5 ms·

> So, it's exactly as destructive as I think. My thoughts exactly. Setting the world back 100+ years is a disaster of gigantic proportions. I also find it odd

> So, it's exactly as destructive as I think. My thoughts exactly. Setting the world back 100+ years is a disaster of gigantic proportions. I also find it odd that the author didn't even attempt to provide an estimate of the possible victim count. I'm basically sure it would at least be in the tens, perhaps hundreds of millions. This is to say nothing about a possible future arms race that would increase the numbers of warheads substantially.

dv_dt 5y ago
And this would be back hundred+ years in civilization, with the easiest energy extraction sources for coal/oil etc already gone. Humanity would have a very hard time following the same tech/energy ladder back to now.
- extheat 5y ago
  I don't think so, I think humans would probably be able to build back pretty quickly given the tech and manufacturing capability we have today. Yeah, 95% of it may have been destroyed worst case, but even at <5% capacity, if humanity worked together, we could scale things back up in maybe 10 years. The hardest part I argue isn't necessarily manufacturing, the labor part or even the mineral sourcing, but the technological breakthroughs necessary to advance society. For example, we'd still know how to create electronics with semiconductors and silicon, planes, rockets, missiles and so forth, just not at scale. And all the important books, software and media would be preserved in safe places like the Github code vaults. Of course, this is all assuming we have ego driven passionate people remaining at the helm, ala Elon Musk. But that's not a surefire thing. The biggest problem I see is the amount of habitable land on the Earth. For short periods of time, people wandering in nuclear wastelands will mostly be OK, however it's not safe to inhabit so we'd have to move the remaining infrastructure to safe places on the planet, wherever that may be. But I think it does underscore the need to diversify off of the Earth.
  - cmurf 5y ago
    Absurd. This kind of war destroys the government. You can only speculate what replaces it. And it'll probably be the winners (or non-losers) who dictate. 95% dead is a lot of corpses and demolished infrastructure with no fuel to operate heavy machinery to clean up anything. Europe after WW2 had the Marshall Plan. Who does this for WW3? China? India? Why not just take the intellectual property? There's no longer anyone, person or government force or leverage to protect it. If cities are destroyed expertise is probably not 95% destroyed, but closer to 99%. I think the current geopolitics is wiped out. At least the belligerents. Not only are their governments physically destroyed, but they have no legitimacy. They just allowed the worst failure in human history to occur. There's no assurances what happens next.
    - extheat 5y ago
      I don’t think it’s absurd. Maybe overly optimistic, but life has found a way to make it to where it is today. I have no reason to not believe that humans would still be around and kicking (even some of the Dinosaurs survived to today...). Yes most of the governments would be gone—natural law would take over. But in the end, there are going to be survivors. Some of them are smart. Most of them can talk, read, write and so forth. If you view a nuclear war as completely destroying the planet, I think that’s the problem. Even with all the (known) present nuclear warheads on the planet, we don’t have enough to destroy every meter of land on the planet. That would require deliberate and pinpoint precision, most likely not going to happen. The Earth is just too big. There will be technologically advanced places that will persist—no matter what. And they’re the keys to gradually returning the planet to where it once was. It’s not going to be a quick process, it’s going to happen on the scale of 10+ years, but it will get done. If this was not the case we can forget about going to Mars or even the Moon and just call it impossible.
      - leto_ii 5y ago
        > But in the end, there are going to be survivors. Some of them are smart. Agreed. They however will be spending their time doing subsidence agriculture, basic medicine, hunting, building etc. just like anybody living in premodern conditions. With 95% population loss you can be damn sure there will be no internet, electricity, water/sewage, refined fuel for transportation etc. People will quickly revert to the middle ages because they'll have to. There will be no time to tinker with reinventing microelectronics. > There will be technologically advanced places that will persist—no matter what You can be basically sure that there won't. The 5% left will be in small remote communities, not in a few big cities.
  - ashildr 5y ago
