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Then what's with the "enough nukes to destroy the world x times over" numbers I remember hearing? Have we really disarmed that much? Or were the numbers exagger

Then what's with the "enough nukes to destroy the world x times over" numbers I remember hearing? Have we really disarmed that much? Or were the numbers exaggerated?

adventured 11y ago
Nuclear war would severely harm the nations hit. Russia as a nation for example would all but cease to exist, as their population is extremely tightly clustered in the west; the US by comparison is far more spread out (Russia would have to hit every single US city that they could, in order of population, and that still wouldn't destroy the US, but it would clear out their entire arsenal on just part of one nation). The desire has always been to make sure everyone is properly afraid of a nuclear war, because of the destruction it would indeed cause. It's desirable for it to be considered off the table entirely, a true last resort response. There is a large gulf between an outcome that destroys all of the relevant cities in the US and ending the human race. The 'mistake' is an intentional over-estimation of how much destruction the whole can cause (Why? To properly cause immense fear, so global nuclear war is thought of as a humanity ending event; and that's probably sane reasoning). Back in reality, only a few nations would be heavily destroyed, and the amount of radiation most of the rest of countries would absorb wouldn't matter in regards to survival. Some will claim it would cause nuclear winter, destroy the global food and fresh water supply etc. It wouldn't come close to causing that. Nearly the entire planet would remain fundamentally just fine (the nukes would be focused on urban areas anyway). We know for a fact that large numbers of nuclear detonations (eg 178 in 1962) don't just magically spread globally and start killing everyone via destroying the food supply or other similar mass outcome events. Specific small areas of the planet would not be fine of course, they would be completely destroyed. An extremely small percentage of arable land could be destroyed, even if it was specifically targeted. Within less than a century you'd never know a global nuclear war occurred as far as obvious signs in nature are concerned, outside of the specific areas that were hit.
ars 11y ago
The numbers were exaggerated. Even at the peak we never had the ability to kill anything but a fraction of the humans on earth.
credit_guy 11y ago
That number was based on a silly division that went something like this: nb bombs (~20k) x average yield (~ 200 kT TNT) / nb people ( ~ 4 bn at the time) = 1 ton of TNT per person, which is enough to kill you about 100 or 1000 times, pick a number.

Then what's with the "enough nukes to destroy the world x times over" numbers I remember hearing? Have we really disarmed that much? Or were the numbers exaggerated?

adventured 11y ago

Nuclear war would severely harm the nations hit. Russia as a nation for example would all but cease to exist, as their population is extremely tightly clustered in the west; the US by comparison is far more spread out (Russia would have to hit every single US city that they could, in order of population, and that still wouldn't destroy the US, but it would clear out their entire arsenal on just part of one nation). The desire has always been to make sure everyone is properly afraid of a nuclear war, because of the destruction it would indeed cause. It's desirable for it to be considered off the table entirely, a true last resort response. There is a large gulf between an outcome that destroys all of the relevant cities in the US and ending the human race. The 'mistake' is an intentional over-estimation of how much destruction the whole can cause (Why? To properly cause immense fear, so global nuclear war is thought of as a humanity ending event; and that's probably sane reasoning). Back in reality, only a few nations would be heavily destroyed, and the amount of radiation most of the rest of countries would absorb wouldn't matter in regards to survival. Some will claim it would cause nuclear winter, destroy the global food and fresh water supply etc. It wouldn't come close to causing that. Nearly the entire planet would remain fundamentally just fine (the nukes would be focused on urban areas anyway). We know for a fact that large numbers of nuclear detonations (eg 178 in 1962) don't just magically spread globally and start killing everyone via destroying the food supply or other similar mass outcome events. Specific small areas of the planet would not be fine of course, they would be completely destroyed. An extremely small percentage of arable land could be destroyed, even if it was specifically targeted. Within less than a century you'd never know a global nuclear war occurred as far as obvious signs in nature are concerned, outside of the specific areas that were hit.

ars 11y ago

The numbers were exaggerated. Even at the peak we never had the ability to kill anything but a fraction of the humans on earth.

credit_guy 11y ago

That number was based on a silly division that went something like this: nb bombs (~20k) x average yield (~ 200 kT TNT) / nb people ( ~ 4 bn at the time) = 1 ton of TNT per person, which is enough to kill you about 100 or 1000 times, pick a number.