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It's worth noting that nuclear winter is just an educated guess about what would happen; we obviously don't have any data on how a large-scale nuclear exchange
by smitherfield 10y ago
It's worth noting that nuclear winter is just an educated guess about what would happen; we obviously don't have any data on how a large-scale nuclear exchange would affect the climate, and there may be other climatic effects that are harder to predict.
I'm skeptical that we would see much effect from an exchange of 50 weapons; the year 1962 saw 178 detonations.[1]
[1] https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally
- reitoei 10y agoBig difference between dropping a nuke on a remote atoll in the middle of the pacific to a dropping one on a densely populated city.
- saiya-jin 10y agoin long term effect on the planet or overall human population, not much difference
- enraged_camel 10y agoYou also aren't considering the strength of the nukes. Back in 1962 nuclear bombs were relatively low-yield (especially those used in tests). Today, a single nuke can decimate the entire DC area. http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/highvslowyield/ http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/highvslowyield/
- mordant 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba The trend in nuclear weapons has been for lower yields over the last 45 years or so. The reason is that advances in CEP precision due to better guidance systems means than huge yields are no longer necessary in order to ensure destruction of the intended target(s). 'Nuclear winter' is a completely unsupported theory pushed by Carl Sagan and the Union of Confused Scientists. Recall that these same people pushed 'the coming Ice Age' in the 1970s, 'global warming' until even their jiggered data was so obviously wrong that they renamed it 'climate change', and also predicted 'nuclear winter' effects from the burning oilfields during the first Gulf War - which never materialized, of course.
- ben_w 10y ago"Coming ice age" was mostly the press, not the scientists. Attention-grabbing headlines without a connection to reality; "fake news " isn't new.
- fdsaaf 10y agoWe turned a ton of cities into ashes during WWII without the help of nuclear weapons (except at the very end).
- Johnny555 10y agoThe current nuclear arsenal is over 2000 times greater than all of the munitions used in WWII (including the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent * The total energy of all explosives used in World War Two (including the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs) is estimated to have been three megatons of TNT * The total global nuclear arsenal is about 30,000 nuclear warheads with a destructive capacity of 7,000 megatons or 7 gigatons (7,000 million tons) of TNT
- berntb 10y agoFirebombings cause a lot of ash with little boom. And TFA talked about a nuclear winter from burning cities when using a hundred Hiroshima bombs, not the US/Russian arsenal. We ought to have learned about those effects, just from WW II.
- htrp 10y agoI'd imagine its more on explosive yields. 178 detonations in 1962 spaced out versus 50 weapons of the multi-megaton variety within short succession.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]