Potential nuclear scenario

[Dystopiary]

There's been a lot of speculation about whether Putin would use nukes and what might be the response in the Ukraine and the Russian invasion thread.
This led to a discussion about what that might entail and scenarios that could arise.

So what might happen if there was a nuclear war - how far would powers with nukes go, what nukes would be used and how, what damage would be done, and could people survive?

 

[maomao]

Humans would survive. Threads is a little over the top, I doubt people would forget how to speak but severe ptsd would be widespread and without much remaining medical infrastructure the population would continue to plummet for decades.

In current scenarios large parts of the world would escape unscathed. In the 60s the yanks had everything aimed at Russia AND China and would have launched the lot regardless of the nature of the trigger. Bit unfair on the Chinese I always thought. Currently they might profit from a nuked Russia as it would be ripe for colonisation.

 

[Dystopiary]

I'd have thought the physical effects would be ongoing for generations with birth defects and cancer.

 

[existentialist]

Given that things like Chernobyl and Fukushima seem to have been a lot "dirtier" in terms of long-lasting isotopes than most airburst bombs would be (leaving aside the appalling "cobalt bomb"), it's quite possible that our projections of just how irradiated the place would be might be over-pessimistic. Time was when we'd have been talking about a Chernobyl event as utterly catastrophic across a wide area, but while it's been awful (and will continue to be) locally, the result has been comparatively mild increases in the kind of cancers associated with radioactive contamination.

 

[2hats]

a lot "dirtier" in terms of long-lasting nucleotides

Presumably due to the mutagenic rate?

 

[tommers]

So what we're saying is it's more mutually assured inconvenience.

 

[existentialist]

Presumably due to the mutagenic rate?

Have I used the wrong word? <googles frantically>

Edited. Brainfart.

 

[A380]

If we lose this industrial society I think it would be hard for humanity to get it back as we have probably used up all the coal and iron ore you could get out of the ground with hand tools.

On the other hand I could launch a range of hand made badges with the CND symbol and "I told you so" on them. So there is that.

 

[DotCommunist]

if enough crap goes up to cause a nuclear winter then 2-3 years of no crops is not going to be fun. Tinned beer starts tasting off about 14 months in. You have to wonder how many existing tipping points for ecological collapse would be rammed straight through by it all. I get the impression a lot of delicate systems are overtaxed already. Not the apocalypse but the beginning of a slow decline into species senescence and finally Caesar and his apes take over.

 

[2hats]

Have I used the wrong word? <googles frantically>

Edited. Brainfart.

Still the wrong word. The longest lasting isotopes are precisely that because they are stable, ie not radioactive. The word you seek is radionuclides.

 

[maomao]

I'd have thought the physical effects would be ongoing for generations with birth defects and cancer.

Most birth defects in Japan were confined to those who were embryos at the time the bombs were dropped. Massive rise in leukaemia and particularly childhood leukaemia. But it doesn't seem to have caused birth defects or disease in kids born after the bomb.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that we'd all be painlessly vapourised or something. That would be the case for people close enough to the blast but dying over the course of a couple of days from a combination of burns and radiation sickness, while watching your friends and family expire in pain and with no way of finding out whether humanity has survived sounds a particularly miserable way to expire.

 

[existentialist]

Still the wrong word. The longest lasting isotopes are precisely that because they are stable, ie not radioactive. The word you seek is radionuclides.

Thank you. I'm not at my best today

 

[Supine]

So what we're saying is it's more mutually assured inconvenience.

I’d suggest that’s underplaying it a bit

 

[mojo pixy]

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that we'd all be painlessly vapourised or something. That would be the case for people close enough to the blast but dying over the course of a couple of days from a combination of burns and radiation sickness, while watching your friends and family expire in pain and with no way of finding out whether humanity has survived sounds a particularly miserable way to expire.

Disease would be a far worse enemy than it is now. I expect worse in the medium-term than radiation sickness or injuries like burns too, and for more people. Food supply and medicine supply suddenly very limited, injuries and conditions currently treatable with antibiotics would take a much heavier toll than they do now. And clean water - especially given the state of the UK's water infrastructure already - would be harder to get, especially in what's left of cities.

Rats would flourish, flies too. Luckily we've all been stockpiling alcohol gel, so we can at least have clean hands - because dirty hands means infection, food poisoning and disease.

That's my shard of despair, I guess we're each allowed one

 

[Dystopiary]

If we lose this industrial society I think it would be hard for humanity to get it back as we have probably used up all the coal and iron ore you could get out of the ground with hand tools.

On the other hand I could launch a range of hand made badges with the CND symbol and "I told you so" on them. So there is that.

C*nts Never Did listen.

 

[Dystopiary]

Would we still have internet?

 

[Pickman's model]

Would we still have internet?

we'd be using tin cans connected by string

 

[maomao]

Disease would be a far worse enemy than it is now. I expect worse in the medium-term than radiation sickness or injuries like burns too, and for more people.

People already dependant on medication might as well just give up. Even my easily treatable chronic reflux would become a major problem. My youngest wouldn't be able to access the drugs that are hopefully saving his life.

 

[kebabking]

we'd be using tin cans connected by string

At least the cans would glow in the dark, so it would be a bit like smartphones in the before time's...

