I was wondering what the modern accepted concensus on how devasting a general full-scale Cold War style global nuclear war would be/have been.
Many people seem to accept it as an article of faith that such an event would mean the end of the human race.
I personally don’t buy it and I’m fairly sure the Nuclear Winter theory has been discredited but its impossible to argue my case without good facts.
So who’s right and who’s wrong?
Thanks
I have no choice but to generalise the issue greatly but… I have been ‘educated’ in the past that global human society today is so fragile that any significant event such as the total destruction of an important city or a third world war could throw it into a downward spiral leading to total extinction.
I find that hard to believe, end of civilisation maybe but extinction? Surely even small groups of hunter-gatherers would survive? (though large enough to maintain viable population replacement)
OK, let’s play Global Thermonuclear War, Seventies style.
Round one. The evil Russians launch a saturation strike to take out American silos in the northern half of the Great Plains. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 missiles with one to eight warheads each, probably a total of 5000 warheads. Eighteen minutes later, half of these are taken out by the counter battery explosion of twenty five hundred or so high altitude low yield anti aircraft nuclear weapons launched by NATO. Simultaneously, six or seven hundred warheads are launched from the silos felt to be most at risk, and these are targeted to interrupt second round nuclear battery fire from the Warsaw Pact.
OK, end of round one, half an hour into the war, and we have about three thousand nuclear detonations, mostly in mid air, some in the Great Plains of the US, and a bunch in the air over the poles, and over western and eastern Europe. Not much damage to civilian targets yet, but lots of incidental fallout drifting with the wind. (Even the ones that got taken out contribute to the total radiation as their warheads are disrupted without going nuke.) There are currently a few hundred warheads flying, targeted on command and control facilities on both sides. (These are much nearer to the civilian areas, in most cases.)
Round Two: Second Strike is launched by both sides, the targeting is flexible, and includes known deployment areas of both nuclear and conventional force concentrations. Probably a thousand missiles, fifteen hundred to three thousand warheads. Naval targets are targeted as well. Port facilities are saturation bombed, as are critical rail junctions. Ports and rail junctions are all near civilian targets. Large numbers of these missiles are taken out by counter fire, as a sustained cloud of nuclear explosions is maintained for the entire first hour after round one. An hour and a half has gone by, and the first and second strike capability of both sides is either expended, or destroyed. Ten thousand nuclear explosions so far, and half that many disrupted warheads adding their plutonium to the mix.
Round three: Naval engagement takes place, with all suspected locations of enemy ships being hit with low yield nuclear strikes, and known targets with multiple strikes. Submarines are all on mission, but not taking part in active fire, unless they have already expended their nuclear weapons. (Not likely, at this point.) Boomers go deep, and await their mission. Hours pass, now, and manned bombers begin to arrive at mission targets. Timing is critical, in order to take advantage of ionic disturbance from prior nuclear detonations, and avoid radar identification. Hard targets, and suspected withdrawal rally points are hit with gravity bombs, very large yields, and probably another three thousand warheads, but a yield total more than all the previous detonations. Civilian areas are now indistinguishable from military targets.
Strategic assets are now committed, expended, or destroyed. Most of the remaining assets are conventional forces with tactical nuclear capability. These military units are primarily mobile, and are actively seeking to engage the most dangerous of the enemy assets. Infrastructure, whether civilian, or military is the primary asset remaining to both sides, and small scale nuclear weapons will be targeted on the most valuable ones, probably another five thousand warheads, most of which will now be able to reach their targets. At this point, command decision will determine whether living civilian populations constitute strategic assets.
Weeks will pass, as the rate of nuclear strikes gradually decreases. Eventually one side will have established it’s ability to continue military operations without constraint from opposing forces. At that time the US has a plan. Remember those boomers that “Went deep, to await mission time?” Well, there is “Operation Spoilsport” to be considered. Three hundred to a thousand one to ten megaton warheads can be targeted on the government of the surviving enemy countries, and delivered without opposition. Whatever surviving intelligence capability is able to do so will be designating targeting scenarios already planned, and safely on board the surviving submarines.
