Cultural effects of a nuclear war.

I came with the idea for this thread after reading Amerigo's Cuban Missile War Timeline, where human civilisation survives in a reasonable state despite all the death and destruction.

Still, this war would destroy most european and american cities. Think of all the ancient cities, museums and works of art turned into dust in a second.

Of course, in a scenario where hundreds of millions have died,and mankind's first concern is to survive, caring about the Mona Lisa getting nuked is quite obscene. However, I think that the cultural effects of having a large percentage of western heritage getting literally wiped from the face of earth would start to be felt in a few generations. Once the situation settles and the survivors in America and Europe get their act together and a semblance of normality returns, someone will start caring that the Mona Lisa got nuked. People would look at old art books and realize that perhaps 90% of the works depicted there were wiped out from the face of earth, never to return. Small old cities untouched by nukes would probably be protected to preserve the old architecture wiped out in the big metropolis. Perhaps we could see to diametrally opposed currents in culture: one in which the lost art works would try to be recreated, and another that would try to forget the past and see the lost heritage as a part of the world that caused the nuclear war.

Your thoughts?

My thoughts: A nuclear war would be like the burning of the Library of Alexandria, only a thousand times worse.

If the war were to happen in the 1990s, maybe even in 1988, then we wouldn't see an effect like that of the burning of the Library at Alexandria. While that library was the only real collection of knowledge at that time, at the 1990s there were databases and libraries across the world. Even back in the 1960s, there were libraries in Japan, China, Latin America, etc. It would be terrible, and most development post-war would be rebuilding, with little innovation for a while, but not total loss of knowledge.

Regarding culture, I've heard theories that some nihilism in immediately post-war Japanese literature can be attributed to the bombings. We could see a culture that has some degree of death worship, looking forward to the end.

On the other hand, if it happens in the future, with so much stuff on computer, then the EMP alone would fry that.

Polish Eagle said:

If the war were to happen in the 1990s, maybe even in 1988, then we wouldn't see an effect like that of the burning of the Library at Alexandria. While that library was the only real collection of knowledge at that time, at the 1990s there were databases and libraries across the world. Even back in the 1960s, there were libraries in Japan, China, Latin America, etc. It would be terrible, and most development post-war would be rebuilding, with little innovation for a while, but not total loss of knowledge.

Regarding culture, I've heard theories that some nihilism in immediately post-war Japanese literature can be attributed to the bombings. We could see a culture that has some degree of death worship, looking forward to the end.

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I think we'd see a very nihilsic society with death and repression being a part of everyday life.

Acceptance of this would play a large part in culture with music of Johnny Cash and others of his style probably doing very well.

Also there will probabl be a larger metal movement possible even a dominant one with the want to escape and general low self esteem.

The Kiat said:

On the other hand, if it happens in the future, with so much stuff on computer, then the EMP alone would fry that.

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Actually a lot of buisneeses and bigger libraries have taken measures to survive EMP attack.

I must say up front that the Cuban Missile War Time line was a most excellent piece of work.

As to the cultural effects in such a world: aside from the irreplaceable losses to art and music, there is also the fact that three World Wars in the same century – each of them exponentially bloodier than the last – are going to lead a lot of people to believe that there is something seriously wrong with human nature. Why are people so violent, so fanatical, many will ask. What is wrong with the human heart that needs to be fixed? And how to fix it?

In an earlier era this would have lead to the rise of various Utopian belief systems, weather secular or religious, but in the ATL World Wars 2 and 3 were started by just such ideas – Fascism, National Socialism and International Communism. So humanity has tried to find paradise and the results have been genocide and megadeath. Many may conclude from this that humans are not capable of perfecting their lot.

This could lead to a more widespread growth of religion – the contemplative, rely-solely-on-god, inward looking variety rather than the raving holy-roller/jihadist kind. People will have had enough of that sort of thinking. I can also see Existentialist and Nihilist thought becoming more mainstream, even in the United States. Even in popular culture.

For instance, the effect on Science Fiction will be dramatic to say the least. Star Trek style happy futures will be right out - at least for awhile. In fact, Roddenberry's Trek in the CMW TL may look and feel a whole lot more like our Battlestar Galactica than anything else. By now though, nearly 50 years on, folks may have wearied of all the gloom and want their happy futures back.

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson said:

In an earlier era this would have lead to the rise of various Utopian belief systems, weather secular or religious, but in the ATL World Wars 2 and 3 were started by just such ideas – Fascism, National Socialism and International Communism. So humanity has tried to find paradise and the results have been genocide and megadeath. Many may conclude from this that humans are not capable of perfecting their lot.

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My thoughts on this issue are quite similar. I might add that we could see somewhat similar impact in arts as after the Black Death, the proximity of Death would impact arts greatly and would displace Love and God (in this case, the earthly utopias) as central motif.

