One-off tests in ideal conditions work 50% of the time. Sooo if we have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 4 times over that means in an ideal cas

One-off tests in ideal conditions work 50% of the time. Sooo if we have enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 4 times over that means in an ideal case we only all die twice? Of course they probably won’t all launch at once. Maybe half of nuclear weapons are in hands of the three likely parties. So maybe half get launched. In the shit show of a full-scale nuclear exchange you can predict less than perfect performance (also I’d guess countermeasures are better than advertised on both sides since countermeasures are 1,000x cheaper than intercept measures). Then again some will fail to launch since global corruption has undermined effectiveness broadly. The numbers get fuzzy, but it’s looking like everybody still dies. Best case maybe most of the northern hemisphere is unlivable. A recent study shows that even a limited nuclear exchange will toss up so much ash as to reduce agricultural yields and starve a billion people. Let’s say it’s not a limited exchange and food production is down to 25% of normal. I suppose the number who starve would be lower if half of the planet were already dead. Then again there hasn’t been a study of what would happen to the global economy and food system if large parts of the world were rendered radioactive wasteland (my gut says it’s not going to survive such a shock). I suspect food shipping wouldn’t continue as normal. So almost everyone dies and the rest fight over the insufficient remaining food. Whee! I’m coming around to the “die in the first blast” strategy.