all out Nuclear war.

what would a full* Nuclear war between (at first) the USSR and USA in say 1985 look like? who'd "win" who'd lose (more)? would humanity live through it? who'd become a super-power in the post war world?



*i think of full Nuclear war as the use of all or most of the Nuclear weapons the USA and USSR have and involving most nuclear nations.
 

Anaxagoras

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Nobody wins. The entire human race is dead within a year, except perhaps for a dozen or so lucky people surviving in some cave in southern Chile or some other such place.
 
Nobody wins. The entire human race is dead within a year, except perhaps for a dozen or so lucky people surviving in some cave in southern Chile or some other such place.

a lot of people say that, but given that most likely no Nukes would be used in Africa, or Latin America, maybe even Oceania, i don't see how the Human race would die out.
 
I once read a report about a nuke war in 1989.

All I can recall is that post-nuke food harvests in the US would be 2% prewar yields and that the Japanese would go raiding for food as far south as Australia.

Ouch.
 
Nuclear Apocalypse. Humanity may survive, but it is freakishly screwed. Even without a nuclear attack on some part of the world, the fallout will screw over many parts of the world where the initial nuclear attack did not destroy. Add that to mass starvation, the fear of overpopulation is a thing of the past.
 
Humanity'll survive, certainly, although between the fallout and the impact winter civilization is in for a bumpy ride. If any kind of society makes it through it'll be more agricultural ones and southern hemisphere states that can go into full-scale authoritarian mode. I'm seeing Argentina here, and (maybe) Australia under martial law.
 
Fallout is overrated.

It is true that it would be a major problem--certain incidents of cancer will skyrocket, radiation sickness will be a major problem, and birth defects will be widespread--but On the Beach is waay inaccurate.
 
a lot of people say that, but given that most likely no Nukes would be used in Africa, or Latin America, maybe even Oceania, i don't see how the Human race would die out.

Fallout kills easily millions of people, directly or indirectly.

A 'nuclear winter' has been proven to be not quite as bad as Sagan and the gang said it would be but I would imagine that the smoke and dust and whatnot from the fires definitely fucks up the climate worldwide, creating crop failures, floods and crazy weather worldwide. So instead of Nuclear Winter we end up with a Nuclear Autumn. Millions more dead.

Worldwide collapse in trade and food aid cause massive shortages of food and medicine to less developed nations. Millions die.

African and Latin American governments collapse due to all the chaos. Parts of the two continents become a free for all, with a thousand different groups fighting for scarce resources. Millions more dead.

Massive amounts of dead bodies makes conditions perfect for diseases of all kinds. More millions dead.

Destruction of the ozone layer will cause a large increase in skin cancers and other conditions worldwide. More millions dead.

Noticing a pattern?

There will be survivors, of course --there always are. But human population gets knocked down to --if we're lucky --'only' 20-30% of pre WW3 levels.
 
It would probably be pretty much like Threads.

That's probably one of the most accurate nuke war movies.

Why have hysterical portraits of glaciers on the Amazon (the more extreme nuke winter scenarios) or fallout killing everything when you've got something that's both terribly scary and realistic?
 
part of the world population, those who have the means or the means to procure the means, go anywhere safe, as in underground or under mountains, where they grow food under artificial light and filter water

part does much the same but in a do it yourself kind of way, scarping together neon lights and hidroponic farms in basemnts and setting up water filtering sistems, taking joint efforts to isolate safe areas or simply dig in as deep as hey can and so on

something later caled "order" is kept by brutal martial law worldwide and small wars break out over controll of warious strategic resorces

most of the population is fucked
surface society fast fowards into two pararel sistems, one a military controled quasi-feudal state, and the other a kind of devolved tribal sistem, possibly social-anarchist in more advanced or lucky parts

the first years are a nightmare, radiation desease, refugees, mass executions, still borns, starvation, canibalism, suicide pandemic

as the first year passes and then the second, most people, eweriwere, are dead
howewer more, manny more survive than expected, and a kind of death camp mentality evolves, where people function day by day in a state of removed automatism, surviving things they never dreamed of, doing things they newer thought of in worst nightmares, seeing how life goes on, no mater what has a huge impact on people and society, and individuals and organisations and states start self organising to produce more food and generate more energy and maintain relative order
slowly things stabilise, the dead are eaten and forgotten, urban life reorganises itself

all this time under ground or behind concrete walls, a paralel society evolves, one built on selfsuficiency and paranoia

there is interaction betveen the two societies, at first there is fear and resentment, but that is owercome as they both need one another to survive, and slowly they merge back into one

disparity, coruption and injustice are rampant and omnipresent

in all these ways, having lost a lot of weight, and said goodbye to a lot of taboos, humanity gets trough the winter

once the nuclear winter is finaly ower, people see a world that is seemingly dead
soon howewer life returns to the surface, and it turns out life does ok with radiation, its all a bit deformed and most larger species are gone for good but the world gets greener and greener.

ewen if the first survivors scofed at the idea of procreation in such a world, noone can stop people being people, and new generations are born, painfully, litle by litle, as the infertility and stillborn rates are high, and much ofspring deformed and sick
still to ewriones amasement it turns out population numbers grow faster than predicted, and in manny places, especialy rural areas, numerous people ignore the fact that the whole planet is radioactive and just live life, as short and bizare as it is

meanwhile society developes further, technology is salvaged and replicated, efforts are made to increase food production, samples of healthy human genetic material are taken to safety and much progres is made in energeticks and medicine, especially geneticks, wars are fought and lost and won and politics continue as usual
society splits betveen a surface dweling ploretariat, iradiated and deformed, but well organised and growing fast, and a paranoid underground upper class, practicing eugenics and obsesing about health issues
betveen them is the army, not that any group lacks weaponry, but the military has established itself as a kind of feudal lordship, demanding goods and services in exchange for protection, or just taking things when not outgunned

other than wathewer group of state payed buthers call themselwes military, militias and paramilitary organisations are a huge part of politics and general society

in some parts of the world this leads to prolonged civil wars, but mainly things are in a stalemate, alowing diplomatic and political negotiation

along with official society a large wariety of populations and groups live on surface or under concrete, autonomus enclaves, and selfsuficient towns and wilages, alike the mideval citty states, large groups of nomads roaming the wastelands, groups of oportunists rumaging the old urban areas now woid of life but full of enough manufactured goods to compensate centuries of industrial production, given one doesnt mind the radiation

noone even bothers to think what hapened to america and ussr, there are vague acounts of military action by the dieing superpowers, atempting to maintain teritorial integrity, or ewen still engage in some kind of war, mostly just to obtain controll of resources and living space
 
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CalBear

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a lot of people say that, but given that most likely no Nukes would be used in Africa, or Latin America, maybe even Oceania, i don't see how the Human race would die out.

The species would survive, after a fashion.

One of the great myths of the Cold War was "the Southern Hemisphere is safe". It wasn't. It was less filled with targets, but it was far from safe.

A short target list circa 1985:

South of the Equator

Rio de Janeiro, San Paulo, Montevideo, Stanley, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Diego Garcia, Jakarta, Perth, Melborne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland

South of the Tropic of Cancer

Havana, Guantanamo, Balboa (Panama), San Jose, Managua, Kingston, San Juan, