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The trouble with the alternate worlds (and the very similar quantum suicide) idea, is that there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for th

The trouble with the alternate worlds (and the very similar quantum suicide) idea, is that there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population). Why haven't we seen any of those paths?

smacktoward 11y ago
> there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population) Not with modern thermonuclear weapons, there isn't. There's no hole you can dig deep enough to save you from one of those going off right next to you.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Most people wouldn't be right next to one going off, though. Even at the peak of the cold war, pushing The Button wouldn't have killed everybody. Probably not even a majority of humanity. It would have been righteously apocalyptic, and wrecked a good chunk of civilization, and made all other wars before it look puny and laughable, but there would be plenty of survivors, especially outside the countries involved in the war.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    The bombs wouldn't have killed everybody, sure. But the fallout, and the famines due to agricultural productivity collapse, and the reduced disease resistance due to malnutrition, and...
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Certainly many more would die. But many more would live. There are lots of low-tech, poor farmers out there who wouldn't be too affected.
      - smacktoward 11y ago
        As is probably obvious by now, I don't share your optimism on that score. Even peasants using Stone Age farming techniques would be affected if a radioactive dust cloud blows over their fields, or if soot thrown into the atmosphere causes a nuclear winter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter) that prevents their crops from getting the sunlight they need to grow. Livestock can unknowingly eat contaminated feed or water and produce contaminated meat and milk. Diseases that run rampant through the weakened immune systems of populations closer to the blasts can mutate more quickly into strains that threaten anyone. Etc. So even if you're on the other side of the world when the bombs fall, peacefully farming with a stone plow, there's lots of ways those bombs can ruin your day too. There's a great novel from the '80s called Warday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday) that explores these themes in more detail. It's set in the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear war -- limited meaning, in the case of the US, that the only targets struck by Russian missiles are New York City, San Antonio, and the Midwestern missile fields. (Some of the missiles aimed at New York even miss, exploding out at sea.) Most Americans never see a mushroom cloud and come through the one-day war without a scratch. But the nuclear exchange, "limited" as it is, sets off a chain of ecological and technological consequences that after five years have killed many more people than the bombs did.
        mikeash 11y ago
        I'm a big fan of that book. Not only is it really well written, but as far as I can tell it's pretty accurate as well. The reason for my "optimism" (if you can call it that... everything is relative, I suppose) is that it gets harder and harder to kill people as the numbers increase. Maybe some disease arises which replicates the Spanish Flu or Black Death, and among a weakened population it kills off 50% of them. Well, you still have 50% left. As the population declines and civilization collapses, diseases will have a much harder time spreading, so it becomes self-limiting. Contamination will mostly not affect your day-to-day life outside of certain areas. It'll definitely affect your ability to die of old age, and have healthy children, but people as a whole will survive. I imagine there would not be a particularly large number of survivors in the US after an all-out nuclear strike. But people in places like South America wouldn't be affected all that greatly aside from the instantaneous collapse of global trade and communications.
lmm 11y ago
What's the expected number of person-minutes of life among people surviving a nuclear war? I'm guessing a lot less than for people surviving the absence of one.

smacktoward 11y ago

> there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population) Not with modern thermonuclear weapons, there isn't. There's no hole you can dig deep enough to save you from one of those going off right next to you.

mikeash 11y ago
Most people wouldn't be right next to one going off, though. Even at the peak of the cold war, pushing The Button wouldn't have killed everybody. Probably not even a majority of humanity. It would have been righteously apocalyptic, and wrecked a good chunk of civilization, and made all other wars before it look puny and laughable, but there would be plenty of survivors, especially outside the countries involved in the war.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  The bombs wouldn't have killed everybody, sure. But the fallout, and the famines due to agricultural productivity collapse, and the reduced disease resistance due to malnutrition, and...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Certainly many more would die. But many more would live. There are lots of low-tech, poor farmers out there who wouldn't be too affected.
    - smacktoward 11y ago
      As is probably obvious by now, I don't share your optimism on that score. Even peasants using Stone Age farming techniques would be affected if a radioactive dust cloud blows over their fields, or if soot thrown into the atmosphere causes a nuclear winter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter) that prevents their crops from getting the sunlight they need to grow. Livestock can unknowingly eat contaminated feed or water and produce contaminated meat and milk. Diseases that run rampant through the weakened immune systems of populations closer to the blasts can mutate more quickly into strains that threaten anyone. Etc. So even if you're on the other side of the world when the bombs fall, peacefully farming with a stone plow, there's lots of ways those bombs can ruin your day too. There's a great novel from the '80s called Warday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday) that explores these themes in more detail. It's set in the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear war -- limited meaning, in the case of the US, that the only targets struck by Russian missiles are New York City, San Antonio, and the Midwestern missile fields. (Some of the missiles aimed at New York even miss, exploding out at sea.) Most Americans never see a mushroom cloud and come through the one-day war without a scratch. But the nuclear exchange, "limited" as it is, sets off a chain of ecological and technological consequences that after five years have killed many more people than the bombs did.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        I'm a big fan of that book. Not only is it really well written, but as far as I can tell it's pretty accurate as well. The reason for my "optimism" (if you can call it that... everything is relative, I suppose) is that it gets harder and harder to kill people as the numbers increase. Maybe some disease arises which replicates the Spanish Flu or Black Death, and among a weakened population it kills off 50% of them. Well, you still have 50% left. As the population declines and civilization collapses, diseases will have a much harder time spreading, so it becomes self-limiting. Contamination will mostly not affect your day-to-day life outside of certain areas. It'll definitely affect your ability to die of old age, and have healthy children, but people as a whole will survive. I imagine there would not be a particularly large number of survivors in the US after an all-out nuclear strike. But people in places like South America wouldn't be affected all that greatly aside from the instantaneous collapse of global trade and communications.

lmm 11y ago

What's the expected number of person-minutes of life among people surviving a nuclear war? I'm guessing a lot less than for people surviving the absence of one.