# Nuclear War: The End or Not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2005, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340 "2005-04-21T00:13:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/41 "2005-04-23T21:40:04Z")
> [@Stryfe](#): > > I think we would be stuck at a fairly low level agricultural or possibly even hunter/gatherer level for some time possibly even centuries. Of course some information will survive and some technological improvements will come about faster, but I don’t think we would get back to our current level of technology for a long time if ever. Meh. So much of what we consider to be our indeispensible technology is just a product of the last 100 years or so. I figure even after a massive die-off, the survivors will have an edge if they can remember some basics: [ul][li]Boil water before drinking it;[/li][li]Personal cleanliness, especially of wounds and before delivering babies, is important; and[/li][li]Food can be preserved using cold, canning or freeze-drying.[/ul][/li] This already gives them a big advantage over people living in, say, 1900, when cholera/typhoid/diptheria/tuburculosis/puerperal fever routinely killed oodles of people. Give the survivors about 200 years to make up for the 100 years in lost progress and they’ll be fine. Fact is, the most critical technological advance in improving human health wasn’t the microchip or the laser, but simple mundane sanitation. ---
**Author:** ![Buran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@Buran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buran)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/42 "2005-04-23T23:48:46Z")
The general public knowledge of nuclear weapons and their effects is next to nothing, I hate it when a movie or TV show uses them as a critical plot point because its almost certain that it’ll bear virtually no relation to reality. For example the latest episode of Dr Who had aliens intending to use the earths stock of nuclear weapons to turn “the entire surface of the planet into molten radioactive glass” and kill every living thing on the planet. :rolleyes: Another plot point had earth defending itself by launching nuclear missiles at a spacecraft in orbit despite the fact that they are not designed in any sense for that role and probably _can’t_ be used to hit something in orbit. Possibly the most ludicrous plot point of all was the UK handing control of its nuclear assets to the UN…totally unable to use them independently even in an emergency. _sigh_ ignorance really is bliss… ---
**Author:** ![NillyWilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3da27b/32.png) [@NillyWilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NillyWilly)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/43 "2005-04-24T03:56:38Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The first strike is only going to kill (WAG) maybe 10% of the population. 10% ?!?! Think again. Think of 5 or 10 (or whatever number I’d like) MIRV warheads for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco etc. etc. The first few of those would total on the order or 10% of the total population of the US. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/44 "2005-04-24T04:20:20Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > Actually, reconstruction might not be possible at all, because the supplies of various resources (e.g. oil) you can access with 18th-19th century tech were, well, used up in the 18th-19th centuries. This wasn’t a problem the first time around (since we could just move on to harder-to-access supplies as the technological infrastructure improved), but would obviously be a show-stopper with that infrasturcture wrecked. We (well, a successor species) would have to wait until geological phenomena reconstituted some accessible supplies. You mean like coal? There’s lots of that still around. We could go to a coal and ethyl alcohol powered society. With so many fewer people, the energy issues with alcohol wouldn’t be as serious. Stuff like iron, aluminum,etc… would actually be easier to get at- recycling is almost always easier than smelting ore. There could be electricity, railroads, etc… And if there are any surviving universities (pretty likely, considering how many are in the sticks), then most knowledge wouldn’t be lost, and we could rebuild fairly quickly- faster than we did it the first time around anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/45 "2005-04-24T04:21:09Z")
> [@NillyWilly](#): > > 10% ?!?! Think again. Think of 5 or 10 (or whatever number I’d like) MIRV warheads for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco etc. etc. > > The first few of those would total on the order or 10% of the total population of the US. 10% of the U.S, yes. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/46 "2005-04-24T05:04:03Z")
A couple more angles on this, maybe. …Put me in the camp of “it would suck big time”, but we’d get through it. First, a thought on the whole strategy of it: what purpose would the bad guys have in completely obliterating the Ukraine or Kansas? Lots of good farmland there, why muck it up? Seems to me that a better strategy is to demoralize the enemy enough that they’re willing to negotiate favorable political terms, rather than kill them all. The hope is that the world has enough greedy bastards who’d be looking for personal opportunities under a cease-fire, rather than seeking blood and total destruction for its own sake. Nope, don’t know how long the world-wide economic devastation would last, nor how bad it would get. Still, major disasters can bring out both the worst and the best in people. I think that depressions are caused more by a lack of confidence than by anything “real” - Roosevelt probably pegged that one. If we got some shaky hope back quickly, I think we’d recover quickly. Anyhow, I suspect that we could get by with a lot less than we do, if we simply decided to. If transportation became a real problem, we could simply move closer to where we work - but as it is, we can afford to move out to the suburbs, so we do. If TV stations stopped broadcasting, we’d simply have to find some other way to spend our evenings. That part, we’d survive, I think. Drying clothes out on a clothes line is declasse nowadays, but it is a way to save on the electric bill, especially when the power isn’t on all the time. No, my post here doesn’t have much to do with nuclear weapons. Er. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2005, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/47 "2005-04-24T13:20:31Z")
> [@Civil Guy](#): > > If TV stations stopped broadcasting, we’d simply have to find some other way to spend our evenings. The survivors would breed prodigiously. There would be much time and little to do. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2005, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/48 "2005-04-25T13:39:09Z")
> [@bump](#): > > You mean like coal? There’s lots of that still around. Yes, but in veins you can get to with 19th century tech? ---
**Author:** ![Domokun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@Domokun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Domokun)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2005, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340/49 "2005-04-25T14:05:52Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > Yes, but in veins you can get to with 19th century tech? Like great big holes in the ground? Open cast mining is messy but it looks pretty low tech. We might even be able to use the existing holes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-war-the-end-or-not/300340.md?page=2)