What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI.
I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly. So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse....full stop. Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single person theoretically dies....as in the AGI apocalypse fantasy land scenario....so let's not worry too much.
I wrote this post, and the point is to improve discussion of societal risks. As others have pointed out, nuclear war doesn't have to kill everyone to be extremely bad and worth avoiding. I spend a lot of my time thinking about risks from nuclear and biological weapons, and downplaying these risks is not my purpose.
One problem with assuming nuclear war kills everyone is that this discourages anyone from preparing for potential nuclear wars. While of course we should try to prevent it, we should also try to mitigate the consequences in the even a war does occur!
Climate change has also been billed by some as a near-term extinction event. That isn’t true. When the public catches on they throw out the baby with the bathwater.
To get the risk back in perspective, it’s necessary to first disabuse ourselves of the hyperbolic harm.
Well, at a certain point it changes the geopolitical calculus. Not that nuclear war should ever be entered into lightly. But guaranteed human extinction pretty much rules out any and all justification. In the most anti-nuclear paradigms, even second-strike is off the table, because it only exacerbates nuclear winter.
Whereas if nuclear war is winnable, as Pentagon strategists have been saying since the 1950s, then first nuclear strike should probably still be on the table for certain extreme geopolitical situations.
So, the question seems pretty relevant in that it's a major determinant in terms of setting optimal military doctrine.
Absolute panic is not the best response, even to a civilization ending event. Calm rational understanding is required to evaluate the true nature of the threat. Not to downplay it but purely to understand it. No one is saying disarmament is less critical. Please be willing to examine a truth that might counter a narrative that can be used to motivate the world in a positive direction. To do so should not be seen as herecy. We live in very tribal times please do not assume someone pointing out an inconvenient truth is opposed to everything you believe in.
Civilisation can be rebuilt. Focus on existential threats over far more likely civilisation collapse threats is done by those who view unrealised potential as loss. So it’s 7 billion humans vs the trillions that could exist if we keep spreading and growing and start colonising other planets.
Here’s a good review/summary by a rationalist of a book on the topic by someone who if not a rationalist (I don’t actually know) was at least instrumental in starting the effective altruism movement which is rationalist adjacent.
Standard issue "rationalist" flex: pick a controversial topic, take a contrarian (or at least apparently contrarian) position, argue it in some creative way.
Bonus points if it treads close to some socially or politically taboo topic while avoiding anything that goes directly for it. Being overtly inflammatory and divisive is for low-brow YouTubers. High brow rationalists only hint at the possible controversial implications.
* Also YouTuber could be translated as "you are a potato."
In the context of civilization collapse, I think the author is overestimating how likely it is that people will be able to figure out subsistence farming using only locally available materials before they starve. Does anyone on Earth still do that, i.e. with no reliance on materials shipped in from elsewhere?
I've noticed that contemporary tech people (or at least the richer ones) have a cultural tick that leads them to deny or minimize the importance of real problems that don't involve shiny new technology. By way of examples:
Microsoft destroying YouTube-DL: Problem.
Amazon exploiting its non-tech workforce: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bitcoin's energy use: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Macs not running third party code: Problem.
Nuclear war: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Global climate change: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Future risk of AI paperclip maximizers: Problem.
Current danger of businesses operating as human-powered paperclip mazimixers: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It adds to our growing collection of factoids. Not everything needs to be useful. At least the article arrived at its conclusion without any Bayes theater.
I guess its the same point that drove Xeno to demonstrate that he was so much much more rational than the average Greek his contribution to the history of thought was a set of arguments that motion was impossible.
Possibly with added profit motive. Say what you like about nuclear bombs actually being real, they won't torture infinite numbers of clones of you if you don't donate to Yudowsky's AI research institute.
Civilizational Collapse is something totally different from extinction and it's actually something very important to concern ourselves over because it's on the cards, i.e. a possible outcome we should probably be thinking about and planning for.
If it were to happen, a lot of people would accept the new reality and bear it, people are resilient.
If nothing else, and I think there is something else, it provides intellectual exploration and discovery, which is both fun and an excellent way of expanding knowledge and understanding.
If such things are not for you, then that's cool, but for those with a curious mind the point of such things is self-evident.
