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Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing how fortunate it is that it's so hard to make the one weapon capable of destroying the world. Actually, I've always wondered if it was true that humans really had figured out a method of destroying the world if humanity goes insane. Out of curiosity, are there enough nukes to theoretically remove all life? What about all mammals?

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This reminds me of a scene from Three Worlds Collide[1]:

>"My lord," the Ship's Confessor said, "suppose the laws of physics in our universe had been such that the ancient Greeks could invent the equivalent of nuclear weapons from materials just lying around. Imagine the laws of physics had permitted a way to destroy whole countries with no more difficulty than mixing gunpowder. History would have looked quite different, would it not?"

>Akon nodded, puzzled. "Well, yes," Akon said. "It would have been shorter."

>"Aren't we lucky that physics didn't happen to turn out that way, my lord? That in our own time, the laws of physics don't permit cheap, irresistible superweapons?"

>Akon furrowed his brow -

>"But my lord," said the Ship's Confessor, "do we really know what we think we know? What different evidence would we see, if things were otherwise? After all - if you happened to be a physicist, and you happened to notice an easy way to wreak enormous destruction using off-the-shelf hardware - would you run out and tell you?"

>"No," Akon said. A sinking feeling was dawning in the pit of his stomach. "You would try to conceal the discovery, and create a cover story that discouraged anyone else from looking there."

To answer your question about nukes: There are close to 20,000 nuclear weapons in existence. Over 2,000 of them have been detonated in the past 60 years, but most of those were underground. Detonating all nukes would certainly cause problems, but it wouldn't be the end of humanity.

1. http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pd...

SO I just read the whole thing, and... I don't get it: Who are the confessors in Ch 7-8?

Almost. If nuclear war starts there will be regions that will be not nuked (neutral countries, territories not threatening either side and so on). Basically most of northern hemisphere would be destroyed. After the war clouds of extremely radioactive dust would kill most of the life, mutate rest (making for example most mammals unable to get pregnant). Southern hemisphere would be mostly untouched but the radioactive clouds and winds would take it tool for hundreds of years. Majority of life would die out (human race would most likely survive despite scary stories - it would just go back to what it was 100 years ago). Casualties would be counted in billions. Most flora and fauna would be destroyed. Dusts in atmosphere would make changes to the planet cooling it a bit. It would take hundreds of years for our civilization to get back to what it is now (but most northern part of globe would stay uninhabitable). The hope to restore humanity would be in hands of Australia, New Zealand, Argentina.

In this scenario, how long would it take for the radioactivity to completely disappear and start re-inhabiting and re-populating the northern hemisphere?

Its not that easy. Radioactive materials dont just disappear. It would take probably around ~100-200 years for humans to evolve to be partly immune to radioactivity (the same way we "evolved" to be partly immune to coal vapors and other toxic waste in our air) and reduce amount of sick/sterile people. Then humans would need to slowly remove or neutralize radioactive content - 200 years sounds right for humanity to find a way of doing this (as of now there is no mass way doing so - but I believe humanity would come out with solution if this would be the way for civilization to survive). The process probably would take ages - started with regions less contaminated (Islands etc) and moving onwards avoiding direct impact zones.

"200 years" and "evolve" should never, ever, appear in the same sentence.

You're not thinking very hard. How long does it generally take to get a new breed of dog? How many generations of E. Coli will occur over 200 years? Assuming a human generation length of 25 years, why would there be no evolutionary change over 8 generations?

Selection for existing attributes is plausible on 200-yr timescale. Pro-adaptive mutation is not.

To within measurement error, all attributes are pre-existing attributes. It's called "natural variation" and is the universally-accepted explanation for why we have sexual reproduction instead of budding. Right now, some people are more radiation-resistant than others.

It depends largely on the type of blast, an air blast, which is the most destructive to property and buildings is the least contaminating in it's effects; e.g. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, if you let the bomb detonate very close the surface, you get less destruction in terms of the blast, but you get insanely high radiation levels for a long time afterwards. Analogous to Chernobyl.

> It's amazing how fortunate it is that it's so hard to make the one weapon capable of destroying the world.

Well, the first several quadrillion iterations of Earth had easy-to-make nukes.

"Out of curiosity, are there enough nukes to theoretically remove all life? What about all mammals?"

You might want to watch this episode of VICE for their take of the conflict between India and Pakistan ... and the potential destruction of Earth from their nuke arsenals. It addresses that very question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nzm2CidMpM

The last 30 seconds of that video mention it but there way off base. Humanity has done a lot of above ground nuclear testing and for the most part unless your vary close it's simply a slight increase in cancer risk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk

The total number of known tests by country is shown here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_nuclear_testing_count...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AUYCnzmDJY

I'd recommend you watch Threads (found the full version on Youtube), which is arguably the best serious look at a post-apocalyptic world.

TL;DR: Humanity wouldn't die out but it would certainly regress 1-2 centuries at least.

Not sure, but I believe there are nuke-proof bunkers that could secure humanity if such an event were ever to occur.

Deep deep underground with lots of canned food, diesel and light that can simulate sunlight... Think Zion in the matrix :)

More like Howey's "Wool" (Silo Series[1]).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series)

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

President Merkin Muffley: [Turns to Strangelove] You mean people could actually stay down there for a hundred years?

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...

> Dr. Strangelove: It would not be difficult, Mein Führer. Nuclear reactors could - heh, I'm sorry, Mr. President -

This makes much more sense after learning the story of Werner von Braun (via Tom Lehrer's song)

Fully appreciating that movie requires a lot of knowledge of history.

>>It's amazing how fortunate it is that it's so hard to make the one weapon capable of destroying the world.

I've concluded the opposite. It takes 386 gen tech to destroy the world.

There are not enough nukes luckily. 80% of humanity would be wiped out but remote places like Australia, Siberia and parts of Africa would be unaffected, so in theory humanity could survive. The biggest problem is that potable water would be a problem since you don't have any infrastructure left to clean it, but of course those remote locations could fetch clean water if they are lucky. In the last centuries we got child mortality rate really low, that would probably go back to 40-50% like in the middle age. The life in the post nuclear war world would be very difficult, you probably know what I mean if you ever played with Fallout.

I'm not too sure Australia would be unaffected, there are quite a few US bases / radar stations etc on Aussie soil...the Chinese/Russians may not like it if it came to a head..Antarctica and Greenland maybe?

Well you have to consider the size of that continent. I am not saying it would be 100% unaffected but remote locations like North-West Australia has literary nothing there to attack. Some small towns and that is it.

That's right, there are locations here that literally mean : nowhere

I'd have a hard time calling humanity surviving a win here. But then I am pretty good at the Fallout games (as long as you're talking about 1, 2, or Tactics), so maybe if I move to Australia I'll have a better chance in the post-nuclear wasteland. As long as I don't piss off Max, I guess.

There is the theory that a "cobalt bomb" would be pretty effective in wiping out humanity.

http://www.rense.com/general40/dooms.htm

Cobalt's half-life, ability to be transported around the planet's atmosphere as dust, and the the type of radiation that cobalit-60 produces makes for a pretty good theoretical doomsday device.

You still can't hit 100% of Earth at once. Co-60 has longer half-time but you still need to distribute it to everywhere and that is very difficult.

A few cobalt-clad h-bombs would make the planet uninhabitable for humans. Doomsday weapons are withing reach of, at least, the US and Russia, probably China, too.

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