These things don’t seem like “world trade” to me. What you describe in your first paragraph is more like humanitarian aid, and your second paragraph sounds like war.
Intel has a factory in Costa Rica, that’s some key computer components which could still be made if raw materials and designs stayed available. But the damage to communications and power infrastructure would be huge, and the immense majority of assembled items have parts made in 25 different countries, by companies whose servers (those things which, among other things, tell the more complicated machines how to do their jobs) in five yet-different countries…
Even without the EMP issue, a big threat to electricity is that power plants are prime targets in a strategic nuclear exchange. A power line touching a tree in Ohio knocked out power in New York City, so what’s going to happen when all the major power plants are turned into fallout?
Beam Piper wrote about this in his ‘Terro-Human Future History’. After WWIII, the countries that put things back together were Australia, South Africa and the nations of South America. So a lot of the characters have names derived from Afrikaans, Spanish and other traditions.
In terms of re-establishing global trade? There has to be a demand. It doesn’t matter if there’s an Intel plant in Costa Rica if no one wants those parts. It would be centuries before a complex supply chain could be established. Even if demand was magically there, most of the major deep-water ports would be gone and most of the demand for such would be gone.
Local trade would commence immediately, of course, both of newly produced items - food and clothing and such - and salvaged things. But that’s pretty much county-to-county and not intercontinental.
These things happen in stages. First local trade of subsistence items. Then larger trade via trade routes of items of local plenty to local scarcity or novelty. Then larger chains with more complex items.
In short, it’d happen when there’s a demand for it. No demand for iPhones? No trade in iPhones.
This is true and underappreciated. But it’s fairly immaterial. Every first-world city or town depends on global trade. All of the food and fuel comes from the global supply chain, so when the big one hits, those towns will die on the vine for lack of food and supplies. All that crappy stuff that used to ship from China? Definitely not coming anymore. Even trade with the next state over is going to be dicey.
“But what about farmers!”, people say. Most farms nowadays are factories whose inputs include regular weekly infusions of fuel and advanced machinery, medicines, and food supplements. All these inputs will cease permanently after a nuclear war. In fact, farm equipment is increasingly as software-governed as your iPhone and will brick itself if it can’t communicate with John Deere. There’s no repairing or maintainance of equipment like that. We are all factory workers now. Farmers, as they now exist, will be every bit as irrelevant and disadvantaged in the new world as tax attorneys or airline pilots. Even the pre-firmware farm equipment needs fuel, tire, lubricants.
By the time anybody would be economically able to say 'Hey let’s move back to Muncie, Indiana", it will have been a generation, probably two. The structures would be ruined, there’d be no supplies to fix them. The knowledge of how to run factories or utilities will have died out with the previous generation. Information in physical libraries will be hard to find; digital information will be gone or inaccessible.
Fallout is primarily a localized phenomenon, at least in terms of deadly fallout. And it’s hugely dependent on the height of the nuclear explosion- airbursts don’t have significant fallout, as the only thing to be fallout is the bomb itself. Surface bursts are much worse, as they essentially incorporate a lot of ground into the explosion, irradiate it heavily, and then let it settle back somewhere else (fallout). Sub-surface bursts tend to contain most fallout.
At any rate, unless you’re within several hundred miles of the burst, prompt fallout isn’t an immediate issue, as it settles out relatively close to the burst. The main worry after that is stratospheric fallout, which is more along the lines of a cancer risk than an acute radiation sickness risk.
For example, if the Chinese were to drop a 5 mt warhead on FE Warren AFB (home of USAF Global Strike Command’s 90th missile wing), the prompt fallout could reach as far as Santa Fe NM, Billings MT, Pierre SD, Lincoln NE, Dalhart TX or Salt Lake City UT. That’s a long way, but that’s both the maximum distance (1 rad/hr) and a big bomb (most are something like 800 kt, which is 16% as large). Using a more realistic bomb, the fallout plume only extends about as far as North Platte, NE or Pueblo, CO.
So the real issue would be whatever short-term climactic changes the conflict would wreak- probably some degree of nuclear winter would be the primary concern. That would probably be severe, but I’m not so sure it would be so severe that it would collapse governments and civilization in untouched areas, like S. America, Africa and parts of Asia.
The key question is “how widespread a war”? In the USA-USSR scenario - would the Russians bomb South Africa? The Arabian oil fields? Mexican oil fields? Any and all of Europe, or just major military bases? Hydro power dams? How much infrastructure would remain? We seem fixated on “blow up the cities” but real warfare concentrates on major military targets, then production and transport centers key to military success. Russia obviously wants to ensure that the USA does not have the production capacity to ship large convoys of troops to Europe or rebuild a troop transport capability. Ditto for air attack vulnerability. Indeed, from Russia’s point of view, leaving a site like Manhattan unscathed would perhaps created a restless starving distraction for the enemy.
