Cold War WI: Everyday Life After an Atomic War

I've grown extremely curious about the common man's history. Things like TV shows, fashion, values and morals, restaurants, music, products, that sort of thing. Just how a person lives. I think it's a neglected area of Alternate History. That has therefore inspired this.

If the Cold War erupted into WW3, which is assuredly going to involve atomic exchange at least to some degree (even if you avoid full exchange), what is life going to be like after that for the normal person?

PS, kindly forgive the wide breadth of years. I understand full well how long the Cold War lasted, but it would be awkward to create a thread for each decade of the Cold War.

That would vary by the time period. Early in the Cold War, the U.S. mainland might not be affected at all, while the later Cold War would be a horrific mess.

I do remember reading an article on Dropshot--the American warplan for blasting the Communist Bloc out of existence in the event of a war in the 1950s--and it made a cultural prediction that there'd be no counterculture and 1960s ferment. For good or ill, "the 1950s" would continue for a generation.

Not finding it with a cursory Google search though.

Do you mean in a "limited" exchange scenaro (i.e. citizens of North America are relatively well-off), or what?

vultan said:

Do you mean in a "limited" exchange scenaro (i.e. citizens of North America are relatively well-off), or what?

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The scenarios can vary, as I said in the OP, between limited nuclear exchange to full blown, "throw whatever we can at them" exchange. I think those are the only two scenarios you can get. WW3 between America and Russia was never going to be without atomic exchange.

Now, if you want to get into restaurants of all things, if there are large numbers of refugees coming to the United States, you might see them bringing their cuisines with them.

Imagine refugees from a devastated Germany (regardless of the time period, Germany is going to get trashed--again) opening schnitzel (sp?) shops and the like.

Also, if there's a lot of fallout and consequent sterility, voluntary childlessness when so many people want children of their own and cannot have them is going to be severely unpopular. Adoption might be promoted by the government, media, etc. due to a large number of orphans.

I'm imagining a return of the "orphan trains", only with orphaned children from nuked population centers being sent into rural areas where fuel shortages might necessitate more manual labor.

And about fuel, the novel Alas Babylon suggests there might not be gasoline available for civilian use in the characters' lifetimes. And that was in the 1960s. More bicycles, perhaps a return of the horse, and consequent limiting of people's horizons.

Also, I imagine a greater emphasis on local food consumption and production, as transportation networks will be ganked up.

A lot fewer out-of-season fruits and vegetables and more preserves, jams, etc. They're called "preserves" for a reason.

It depends on whether the exchange is tactical or strategical.

Tactical use of nukes isn't going to be terrible. There will be fallout, yes, and the impact zones will be abandoned for decades. And there will be short-term radioactive clouds. But that's going to be fairly regional, and the damage is, i think, not beyond short-term recovery.

A strategic nuclear war, even if its somewhat limited, would have effects that cause the breakdown of civilization by its base: global crop failure, due to nuclear winter.
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf

Decades is a bit much. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were re-occupied in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, when people predicted no plants would grow there for decades.

About the nuke winter model in your link, 100 Hiroshima bombs is 15,000 kilotons. I'll need to see KT vs. MT to see how many aboveground nuclear tests that's equal to.

Of course, the obvious response is that nuclear test sites don't burn continually.

MerryPrankster said:

Decades is a bit much. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were re-occupied in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, when people predicted no plants would grow there for decades.

About the nuke winter model in your link, 100 Hiroshima bombs is 15,000 kilotons. I'll need to see KT vs. MT to see how many aboveground nuclear tests that's equal to.

Of course, the obvious response is that nuclear test sites don't burn continually.

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15,000KT = 15 MT. That was the yield of the device used in the Castle Bravo test, which was the largest nuclear test the Americans conducted. (The yield exceeded predictions by ~250%. It was supposed to be a 6MT device.)

The US and the USSR conducted ~600 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1963, with the bulk of them happening in the late '50s. (Probably about ~100 a year total until the 1960 moratorium, and then about 50-100 between late 1961 and the signing of the limited test ban in 1963.) IIRC there were no long term climatic effects, though there were issues with fallout. Especially if the winds were to shift unexpectedly.

MerryPrankster said:

Decades is a bit much. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were re-occupied in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, when people predicted no plants would grow there for decades.

About the nuke winter model in your link, 100 Hiroshima bombs is 15,000 kilotons. I'll need to see KT vs. MT to see how many aboveground nuclear tests that's equal to.

Of course, the obvious response is that nuclear test sites don't burn continually.

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That's the point, and why i made a difference between tactical nuclear confrontations (which would cause no mega fires) and a strategical nuclear war, where cities, factories and oil wells would be targetted, and the fires would raise soot to the stratosphere.

Yes, i think i have overstated the damage caused by radiation in the case of a tactical war. I was thinking about larger nukes than Hiroshima/Nagasaki, but, obviously, a tactical use would take the smaller nukes, not the large ones.

