4 ms·

5,000 megatons would be enough to destroy every major and semi-major city on the planet, literally. There are 4,416 cities on the planet with 150k+ population.

5,000 megatons would be enough to destroy every major and semi-major city on the planet, literally. There are 4,416 cities on the planet with 150k+ population. 10 100kt bombs are more than enough to destroy most cities on the planet, at least when you define "destroy" as "most everything is broken and/or on fire and most people are dead within 1 year's time". After your 10-nukes-per-city campaign, you've still got another 5,840 100kt bombs left in your 5,000 megaton budget to divide among the largest cities (NYC, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Tehran, etc.). I'm stating this because I don't think it's too useful to predict the secondary effects (nuclear winter, etc.) of a war so terrible that basically everyone on the planet would already be dead (from blast, fire, etc.) or dying within a year's time (radiation, starvation from infrastructure collapse, etc.).

danielvf 9y ago
I'm certainly not saying nuclear war wouldn't be awful - it would be! But in judging Carl Sagan's claims, we look at what he actually wrote to the public, and it's the specific climate claims that Carl Sagan made that appear to be wildly incorrect.
goatlover 9y ago
The people not near the cities targeted wouldn't die from environmental results. That's the point. They might die from serious economic disruption if they can't get access to food. But there would be people who would survive it. There's quite a lot of land in flyover states and what not. A lot of that is farmland.
- greedo 9y ago
  A lot of that farmland you're referring to houses ICBM silos, command and control facilities, or airbases.
  - goatlover 9y ago
    I'm guessing that's less than 0.01% of the actual land area. Anyway, there's mountains, forests, arctic wilderness, islands, etc. where some people live in various concentrations. Human civilization would take a massive blow from an all-out nuclear war, but human beings wouldn't go extinct, and some elements of civilization would remain. It's not like all technological capability or knowledge would be lost.
    - greedo 9y ago
      The interdependency of technology between cities, states and nation-states shouldn't be underestimated. How many books are available today that can describe how to make a semiconductor? Will these books survive? How about the process to create pure silicon? Or the lithography necessary to create CPUs? And with multiple nuclear detonations, the likelihood of EMP effects is high; this will cripple civilization as much as any explosions or fallout. Sure, technology can survive; witness the gunsmiths in the Hindu Kush who can recreate a functioning Enfield rifle (or ak-47) from scrap metal. But the world would be set back at least 100 years or more, and much knowledge would be lost because of poor archiving, poor dissemination, and the death of experts who are invaluable.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > A lot of that farmland you're referring to houses ICBM silo Certainly NOT a lot. Even if you have tens of thousands of ICBM silos that's still not much density compared to whole land at your disposal.
jabretti 9y ago
That sounds like a city-dweller's perspective. Sure, I would almost certainly be dead, but life on Earth would continue, our species would continue, and our civilisation would continue (albeit with some major setbacks). Besides, I don't think anyone's nuclear war plan is actually to destroy every major to semi-major city on Earth. In a realistic 1980s nuclear war, a lot of nukes would be targeted at military bases and the like. Plenty of others would destroy every major city in the US and USSR, plus each country's nuclear-armed allies. Maybe we here in Australia would get a nuke or two out of spite. But is anyone going to bother to nuke South America?
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > In a realistic 1980s nuclear war, a lot of nukes would be targeted at military bases and the like i think it's mentioned in Command and Control (book) but if I recall correctly the plan from the US perspective was not only to nuke military targets, but also all major population centers, with several thermonuclear bombs for each target, for good measure. And that was not only the USSR, but basically every ally of the USSR as well. You can imagine that the other side was also going to do about the same thing. Sure, some countries may have been relatively spared, but all in all the whole of Europe, US, Russia, China, would have been annihilated.
- gonational 9y ago
  > ... is anyone going to bother to nuke South America? Yes. There is this tendency to assume that, because you're ("you're" in the general sense) not thinking about a place, then that place necessarily isn't important from a geopolitical point of view. Not taking into account the geopolitical value of maintaining military bases on the US's southern flanks, it's worth noting that Brazil is the 12th largest oil producer, among its many other important economic attributes. Argentina is one of the go-to places for China to buy farm land[1]. Take those two and you're left with basically 10% of South America. 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303823104576391621352528138 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303823104576391...

danielvf 9y ago

I'm certainly not saying nuclear war wouldn't be awful - it would be! But in judging Carl Sagan's claims, we look at what he actually wrote to the public, and it's the specific climate claims that Carl Sagan made that appear to be wildly incorrect.

goatlover 9y ago

The people not near the cities targeted wouldn't die from environmental results. That's the point. They might die from serious economic disruption if they can't get access to food. But there would be people who would survive it. There's quite a lot of land in flyover states and what not. A lot of that is farmland.

greedo 9y ago
A lot of that farmland you're referring to houses ICBM silos, command and control facilities, or airbases.
- goatlover 9y ago
  I'm guessing that's less than 0.01% of the actual land area. Anyway, there's mountains, forests, arctic wilderness, islands, etc. where some people live in various concentrations. Human civilization would take a massive blow from an all-out nuclear war, but human beings wouldn't go extinct, and some elements of civilization would remain. It's not like all technological capability or knowledge would be lost.
  - greedo 9y ago
    The interdependency of technology between cities, states and nation-states shouldn't be underestimated. How many books are available today that can describe how to make a semiconductor? Will these books survive? How about the process to create pure silicon? Or the lithography necessary to create CPUs? And with multiple nuclear detonations, the likelihood of EMP effects is high; this will cripple civilization as much as any explosions or fallout. Sure, technology can survive; witness the gunsmiths in the Hindu Kush who can recreate a functioning Enfield rifle (or ak-47) from scrap metal. But the world would be set back at least 100 years or more, and much knowledge would be lost because of poor archiving, poor dissemination, and the death of experts who are invaluable.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > A lot of that farmland you're referring to houses ICBM silo Certainly NOT a lot. Even if you have tens of thousands of ICBM silos that's still not much density compared to whole land at your disposal.

jabretti 9y ago

That sounds like a city-dweller's perspective. Sure, I would almost certainly be dead, but life on Earth would continue, our species would continue, and our civilisation would continue (albeit with some major setbacks). Besides, I don't think anyone's nuclear war plan is actually to destroy every major to semi-major city on Earth. In a realistic 1980s nuclear war, a lot of nukes would be targeted at military bases and the like. Plenty of others would destroy every major city in the US and USSR, plus each country's nuclear-armed allies. Maybe we here in Australia would get a nuke or two out of spite. But is anyone going to bother to nuke South America?

ekianjo 9y ago
> In a realistic 1980s nuclear war, a lot of nukes would be targeted at military bases and the like i think it's mentioned in Command and Control (book) but if I recall correctly the plan from the US perspective was not only to nuke military targets, but also all major population centers, with several thermonuclear bombs for each target, for good measure. And that was not only the USSR, but basically every ally of the USSR as well. You can imagine that the other side was also going to do about the same thing. Sure, some countries may have been relatively spared, but all in all the whole of Europe, US, Russia, China, would have been annihilated.
gonational 9y ago
> ... is anyone going to bother to nuke South America? Yes. There is this tendency to assume that, because you're ("you're" in the general sense) not thinking about a place, then that place necessarily isn't important from a geopolitical point of view. Not taking into account the geopolitical value of maintaining military bases on the US's southern flanks, it's worth noting that Brazil is the 12th largest oil producer, among its many other important economic attributes. Argentina is one of the go-to places for China to buy farm land[1]. Take those two and you're left with basically 10% of South America. 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303823104576391621352528138 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303823104576391...