Nowadays, taking out communication infrastructure would be a major target.
But then places like Venezuela, Indonesia and Nigeria would still have oil to supply the needs of a rebuilding world - and not every tanker would have been in a blown up port. Ditto container ships. The shortage would be probably be refineries for a while. But there are basic goods that need to be traded, and parts from out-of-commission machinery might be a hot item too.
The thing not considered is how the banking system would recover, particularly international banking. I assume the fed would be vaporized. What happens to assets and savings? A lot would have been invested in no longer existent companies’ stocks and bonds. I assume the system would be rebuilt from the ground up.
I’m going to guess international trade would start as soon as communications were re-established; but slowly. the untouched areas of the world would see an opportunity to get into manufacturing goods they could not compete in beforehand, so building tech and expertise would take a few years. We may go backward to simpler tech for a while. People with high tech engineering experience would be in great demand.
You could write books on this stuff. Science fiction writers have.
(And many of those focussed on more mundane issues - like the breakdown of law and order in the absence of a strong central authority. OTOH, it occurs to me that in the absence of a complex legal system, summary justice and execution rather than feeding idle mouths in prison will mak a comeback - ie. feudal justice.).
You also have to ask why the war started in the first place. These days it wouldn’t be conflicting ideologies. It would be the drive for economic dominance. So there would be little reason to take out US cities/population. The oligarchs want them as customers/peons/exploitable workers. Killing them would be counter-productive. So the targets would be American nukes and command/control centers. Or maybe just a couple of “demonstration” strikes. Take out Long Beach and you cripple not only a key west coast port but some very large refineries as well. Put the nuke aboard a flag-of-convenience freighter and you even have deniability.
On the flip side, the Russians are screwed if we launch anything. They already don’t have any decent ports. If we nuke the ones they have and take out their major pipelines, they freeze in the dark a lot quicker than we do.
I’d think that we would go back to city states fairly soon. People of regions that were not that badly damaged would band together and defend themselves collectively against people wandering around looking to take what they could get.
How’s trade going with Chernobyl these days?
Whether society will resume functioning (organized cleanup/decontamination efforts, restoring communications and transport, utilities, food, markets, etc.) and how long reconstruction will take depends on the scale of the attack and on the postwar political environment, also on the extent of preparation and stockpiling before the war. People wandering around Mad Max-style sounds like a total breakdown; presumably (if still possible…) there would be an organized effort to shelter survivors and refugees coming from now-uninhabitable areas. (Ideally as many people as possible are evacuated before the missiles fly.) Cities- the small cities that survive- of course cannot exist independently and have to trade with relatively undamaged portions of the country or other parts of the world.
Not exactly. Standard first-strike doctrine has always been counterforce (military targets). The point is to eliminate the enemy’s ability to wage war. The second-strike strategy has always been countervalue (population/cultural centers). The point is to use your small remaining forces in the ugliest, most painful way possible.
AFAIK Russia has prioritized their retaliatory capabilities because they always expected the US to strike first. Point being - expect cities and people to be hit hard.
But again, it’s not the weapons that will kill people so much as the attendant collapse of industry, transport, communications, agriculture, everything that modern civilization currently depends on.
It’s a tourist attraction. There are accommodations available in Chernobyl City.
Read Clancy’s “Sum of All Fears” for a very good primer on terrorist nuclear attacks. It’s apparently possible to analyze the aftermath of an atomic blast and from the isotope mix determine exactly where the bomb was made, down to the reactor. And based on the USA taking over Afghanistan in retaliation for 4 airline attacks, don’t underestimate a nuclear attack becoming a 2-for-1 retaliatory special very quickly. Then what? 2 more back, and then all out war? there’s a reason why a nuclear attack is a Really Bad Idea. Much as assorted hawks would like to think so, there is no 100% effective protection against a conventional nuclear attack. Will antimissile countermeasures work? Who wants to find out the hard way? I don’t see a single blast or a limited strike staying limited.
Unless the damage is MASSSIVE, I don’t see especially the rural population liking the idea of small city states. Plus, remember the city-states of Italy and Germany crumbled in the face of technology - Venice famously surrendered without a shot when the first army arrived with canons that could reach 3 miles across the lagoon. Walled cities and castles failed in the face of artillery able to blow down the thickest walls; and city-states surrendered to nation-states with the capability to field much bigger armies and the money to make much more of more powerful artillery.
the untouched areas or continents will assess what they need to carry on, build the factories to supply the missing pieces of tech, and then begin selling those to areas that cannot do so as quickly. A new axis of industrial states will dominate.
There may be a period of mass starvation, riots, and civil unrest across areas hardest hit, especially if one nuclear strategy is to take out critical infrastructure but not population. Destroy power to the upper east coast area, and see how well people survive. take out refineries. Take out transportation hubs. take out telecommunications. However, the infrastructure is so widespread that it is difficult to truly hamstring these services.
For example, one bridge failure in Nipigon cut Canadian road travel in two. There are probably too many bridges across the Mississippi to effectively cut the USA in tow. How many mountain passes need to be closed to cut off the west coast? Too many. How many power plants in the NYC or LA environs? Can you get them all? Plus, many people have solar power for their house. They need only connect cell towers to get communication back in some places (If people can charge their phones). the internet and its routing tech was specifically designed to be robust in the face of multiple connection failures.
but then, how susceptible are some of these to EMP from nuclear blasts? A more nasty attack would simply EMP the entire USA and Europe. Try getting by without power, communications, banking - or Twitter… 
And so much of our infrastructure is dependent on electronics. Probably water and sewage are all electronically controlled nowadays. Traffic lights, gas pumps (and payment) banking, payrolls,
International and transoceanic trade requires some kind of global economy. Without payment of some sort trade falls apart. Good will only goes so far. Ocean and island states, even if they were not directly involved in the war, will fall apart. Indonesia, Micronesia, Guam, Japan, Hawaii, Caribbean islands, etc. are carrying too many people to support without the constant stream of ocean going supply ships. Even a year or two of this supply being cut off will be devastating. The natural production of food cannot even begin to support the populations there. Indonesia may have oil, but they are all going to starve before the trade can be resumed.
Even Alaska relies upon the inland waterway from Seattle to supply most of their product needs.
So we need to expect no oceanic trade for several years. Very limited overland trade between other distinct geographical areas, and the death of all cities until the overland supply resumes. It takes a lot of semi truck loads, each and every day to keep a city alive, and they won’t last a week without it.
Yes, the main question is money. how does that work now? Someone somewhere keeps a ledger of who owes whom; I had heard that the US Fed does that now, which is why so many foreign banks are hesitant to cross the US government in things like sanctions against foreign states. If they have to start from scratch, then expect the same gradual emergence of international banking as in renaissance times - a merchant in country A establishes a relation with a local bank (or trusted partner) in B. it ships goods to B, receives payment in B, buys material to ship back to A. To switch from gold to electrons, one needs confidence that the currency (as represented by ledger entries in banks) is stable. Keep in mind, this is nothing that has not happened before. Goods went from one end of the Silk Road to the other without an international banking system.
There will be trade immediately, but it may take a decade or two to reach the level pre-war, and there will be a massive realignment in areas with nothing to trade or too much population.
I do wonder about more third-world countries like Indonesia - there may be a massive starvation and riots in a few big cites, but the rural population has been producing mor than enough for its own support. the problem may become civil unrest, and invasion of the countryside from the cities. Local constabulary may start to run out of bullets and be reduced to machetes and spears. This may encourage lawless elements, and nothing stifles trade like the threat of robbery or piracy.
As I said, there’s enough material here to fill a lot of books.
Moderator Action
This requires a bit too much speculation for GQ. It seems to me that there is enough debate here to give GD a shot.
Moving thread from GQ to GD.
I always understood the counterforce/countervalue distinction to be somewhat moot except when discussing literal counterforce (i.e. nuking missile silos in Montana, N. Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska) targeting.
I mean, if you’re going for war-making infrastructure, does it really matter if you nuke the Wayside Yard in Houston, the Port of Houston, the refineries in La Porte, Texas City and Baytown, and the Wyman-Gordon steel forging plant in NW Houston/Cypress, and the area’s Natl. Guard armories versus just nuking the city itself?
Counterforce is what it says, targeting enemy forces. Specifically, weapons systems and formations.
Targeting ports and steelworks is not counterforce. It’s on the strategic end of countervalue. Targeting population centers is punitive countervalue targeting.
Here is a map of the 2000 warhead scenario vs the 500 warhead scenario. 2000 is first-strike, which targets military forces. The 500-warhead strike is after the enemy assets are all launched against you, you have few remaining assets, so you’re going to be a dick and target the people.
This thread got me thinking that first year after a nuclear war is going to be completely devastating for the United States when all the natural disasters that occur regularly now happen in the aftermath. I mean think of these scenarios:
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A category 4 hurricane barrels through Louisiana and The Gulf Coast destroying thousands of homes.
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The annual tornadoes plummet small towns throughout the Great Plains and Midwest.
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The West annual wildfires run unimpeded and burn up even more small towns.
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Earthquakes rock what is left of South California and destroy even more buildings than the nuclear blasts did.
With the health infrastructure damaged there are also bound to numerous disease outbreaks and even more people dying.
It would be a hellish nightmare all around.