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Pretty much and especially if you live in a city - really no survival is possible. However, some in rural areas would survive - the odds would not be good but

Pretty much and especially if you live in a city - really no survival is possible. However, some in rural areas would survive - the odds would not be good but some would so humanity would survive the "eye of the needle" this would cause. Just not most people individually.

toss1 5y ago
Pretty close approximation for cities, although it depends on the city geography & wind, the yield & number of denotations, etc. The most common first impression does seem to be that "of course it's not survivable, why even think about it?". However, a quick look at any map of effects shows that the zone of survivable effects extends far beyond the reach of lethal effects, to the extent that 90%+ of the total affected zone is quite survivable for those who manage to avoid the initial thermal radiation and flying debris from the shock wave. Of course there are many who wouldn't want to live in the aftermath, but that is a different question.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > Of course there are many who wouldn't want to live in the aftermath, but that is a different question. A pretty important one, I think. Paramount to, "Would you like to live in hell?" And especially having children - you'd need to be extremely stupid or sadist to have a child in such a world, especially knowing the high chances of them being born malformed etc.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Birth defects are not the problem here. Even cities which were bombed in wwii didn’t have extreme levels of birth defects. The numbers I have seen estimate an increase from the current 6% to something like 6.1% after nuclear war. The completely breakdown of power generation and supply chains would be a much bigger threat.
    - zxcvbn4038 5y ago
      Supply chain and food production/preservation would be the biggest issue. Not having antibiotics would have a huge impact. I find it interesting that survivalist literature goes into so much detail on so many topics never seems to cover medical stuff. What do you do for birth control after the apocalypse? How can you make an antibiotic? How can you make an anesthetic? I’ve seen YouTube videos for making chloroform but never details how to use it.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > I find it interesting that survivalist literature goes into so much detail on so many topics never seems to cover medical stuff. What do you do for birth control after the apocalypse? How can you make an antibiotic? How can you make an anesthetic? I mean, you don't? One dude, a family, or even a small community cannot hope replicate all the stuff that comes from modern supply chains. Surviving a civilization-ending catastrophe would basically mean navigating the glide path down to a poor subsistence lifestyle that lacks a huge amount of technology we take for granted. People got by without that stuff for pretty much all of human history. The best survivalist could probably do is compile traditional/herbal remedies that are at least somewhat effective, but there would still be huge gaps. So birth control: abstinence, keeping an unplanned baby, infanticide, or some herbal abortifacient. antibiotics: hope you can fight off that infection or we'll have to amputate anesthetic: alcohol or a stick in the mouth
        hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        Reflecting on this makes me really appreciate living in the 21st century.
      - toss1 5y ago
        Antibiotics, anesthetics, birth control? Lucky if you stashed or found some leftovers. We'd be back to some available herbal remedies. And birth control? You'll want the opposite if you want your clan to survive. Without antibiotics & other modern medicine, or even soaps (anyone in your group know how to make that?), you'll be back to having a dozen children and being lucky if one or two survive to adulthood.
Ekaros 5y ago
I have absolutely no doubt human race would survive. We are distributed enough and there is plenty of still developing areas. Now modern civilization very much less so.
- phreeza 5y ago
  We'd survive the first few months after nukes start to fly, after that I'm not so sure. The vast majority of humans live in areas where the climate and environment makes survival without a lot of cultural knowledge very hard. Add to that fallout, possible climate effects from the nukes, I can easily see a non-zero probability of total extinction within a couple of years.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I'm thinking of current subsistence farmers, specially in Africa and South America. Nuclear war has some impact, but I don't think all areas in world are heavily affected. I doubt absolutely all of these will be hit to extinction level. Developed countries on other hand surely massive starvation to boot.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    I don’t believe there are any Southern Hemisphere nuclear powers currently. Would northern hemisphere powers deliberately target folks in the Southern Hemisphere? If not, I expect most of them would survive.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    I imagine there would be plenty fish in the ocean still. Some would survive.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Living in Seattle, I've thought about the odds of surviving a nuclear attack here. I figured surviving the blast is very possible. But after that, things look pretty grim. Long term survival in the city itself is improbable, and due to terrain there are only 3 ways out of the city. Consider that all the survivors would be clogging those routes to get to a farm, it looks like succeeding would also be improbable. Your only hope would be to leave before the attack.
ekianjo 5y ago
> especially if you live in a city yes, for multiple reasons: - cities are clear targets for nuking - even if partially nuked, a city would be unsustainable once its roads and pathways are destroyed. Cities live by concentrating massive amounts of food and resources from outside cities, once the chain is broken a city falls.
beerandt 5y ago
This isn't necessarily the case anymore. At least not universally. Big bombs and mirvs weren't necessarily for more damage, but primarily to ensure smaller, high priority targets got destroyed. (Because accuracy of ballistic profiles and fusing abilities meant pretty bad accuracy in the downrange direction, which is an incredibly interesting and far-reaching topic itself). Point being, more accurate weapons means (for the US, at least) about 2/3s fewer, smaller bombs are needed to take out the same target list. (The math works out to be approx 4th-root required power needed proportional to radius CEP reduction.) And fewer, smaller, more accurate warhead targeting plus upgraded variable fusing means a target near a city doesn't automatically doom the city itself. At least for whoever's getting nuked by the US. There's obviously still debate on if the cities themselves would be targets, but the treaty numbers are designed to make the opportunity-cost of bombing a city relatively high, meaning not enough warheads to hit other high-value military targets. Counterpoint: Who really knows what Russia and China are actually doing?

