I hope I don't survive the nuclear war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg
I appreciate that anyone who has seen Threads might find that difficult to believe.
>It was assumed that 131 nuclear weapons would fall on Britain with a total yield of 205 megatons (69 ground burst; 62 air burst)[1] with yields of 500 KT to 3 MT[2] That was felt to be a reasonably realistic scenario, but the report stated that a total strike in excess of 1,000 megatons would be likely.
But also that the scenario was overestimated:
>Square Leg was criticised for a number of reasons: the weapons used were exclusively in the high-yield megaton range, with an average of 1.5 megatons per bomb, but a realistic attack based on known Soviet capabilities would have seen mixed weapons yields, including many missile-based warheads in the low-hundred-kiloton range.
In other words, more small bombs does way more destruction than one big bomb if we assume the same total yield. To give a specific example, imagine dropping one 1500 kiloton bomb vs five 300 kiloton bombs. In the first scenario the destructive power would be about 11.5 units of damage. In the second example it would be 5 * 6.7 = 33.5 units - assuming no overlap.
In other other words, the report assuming a small number of high yield weapons (instead of larger number of lower yield weapons - but an otherwise comparable total yield) was understating the impact of nuclear war, potentially dramatically.
In other other other words - the report was being criticized for understating the impact of nuclear war in both cases.
In the last months, we've seen how the Red army performs in conventional war. They were supposed to have 10,000 - 14,000 tanks, including modern ones, but we now see that they barely had any modern tanks and that after losing 2,500 tanks from the 60s, 70s and 80s, they started begging Belarus for their old tanks. They also claimed to have a modern air force, but until now, they have been unable to establish air dominance against a country that barely had any air force. And they were supposed to have a navy, but also that was an exaggeration. They claimed to have precision-guided missiles, and even supersonic missiles. They ran out of those long time ago, and they weren't that precise or fast. What they had was a lot of empty posture.
Why do we believe that they are any better at nuclear war than they are at waging conventional war? Whatever is true for a simple conventional war, is even more true for a nuclear war: Their missiles and warheads are old and unmaintained, and far fewer in numbers than they pretend.
The effects of corruption runs so deep in their society. Just like you can't buy any complex Russian products in your local stores, and just like you never wanted a Russian car, Russian military is completely incapable of successfully waging war against the West.
Can Russia launch a nuclear attack against NATO? Probably, yes. But it would be much smaller than the official numbers suggest, and layered Western missile shields would intercept a percentage of those missiles. Some missiles would miss their target and some would not detonate.
Different studies give different estimates ranging from tens of millions to hundreds of millions dead in the immediate aftermath of a strike, but studies assume that Russia is actually capable of carrying out a strike and penetrate our defenses with a large number weapons that work. Estimates of dead afterwards, are usually from starvation, not from radiation.
It's been 40-50 years since Russia actually had strength comparable to NATO. Even back then, humanity would have survived a nuclear war. Nowadays, both Russia and the free world has fewer weapons, and we now know that Russian military capabilities are routinely exaggerated. A nuclear war with Russia would be terrible, but it would be over quickly, it would end in Russian defeat, and most of us would live on afterwards.
What military targets there were would be significantly reduced today. We were targeting military targets, not to target their military - but to try to destroy their means of nuclear delivery (bombers). Today in the ICBM era, that means of delivery is largely nuclear fortified silos spread far out and in the middle of nowhere. Poor targets.
Nuclear war isn't about defeating the enemy, it's about destroying them. If Russia nuked 100 military targets today, then tomorrow there'd be 20 million Americans looking to enlist, and every single aspect of manufacturing we have domestically or can influence abroad would be directed towards rebuilding at an unprecedented rate.
The way you overcome this is by focusing on that rebuilding: population, industry, economy, and even medical. You probably have a much better chance of surviving a nuclear war if you live out in the middle of nowhere, even beside a nuclear silo, than you do living in a common population center. Though with the goal of destruction, even that may be insufficient since there's no reason to expect things like salted bombs [2] or other doomsday type weaponry would not come into play.
[1] - https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear...
Lack of water could be an issue in some areas but simply walking to fresh though not clean drinking water is viable in most areas.
Violence after disasters is more trope than reality. People will loot after a disaster, but it’s not like people are going to show up to Best Buy and work after a nuclear war. Looting is more useful to humanity than simply letting food rot because people can’t work the self checkout machine.
And these tangential issues would emerge in spades after nuclear war. For instance one of the most basic is logistics. Think about how insanely much is just involved in getting an ear of corn from a farm to you. At the most fundamental you're relying on machinery, drivers, oil, gas, refineries, roads infrastructure, food processing infrastructure and a whole lot more - before that ear of corn is anywhere near you. And then there needs to be a means of distribution, and more.
Our entire economy came on the verge of collapse because of COVID, and nuclear war would have an impact with so many orders of magnitude greater than COVID that I think even dreaming of anything even vaguely resembling normalcy afterwards is unrealistic. Violence happens after disasters when the food runs out. In practical disasters that tends to not happen due to rapid aid, delivery, support, and organization. In nuclear war, the food will run out.
Saying the current social order breaks down isn’t enough to suggest Anarchy will take it’s place. A farmer who wants to collect a harvest without oil will want manpower, and survivors will want to eat. That’s the basis of civilization.
Sure suburbs in their current form don’t work without cars and oil. But, people can migrate quite far on a half a tank of gas and their feet.
And within these stories one can also see what happens to societies once normal social function starts to collapse. While this [1] article reads like a propaganda piece, the tales it recounts are neither unique nor exceptional given the situation. Of course it does feel weird to be here kind of arguing that, "Yes we will starve." I think my main point and motivation is that the consequences of what we're discussing simply cannot be overstated. There is a dangerous amount of misinformation that increasingly seems to be headed towards, 'Maybe nuclear wouldn't be 'that' bad.' Perhaps not misinformation. Because it's true that it wouldn't be 'that' bad, it'd be vastly worse.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-fa...
The Irish potato famine occurred in part because of the potato blight, but it was a multi year issue that at it’s core related to growing exports (cotton, grain) in favor of local food. Russia’s industrialization created famine because so many farm workers where sent to factories. China had similar root causes, the 18year old worker in that story went home to see their family and many fields where fallow. Steal all the food or workers from a village and people starve.
That’s not to say drought etc didn’t play a role, but the American dust bowl isn’t remembered as a famine because there was feedback between the amount of food crops planted and the need for food.
On the other hand WWII involved most of South America, Africa, and Asia to some degree. If WWIII got similarly out of hand then nukes might take out all of the worlds chip making capacity, oil refineries, and deep sea ports as strategic assets making thing far more unpleasant.
I meet a lot of people who think their life will be short and nasty if Russia drops a nuclear weapon over Ukraine (which, at a distance of 2000km, would affect us not at all).
My point was only to reply to the person thinking that a nuclear strike in Ukraine affects them not at all somewhere else in Europe, which I think is extremely shortsighted.