Civilization is in ruins, over most of the Northern Hemisphere. The exact geographic characteristics that make a place conducive to the establishment of organized societies make them prominent military targets. Heavy industry is obliterated, as are rail distribution and port facilities. Civil infrastructure is disconnected at every major point of intersection. Humans will survive. But the nature of the new social system cannot be predicted. Radiation poisoning will be a regular feature in whatever system evolves. Cancer will be endemic. Multiple instances of similar plans to our own “Operation Spoilsport” will be an ongoing threat to world stability.
“Beware the fury of a patient man.” ~ John Dryden ~
Nice post, very interesting. Looks like I still win though. 
Sounds ridiculous to me. In WWII, many countries lost many important cities.
The thing is, nuclear bombs, while devastating weapons, pale in comparison to the forces mother nature can release. When Mt. St. Helens went off, it release the equivalent of about 500 Hiroshima-sized bombs, and spewed FAR more ash and sunlight-occluding particulates into the air than those bombs would have. We lived hundreds of miles away from that blast, and it ‘snowed’ ash like crazy, leaving everything with a thick film of grey dust on it.
Fallout would be a problem, but not as much as you might think. After all, they’ve tested nuclear bombs in Nevada for a long time (and around the rest of the world as well).
A large city that had a typical warhead land on it wouldn’t even be totally obliterated. The bomb that dropped on Hiroshima had an area of total destruction of about seven square miles. The city of Edmonton is about 259 square miles. Even if the bomb were five times bigger (like a typical modern warhead), the area of total destruction would be about 35 square miles, or a little over 1/10 the size of the city.
Now, outside this area more people would die from burns and debris, and more people downwind would die of radiation poisoning from the fallout, but much of the city would survive, and eventually recover. Just as Hiroshima did.
I meant that fallout wouldn’t be as big a problem as you’d think assuming one nuclear weapon. If we’re talking about tens of thousands of them, civilization would probably be set back at least 100 years. But really, that’s just the blink of an eye in the lifespan of the planet. We’d lose a lot of population, and a whole lot of infrastructure, but then there wass no almost no infrastructure at all in the U.S. 300 years ago, and even 100 years ago large areas were totally undeveloped. And we’d have one major advantage today that we didn’t have then - knowledge. I suspect the pace of reconstruction would be much faster than even the optimists would predict.
A modern hydrogen bomb is 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
Lobsang, I’m quite curious as to what “Education” you received that the destruction of a city would result in the extinction of the human race. Honestly, what kind of silliness is that?
Would the human race survive nuclear war? Probably. I wouldn’t bet on good cell phone service for a long time, though, and you might find yourself employed as a dune buggy driver working for a guy named “The Humongous.”
Awright, did you do that from memory??
Your average ICBM warhead is on the order of 100-300 kiloton, or about 5-15x the size of the Hiroshima bomb. Twenty megaton doomsday weapons, while buildable, don’t have much in the way of military utility. The biggest bomb ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, was a 100 megaton design (though the bomb as tested was “only” 60 megatons). It was, in short, an absurd weapon for any number of reasons, but one rather obvious impracticality was that they had to saw the bottom off of a huge bomber just so it could be carried. Multi-megaton weapons are ponderous contraptions. You’re better off sticking multiple smaller weapons into a missile and having them fan out after realease to be guided to multiple strategic targets. Massive hydrogen bombs are really only good for vaporizing entire cities, and with limited time to get your strikes in, you want to hit as many strategic targets as possible, rather than blowing your wad flattening a few of your enemy’s biggest cities while he wipes out your entire military infrastructure.
eh, by “size” of Hiroshima bomb, I mean explosive power, obviously. Poor choice of words. The warheads are actually physically quite a bit smaller than the Hiroshima bomb.
