famine from the general collapse of civilized infrastructure.

[Sea Skimmer]

That pretty much fucks over all the cities, but it leaves the countryside (except for the ICBM fields) intact. Moreover, most of the weapons will rain on the principal combatants in a nuclear war. Though in a general nuclear war, some warheads are targeted at the centers of infrastructure of second and third world nations (to prevent them from trying to capitalize on the sudden power vacuum too soon.) But, again, the farmland and countryside are unaffected.

That totally ignores fallout and contamination of water supplies. Vast areas of countryside will be contaminated, and even if the inhabitants do not die quickly consuming food from the land will be fatal for years. Lack of spare parts and fuel would also cripple large scale mechanized farming anyway creating serious problems.

[Rabid]

An helpful essay on the subject of nuclear warfare:

Nuclear Warfare 101 (part 1) (part 2) (part 3)


I don't know if it's 100% accurate, but I think it gives a pretty good picture of what would happen in the case of a nuclear war.

[Lord of the Abyss]

As for the rest of it, the nuclear material within a nuclear weapon is a small fraction of what's contained inside a nuclear reactor.

Since power plants are an important part of the industrial infrastructure however, I'd expect nuclear plants to be targeted, which means we'd get more radioactive material from them scattered across the countryside.

[Simon_Jester]

There really aren't enough weapons to wipe out humanity. A nuclear war isn't an Exterminatus or a Base Delta Zero. It's a war, and the way the nukes are targeted will (if I recall) fall into the following order.
A) Your opponent's ICBM sites.
B) Your opponent's air bases (which have the unfortunate habit of being located near major cities.)
C) Your opponents air ports and sea ports (see above.)
D) Your opponent's transportation infrastructure, rail hubs and highway interchanges (see above.)
E) Your opponent's war manufacturing capabilities (see above.)
F) Your opponent's government organs (see above.)

That pretty much fucks over all the cities, but it leaves the countryside (except for the ICBM fields) intact. Moreover, most of the weapons will rain on the principal combatants in a nuclear war. Though in a general nuclear war, some warheads are targeted at the centers of infrastructure of second and third world nations (to prevent them from trying to capitalize on the sudden power vacuum too soon.) But, again, the farmland and countryside are unaffected.

Relatively unaffected- I'd be worried about the fallout plumes from places where a major metropolitan area got carpeted in massive-overkill nuclear strikes to make sure all the targets are destroyed.

The overkill is a big factor, I've learned recently. In real life, rocket launches always fail some percent of the time even when you're firing them after weeks to get everything right. And most nations' nuclear warheads are based on twenty, thirty, or forty-year old designs that haven't been tested in a long time. Reliability is a big question mark, so if you have a target which absolutely Must Die, you need to throw multiple bombs at it.

Fallout won't kill the world, but it does further screw up your economy, because you get these large areas where people can't safely live: displaced persons, displaced economic activity, and interference with transportation and travel through the irradiated zones. Not good.

[someone_else]

Do we have enough nukes to level the world? NO. Can we level all the cities in the world? NO, same link as above.

That said, nukes have the capability to force a world-wide economic collapse, whose effects are far worse than carpet-bombing it. If you prefer a shot in the head instead of dying of hunger anyway.

They will be aimed at major powers with the obvious intent to screw up critical infrastructure (government is kinda irrelevant and too easy to hide. Power plants, oil/gas tubes and mining sites, emergency stockpiles will be targets) then hunger/thirst/illness/cold will do the killing much before fallout starts to be an issue. Just like the average natural disaster anyway.
And since the rest of the world stays up with money coming from them, if those nations fall everything will fall with them.

The question is: do we have enough nukes to do this third way?
The answer requires too much time to find for my tastes.

[Aoxomoxoa]

Radiation last's thousands of thousands of years, so if there were a nuclear inhalation we would all perish in a matter of weeks/months and if we didn't die in those first weeks we would surely die of the Fallout. I think that nuclear fission is the worst discovery since the fictional "Christianity".