A strategical scenario that would leave our civilization in much better shape would be if it focused mostly on the use of nukes to create EMPs.

An AH curiosity that's run across my mind is the electoral map post war (well, post the martial law post war). Just the idea of New York with 13 electoral votes and California with 29, or whatever it would be.

MerryPrankster said:

Now, if you want to get into restaurants of all things, if there are large numbers of refugees coming to the United States, you might see them bringing their cuisines with them.

Imagine refugees from a devastated Germany (regardless of the time period, Germany is going to get trashed--again) opening schnitzel (sp?) shops and the like.

Also, if there's a lot of fallout and consequent sterility, voluntary childlessness when so many people want children of their own and cannot have them is going to be severely unpopular. Adoption might be promoted by the government, media, etc. due to a large number of orphans.

I'm imagining a return of the "orphan trains", only with orphaned children from nuked population centers being sent into rural areas where fuel shortages might necessitate more manual labor.

And about fuel, the novel Alas Babylon suggests there might not be gasoline available for civilian use in the characters' lifetimes. And that was in the 1960s. More bicycles, perhaps a return of the horse, and consequent limiting of people's horizons.

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With the idea of it being masses of different refugees immigrating to America, I'd submit the idea that the world from there could turn out to be very much like Blade Runner, which is set in the far off (from 1983) year of 2019 where WW3 erupted sometime before the film takes place, and as a result (or as well as that fact), masses of people immigrate from disaster stricken areas like Eastasia to the major cities and evidently masses from the nations themselves of people immigrate to major cities, and there's pollution and global warming and global darkness (google that) and animal life is nearly totally extinct. In fact, in Blade Runner there is a language called City Speak, which is a guttural combination of all the immigrant languages melding into one, so it's a mix of Chinese and Hungarian and Japanese and German and all sorts of things.

In a Catch 22 situation, I get the feeling that perhaps those cities that do survive would see masses of migration into them as they're the only areas that can properly provide modern infrastructure, while at the same time the cities are going to be the ones most target for destruction in an atomic war. The country side could perhaps evolve into a fiefdom-like relationship with the cities, where they grow the food and do all the labor to gather raw materials for the benefit of the city they surround.

May I bump?

Emperor Norton I said:

I've grown extremely curious about the common man's history. Things like TV shows, fashion, values and morals, restaurants, music, products, that sort of thing. Just how a person lives. I think it's a neglected area of Alternate History. That has therefore inspired this.

If the Cold War erupted into WW3, which is assuredly going to involve atomic exchange at least to some degree (even if you avoid full exchange), what is life going to be like after that for the normal person?

PS, kindly forgive the wide breadth of years. I understand full well how long nthe Cold War lasted, but it would be awkward to create a thread for each decade of the Cold War.

Click to expand...

If early in the 1950's the US had better Civil Defense, probably based on the State, then it did in the 1960's. Fallout shelters were stocked and marked. We had Duck and Cover, laugh but in a situation where a city gets one Atomic bomb, it will keep casualties down. I was raised in Columbus OH and my Mother graduated High school in 1955. She used to tell me about Home Economics teaching how to make a balanced meal with canned goods and how to clean the fallout out of your families clothes. In science they explained radiation and fallout. We lived 8 miles north of the downtown section and the SAC refueling base was about 24 miles south of downtown. A lot of our neighbors worked at that base and communted without freeways in the early years of the 1950's. They felt it was a safe area for thier families then.

The most likely WWIII scenario, IMO, is at some point in the first decade of the Cold War. With that in mind, I would assume there would be limited use of atomic weapons, though they would surely be used by the United States and USSR. Assuming that NATO wins the war, there will certainly be an immigration wave to the United States, but this is of course assuming that the United States liberalizes it's immigration law after the war ends. If the United States leaves the war rather well off, it's not going to be looking to take in the mass amounts of refugees from other countries, and so we might not even see something like the Immigration Act of 1965 from OTL.

TNF said:

The most likely WWIII scenario, IMO, is at some point in the first decade of the Cold War. With that in mind, I would assume there would be limited use of atomic weapons, though they would surely be used by the United States and USSR. Assuming that NATO wins the war, there will certainly be an immigration wave to the United States, but this is of course assuming that the United States liberalizes it's immigration law after the war ends. If the United States leaves the war rather well off, it's not going to be looking to take in the mass amounts of refugees from other countries, and so we might not even see something like the Immigration Act of 1965 from OTL.

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WW3 is possible at any time, really. Softer in the late 40s-50s, yes. But not any more possible than in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. WW3, as with any war, is just things getting entangled to such a degree and tensions rising to such a degree that tensions can explode at any moment, even if just by accident. One side accidentally attacks an asset of, or kills people of the other, you can have WW3. One side misinterprets information as an attack or as war having already erupted, you have WW3. The relationship between the US and USSR was made dangerous because it entailed entanglements with other nations and agreements, a need for posturing and not backing down, fears, unknowns and unknown unknowns and all those things that have always lead to conflict except now both had the ability to devastate the earth and to wipe out whole areas of civilization, if not civilization entirely.