It may be that what he’s trying to say is that the bombs themselves might not kill us, but the subsequent panic/looting/lawlessnes would collapse civilization as we know it. (Christ, the power goes off for a few hours and people act like it’s Armegeddon.)
If I could avoid being killed by roving bands of thieves, I’m one of the few who would probably make it and come out “rich”. How many of you know how to make soap, candles, butter, wine, can vegetables, have a working knowledge of medicinal herbs, weave cloth and make bread starting from whole grain?
I can. If I can find people to protect me and my precious brain, I can barter my way to riches!
(Oddly enough, a Google shows the only Operation Spoilsport to be an episode of The Greatest American Hero TV show.)
I don’t see how anyone in North America (maybe Mexico) or Europe could live – thousands upon thousands of nukes going off would probably obliterate all major population centers and those in isolated areas would eventually die of radiation.
I think South America/Africa/Australia/Asia would turn out OK, depending on alliances and the locations of certain military bases. I read “On the Beach” but that sounded quite non-scientific, but I could be wrong.
I wish I could remember the name of a short story by Ray Bradbury (possibly from the Illustrated Man book) about a farmer or gas station owner on some third world country (perhaps Mexico) and how he witnessed the continuous transit of American cars coming from the north and zooming by; one day he sees all rushing back north and asks why the hurry; the last one to pass by yields that the end of the world has come. After that no more cars come from the north, and the guy just shrugs it off.
The story implies a nuclear war had happened obliterating the developed world.
Morality 1, the world is not just the northen hemisphere.
Morality 2, Bradbury is much better than me telling stories.
Don’t forget that while there’s been testing, the casualties from that testing have been hard to quantify and are not widely reported in the media (epidemiological statistics don’t make a very dramatic story).
IIRC, there was a study reported on a while back that estimated 30,000 deaths attributable to US nuclear testing 1945 to 1990 (most in the period 1945-1960s, when atmospheric testing was performed), but I don’t exactly remember the source - my point is that there were still an indeterminate number of casualties from fallout from these tests.
I do think humanity would survive. I also think civilization would survive (primarily in the Southern Hemisphere), but I think we shouldn’t make assumptions about fallout being relatively harmless.
I think that many of you are overestimating the fallout effects. Typical airbursts tend to be relatively low fallout, since the only fallout is that of the bomb itself. Groundbursts tend to have a LOT more, since the bomb and all the earth that gets taken up in the fireball then becomes fallout.
I think what you’d end up with would be something where the larger cities would be mostly destroyed/out of commission, but most cities under say… 75,000 would probably survive, assuming that they didn’t have any strategically valuable targets in or near them.
What would be the real kicker would be the virtual destruction of distribution networks for things like food. I imagine that the average Iowa or Nebraska farmer would be relatively untouched, but the food he produces wouldn’t get very far without the trucking and rail infrastructure. On the flip side, the townspeople in larger towns would likely run out of food and many might starve before some sort of new economy sprung up around local food sources.
Another consideration would be the lack of fuel for surviving power plants. In coal mining areas, or if any nuclear power plants survived, this might not be an issue, but in most parts of the country, this would be another problem.
With luck, there would have been some kind of warning, and there might be National Guard or Army units out in the countryside, and they could organize some sort of martial law or at least oversee food distribution.
I don’t know if it would necessarily set civilization back 100 years permanently, but it would do so temporarily. One thing to remember is that many colleges and universities are located in relatively small towns. Even though they might not have the absolute state of the art on things in their libraries, they’d likely have enough to get back to something close to modern levels once the machine tools were built, etc…
I think that an all-out nuclear war would obviously be horrific, but hardly the end of civilization. Think about it this way… do you think life would really change terribly much for people living in say… Stephenville, Texas?
OK, it was “The highway”, indeed on “The Illustrated Man” book. Now I can go to sleep.