The rationalists of lesswrong.com are fairly cult-like, and have weird obsessions about AGI and other issues. (Look up "Roko's Basilisk" for some real examples of how detached from reality their thinking can easily get.
In our everyday ethics, an accident that kills 2 people is about twice as bad as an accident that kills 1 person. So we can use linear assumptions for evaluating safety measures like seatbelts and vaccines.
In the study of existential risk, killing all the people is much, much worse than killing half the people. Because if you integrate over all the people that will ever live, our descendants potentially spreading around the galaxy, killing all of them zeros out all future happiness. Killing half will only reduce population for a century or two.
Full scale nuclear war means big cities will be bombed and millions of people die. What civilizational collapse are you talking about? The lack of Hollywood movies and absence of the NYSE?
This is just an argument against a straw man. Nuclear war, is bad, any mass killing is bad, any society collapse is bad.
It means actual prolongated suffering for most humans.
Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome, I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse.
It's like the back talk against climate warming, trying to down play it as a non extinction event. Well that's true, We're not killing the planet, we're not even causing human extinction, we're just building a really bad future for our children.
Ofcourse people born into that future would see it as the norm, but we make decision from our view point, and the norm can be terrible when taken in to context.
But I digress, my point is that the rational community seems to have a smarty pants mentality, taking all rhetoric at face value, and usually creating very serious discussions that usually just sidetrack from the important issues.
It's no strawman. Fiction often depicts nuclear wars as near-extinction events with very few human survivors. Going by similar topics, it's safe to assume many people consider this a realistic scenario beyond just fiction.
The real strawman is in your comment though.
Who said nuclear war wouldn't be bad, just because it likely won't cause human extinction? Most people agree that regular wars are bad, and there never was any threat of extinction with them.
> But I digress, my point is that the rational community seems to have a smarty pants mentality
No, the rational community has a rational mentality. One can be against war without claiming it would be the end of the world. Hitting your toe is also not the end of the world but you probably still consider it a bad thing to happen.
Spot on.
In the entire scenario it seems we forget recent pandemic, and what happen few days in.
In the case of nuclear war exchange there won't be any toilet paper, period. :)
Joking aside, we forget how hooked we are to industrial society. Any such event would mean world without shops, internet, new version of anything... no progress... for at least one human lifetime. Back to stone age.
Everything we are used to and enjoy (technology wise), would simply seas to exist, and it is questionable how long would it take to build knowledge and start a new, especially when simple necessities as food and water are only priority.
Thank Darwin we had ancestors with thicker skin and stronger will.
Nobody wants nuclear war or to live in the aftermath of it.
However, should it ever happen I intend to do everything in my power to survive. Early humans endured terrible hardships so we had the privilege of building great comfortable societies. It's our duty to the future to keep carrying the flame.
> It's like the back talk against climate warming, trying to down play it as a non extinction event.
It's quite similar to invoking freedom of speech in order to defend a position -- "Oh, it's not _literally illegal_ to say this? That sure sounds like a compelling argument to me"
> Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome
Wtf? Strong disagree. Extinction is the end. Anything else is of course preferable as it means live goes on and civilization has the chance to rise again.
> I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse.
That is just because because you're weak, your bloodline is weak, and you will not survive the winter without central heating and Uber Eats. But other people are more resilient.
It argues against a 'straw man' that I personally have talked with people that think that nuclear war would certainly destroy all of humankind.
As well, its not arguing against the nuclear war being Super-Bad, the conclusion even talks about an idea for making nuclear war less dangerous so that it is less likely to kill off as many people.
> Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome, I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse.
I do happen to disagree with this, but that is a personal decision and I understand why you would prefer that.
Humans are hard bastards to kill. The biggest and best tool is the one between our ears and the capability to draw a blank expression in the midst of hell is undoubtedly our best asset. It would take much more than nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity. We are the cockroaches of the mammals. The virus of kingdom animalia.
>multiple that by 14,000 warheads, and we get 112 million km². That's a lot! It's still less than the 510.1 million km² of earth's land mass, but it's a lot more than the ~10.2 million km² of urban space. Presumably this is enough to cover every human habitation, so in principle, it might be possible to kill everyone with radiation from existing nuclear weapons.
While there is ~500m km2 of land on the planet, only about 60m km2 is habitable (less desert, poles, mountains etc). Not inhabited, habitable. So yes that's not only sufficient to wipe out all population centers, it's double the amount needed to wipe out all locations on earth capable of sustaining human life.