    > I think humans would probably be able to build back pretty quickly given the tech and manufacturing capability we have today. I’m not trying to be rude, but I don’t think that you have any knowlegde of the logistics and the advanced electronics, biology, chemistry and processes that is necessary for the current manufacturing we have to work. If you look into this and learn how complex even the production of the most simple objects and devices is, you may lose some sleep. And this is only about infrastructure - not engineers/specialists who know how to build and operate it. On top there are no easily available hydrocarbons left to bootstrap an industrial civilization a second time. If we fuck up this time, or are fucked up by a major extinction event, we’ll be stuck in early middle ages until we die out.
    - kortex 5y ago
      I'm quite acquainted with said knowledge. A small community surviving with a garage full of machine tools, some glassblowing, and a bookshelf of dusty encyclopedias, could easily bootstrap back to the early 20th century. A bit of steam reforming and the gigatons of plastic trash gives an ample source of chemical precursors to replace petroleum for chemical uses, and biofuel/gasification for energy. Not to mention millions of solar panels for the taking. Just because it's not economical to do these things now, does not mean it would be impossible, especially in dire straits. Would it cut the human population to a few million? Probably. Reset to the middle ages? Hardly. What are the real innovations that make the modern world? - the surface plate and 3-plate method - steel metallurgy - certain key chemical processes: Haber, Bosch, etc - electrical generation - the radio/telegraph - the transistor - calculus and algebra All would survive a full-blown nuclear attack. Rebuild would be slow and tedious, but completely plausible, if not guaranteed.
      - dv_dt 5y ago
        With a nuclear winter, incoming sun energy for solar would be attenuated. Crops would be contaminated and yields due to the same solar attenuation would further be degraded. Running a machine show would be a practice in slow decline to some very basic levels as you expend your specialized materials dependent on more complex supply chains. You could easily starve while trying to bootstr I would guess some humanity would survive, but it would be a huge dice role wether you had the basic food and energy resources available in your area, as well as the sheer luck to avoid death from environmental poisoning or missing any of a thousand civilizational inputs (like basic medicines). A lot of people like to playact like they would survive. I think it would be horrific.
  - cameldrv 5y ago
    I think that having 5% manufacturing capacity almost might as well be zero given the kinds of things we manufacture today. For example, a car used to have a carburetor that was relatively simple, just a few metal parts. Now we have very sophisticated high pressure fuel injection systems with exotic pumps and valves, all controlled by chips. All of these parts come from different places, and if you don't have a single part, the car doesn't work. In fact, the chip supply chain is one of the most fragile ones given the extreme complexity and precision of making even older chips, and yet almost every device we use now uses electronics instead of mechanical parts just about everywhere it's possible to make the substitution.
    - anamax 5y ago
      Most car engines can be retrofitted to use carburetors. (You plug the in-cylinder injector holes.) Note that diesel engines were made with rather low-tech.
chakalakasp 5y ago
A U.S. nuclear warplanner from around a decade ago (I can link you to him if you're interested) recently stated that he'd suspect that a typical full exchange between the U.S. and Russia would kill 95% of the people living in both countries within 18 months of the attack. Main causes of death would be complete collapse of infrastructure; no supply chains, no food production, no fuel, no heat, no power, no water, no medicine or health care. Most major cities would be destroyed, many cities along rivers would be under fast-flowing as water dams would be targeted to cascade fail most hydrology management, anything downwind of spent fuel storage for nuclear plants (which, in the U.S., are stored above ground near the actual reactors) would be uninhabitable for months to decades, etc. It'd be a very messy 18 months, too, as those left alive immediately after that attack and fallout, which would probably be around 2/3rds of the population of each of the countries, competed for limited resources. And his estimates assumed that nuclear winter was not a real thing. It goes downhill from there if it is.
- justinpowers 5y ago
  Please do provide that link
  - chakalakasp 5y ago
    This is the guy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmteter https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmteter He's an engineer who's job was, in the past, to be one of the people who developed the U.S. nuclear warplans against Russia. His open source attempt at using his understanding to build hypothetical target laydowns for Russian attacks against the U.S. is here: https://github.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP https://github.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP

dv_dt 5y ago

And this would be back hundred+ years in civilization, with the easiest energy extraction sources for coal/oil etc already gone. Humanity would have a very hard time following the same tech/energy ladder back to now.