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Humans would survive. Threads is a little over the top, I doubt people would forget how to speak but severe ptsd would be widespread and without much remaining medical infrastructure the population would continue to plummet for decades.

In current scenarios large parts of the world would escape unscathed. In the 60s the yanks had everything aimed at Russia AND China and would have launched the lot regardless of the nature of the trigger. Bit unfair on the Chinese I always thought. Currently they might profit from a nuked Russia as it would be ripe for colonisation.

It all depends on the size of any nuclear exchange. If really big then all kinds of other factors come into play. Nuclear plants around the world going into meltdown, or whatever. Storage facilities of all sorts becoming unmanaged and unmanageable, resulting in chemical escapes, fires, pollution incidents etc on a colossal scale. Nuclear winter perhaps. Crop failures. Local wars and societal breakdown. Tsunamis? Why not, depending on where bombs get dropped? Accelerated global warming? Quite possibly. Economic dislocation on a worldwide scale. Large parts of the world might escape the immediate impact of an all-out nuclear war, but it could just be the start of a further catastrophic decline.

 

[Nylock]

Would we still have internet?

No. At least not the internet we're currently familiar with...

 

[existentialist]

Would we still have internet?

That's the thing about the precariousness of our society. Even if we kept all the information to rebuild technology (assuming everything went), we'd have to build machines to build bigger machines, to build better machines to design better computers that could design the even better ones...we'd basically have to fast-forward (har) the last 100 years of technological development, just to get back to somewhere near where we started from.

So no, no internet. Not for a good few decades, at least.

 

[2hats]

Most birth defects in Japan were confined to those who were embryos at the time the bombs were dropped. Massive rise in leukaemia and particularly childhood leukaemia. But it doesn't seem to have caused birth defects or disease in kids born after the bomb.

A significant dose is delivered as prompt radiation direct from the moment of ignition and the initial fireball (gamma and neutron), though many people that close will succumb to blast and thermal effects anyway. Another dose contribution, the residual radiation, arises from the radioactive ash (bomb components and adjacent material in the immediate environment that is sucked up into and incinerated, or transmutated, in the fireball). That tails off over the following days/weeks and deposition is heavily influenced by the weather. Longer term (ensuing years) effects for those who did not witness the event directly can be hard to distinguish from other environmental risks (chemical, pollution, lifestyle, etc).

 

[mojo pixy]

People already dependant on medication might as well just give up. Even my easily treatable chronic reflux would become a major problem. My youngest wouldn't be able to access the drugs that are hopefully saving his life.

Liked but not liked obviously

Infancy and of course childbirth would return to being pretty rough and dangerous all round, again medium term.

On the err upside, from the less affected nations of the world there may possibly be a lot of aid. Boots would quickly be on other feet, so to speak. We'd be the refugees, potentially. There's a thought.

 

[Dystopiary]

we'd be using tin cans connected by string

No. At least not the internet we're currently familiar with...

That's the thing about the precariousness of our society. Even if we kept all the information to rebuild technology (assuming everything went), we'd have to build machines to build bigger machines, to build better machines to design better computers that could design the even better ones...we'd basically have to fast-forward (har) the last 100 years of technological development, just to get back to somewhere near where we started from.

So no, no internet. Not for a good few decades, at least.

Bah.

 

[A380]

we'd be using tin cans connected by string

"You've got an empty can? You rich bastard."

 

[maomao]

Anyway, this is all what any nuclear holocaust might be like. How might a nuclear war between the US and Russia actually play out?

Putin uses half a dozen low yield nukes, say 5kt each, to take out key UA positions planning to send his zombie army of drafted troops through to mop up. Biden responds as suggested by wiping out the black sea fleet and some military bases close to the border. Assuming this doesn't generate an automatic response launching their Torpols at Europe what happens next? Does anyone think the Russians pack up and go home?

 

[Nylock]

Either an escalatory tactical strike against Ramstein and forward bases in Poland or equally massive conventional response against the same. Transatlantic communications cables get severed. French HVAC lines into the UK also destroyed. Any undersea infrastructure in the North Sea equally fucked up. Bears in the air to show they mean business

 

[maomao]

Well they do seem to have kept their air force out of harm's way but it's surely still dwarfed by NATO's air power? On paper at least, the USA's combined air forces are three times the size of Russia's. At the point of all out air war with the west then it's nukes or nothing surely? What about that plan to nuke a Nato member and hope that article five doesn't hold? They keep saying the UK on those nutty Russian chat shows but surely not the one country with an independent nuclear force?

 

[souljacker]

That's the thing about the precariousness of our society. Even if we kept all the information to rebuild technology (assuming everything went), we'd have to build machines to build bigger machines, to build better machines to design better computers that could design the even better ones...we'd basically have to fast-forward (har) the last 100 years of technological development, just to get back to somewhere near where we started from.

So no, no internet. Not for a good few decades, at least.

The internet was designed to keep working in the event of a nuclear strike so if we (meaning the human race) still had some power, it would still work. Whether we (meaning me and you) would have it and if we would have access to urban or bbc news for instance is far less clear but would depend on how much local infrastructure had survived the initial blast(s).