toss1 5y ago

Pretty close approximation for cities, although it depends on the city geography & wind, the yield & number of denotations, etc. The most common first impression does seem to be that "of course it's not survivable, why even think about it?". However, a quick look at any map of effects shows that the zone of survivable effects extends far beyond the reach of lethal effects, to the extent that 90%+ of the total affected zone is quite survivable for those who manage to avoid the initial thermal radiation and flying debris from the shock wave. Of course there are many who wouldn't want to live in the aftermath, but that is a different question.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Of course there are many who wouldn't want to live in the aftermath, but that is a different question. A pretty important one, I think. Paramount to, "Would you like to live in hell?" And especially having children - you'd need to be extremely stupid or sadist to have a child in such a world, especially knowing the high chances of them being born malformed etc.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Birth defects are not the problem here. Even cities which were bombed in wwii didn’t have extreme levels of birth defects. The numbers I have seen estimate an increase from the current 6% to something like 6.1% after nuclear war. The completely breakdown of power generation and supply chains would be a much bigger threat.
  - zxcvbn4038 5y ago
    Supply chain and food production/preservation would be the biggest issue. Not having antibiotics would have a huge impact. I find it interesting that survivalist literature goes into so much detail on so many topics never seems to cover medical stuff. What do you do for birth control after the apocalypse? How can you make an antibiotic? How can you make an anesthetic? I’ve seen YouTube videos for making chloroform but never details how to use it.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > I find it interesting that survivalist literature goes into so much detail on so many topics never seems to cover medical stuff. What do you do for birth control after the apocalypse? How can you make an antibiotic? How can you make an anesthetic? I mean, you don't? One dude, a family, or even a small community cannot hope replicate all the stuff that comes from modern supply chains. Surviving a civilization-ending catastrophe would basically mean navigating the glide path down to a poor subsistence lifestyle that lacks a huge amount of technology we take for granted. People got by without that stuff for pretty much all of human history. The best survivalist could probably do is compile traditional/herbal remedies that are at least somewhat effective, but there would still be huge gaps. So birth control: abstinence, keeping an unplanned baby, infanticide, or some herbal abortifacient. antibiotics: hope you can fight off that infection or we'll have to amputate anesthetic: alcohol or a stick in the mouth
      - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        Reflecting on this makes me really appreciate living in the 21st century.
    - toss1 5y ago
      Antibiotics, anesthetics, birth control? Lucky if you stashed or found some leftovers. We'd be back to some available herbal remedies. And birth control? You'll want the opposite if you want your clan to survive. Without antibiotics & other modern medicine, or even soaps (anyone in your group know how to make that?), you'll be back to having a dozen children and being lucky if one or two survive to adulthood.

Ekaros 5y ago

I have absolutely no doubt human race would survive. We are distributed enough and there is plenty of still developing areas. Now modern civilization very much less so.

phreeza 5y ago
We'd survive the first few months after nukes start to fly, after that I'm not so sure. The vast majority of humans live in areas where the climate and environment makes survival without a lot of cultural knowledge very hard. Add to that fallout, possible climate effects from the nukes, I can easily see a non-zero probability of total extinction within a couple of years.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I'm thinking of current subsistence farmers, specially in Africa and South America. Nuclear war has some impact, but I don't think all areas in world are heavily affected. I doubt absolutely all of these will be hit to extinction level. Developed countries on other hand surely massive starvation to boot.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  I don’t believe there are any Southern Hemisphere nuclear powers currently. Would northern hemisphere powers deliberately target folks in the Southern Hemisphere? If not, I expect most of them would survive.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  I imagine there would be plenty fish in the ocean still. Some would survive.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Living in Seattle, I've thought about the odds of surviving a nuclear attack here. I figured surviving the blast is very possible. But after that, things look pretty grim. Long term survival in the city itself is improbable, and due to terrain there are only 3 ways out of the city. Consider that all the survivors would be clogging those routes to get to a farm, it looks like succeeding would also be improbable. Your only hope would be to leave before the attack.

ekianjo 5y ago

> especially if you live in a city yes, for multiple reasons: - cities are clear targets for nuking - even if partially nuked, a city would be unsustainable once its roads and pathways are destroyed. Cities live by concentrating massive amounts of food and resources from outside cities, once the chain is broken a city falls.

beerandt 5y ago

This isn't necessarily the case anymore. At least not universally. Big bombs and mirvs weren't necessarily for more damage, but primarily to ensure smaller, high priority targets got destroyed. (Because accuracy of ballistic profiles and fusing abilities meant pretty bad accuracy in the downrange direction, which is an incredibly interesting and far-reaching topic itself). Point being, more accurate weapons means (for the US, at least) about 2/3s fewer, smaller bombs are needed to take out the same target list. (The math works out to be approx 4th-root required power needed proportional to radius CEP reduction.) And fewer, smaller, more accurate warhead targeting plus upgraded variable fusing means a target near a city doesn't automatically doom the city itself. At least for whoever's getting nuked by the US. There's obviously still debate on if the cities themselves would be targets, but the treaty numbers are designed to make the opportunity-cost of bombing a city relatively high, meaning not enough warheads to hit other high-value military targets. Counterpoint: Who really knows what Russia and China are actually doing?