extheat 5y ago
I don't think so, I think humans would probably be able to build back pretty quickly given the tech and manufacturing capability we have today. Yeah, 95% of it may have been destroyed worst case, but even at <5% capacity, if humanity worked together, we could scale things back up in maybe 10 years. The hardest part I argue isn't necessarily manufacturing, the labor part or even the mineral sourcing, but the technological breakthroughs necessary to advance society. For example, we'd still know how to create electronics with semiconductors and silicon, planes, rockets, missiles and so forth, just not at scale. And all the important books, software and media would be preserved in safe places like the Github code vaults. Of course, this is all assuming we have ego driven passionate people remaining at the helm, ala Elon Musk. But that's not a surefire thing. The biggest problem I see is the amount of habitable land on the Earth. For short periods of time, people wandering in nuclear wastelands will mostly be OK, however it's not safe to inhabit so we'd have to move the remaining infrastructure to safe places on the planet, wherever that may be. But I think it does underscore the need to diversify off of the Earth.
- cmurf 5y ago
  Absurd. This kind of war destroys the government. You can only speculate what replaces it. And it'll probably be the winners (or non-losers) who dictate. 95% dead is a lot of corpses and demolished infrastructure with no fuel to operate heavy machinery to clean up anything. Europe after WW2 had the Marshall Plan. Who does this for WW3? China? India? Why not just take the intellectual property? There's no longer anyone, person or government force or leverage to protect it. If cities are destroyed expertise is probably not 95% destroyed, but closer to 99%. I think the current geopolitics is wiped out. At least the belligerents. Not only are their governments physically destroyed, but they have no legitimacy. They just allowed the worst failure in human history to occur. There's no assurances what happens next.
  - extheat 5y ago
    I don’t think it’s absurd. Maybe overly optimistic, but life has found a way to make it to where it is today. I have no reason to not believe that humans would still be around and kicking (even some of the Dinosaurs survived to today...). Yes most of the governments would be gone—natural law would take over. But in the end, there are going to be survivors. Some of them are smart. Most of them can talk, read, write and so forth. If you view a nuclear war as completely destroying the planet, I think that’s the problem. Even with all the (known) present nuclear warheads on the planet, we don’t have enough to destroy every meter of land on the planet. That would require deliberate and pinpoint precision, most likely not going to happen. The Earth is just too big. There will be technologically advanced places that will persist—no matter what. And they’re the keys to gradually returning the planet to where it once was. It’s not going to be a quick process, it’s going to happen on the scale of 10+ years, but it will get done. If this was not the case we can forget about going to Mars or even the Moon and just call it impossible.
    - leto_ii 5y ago
      > But in the end, there are going to be survivors. Some of them are smart. Agreed. They however will be spending their time doing subsidence agriculture, basic medicine, hunting, building etc. just like anybody living in premodern conditions. With 95% population loss you can be damn sure there will be no internet, electricity, water/sewage, refined fuel for transportation etc. People will quickly revert to the middle ages because they'll have to. There will be no time to tinker with reinventing microelectronics. > There will be technologically advanced places that will persist—no matter what You can be basically sure that there won't. The 5% left will be in small remote communities, not in a few big cities.
- ashildr 5y ago
  > I think humans would probably be able to build back pretty quickly given the tech and manufacturing capability we have today. I’m not trying to be rude, but I don’t think that you have any knowlegde of the logistics and the advanced electronics, biology, chemistry and processes that is necessary for the current manufacturing we have to work. If you look into this and learn how complex even the production of the most simple objects and devices is, you may lose some sleep. And this is only about infrastructure - not engineers/specialists who know how to build and operate it. On top there are no easily available hydrocarbons left to bootstrap an industrial civilization a second time. If we fuck up this time, or are fucked up by a major extinction event, we’ll be stuck in early middle ages until we die out.