The ecosystem destruction alone, let alone spectrum social, ecological, agricultural and atmospheric effects that total nuclear war would cause, pretty much guarantee a wipeout of large mammals from the planet a-la the Cretaceous-Paleogene exctinction. In fairness, the impact from that event was equivalent to 100 million of the largest bombs we have ever made, detonated in one spot. But it's destruction was global, total, and immediate. The survivors of the first hours of a total nuclear war won't have such a quick death to look forward to.
When I think about nuclear war leading to human extinction, the first thing that comes to mind isn't any of those 3 mechanisms, but rather economic damage. Not economic damage as in "I lost my retirement investment," but as in "we can't produce enough food." I'd be worried about even much smaller and less deadly nuclear wars leading to massive civil unrest and breakdowns in large-scale social institutions and economies. Mass starvation would be the biggest killer. But I suppose that still wouldn't likely lead to absolute human extinction, but it could certainly lead to a future civilization that is largely unrecognizable to us humans accustomed to industrial or even agricultural societies.
Today, the 1950's era "Duck and Cover" drills [1] are sometimes laughed at. However, in the event of an actual nuclear blast, some simple preparation would save lives. When a bright flash lights up the sky, people indoors will naturally run to the nearest window to see what happened. This is the wrong thing to do, because the bright flash of an explosion is followed a few seconds later by a pressure wave, turning the window glass into a fast-moving cloud of shrapnel.
Just getting under a desk or table away from any windows improves your chances of survival. The advice is useful even if the flash is not caused by a nuclear weapon. Most of the injuries from the Chelyabinsk meteor [2] in 2013 were caused by window shrapnel.
Between the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first gulf war, and many more country-sized forest fire events, we've learned that Nuclear Winter is not a likely scenario. In fact, the very scientists who coined the term in the 1980s have backed away from it.
Nuclear war would be awful, and certainly the radioactive fallout would be bad, and the damage to thriving historical cities, not to mention the human toll. But extinction level? Unlikely.
One thing this pandemic has taught me is the resilience of the modern supply chain to huge unexpected disruption. It's much stronger in that dimension than I initially feared in early March.
What a lot of people seem to gloss over is that the southern hemisphere is, for the most part, blissfully uninvolved in nuclear politics and unlikely to be targeted. Global wind patterns would dump most of the fallout in the northern hemisphere. Google and Facebook would be gone because there are too many primary data centers in the northern hemisphere but Wikipedia might not even go down. Humanity on the historical level would notice a strange blip.
Not discounting the terrible loss of life (I'd be dead along with everyone I know and love) but lesswrong is generally concerned with existential risk, not whether global GDP will be X in 100 years.
What we don't really understand is the lethality of the second and third order effects. People who can't be fed (because industry has collapsed) don't just sit and die peacefully. Foraging is unlikely to work, since our natural ecosystems are not large enough to support large-ish human populations and would soon be destroyed by overuse (damage to them from the actual nuclear war being beside the point). A huge immigration crisis in the rest of the world could have its own highly disastrous consequences.
Finally, I wonder how bad the effects on reproductive health would be from the various radiation effects be? Humans who had trouble reproducing, with a much degraded medical system might face further downstream problems from that. Same thing with animal species, which might cause more food troubles.
Point is, there is significant survival trouble just from a violent collapse of civilisation, that estimating the probability of human survival is fairly impossible. Finally, if humanity becomes so critically weakened, even (by today's standards) minor disasters might become extinction events.
> The nuclear winter model at its simplest: Nuclear detonations → Fires in cities → Firestorms in cities → Lofted black carbon into the upper atmosphere → black carbon persists in upper atmosphere, reflecting sunlight and causes massive cooling
>
> Each step is required in order for the effect to occur.
Why cities in particular? Are cities more flammable or more likely to produce the wrong kind of smoke than, say, a forest fire? (I'm assuming there exist at least some military targets in heavily forested areas.)
Also, is the nuclear blast itself a key component in the effect? For instance, does the mushroom cloud create an updraft larger than what you'd have with a regular forest fire?
Note: I wrote this post and cross-posted it to the EA Forum, and there are some good comments there discussing the longer-term risks of nuclear war that I didn't include in the original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mxKwP2PFtg8ABwzug/...
