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> That said, it'd take far more than one bomb to take down a country, unless we are talking city states Hit the ten biggest metropolitan areas [1] with one nuk

> That said, it'd take far more than one bomb to take down a country, unless we are talking city states Hit the ten biggest metropolitan areas [1] with one nuke each and you'd hit about 88 million people and probably an even bigger share of all industry that isn't farming. The biggest problem is power transformers, there isn't much capacity in manufacturing them, it's already a bottleneck thanks to regular replacement and renewable energy / datacenter buildouts with 24+ months of lead time [2] - now imagine a significant war related impact, the lead time would probably skyrocket to at least a decade. At least one source claims that the radius from a single device could be much, much larger [3], so with proper design to maximize an EMP (which even Starfish Prime wasn't intended to do), it is conceivable that dropping just two of these things over the East and West Coast respectively would cause immense damage. A Fallout-style nuclear war, I think, would be easier to recover from than even a small exchange of EMPs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropolitan_areas_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropo... [2] https://berlin.cwiemeevents.com/articles/new-normal-component-suppliers https://berlin.cwiemeevents.com/articles/new-normal-componen... [3] https://atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasstone-dolan/chapter11.html https://atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasst...

LargoLasskhyfv 20d ago
Why do you exclude farming? Even if the tractors and other machines would still work, where would the harvest go under such circumstances? By which means? Think about how industrialized all that shit is meanwhile, with 'precision agronomy' by means of GPS, and so on? And as you said yourself: Transformers. Cooling for perishable stuff without electricity? Wanna rely on some Amish with horsedrawn carts? Edit: Will the stocks of fertilizer last long enough, before some normalcy sets in again?
- mschuster91 20d ago
  Many farmers still have really old diesel tractors around. These things run fully mechanical, sans the starter motor maybe. If there is one thing farmers are good at, it's in-field improvised repairs. Refrigeration is mostly an issue with meat and milk, but eh, humans have managed to do fine for millennia without it. Fertilizer however, oh boy, that will be a nightmare. We can get by now that we know about stuff like nitrogen fixers or the beneficial effects of livestock like chicken, but it requires a serious effort to rethink mindsets.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 20d ago
    You know that most of the chickens we have won't make it for long, outside?¹ Because they are all highly 'optimized' breeds? Even coming with a handbook for that breed, several hundred pages long. Defining exactly what to feed when in which amounts and intervals, but also temperature and lighting. Where again does one get that stuff, when everything is chaos? Could more normal, robust ones be bred and distributed fast enough to compensate? In the required amounts? ¹As folks from PETA and the likes have discovered when freeing them, several times in multiple places. Beginning since at least two decades ago, meanwhile.
  - wat10000 20d ago
    I doubt farmers have enough spare pre-electronics equipment sitting around to run the entire farm at the same scale. I'm sure they could improvise a way to continue farming, but output would be substantially impacted. Humanity managed to do fine for millennia by existing in a state of frequent malnutrition and a not insignificant number of deaths from starvation. And it was never in a world with the population density we have today.

LargoLasskhyfv 20d ago

Why do you exclude farming? Even if the tractors and other machines would still work, where would the harvest go under such circumstances? By which means? Think about how industrialized all that shit is meanwhile, with 'precision agronomy' by means of GPS, and so on? And as you said yourself: Transformers. Cooling for perishable stuff without electricity? Wanna rely on some Amish with horsedrawn carts? Edit: Will the stocks of fertilizer last long enough, before some normalcy sets in again?

mschuster91 20d ago
Many farmers still have really old diesel tractors around. These things run fully mechanical, sans the starter motor maybe. If there is one thing farmers are good at, it's in-field improvised repairs. Refrigeration is mostly an issue with meat and milk, but eh, humans have managed to do fine for millennia without it. Fertilizer however, oh boy, that will be a nightmare. We can get by now that we know about stuff like nitrogen fixers or the beneficial effects of livestock like chicken, but it requires a serious effort to rethink mindsets.
- LargoLasskhyfv 20d ago
  You know that most of the chickens we have won't make it for long, outside?¹ Because they are all highly 'optimized' breeds? Even coming with a handbook for that breed, several hundred pages long. Defining exactly what to feed when in which amounts and intervals, but also temperature and lighting. Where again does one get that stuff, when everything is chaos? Could more normal, robust ones be bred and distributed fast enough to compensate? In the required amounts? ¹As folks from PETA and the likes have discovered when freeing them, several times in multiple places. Beginning since at least two decades ago, meanwhile.
- wat10000 20d ago
  I doubt farmers have enough spare pre-electronics equipment sitting around to run the entire farm at the same scale. I'm sure they could improvise a way to continue farming, but output would be substantially impacted. Humanity managed to do fine for millennia by existing in a state of frequent malnutrition and a not insignificant number of deaths from starvation. And it was never in a world with the population density we have today.