Could "civilisation" have survived a global nuclear war?

[wevets]

@Shodan

Over fifty years, it is insignificant

Can you name any other weapon whose testing (not even intentional use on populations!) has killed so many?

My point is that fallout is not insignificant - tests designed to kill zero people have killed thousands. How many more would die if the weapons use were scaled up in an actual war?

, especially if it strikes people past child bearing.

Now that’s just mean!

[Bryan_Ekers]

@wevets

Can you name any other weapon whose testing (not even intentional use on populations!) has killed so many?

Well, there was that experimental wolverine gun the Navy toyed with in the fifties…

[XT]

@wevets

Can you name any other weapon whose testing (not even intentional use on populations!) has killed so many?

Well, depends on your definition of ‘weapon’. If I can expand that to include ‘logistics support’ then how about the coal fired steam engine? I know that today (let alone back when it was extensively in use) something like 5000 coal miners die yearly just from MINING the coal used. I figure that if you added up all the folks killed just producting the coal, let alone those in the general public that died from secondary effects of coal burning and smoke…well, it probably makes even those INTENTIONALLY killed imediately in the two nuclear attacks seem fairly small potatoes.

-XT

[Declan]

@Bryan Ekers

Well, the question falls back on which area has the best combination of high industry and low nuclear-target importance? How significant a target was Buenos Aires, or Calgary, or Budapest, or Dublin? Make a list of the 100 largest most developed cities worldwide at the height of the Cold War (say, 1985). I figure at least a handful would be spared direct attack.

Speaking of Canada

I doubt that the soviets would have taken the chance that we would have stayed neutral, if the city sported an airport it was a target. Halifax , and the west coast ports , the same.

CFB North Bay is Norad North and would have been directing bombers outbound and inbound back to refuel and rearm for second or third strikes.

If the initial siop is counterforce, then its possible that citys will be spared , but if it goes to an all out slugfest ,then the soviet union was toast.

Declan

[wevets]

@xtisme

Well, depends on your definition of ‘weapon’. If I can expand that to include ‘logistics support’ then how about the coal fired steam engine?

:o Dear God! Now I know where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction went! It all makes sense now.

Back to seriousness though, according to a government report The Effects of Nuclear War, prepared by the Office of Technology Assessment in 1979. Page 115 says:

The calculations for long-term radiation hazards, with all their uncertainties, permit an order-of-magnitude conclusion:

There would be a substantial number of deaths and illness due to radiation among those who were lucky enough to escape a lethal dose during the first weeks after the attack.

The number of deaths would be very large by peacetime standards, and the hazards much greater than what is considered tolerable today.

The number of deaths would be rather small compared to the number of deaths
resulting from the immediate effects of the attack — millions compared to tens or
hundreds of millions.

Of course, if as many as 165 million Americans are killed not including fallout in the first 30 days of a nuclear war, it may seem unimportant that 30 million more die of fallout over the next few decades. I can guarantee that it will not seem unimportant to those who die or their families. Also, with a population reduced by 60 or 70 percent, 30 million would be a much more important fraction of the survivors than of the prewar population.

In summary, U.S. fatality estimates range from a high of 155 million to 165 million to a low of 20 million to 55 million.

(page 95)

[LonesomePolecat]

@wevets

I doubt it. After all, the CDC estimates that the 1,000 or so nuclear tests conducted between the 1940s and 1990s killed about 11,000 people in America indirectly through fallout:

And it probably killed John Wayne.

[BMalion]

I’d say the Eskimoes would be just fine.

[XT]

@wevets

Dear God! Now I know where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction went! It all makes sense now.

You know, I always DID think Thomas had shifty eyes and was too cheerful. I mean, I’d say to myself all the time ‘Whats that little bastard hiding?’. And now we know…

-XT

[hotflungwok]

I read a study on nuclear war years ago that had some interesting conclusions. Even in a full scale exchange, a total area the size of the UK would survive untouched in America, including fallout. At least some of the military’s nuclear shelters would work, so you would get surviving troops, or most likely upper eschelon. The massive amount of EMP would knock out just about all communications in affected countries, and most things that rely on solid state electronics. Communication would be affected globally, as most satellites and relay stations would be knocked out.

It would knock us back a few centuries, and there would be some really bad times, but we would survive as a species.

[msmith537]

Clearly people are using the terms “species” and “civilization” interchangably. Sure, our species would likely survive. The civilization on the recieving end of a nuclear war would not. The obliteration of major cities and all the technology, knowledge, art, history, social services and political infrastructure contained within would, by definition, destroy civilization.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@hotflungwok

The massive amount of EMP would knock out just about all communications in affected countries, and most things that rely on solid state electronics. Communication would be affected globally, as most satellites and relay stations would be knocked out.

It would knock us back a few centuries, and there would be some really bad times, but we would survive as a species.

I doubt it would even knock us back that far. Just because the electronics are broken doesn’t mean that we can’t build new transmitters. It would probably only be a matter of weeks before we had worldwide communications networks again. Sure, they’d be slower, less reliable, and more expensive to use, but they’d be up and humming.

msmith, I think you need to consider the difference between “a civilization” and “civilization”. Yes, the global westernized civilization that exists now would not continue as it was, but we wouldn’t revert to stone tools or even pre-industrial technology for very long. Civilization in general would continue.

[An_Gadai]

As I asked above was the concept of nuclear winter hyped?