It may not wipe out human life, but it will severely disrupt the natural processes of human beings for a while, especially those who remain close to the nuclear zone.
This may be unconventional but if an exchange ever happens I predict there will be between 0 and 1 warhead detonated
The people tasked with the counterattack will like their predecessors when falsely convinced of an impending attack, fail to counterattack because their obligations to humanity are greater than they are to a nation.
A follow-up attack from the belligerent will be political suicide and there would be great political pressure from the belligerents own citizens and the global population at large to somehow disable or destroy any inflight warheads.
I thought I had read somewhere during the Norwegian rocket incident that US officials encouraged Russia to take necessary action on the rocket if they believed it to be an accidentally fired offensive warhead but I may be thinking of another time.
Anyways, despite the blustering of MAD and first strike and all the planning of how it would go down, I think the hard evidence of how humans have responded to close calls in the past 70 years points to zero - one detonations followed by global dismantling and abolition.
An interesting logical property about this prediction is either it's right or there will be no evidence it was ever made.
Can we get an "official" remark on what specifically causes the opinionated editorialization of some titles with a question mark? I know I'm not the only one who finds it off-putting.
Does there exist any scholarship that argues that nuclear war could cause human extinction, or is this just a refutation of a sort of folk knowledge that "obviously" nuclear war could lead to extinction? The author engages a bit with the scholarship surrounding the idea of nuclear winter, which is nice, but reference to an argument in favor of the possibility of extinction, it's tough for me as lay person to judge whether the author is refuting the best case for extinction, or just a straw man.
I believe the statement was more political than actual science. Let's not blow the world up ok? Radiation is bad. Let's just agree to keep some semblance of respect for human life.
Nice to know, but lets not test this theory out. Maybe the odds of human extinction from nuclear war isn't 100%, but the odds of human suffering from nuclear war is 100%.
Very often the problem doesn't seem to be the disaster itself, it's how unprepared we are to deal with it and the fact it's economically unfeasible. People can't just move to a healthy, habitable planet nearby because there is no such (known?) thing.
Think about how devastating nuclear war would be on our lifestyle, when things such as viruses and a higher frequency of cold and heat waves are already disrupting it.
To really stand a chance of killing everyone you need to contemplate much larger weapon designs - inevitably Edward Teller did just that with 1Gt and 10Gt designs:
I'm not sure I agree with the arguments against this article. Obviously we want to avoid it as much as possible but it's still interesting from a philosophical point of view to know it will not be the extinction of all human life. For me it seems very likely there will be some nuclear conflict at some point in the next 10,000+ years, and it's nice to know some fragment of humanity will survive
[+] [-] codekilla|5 years ago|reply
I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly. So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse....full stop. Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single person theoretically dies....as in the AGI apocalypse fantasy land scenario....so let's not worry too much.
[+] [-] landfish|5 years ago|reply
One problem with assuming nuclear war kills everyone is that this discourages anyone from preparing for potential nuclear wars. While of course we should try to prevent it, we should also try to mitigate the consequences in the even a war does occur!
I've written more about risks from nuclear war here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rn2duwRP2pqvLqGCE/does-the-u... and here: https://jeffreyladish.com/one-hundred-opinions-on-nuclear-wa...
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|5 years ago|reply
Counter hyperbole.
Climate change has also been billed by some as a near-term extinction event. That isn’t true. When the public catches on they throw out the baby with the bathwater.
To get the risk back in perspective, it’s necessary to first disabuse ourselves of the hyperbolic harm.
[+] [-] dcolkitt|5 years ago|reply
Whereas if nuclear war is winnable, as Pentagon strategists have been saying since the 1950s, then first nuclear strike should probably still be on the table for certain extreme geopolitical situations.
So, the question seems pretty relevant in that it's a major determinant in terms of setting optimal military doctrine.
[+] [-] xupybd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leetcrew|5 years ago|reply
if nothing else, it paints a more accurate picture of the issue. is there something wrong with that?
[+] [-] austhrow743|5 years ago|reply
Here’s a good review/summary by a rationalist of a book on the topic by someone who if not a rationalist (I don’t actually know) was at least instrumental in starting the effective altruism movement which is rationalist adjacent.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/01/book-review-the-precip...
