100-200 years after a 1983 nuclear war

Based off the TL 1983 doomsday on wikia, which postulates nuclear war in 1983, how long would it take for population, infrastructure, economic etc... levels to recover back to the prewar state? What would the world look like in 100-200 years? Is it possible for major countries like the US, China, Russia to re-emerge within 2 centuries?
 
Based off the TL 1983 doomsday on wikia, which postulates nuclear war in 1983, how long would it take for population, infrastructure, economic etc... levels to recover back to the prewar state? What would the world look like in 100-200 years? Is it possible for major countries like the US, China, Russia to re-emerge within 2 centuries?

Given that time, I think yes. The USA, USSR, and China can reunite again.
 
I hate to say it, but given the fact the USSR and USA suffered a lot of ground-level nuclear strikes, the possibility of these two countries re-emerging to pre-1984 levels of population and economic activity could take as much as 500 years, in my humble opinion. That's how long it may take for the last of the dangerous radioactive by-products from all those ground-level explosions to finally fall to a safe level. In short, it would be around 2400 AD or later that large-scale economic exploitation of North America and the former Soviet Union can finally occur again in relative safety for the people living there.
 
Umm... radioactive decay doesn't quite work like that. It's a bundle of logarithmic decays with different time constants. This means that the hot isotopes are those with short half lives - and those with long half lives aren't a big deal.
From the wiki list of fallout isotopes (can't be bothered to look up from a proper source):
Strontium 91 - half-life 9 hours, decays to Yttrium 91 - half life 52 days, decays to Zirconium 91 (stable)
92Sr - half life 2 hours, decays to Yttrium 92, half life 4 hours, decays to Zirconium 91 (stable)
95Zr - half life 64 days, decays to Niobium 95 - half life 35 days, decays to Molybdenum 95 (stable)
99Mo - half life 3 days, decays to Technetium 99 - half life 211,000 years, decays to Ruthenium 99 (stable)
106Ru - half life 370 days, decays to Rhodium 106 - half life 30 seconds, decays to Palladium 106 (stable).
131Sb - half life 23 minutes, decays to Tellurium 131 - half life 30 hours, decays to Iodine 131 - half life 8 days, decays to Xenon 131 (stable)
132Te - half life 3 days, decays to Iodine 132 - half life 2 hours, decays to Xenon 132 (stable)
134Te - half life 42 minutes, decays to Iodine 134 - half life 52 minutes, decays to Xenon 134 (observationally stable).
137Cs - half life 30 years decays to Barium 137m and then immediately to Barium 137 (stable)
140Ba - half life 13 days, decays to Lanthanum 140 - half life 2 days, decays to Cerium 140 (stable)
141La - half life 4 hours, decays to Cerium 141 - half life 32 days, decays to Praseodymium 141 (stable)
144Ce - half life 285 days, decays to Praseodymium 144 - half life about 15 minutes, decays to Neodymium 144 - half life 2,290,000,000,000,000 years

Point is that after a few years the only isotopes left in significant quantities is Technetium 99 which has a long half life and so isn't very radioactive, Caesium 137 which will halve in activity every 30 years, and Neodymium 144 which is going to be invisible behind the background radiation.
The reality is that the vast majority of the fallout will be gone after a year or two, and what is left will decay by about an order of magnitude every century. After 500 years, even the Caesium 137 contamination will be down to 0.01% of what it once was.

The real issue is that after a nuclear war what was once there is gone forever - you'll see countries re-emerging where the USA and USSR once were, but they won't be America or Russia as we recognise them, they'll be something else sharing perhaps a common language and some symbolism with their original states.
 
Umm... radioactive decay doesn't quite work like that. It's a bundle of logarithmic decays with different time constants. This means that the hot isotopes are those with short half lives - and those with long half lives aren't a big deal.
From the wiki list of fallout isotopes (can't be bothered to look up from a proper source):
Strontium 91 - half-life 9 hours, decays to Yttrium 91 - half life 52 days, decays to Zirconium 91 (stable)
92Sr - half life 2 hours, decays to Yttrium 92, half life 4 hours, decays to Zirconium 91 (stable)
95Zr - half life 64 days, decays to Niobium 95 - half life 35 days, decays to Molybdenum 95 (stable)
99Mo - half life 3 days, decays to Technetium 99 - half life 211,000 years, decays to Ruthenium 99 (stable)
106Ru - half life 370 days, decays to Rhodium 106 - half life 30 seconds, decays to Palladium 106 (stable).
131Sb - half life 23 minutes, decays to Tellurium 131 - half life 30 hours, decays to Iodine 131 - half life 8 days, decays to Xenon 131 (stable)
132Te - half life 3 days, decays to Iodine 132 - half life 2 hours, decays to Xenon 132 (stable)
134Te - half life 42 minutes, decays to Iodine 134 - half life 52 minutes, decays to Xenon 134 (observationally stable).
137Cs - half life 30 years decays to Barium 137m and then immediately to Barium 137 (stable)
140Ba - half life 13 days, decays to Lanthanum 140 - half life 2 days, decays to Cerium 140 (stable)
141La - half life 4 hours, decays to Cerium 141 - half life 32 days, decays to Praseodymium 141 (stable)
144Ce - half life 285 days, decays to Praseodymium 144 - half life about 15 minutes, decays to Neodymium 144 - half life 2,290,000,000,000,000 years

Point is that after a few years the only isotopes left in significant quantities is Technetium 99 which has a long half life and so isn't very radioactive, Caesium 137 which will halve in activity every 30 years, and Neodymium 144 which is going to be invisible behind the background radiation.
The reality is that the vast majority of the fallout will be gone after a year or two, and what is left will decay by about an order of magnitude every century. After 500 years, even the Caesium 137 contamination will be down to 0.01% of what it once was.

The real issue is that after a nuclear war what was once there is gone forever - you'll see countries re-emerging where the USA and USSR once were, but they won't be America or Russia as we recognise them, they'll be something else sharing perhaps a common language and some symbolism with their original states.

In the 1983 Doomsday TL in the Wikia, The Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics still has the pre-nuclear war Slavic, Caucasian and Central Asian cultures, and since it's the premier power in the region, it can still expand and take European Russia, Belarus and Central Asia. That is if it can greatly expand its army, which won't happen in 100 years.

As for the United States, it's much more tricky: it is more fragmented than the former Soviet Union, and the government of the former USA is now in exile in Australia, so it's much harder for them to make a comeback in the mainland.

As for China, i'm confident with its ability to reunite. It had a history of fragmentation, but still, it reunited. China can reunite in the future in the ATL.
 
Top