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There will probably be a thermonuclear war in our future timeline, but is it worth, for us the people, to think or prepare for it? When or if it happens, there'

There will probably be a thermonuclear war in our future timeline, but is it worth, for us the people, to think or prepare for it? When or if it happens, there'll be nothing left. We can just assume it'll never happen and fight any war outside the physical battlefield (with economical or cyber wars), while trying to spread to other planets.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Preparing for thermonuclear war equates to preventing it from ever happening. The aftermath is like 536 ("the worst year in human history"), but orders of magnitude worse. Radiactive ash covers the sky. The Sun don't shine for years, possibly decades. Temperatures drop to permanent winter, everthing freezes. Food doesn't grow. Animals die. Civilization collapses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 Only geothermally powered, self-sufficient survival bunkers can support a handful of people, and it's a fight against time. The genetic pool is decimated and our biological evolution is basically halted. Hope you printed out the whole of Wikipedia, and can find the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the arctic somehow.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  Thermonuclear war would certainly kill life in a lot of places and render large areas inhospitable, but I’m not convinced Nuclear Winter wasn’t exaggerated propaganda. Remember the USA/Soviet Union exploded hundreds of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere between the 1940s and 1960s, including some terrifyingly large hydrogen bombs that were much more powerful than what we deliver on ICBMs. Chances are most of the northern hemisphere would have a bad time with fallout for a year or two but large parts of the Southern Hemisphere would continue on as if nothing happened.
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    The meteor that nearly killed the dinosaurs is estimated to have contained 420 zettajoules of energy in its impact, and to have killed to extinction 75% of all plant and animal species on Earth. There are some 13_000 nuclear weapons currently in the world. If we assume they are all equivalent to the largest one ever tested (210 petajoules), they would in aggregate contain 2.73 zettajoules of energy, or 0.65% of the meteor. Maybe you're right, we don't have the capacity to blow up the Earth quite yet.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    These tests were all tweaked for low fallout though, with artificially reduced yields. And many were air bursts that are less bad because they don't throw a whole lot of soil into the air. A lot of the multi megatonne ones in particular. They weren't simulating actual attack scenarios with those as they were so overpowered there'd be no point. It was just a big dick measuring contest at that point. I think the Soviets won with their Tsar Bomba and I guess the US wasn't willing to escalate it further. But yeah I think most of the nuclear winter scenarios were based on massive conflict with those multi megatonne bombs which are no longer in use.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

Preparing for thermonuclear war equates to preventing it from ever happening. The aftermath is like 536 ("the worst year in human history"), but orders of magnitude worse. Radiactive ash covers the sky. The Sun don't shine for years, possibly decades. Temperatures drop to permanent winter, everthing freezes. Food doesn't grow. Animals die. Civilization collapses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 Only geothermally powered, self-sufficient survival bunkers can support a handful of people, and it's a fight against time. The genetic pool is decimated and our biological evolution is basically halted. Hope you printed out the whole of Wikipedia, and can find the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the arctic somehow.

oceanplexian 5y ago
Thermonuclear war would certainly kill life in a lot of places and render large areas inhospitable, but I’m not convinced Nuclear Winter wasn’t exaggerated propaganda. Remember the USA/Soviet Union exploded hundreds of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere between the 1940s and 1960s, including some terrifyingly large hydrogen bombs that were much more powerful than what we deliver on ICBMs. Chances are most of the northern hemisphere would have a bad time with fallout for a year or two but large parts of the Southern Hemisphere would continue on as if nothing happened.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  The meteor that nearly killed the dinosaurs is estimated to have contained 420 zettajoules of energy in its impact, and to have killed to extinction 75% of all plant and animal species on Earth. There are some 13_000 nuclear weapons currently in the world. If we assume they are all equivalent to the largest one ever tested (210 petajoules), they would in aggregate contain 2.73 zettajoules of energy, or 0.65% of the meteor. Maybe you're right, we don't have the capacity to blow up the Earth quite yet.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  These tests were all tweaked for low fallout though, with artificially reduced yields. And many were air bursts that are less bad because they don't throw a whole lot of soil into the air. A lot of the multi megatonne ones in particular. They weren't simulating actual attack scenarios with those as they were so overpowered there'd be no point. It was just a big dick measuring contest at that point. I think the Soviets won with their Tsar Bomba and I guess the US wasn't willing to escalate it further. But yeah I think most of the nuclear winter scenarios were based on massive conflict with those multi megatonne bombs which are no longer in use.