Isn't this entire thread mostly a study in the fact that we have no idea what the world would look like post a plausible nuclear war? I mean, it seems that most speculation is confined to the most medicore of effects.

if we take a 1961/1962 nuclear war, Scenario including Nuclear winter and Ecological collapse.
the world would very different of our world.

let start with music
No Beatles or Roiling Stones, they died as all major city in great Britain were nuked.
Here Brain Wilson and his "the Beach Boys" fill up the void, if Los Angeles is mis by soviet R-7 ICBM.

values and morals
it will be "survive or die" mentality under the people
yes some people will try help others like clergy, but ones the supply are run empty. Then the Dark side of Humans surfaced.
Society have to take "Zero tolerance" law and order, to keep things in order, including public execution of criminals.

Living

with massive refugee crisis (bigger then the migration wave at end of roman empire)
first, people will be packed with the dozen in one room, making a one family house a refugee camp with hundred people !
later with build of new prefab housing, those "refugee camp" are empty and demolish.
In those new "Home" the People will have livingspace similar to Japanese housing,: Minimal
and very similar in layout entrance store of protective clothes and shoes, to prevent contamination of home.

Fashion
people will wear two divergent set of clothes
one protective for outside (radiation, acid rain etc) how is stored in entrance of Home.

the other will be fashion clothes for inside living
i bet the protective clothes will be also fashion victims.

Food
here will be massive changes in taste and eating habits, do lack of Animals become extinct during war or radioactive contamination.
Birds like chicken could become new dodos in museums.
under those condition hungry People will eat anything.
it would not surprise me, if in Restaurants of Post war time will have on there menu: Dog goulash, roasted Guinea pigs or rats.
or they goes step further and develop synthetic Food from oil
about a wide variety of goods in Post war time, forget it
you will not find 37 types of Ketchup here, if you lucky there will one or two to choose from.

TV and Movie
it repeat post ww2 time in Germany, people will seek light entertainment to forget, means: Light comedy, Musicals and schmaltzy love story with happy ending.
it will take some time for real time drama come to cinema near you

by the Way
The Weather Forecast will include daily Fallout warning and Radiation levels

Assuming a 1970s/1980s conflict large parts of Europe,the United States and the Soviet Union would be destroyed as functioning modern societies and would likely return to Dark Age/Medieval conditions maybe recovering to 18th/19th centuryafter a generation or two if they are lucky. It may wellbe that large areas have conditions similar to those shown n Threads or Mad Max. Tv shows and radio shows, forget it except if someone locally can crank up a generator powerful enough to run any old equip,ent that thery can still get to work. Motorised vehiclees.Again there might be quite a lot left by refugees when they ran out of fuel.Maybe in some places somoene can produce sufficient fuel to run a few vehicles. In many places perhaps back to the horse and cart. Many old cars and trucks might now be horse drawn.

Large areas outside towns are likely dominated by warlords and some towns will have effectively been taken over by the local warlord and are run along feudal lines. Disease is probably rampentAntibiotics virtually non existent though there has probably been considerable revival of herbal remedies. Relatively few pre war doctors and other health staff probably survived the war and those who did are woefully under resourced

Few books survived the war and many will be wearing out.Large sections of the population could well be illiterate though some people retain the skills.

Life is probably nasty, brutish and short for most but there may well be areas of light as there were during the Post Roman Dark Ages where recovery will gradually spread from but it will take decades and probably longer for anything like a modern technical society to re-emerge.

lucaswillen05 said:

Assuming a 1970s/1980s conflict large parts of Europe,the United States and the Soviet Union would be destroyed as functioning modern societies and would likely return to Dark Age/Medieval conditions maybe recovering to 18th/19th centuryafter a generation or two if they are lucky. It may wellbe that large areas have conditions similar to those shown n Threads or Mad Max.

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Soviet Union and East block will even to be worse off in a 1961/1962 nuclear war scenario.
while they launch 4 to handful ICBM to USA, dozens of MRBM and hundred nuclear bombers on north west europe.

the NATO do a nuclear Overkill on Soviet Union and East block and China.
alone on Moscow, SAC waned to drop 100 megatons on atomic bombs !
every Communist target had to be hit MINIMUM by 3 nuke !
and that with caliber nuclear weapons range of 15 megatons ! down to 10 kilotons
(a 1980s nuclear war scenario. use more nuke, but on much lower caliber of 10 kilotons)

that 1960s nuclear overkill and nuclear winter will left around 2~20 million russians alive distributed on former Soviet territory.
this is more stone-age level, but this depend on level of local resource.
have communes sufficing resource they could preserved there technological level.
what let to this strange situation after the War:
east germany and East block are people living in Medieval conditions
North france and benelux are people living 18th/19th century level
while south of Lyon to Algiers they live on 20th century level