4 ms·

the thing I never understood about nuclear annihilation is that doesn't it mainly focus on urban areas? Just curious are there enough nukes in the world to wipe

the thing I never understood about nuclear annihilation is that doesn't it mainly focus on urban areas? Just curious are there enough nukes in the world to wipe every square km of the earth? When nations scale their arsenal what's their budgeting rationale, to hit all the major cities of an opponent? Dropping a Tsar Bomba 17,080 km² https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ * Surface of North America 24.71 million km² * Surface of South America 17.84 million km² * Surface of Africa 30.37 million km²

hellotomyrars 4y ago
Kind of doesn’t matter. You’re probably luckier to get vaporized in a direct hit than the be on the outskirts in a world where the entire nuclear arsenal of the world has detonated somewhere on earth.
kelipso 4y ago
I think it's meant to focus on urban areas and military installations. 50% of the US population lives in 1% of the area, so around 240,000 square km, and that would cover almost all of the decision makers, wealthy people, politicians, supply chain centers, etc. Then there is the resulting civilization breakdown and weather conditions for the rest of the population.
jerlam 4y ago
You don't need to nuke every literal single square inch of the world to kill a majority of the population. Remove enough governments and the world will become anarchy. Destroy a lot of infrastructure and suddenly no goods, food, or water gets transported. Contaminate the sky and ground enough, and agriculture won't grow. If you live in some tiny corner of the world, off the grid, grow your own food, without any dependencies on the outside world, you might survive for a while. But it won't be the world we live in today.
- jxramos 4y ago
  Very true. I think I'm hung up on the discrepancy with animations around this topic I eventually came to realize were extremely exaggerated. Like I think I saw a cartoon where like a chunk of the earth was removed like a lobotomy sort of thing, a huge sector of mass. I realized much later that these bombs simply do not have that kind of power as terrible as they are. I also later realized that asteroids can do some major serious damage on a whole other magnitude beyond nukes. The size of an asteroid crater is way beyond the crater size of nukes * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Eart... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_Crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_Crater
  - jxramos 4y ago
    Interestingly enough I can't make out the Tsar Bomba crater https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bomba+Zar/@73.5383394,54.7336004,1236m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x44f7639ffb29a117:0x688ce749fa62ac0b!8m2!3d73.5383394!4d54.7336004!16s%2Fg%2F11gnpvh2m1 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bomba+Zar/@73.5383394,54.7...
  - namaria 4y ago
    The global effects of a nuclear war would be truly horrible. It's not just about the force of impact or blast radius or even how much land gets directly scorched. It's akin to a major chain volcanic eruption... A huge amount of particulate blocks the sun for decades and everything withers. There will be no post apocalyptic society. This is a major extinction event, an ecosystem wipe.
efficax 4y ago
don't neglect the fallout, and the nuclear winter
- 0xffff2 4y ago
  Nuclear winter is largely a myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...
xrayarx 4y ago
https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/ https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-... There are about 13,000 nukes, 2000 are on alert, that means ready to be used at any time. Here is a US list of targets, there are also lists from Russia: https://futureoflife.org/resource/us-nuclear-targets/ https://futureoflife.org/resource/us-nuclear-targets/ There are of course secondary effects: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-war/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nu...

hellotomyrars 4y ago

Kind of doesn’t matter. You’re probably luckier to get vaporized in a direct hit than the be on the outskirts in a world where the entire nuclear arsenal of the world has detonated somewhere on earth.

kelipso 4y ago

I think it's meant to focus on urban areas and military installations. 50% of the US population lives in 1% of the area, so around 240,000 square km, and that would cover almost all of the decision makers, wealthy people, politicians, supply chain centers, etc. Then there is the resulting civilization breakdown and weather conditions for the rest of the population.

jerlam 4y ago

You don't need to nuke every literal single square inch of the world to kill a majority of the population. Remove enough governments and the world will become anarchy. Destroy a lot of infrastructure and suddenly no goods, food, or water gets transported. Contaminate the sky and ground enough, and agriculture won't grow. If you live in some tiny corner of the world, off the grid, grow your own food, without any dependencies on the outside world, you might survive for a while. But it won't be the world we live in today.

jxramos 4y ago
Very true. I think I'm hung up on the discrepancy with animations around this topic I eventually came to realize were extremely exaggerated. Like I think I saw a cartoon where like a chunk of the earth was removed like a lobotomy sort of thing, a huge sector of mass. I realized much later that these bombs simply do not have that kind of power as terrible as they are. I also later realized that asteroids can do some major serious damage on a whole other magnitude beyond nukes. The size of an asteroid crater is way beyond the crater size of nukes * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Eart... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_Crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_Crater
- jxramos 4y ago
  Interestingly enough I can't make out the Tsar Bomba crater https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bomba+Zar/@73.5383394,54.7336004,1236m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x44f7639ffb29a117:0x688ce749fa62ac0b!8m2!3d73.5383394!4d54.7336004!16s%2Fg%2F11gnpvh2m1 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bomba+Zar/@73.5383394,54.7...
- namaria 4y ago
  The global effects of a nuclear war would be truly horrible. It's not just about the force of impact or blast radius or even how much land gets directly scorched. It's akin to a major chain volcanic eruption... A huge amount of particulate blocks the sun for decades and everything withers. There will be no post apocalyptic society. This is a major extinction event, an ecosystem wipe.

efficax 4y ago

don't neglect the fallout, and the nuclear winter

0xffff2 4y ago
Nuclear winter is largely a myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...

xrayarx 4y ago

https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/ https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-... There are about 13,000 nukes, 2000 are on alert, that means ready to be used at any time. Here is a US list of targets, there are also lists from Russia: https://futureoflife.org/resource/us-nuclear-targets/ https://futureoflife.org/resource/us-nuclear-targets/ There are of course secondary effects: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-war/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/devastating-effects-of-nu...