[+] [-] api|5 years ago|reply
Bonus points if it treads close to some socially or politically taboo topic while avoiding anything that goes directly for it. Being overtly inflammatory and divisive is for low-brow YouTubers. High brow rationalists only hint at the possible controversial implications.
* Also YouTuber could be translated as "you are a potato."
[+] [-] throwhypothetic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lainga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|5 years ago|reply
Each China, and India has more people, and potentially more troop, than USA, and Russia combined.
As I wrote before, the next third power in any massive war has an extreme incentive to stay neutral, to take the lead, or may well be land, after.
You think that Xi, and Modi will stay still at the opportunity to do the biggest land grab in history?
[+] [-] bleepblorp|5 years ago|reply
Microsoft destroying YouTube-DL: Problem.
Amazon exploiting its non-tech workforce: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bitcoin's energy use: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Macs not running third party code: Problem.
Nuclear war: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Global climate change: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Future risk of AI paperclip maximizers: Problem.
Current danger of businesses operating as human-powered paperclip mazimixers: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Etc.
[+] [-] analog31|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notahacker|5 years ago|reply
Possibly with added profit motive. Say what you like about nuclear bombs actually being real, they won't torture infinite numbers of clones of you if you don't donate to Yudowsky's AI research institute.
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
If it were to happen, a lot of people would accept the new reality and bear it, people are resilient.
[+] [-] sfg|5 years ago|reply
If such things are not for you, then that's cool, but for those with a curious mind the point of such things is self-evident.
[+] [-] user-the-name|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reitzensteinm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlb|5 years ago|reply
In the study of existential risk, killing all the people is much, much worse than killing half the people. Because if you integrate over all the people that will ever live, our descendants potentially spreading around the galaxy, killing all of them zeros out all future happiness. Killing half will only reduce population for a century or two.
[+] [-] uCantCauseUCant|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JohnHaugeland|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LudwigNagasena|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mola|5 years ago|reply
It's like the back talk against climate warming, trying to down play it as a non extinction event. Well that's true, We're not killing the planet, we're not even causing human extinction, we're just building a really bad future for our children.
Ofcourse people born into that future would see it as the norm, but we make decision from our view point, and the norm can be terrible when taken in to context.
But I digress, my point is that the rational community seems to have a smarty pants mentality, taking all rhetoric at face value, and usually creating very serious discussions that usually just sidetrack from the important issues.
[+] [-] DarkWiiPlayer|5 years ago|reply
The real strawman is in your comment though.
Who said nuclear war wouldn't be bad, just because it likely won't cause human extinction? Most people agree that regular wars are bad, and there never was any threat of extinction with them.
> But I digress, my point is that the rational community seems to have a smarty pants mentality
No, the rational community has a rational mentality. One can be against war without claiming it would be the end of the world. Hitting your toe is also not the end of the world but you probably still consider it a bad thing to happen.
[+] [-] NiceWayToDoIT|5 years ago|reply
In the case of nuclear war exchange there won't be any toilet paper, period. :)
Joking aside, we forget how hooked we are to industrial society. Any such event would mean world without shops, internet, new version of anything... no progress... for at least one human lifetime. Back to stone age. Everything we are used to and enjoy (technology wise), would simply seas to exist, and it is questionable how long would it take to build knowledge and start a new, especially when simple necessities as food and water are only priority.
[+] [-] tylerjwilk00|5 years ago|reply
Thank Darwin we had ancestors with thicker skin and stronger will.
Nobody wants nuclear war or to live in the aftermath of it.
However, should it ever happen I intend to do everything in my power to survive. Early humans endured terrible hardships so we had the privilege of building great comfortable societies. It's our duty to the future to keep carrying the flame.
[+] [-] formerly_proven|5 years ago|reply
It's quite similar to invoking freedom of speech in order to defend a position -- "Oh, it's not _literally illegal_ to say this? That sure sounds like a compelling argument to me"
[+] [-] ralfd|5 years ago|reply
Wtf? Strong disagree. Extinction is the end. Anything else is of course preferable as it means live goes on and civilization has the chance to rise again.
> I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse.
That is just because because you're weak, your bloodline is weak, and you will not survive the winter without central heating and Uber Eats. But other people are more resilient.
[+] [-] MinusGix|5 years ago|reply
> Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome, I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse.
I do happen to disagree with this, but that is a personal decision and I understand why you would prefer that.
[+] [-] vagrantJin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] FooHentai|5 years ago|reply
While there is ~500m km2 of land on the planet, only about 60m km2 is habitable (less desert, poles, mountains etc). Not inhabited, habitable. So yes that's not only sufficient to wipe out all population centers, it's double the amount needed to wipe out all locations on earth capable of sustaining human life.
The ecosystem destruction alone, let alone spectrum social, ecological, agricultural and atmospheric effects that total nuclear war would cause, pretty much guarantee a wipeout of large mammals from the planet a-la the Cretaceous-Paleogene exctinction. In fairness, the impact from that event was equivalent to 100 million of the largest bombs we have ever made, detonated in one spot. But it's destruction was global, total, and immediate. The survivors of the first hours of a total nuclear war won't have such a quick death to look forward to.
[+] [-] tshaddox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwneal|5 years ago|reply
Just getting under a desk or table away from any windows improves your chances of survival. The advice is useful even if the flash is not caused by a nuclear weapon. Most of the injuries from the Chelyabinsk meteor [2] in 2013 were caused by window shrapnel.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60&t=81s
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
[+] [-] ghostcluster|5 years ago|reply
Nuclear war would be awful, and certainly the radioactive fallout would be bad, and the damage to thriving historical cities, not to mention the human toll. But extinction level? Unlikely.
One thing this pandemic has taught me is the resilience of the modern supply chain to huge unexpected disruption. It's much stronger in that dimension than I initially feared in early March.
[+] [-] dimitar|5 years ago|reply
- Quite a few nuclear weapons will be spent on military sites, which are often in low-population density areas.
- Quite a few nuclear weapons will be used to destroy other nuclear weapons.
- Nuclear fratricide, or nukes from the same side damaging each other in ill-coordinated explosions
- Air defence destroying at least some missiles and especially planes.
- Some bombs will be duds and fail to detonate due to bad maintenance.
[+] [-] benlivengood|5 years ago|reply
Not discounting the terrible loss of life (I'd be dead along with everyone I know and love) but lesswrong is generally concerned with existential risk, not whether global GDP will be X in 100 years.
[+] [-] gampleman|5 years ago|reply
Finally, I wonder how bad the effects on reproductive health would be from the various radiation effects be? Humans who had trouble reproducing, with a much degraded medical system might face further downstream problems from that. Same thing with animal species, which might cause more food troubles.
Point is, there is significant survival trouble just from a violent collapse of civilisation, that estimating the probability of human survival is fairly impossible. Finally, if humanity becomes so critically weakened, even (by today's standards) minor disasters might become extinction events.
[+] [-] elihu|5 years ago|reply
Why cities in particular? Are cities more flammable or more likely to produce the wrong kind of smoke than, say, a forest fire? (I'm assuming there exist at least some military targets in heavily forested areas.)
Also, is the nuclear blast itself a key component in the effect? For instance, does the mushroom cloud create an updraft larger than what you'd have with a regular forest fire?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] landfish|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattbgates|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristopolous|5 years ago|reply
The people tasked with the counterattack will like their predecessors when falsely convinced of an impending attack, fail to counterattack because their obligations to humanity are greater than they are to a nation.
A follow-up attack from the belligerent will be political suicide and there would be great political pressure from the belligerents own citizens and the global population at large to somehow disable or destroy any inflight warheads.
I thought I had read somewhere during the Norwegian rocket incident that US officials encouraged Russia to take necessary action on the rocket if they believed it to be an accidentally fired offensive warhead but I may be thinking of another time.
Anyways, despite the blustering of MAD and first strike and all the planning of how it would go down, I think the hard evidence of how humans have responded to close calls in the past 70 years points to zero - one detonations followed by global dismantling and abolition.
An interesting logical property about this prediction is either it's right or there will be no evidence it was ever made.
[+] [-] dTal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Imnimo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gabereiser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disown|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl95|5 years ago|reply
Think about how devastating nuclear war would be on our lifestyle, when things such as viruses and a higher frequency of cold and heat waves are already disrupting it.
[+] [-] arethuza|5 years ago|reply
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-big...
NB That's not a typo, I did mean gigaton
[+] [-] dmarchand90|5 years ago|reply