# Would You Launch the Nukes

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-launch-the-nukes/508057>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 28, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-launch-the-nukes/508057 "2009-08-28T17:49:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\
**Post date:** [September 1, 2009, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-launch-the-nukes/508057/81 "2009-09-01T19:50:30Z")

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I am greatly amused by the people who still foolishly think of nuclear weapons as magic death-ray emitters which will surely annihilate all life!

Plseas. It’s a big bomb, and enough city-busting will damage the world economy, and that’s it. **BobLibDem** ’s ignorance of their true long-term effects is commonplace but still ridiculous. No nuclear winter, no tide of death radiation to kill all life, no nothing.

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**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\
**Post date:** [September 1, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-launch-the-nukes/508057/82 "2009-09-01T20:16:27Z")

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> [@Curtis LeMay](#):
>
> Unless both sides launch 10,000 nukes at once I highly doubt a nuclear war will extinguish life on Earth. We survived the Toba Volcano Eruption.

Even thats not going to kill all the humans. Not even close IMO. It might wipe out some highly specialized species or ones that already have very low population numbers or breeding rates. Or in other words ones that are already on the edge anyway.

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**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\
**Post date:** [September 2, 2009, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-launch-the-nukes/508057/83 "2009-09-02T10:14:37Z")

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I stand by my assessment. [Nuclear winter](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11287-nuclear-winter-may-kill-more-than-a-nuclear-war.html) is a very real possibility, in my opinion.

> [@](#):
>
> The pair modelled the impact of 100 explosions in subtropical megacities. They modelled 15-kilotonne explosions, like the Hiroshima bomb. This is also the size of the bombs now possessed by India and Pakistan, among others.
> 
> The immediate blast and radiation from the exchange of 100 small nuclear bombs killed between three million and 16 million people, depending on the targets. But the global effect of the resulting one-to-five million tonnes of smoke was much worse. “It is very surprising how few weapons are needed to do so much damage,” says Toon.

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