Jukra said:

My thoughts on this issue are quite similar. I might add that we could see somewhat similar impact in arts as after the Black Death, the proximity of Death would impact arts greatly and would displace Love and God (in this case, the earthly utopias) as central motif.

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You're right about death and mortality, the ephemeral nature of life, becoming a central motif in post-WWIII art. Also in music. The whole psychedelic/Hippy/Summer Of Love thing just isn't going to happen here, not to mention Disco, Punk, Hip-Hop, etc. Not that the latter were particularly upbeat, just, well, too many butterflies. Goodness, what would music sound like in this TL? The March Violets. The Swans. Joy Division? Nah, too upbeat. Fly-era Yoko Ono. Geinoh Yamashirogumi. Man, they are going to be so messed up.

Philosophy can't help but expand.

An awful lot of the survivors will have an awful lot to ponder when they have a moment's peace, which won't be often in the early going, but after some time, when general order is restored (by some means; people won't stand the chaos for long) I think a lot of deep thinking will be done, if for no other reason than, as mentioned above, a greater examination of just exactly what and where mankind has gone wrong and continues to go wrong that creates greater and greater destruction inspite of the greater and greater ambitions and intentions for utopia.

After things return to normalcy in this scenario, which would take some time in Europe and North America, worldwide there would be a greater appreciation for cultural artefacts, with efforts to try to recreate what is possible (for ex. architectural styles on ancient cities).

Its hard to say but i'm not sure that nihlism and fatalism would be such large factors, except maybee among the surviving intellectual elite. I think that people (in the first few generations) would strive towards normalcy and try to preserve any of the pre-war good life that they could. Later we might see a more pessemistic outlook, but then its possible that people could be more optimistic, ideas like 'building a new future' and 'mankind survived the worst' and so on.

Novosibrisk said:

Its hard to say but i'm not sure that nihlism and fatalism would be such large factors, except maybee among the surviving intellectual elite. I think that people (in the first few generations) would strive towards normalcy and try to preserve any of the pre-war good life that they could. Later we might see a more pessemistic outlook, but then its possible that people could be more optimistic, ideas like 'building a new future' and 'mankind survived the worst' and so on.

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Yes. The Great Existential Depression will only last for a little while, then new generations will move on as damage is repaired and memories fade. But for awhile, things are gonna be goth as a fothermucker. If the Beatles manage to survive the Cuban Missile War (doubtful, all things considered) their music is gonna be, uh, somewhat different.

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson said:

Yes. The Great Existential Depression will only last for a little while, then new generations will move on as damage is repaired and memories fade. But for awhile, things are gonna be goth as a fothermucker. If the Beatles manage to survive the Cuban Missile War (doubtful, all things considered) their music is gonna be, uh, somewhat different.

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I wholeheartedly support the Beatles sounding like Cannibal Corpse and Dimmu Borgir having a razor fight in a volcano.

Novosibrisk said:

I wholeheartedly support the Beatles sounding like Cannibal Corpse and Dimmu Borgir having a razor fight in a volcano.

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Silly, that's the Stones - alt-Beatles would sound like Interpol: "But it's different now that I'm poor and aging/I'll never see this face again/You go stabbing yourself in the neck." Oh my yes.

Archangel said:

After things return to normalcy in this scenario, which would take some time in Europe and North America, worldwide there would be a greater appreciation for cultural artefacts, with efforts to try to recreate what is possible (for ex. architectural styles on ancient cities).

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I was wondering about the recreating and though perhaps the opposite might happen? Perhaps the war is seen as year zero and the desire is to create something new and different than the 'old world' that ended in such death and destruction and general ruination of the world?

Jason said:

I was wondering about the recreating and though perhaps the opposite might happen? Perhaps the war is seen as year zero and the desire is to create something new and different than the 'old world' that ended in such death and destruction and general ruination of the world?

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At a much more limited scale, we can see what happened to most german cities after the destruction of WWII. Usually, monuments were rebuilt while the urban areas around it were built in a modern style. But of course, a single nuke is much more powerful than all the WWII ordinance ever fired over a single german city. A ground burst would even change the city's topography, making all attempts to recreate the ancient urban structure impossible.

I don't think the preservation of classical music would suffer a lot: music is immaterial, and any australian or argentine library would have enough copies of sheet music to rebuild western music with ease. The same would happen to literature: a single decent-sized library in an average city untouched by the war could preserve pre-war literature. The big problem would come from works that, by definition, are unique: paintings, sculptures and buildings. It is the loss of those things which would have the most important after effects.

Jason said:

I was wondering about the recreating and though perhaps the opposite might happen? Perhaps the war is seen as year zero and the desire is to create something new and different than the 'old world' that ended in such death and destruction and general ruination of the world?