  - kortex 5y ago
    I'm quite acquainted with said knowledge. A small community surviving with a garage full of machine tools, some glassblowing, and a bookshelf of dusty encyclopedias, could easily bootstrap back to the early 20th century. A bit of steam reforming and the gigatons of plastic trash gives an ample source of chemical precursors to replace petroleum for chemical uses, and biofuel/gasification for energy. Not to mention millions of solar panels for the taking. Just because it's not economical to do these things now, does not mean it would be impossible, especially in dire straits. Would it cut the human population to a few million? Probably. Reset to the middle ages? Hardly. What are the real innovations that make the modern world? - the surface plate and 3-plate method - steel metallurgy - certain key chemical processes: Haber, Bosch, etc - electrical generation - the radio/telegraph - the transistor - calculus and algebra All would survive a full-blown nuclear attack. Rebuild would be slow and tedious, but completely plausible, if not guaranteed.
    - dv_dt 5y ago
      With a nuclear winter, incoming sun energy for solar would be attenuated. Crops would be contaminated and yields due to the same solar attenuation would further be degraded. Running a machine show would be a practice in slow decline to some very basic levels as you expend your specialized materials dependent on more complex supply chains. You could easily starve while trying to bootstr I would guess some humanity would survive, but it would be a huge dice role wether you had the basic food and energy resources available in your area, as well as the sheer luck to avoid death from environmental poisoning or missing any of a thousand civilizational inputs (like basic medicines). A lot of people like to playact like they would survive. I think it would be horrific.
- cameldrv 5y ago
  I think that having 5% manufacturing capacity almost might as well be zero given the kinds of things we manufacture today. For example, a car used to have a carburetor that was relatively simple, just a few metal parts. Now we have very sophisticated high pressure fuel injection systems with exotic pumps and valves, all controlled by chips. All of these parts come from different places, and if you don't have a single part, the car doesn't work. In fact, the chip supply chain is one of the most fragile ones given the extreme complexity and precision of making even older chips, and yet almost every device we use now uses electronics instead of mechanical parts just about everywhere it's possible to make the substitution.
  - anamax 5y ago
    Most car engines can be retrofitted to use carburetors. (You plug the in-cylinder injector holes.) Note that diesel engines were made with rather low-tech.

chakalakasp 5y ago

A U.S. nuclear warplanner from around a decade ago (I can link you to him if you're interested) recently stated that he'd suspect that a typical full exchange between the U.S. and Russia would kill 95% of the people living in both countries within 18 months of the attack. Main causes of death would be complete collapse of infrastructure; no supply chains, no food production, no fuel, no heat, no power, no water, no medicine or health care. Most major cities would be destroyed, many cities along rivers would be under fast-flowing as water dams would be targeted to cascade fail most hydrology management, anything downwind of spent fuel storage for nuclear plants (which, in the U.S., are stored above ground near the actual reactors) would be uninhabitable for months to decades, etc. It'd be a very messy 18 months, too, as those left alive immediately after that attack and fallout, which would probably be around 2/3rds of the population of each of the countries, competed for limited resources. And his estimates assumed that nuclear winter was not a real thing. It goes downhill from there if it is.

justinpowers 5y ago
Please do provide that link
- chakalakasp 5y ago
  This is the guy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmteter https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmteter He's an engineer who's job was, in the past, to be one of the people who developed the U.S. nuclear warplans against Russia. His open source attempt at using his understanding to build hypothetical target laydowns for Russian attacks against the U.S. is here: https://github.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP https://github.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP