I came across this recently by CS Lewis which I thought said it well:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
> If vile, selfish, psychopathic maniacs make the decision to end the world then so be it.
I am afraid it's not just the vile selfish psychopathic maniacs, but also the general population, incensed by the media. For example, one might have thought that if the avoidance of a nuclear war were people's priority number one, then the Western media (supposing Russia is the lost cause) would have demanded, every day and from every corner, that the leaders of their countries must avoid any escalatory steps regarding the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Europe. That people would be marching on the streets with slogans demanding restraint. But that's not what is happening. The voices repeatedly cautioning their audience about the danger of a nuclear war are few and far between — Tulsi, Tucker, Eric Weinstein — and they are treated as traitorous or crazy.
Dr. Strangelove : It would not be difficult, Mein Führer! Nuclear reactors could - heh, I'm sorry, Mr. President - nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could raised and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But, I would guess, that a dwelling space for several 100,000 of our people could easily be provided.
President Merkin Muffley : Well, I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down.
Dr. Strangelove : Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors of youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be vital that top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Heil! Actually, they would breed prodigiously, yeah? There would be much time and little to do. With a proper breeding techniques and a ratio of, say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could interact their way back to the present gross national product within, say, 20 years.
> Now imagine there have been hundreds of those “big ones.” That’s what even a “small” nuclear war would include.
Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe this is a matter of definitions, but this feels alarmist to me. I have to think that there are many believable scenarios (e.g., in Ukraine) where "only" one to ten nuclear detonations would be employed. That seems like a "small" nuclear war and while it would undoubtably have many negative repercussions, it would not end world civilization.
I find it amazing that we have people wringing their hands every year that the US dropped ‘tactical’ nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the biggest war ever. And how that is a lesson we should learn and burden we should carry, but in Ukraine, never mind, it’s no big deal. If it happens it happens. We can contain it. Keep up the pressure. If it pops, don’t worry, “We got this!” messaging we’re hearing. Just Wow!
Small aside: I thought it was cool that they used Tg (teragrams) for stratospheric loading instead of the ubiquitous "millions of tons".
We all understand SI prefixes now. I wish people would stop using "thousands of kilometres" (geography) and "millions/billions of kilometres" (astronomy) and instead just use Mm, Gm, and Tm.
I think hours are usefull, even if we could say "meet me there at 46 800 seconds tomorow". And Tg might be "pure", but to get any sense of how much it actually is I am still gonna convert it to tons in my head. Id rather people used appropriate scale of units for given scenario.
The leaders of this world, are vile, evil socio paths, but they love one thing, themselves.
Which is why nukes are inherently unuseable and prevent WorldWars. They are the gametheory six-shooters of international politics. He who owns them is equal to each creature under the sun owning a gun. Which means he gets ignored by the bullies in the alley.
Unfortunatly, they do not create the ability to empathy in these flawed creatures who rules us, thus they are still capable to send others en mass to die for silly dreams of greatness, once they do not fall under the protective shade of the mushroom.
Unless, there were a system to peacefully dispose of them every 4 years, once their disability to govern properly is proven beyond a doubt.
What basis is there for the assumption that nuclear attacks will result in so much soot in the stratosphere? Seems strange that this would be orders of magnitude more than wildfires that burn much larger areas. Are there measurements from Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The second and third order effects -- no electricity, fuel, food, etc -- of a nuclear war would likely make those who survived the initial exchange envy the dead.
The possibility of nuclear devastation pales in my mind next to the guarantee of climate change-based destruction and conflict, which at this point, given the astounding lack of action on the scale we need, is effectively unavoidable.
Yes, in a worst case scenario like the article uses, it really is game over. You may wish you had died early.
I'm not sure that's the most likely scenario, however or at least the only one worth considering. There are some scenarios in which nuclear weapons would be deployed without triggering a wider deployment. In those cases, survival will not only be possible, but likely. What the world looks like after such an event is another question.
Think about how the pandemic played out. Ask most people what that would look like prior to 2020 and you'd get some version of Outbreak or Contagion. Reality was not just different but far messier. Now that we're in it (on the other side of it?) those models look almost quaint.
It could be the same way with a nuclear exchange. The arsenals are very old, for one thing. Misfires and other unexpected events could derail responses. Then there's disbelief. There have been incidents in which those in the chain of command said "no". So a partial exchange isn't exactly impossible.
Then there's the motivation for detonating a nuke. Why do it? To terrify your opponent. To bring them to the negotiating table. To end whatever conflict has erupted quickly. You only do something like that if you're sure there will be no strike launched at you. There are places in the world in which this might be a possibility.
Tactical nuclear weapons are sometimes cited as a trigger, and there's bee a lot of talk about that in Ukraine. But the size of the weapon you need to deploy, and the proximity of that deployment to the side launching the strike makes little military sense. It's escalation with not much payoff. It could work as a weapon of terror, but only if the other side plays along.
There's also timing to consider. There's a tendency to think of a nuclear exchange as climactic event with the launch of thousands of missiles over the course of a day or two. The track record on predicting the duration of wars is quite bad. Young men were falling over themselves to enlist for WWI because they were afraid it would be over so quickly they wouldn't have time to see action. Afghanistan was supposed to be an in-and-out thing. Victory in Iraq was famously proclaimed by the US president years before the US finally withdrew in shame.
A nuclear war can last decades, centuries maybe. The first country to break the taboo makes it that much more likely that another will follow suit. Does this always mean escalation to the the point of launching thousands of weapons? Did the world's current nuclear war start in 1945?
The true hegemons beyond six degrees of freedom separation from Rupert Murdoch's news and sports media empire likely have a well stocked techno paradise buried under the snow in Antartica secured to wait for the return of first spring after nuclear total war.
No doubt the billionaires have already retreated to their shelters.
Anyone seen Jeff Bezos in person lately? Peter Thiel? Other billionaires? If their missing from public life it’s cause they’re at their doomsday hideaway.
Peter Thiel’s doomsday retreat is in New Zealand. He became a New Zealand citizen just so he could buy it. I’ll bet you $5 he’s in NZ right now.
Lol, I love how you go to Murdoch looking over the largest group of people that have said most of humanity isn't needed, that people should eat bugs for the environment, and
“At Davos a few years ago [surveys] showed us that the good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more,” she said.
“So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together.
“The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead but if people aren’t following we aren’t going to get to where we want to go.”
They definitely have a bunker, and probably feel like a few nukes handles some population issues.
'nuclear winter', and the 'end of the world' will not happen with current arsenals. It might have, with the crazy number and size of nukes in the 70s, although even that is highly debatable. But not now.
Even with an all-out exchange, expect Mt. Pinatubo levels of effect. A couple of bad, or even 'missing' summers, perhaps, but nothing like months of darkness, or a decade of winter that older models proclaim.
Not to say we should be any less averse to any kind of nuclear exchange; obviously many millions would die either directly, or from the impact on systems and infrastructure.
I always thought that the nuclear strike was designed to be step 1 in a Doomsday scenario--followed almost immediately by the application of weaponized smallpox and other biological agents. You can't really wipe out humanity with nuclear weapons (you can make a really good start of course), but if you smashed an areas ability to mobilize an effective response applying a biological agent immediately afterwards would allow a very deadly pathogen to spread unchecked.
Australia seems like a nice place to be at the moment...I've been doing a road trip lately and it's like a 3 day drive to get out of my state and I live near the border.
Apart from cities, there's barely anything here and across almost the entire country are small towns like 75-100kms apart that mostly are all self contained.
I like the odds here...get a day or two out of a major population centre and your chances of being near a nuclear explosion are almost zero.
So move to Brazil and get a lead rain coat? This seems strangely manageable. I'm disappointed; I wanted humanity to be snuffed out, but it looks like most of humanity would remain.
What are you talking about? The graphic at the bottom says 5.3 billion dead of famine within 2 years. That is two-thirds of humanity dead, not "most of humanity would remain".
I live near Paris and have high hopes that in case of a nuclear war our capital would be one of the targets, and with some luck I would die quickly without any warning.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|3 years ago|reply
I spent my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s terrified of nuclear war.
I’m not going to do that again.
If vile, selfish, psychopathic maniacs make the decision to end the world then so be it.
It'll prove for certain that humanity doesn’t deserve the world anyway, the rest of life on earth is better off without us.
I’m not going to give them my happiness and life. They’ll have to take it.
[+] [-] jdsnape|3 years ago|reply
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
[+] [-] BrandoElFollito|3 years ago|reply
This song suck so much that I can barely listen to it even today.
And this was in France, a country that was not that engaged in the child war on a day to day basis (at least for a 15 yo).
[+] [-] azangru|3 years ago|reply
I am afraid it's not just the vile selfish psychopathic maniacs, but also the general population, incensed by the media. For example, one might have thought that if the avoidance of a nuclear war were people's priority number one, then the Western media (supposing Russia is the lost cause) would have demanded, every day and from every corner, that the leaders of their countries must avoid any escalatory steps regarding the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Europe. That people would be marching on the streets with slogans demanding restraint. But that's not what is happening. The voices repeatedly cautioning their audience about the danger of a nuclear war are few and far between — Tulsi, Tucker, Eric Weinstein — and they are treated as traitorous or crazy.
[+] [-] svth|3 years ago|reply
President Merkin Muffley : Well, I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down.
Dr. Strangelove : Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors of youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be vital that top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Heil! Actually, they would breed prodigiously, yeah? There would be much time and little to do. With a proper breeding techniques and a ratio of, say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could interact their way back to the present gross national product within, say, 20 years.
[+] [-] noasaservice|3 years ago|reply
Thankfully, you have your trusty PipBoy.
[+] [-] benji-york|3 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe this is a matter of definitions, but this feels alarmist to me. I have to think that there are many believable scenarios (e.g., in Ukraine) where "only" one to ten nuclear detonations would be employed. That seems like a "small" nuclear war and while it would undoubtably have many negative repercussions, it would not end world civilization.
[+] [-] ekianjo|3 years ago|reply
Why do you think it would not escalate? Do you have a crystal ball?
[+] [-] mc32|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perilunar|3 years ago|reply
We all understand SI prefixes now. I wish people would stop using "thousands of kilometres" (geography) and "millions/billions of kilometres" (astronomy) and instead just use Mm, Gm, and Tm.
[+] [-] MaxikCZ|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qikInNdOutReply|3 years ago|reply
Which is why nukes are inherently unuseable and prevent WorldWars. They are the gametheory six-shooters of international politics. He who owns them is equal to each creature under the sun owning a gun. Which means he gets ignored by the bullies in the alley.
Unfortunatly, they do not create the ability to empathy in these flawed creatures who rules us, thus they are still capable to send others en mass to die for silly dreams of greatness, once they do not fall under the protective shade of the mushroom.
Unless, there were a system to peacefully dispose of them every 4 years, once their disability to govern properly is proven beyond a doubt.
[+] [-] hirundo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abraxas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingknife|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] actionfromafar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikece|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanHulton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monstertank|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SevenNation|3 years ago|reply
I'm not sure that's the most likely scenario, however or at least the only one worth considering. There are some scenarios in which nuclear weapons would be deployed without triggering a wider deployment. In those cases, survival will not only be possible, but likely. What the world looks like after such an event is another question.
Think about how the pandemic played out. Ask most people what that would look like prior to 2020 and you'd get some version of Outbreak or Contagion. Reality was not just different but far messier. Now that we're in it (on the other side of it?) those models look almost quaint.
It could be the same way with a nuclear exchange. The arsenals are very old, for one thing. Misfires and other unexpected events could derail responses. Then there's disbelief. There have been incidents in which those in the chain of command said "no". So a partial exchange isn't exactly impossible.
Then there's the motivation for detonating a nuke. Why do it? To terrify your opponent. To bring them to the negotiating table. To end whatever conflict has erupted quickly. You only do something like that if you're sure there will be no strike launched at you. There are places in the world in which this might be a possibility.
Tactical nuclear weapons are sometimes cited as a trigger, and there's bee a lot of talk about that in Ukraine. But the size of the weapon you need to deploy, and the proximity of that deployment to the side launching the strike makes little military sense. It's escalation with not much payoff. It could work as a weapon of terror, but only if the other side plays along.
There's also timing to consider. There's a tendency to think of a nuclear exchange as climactic event with the launch of thousands of missiles over the course of a day or two. The track record on predicting the duration of wars is quite bad. Young men were falling over themselves to enlist for WWI because they were afraid it would be over so quickly they wouldn't have time to see action. Afghanistan was supposed to be an in-and-out thing. Victory in Iraq was famously proclaimed by the US president years before the US finally withdrew in shame.
A nuclear war can last decades, centuries maybe. The first country to break the taboo makes it that much more likely that another will follow suit. Does this always mean escalation to the the point of launching thousands of weapons? Did the world's current nuclear war start in 1945?
[+] [-] abudabi123|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewstuart|3 years ago|reply
Anyone seen Jeff Bezos in person lately? Peter Thiel? Other billionaires? If their missing from public life it’s cause they’re at their doomsday hideaway.
Peter Thiel’s doomsday retreat is in New Zealand. He became a New Zealand citizen just so he could buy it. I’ll bet you $5 he’s in NZ right now.
[+] [-] leeroyjenkins11|3 years ago|reply
“At Davos a few years ago [surveys] showed us that the good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more,” she said.
“So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together.
“The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead but if people aren’t following we aren’t going to get to where we want to go.”
They definitely have a bunker, and probably feel like a few nukes handles some population issues.
[+] [-] jacknews|3 years ago|reply
Even with an all-out exchange, expect Mt. Pinatubo levels of effect. A couple of bad, or even 'missing' summers, perhaps, but nothing like months of darkness, or a decade of winter that older models proclaim.
Not to say we should be any less averse to any kind of nuclear exchange; obviously many millions would die either directly, or from the impact on systems and infrastructure.
[+] [-] a2tech|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monstertank|3 years ago|reply
Apart from cities, there's barely anything here and across almost the entire country are small towns like 75-100kms apart that mostly are all self contained.
I like the odds here...get a day or two out of a major population centre and your chances of being near a nuclear explosion are almost zero.
[+] [-] throwaway049|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedorkknight|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] perilunar|3 years ago|reply
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