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That, the attempt to build something new, I would think is inevitable. It would take time and there would be painful periods of unrest with the burden of trying to rebuild the most basic institutions of civilization coupled with the uncertain future, but ultimately, the survivors can't help but be changed by the experience; racism, sexism, predjudices would, in time, melt away as the survivors are forced to either work together to survive or die alone.

What happens in the event of a total, global, thermo-nuclear war is pretty much the destruction of massive population centers and the bulk of the corresponding infrastructure. The survivors would, initially, be isolated from one and other, a collection of small enclaves, centered around some source of potable water and farmable land, the two most important resources for the survivors.

Surviving technology and the resources to power it (batteries, gasoline, natural gas, coal, etc...) would be more valuable to these people than gold or other minerals as would survivors with knowledge of the workings of that technology. In fact, people with ANY understanding of even basic technology (simple machines, pre-modern technology, etc...) and the resources for harnessing such technology would be incredibly valuable.

In time, these scattered communities would make contact,

Here's where the problems start.

If you have two communities with the same resources at roughly the same levels and roughly the same populations you would probably see the establishment of trade and eventually the establishment of some sort of "greater community", an expansion and merger of the two communities. That's the best case scenario.

If you have two communities that make contact and there are disparities in resources and population, there's a chance of conflict. Say community A has lots of people, but little resources, scavenging for sustanence but also heavily armed. Community B has abundent resources, but a smaller population and lightly armed. Community A and Community B meet. Community A has little to trade but has a desperate need. Community B has two options: absorb Community A and become stronger OR rebuff Community A and probably be destroyed by them. People will not watch their children starve and they will take what they need by force if neccessary.

This initial contact could have servely adverse effects on Community A. Community A may see the experience as what to expect from further contacts and become a militaristic and agressive community, incorperating smaller communities by conquest of arms rather than attempting peaceful coexistance.

Conversely, however, if Community B absorbs Community A, a different disposition may be fostered: B's resources plus A's arms may create a sort of "recovery state"; a community that actively seeks out other survivors, for the purpose of incorperating them into their communities while seeking out additional unclaimed or even undiscovered resources, confident in it's ability to absorb and protect said resources and peoples.

I think, based on the history of human civilization, you'd see a mixture of both of the above for a time, until a change of philosophy recognizes the re-emergence of "the old way" and recognizes the need to break the cycle and seeks to forge a "new way".

Human history tells us a lot of "new ways" will be tried and many will fail, but some will succede and foster stable and sustainable communities, call them states if you will.

I should think that, given the near extinction of the human race, those who remember the "old days" and the points of conflict may try their best to eliminate the old divisions if for no other reason than cooperative means of survival.

In places like the U.S., democracy and republicanism will eventually return, but, tempered by the experiences of the "old days" perhaps modified, hopefully for the better (expansion of the franchise, extension of individual rights and tight restrictions on the central authority of the state compared to the individual communities, etc..) and may very well, over time, produce a better society than the one that existed before the bomb.

Elsewhere, I don't know.

Thoughts from folks from elsewhere?

In an early '60s conflict where America will be largely unharmed, and egregiously so compared with her European allies and enemies, the immediate reaction in the generation too young to have been in positions of power will probably be one of intense war guilt. Possibly something on the order of OTL Germany, where generations later World War III still isn't funny and putting on a Kennedy impersonation is seen as deeply, deeply inappropriate.

Later wars, where the US would suffer the loss of major cities could see a much greater social opposition to urban decline: Undamaged, modern-looking (that's 1950s modern) large cities are rare enough that they are symbols of antebellum civilization, something that will be looked at through very rose-tinted glasses by many.

I want to point out that a war that would leave only tiny remote settlements as the last remnant of civilization was not really in the cards for OTL. MAD was real, but the Mutually Assured Destruction was referring to the super-powers, not to humanity in general.

Even the worst case situation (a slow build-up from tit-for-tat launches that failed to eliminate either side's arsenal) at the worst possible time ('80s, when the counts were highest and the ICBMs most accurate) would not risk the collapse of civilization. At most, we would lose North America, Europe, and most of Asia. Even that last is unlikely, requiring some very weird events to get the Indians and Chinese fully involved and targeted.

Areas in the same hemisphere but unstruck would merely suffer horrendous effects from fallout and weather. The sort of thing a civilized country can bemoan and suffer because it still has live humans left to do the moaning.

Meanwhile, the southern hemisphere would still have fully functioning industrial economies scattered about in actual working nation-states. Movies aside, noone is going to waste the necessary half dozen nukes on Australia, much less New Zealand or Argentina.

Mad Max may be cool as all get out, but while those thirty-strong armies were battling for gas in the wasteland there were probably a few thousand folks in Mumbai working the night shift in helicopter factories.