[Pelranius]

I'd be more worried about biological weapons. They're a lot easier to make, harder to identify and once you let them out, they can easily be a self sustaining event.

[Lagmonster]

Radiation last's thousands of thousands of years, so if there were a nuclear inhalation we would all perish in a matter of weeks/months and if we didn't die in those first weeks we would surely die of the Fallout. I think that nuclear fission is the worst discovery since the fictional "Christianity".

Cutting through the bad spelling, I think you should explain your source for that 'thousands of years' claim. I was under the impression that the road to ecological viability was significantly shorter.

I'm also going to assume that last sentence was a bit of hyperbole; surely the discovery of nuclear fission has led to more benefits and less death than Christianity.

I'd be more worried about biological weapons. They're a lot easier to make, harder to identify and once you let them out, they can easily be a self sustaining event.

And yet we aren't talking about those. Please try not to derail the thread.

[Magis]

Contrary to the musings of Hollywood, fallout isn't that great a concern, even resulting from many nuclear explosions. A study* was performed involving nearly 10,000 people who lived along the main fallout trajectories near (within 200 km) of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan - a site where 450 atomospheric and surface explosions took place over a 40 year period. The study found that the nearby inhabitants were exposed to cumulative doses of between 20 mSv and 4 Sv. The irradiated group showed, in total, a 77% increase in cancer risk. It's not good, but it's not as if those blasts rendered a large area completely uninhabitable. Also, keep in mind that contemporary weapons produce less fallout than their first-generation counterparts. The study found that the radiation dose was mainly due to the first 118 tests between 1949 and 1965.

Also, in a nuclear war type scenario, I don't know if there would be any one area hit with 450 explosions, so the survivors of gigantic nuclear conflagration should have significantly less exposure than those people living near Semipalatinsk.

*S. Bauer, et al., Radiation Exposure due to Local Fallout from Soviet Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing in Kazakhstan: Solid Cancer Mortality in the Semipalatinsk Historical Cohort, 1960-1999, Radiation Research, Vol. 164, No. 4, Part 1 (Oct., 2005), pp. 409-419

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Out of curiosity, how plausible (or implausible) is the post-nuclear apocalypse world portrayed in the FALLOUT series?

[Alyeska]

The USSR had an operating policy (or so claimed via the Internet) to nuke certain countries in the prospect of nuclear war just to prevent them from becoming dominate. Under this theory the USSR would nuke places like Australia and Brazil to ensure they cannot become dominate and cause harm to a now seriously damaged Russia. It doesn't matter who starts war between the USSR and NATO, if a war starts it is not good for the USSR to have untouched countries of relative power who are not real friendly with Russia. Imagine the global power Brazil might wield in a post nuclear war world. It would be more powerful than any European or North American country by far while holding a significant population and relatively clean growing environment. Because of this the USSR had plans to neutralize countries such as this just to keep things even after the war ends.

[someone_else]

Out of curiosity, how plausible (or implausible) is the post-nuclear apocalypse world portrayed in the FALLOUT series?

They clearly state that The Fallout world is an anachronistic setting historically divergent from our own and fundamentally different from our universe in how the laws of science work. The base concept for the setting is a 1950s World of Tomorrow, a future as envisioned through the lens of the Atomic and Jet Ages. The Fallout world is more or less what Americans of the 1950s thought things would be like in a future decimated by nuclear war.. As such, it's just fiction. Albeit fun.

[Panzersharkcat]

Yeah. The area around around Vault 87 should not have that high of radiation levels, IIRC. Plus, you know, radiation turning people into basically zombies and various animals into mutated messes, lasers disintegrating people with burning everybody nearby with the high water vapor, and functioning plasma weapons that melt people into goo. Oh, and mini nukes. Gotta love the mini nukes.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Well while he has conceded the nuclear argument, he still goes on with lolbertarian rants...

[Mihael_Keehl]

As for the rest of it, the nuclear material within a nuclear weapon is a small fraction of what's contained inside a nuclear reactor.

IIRC, uranium has a massive half-life, so it won't be that bad.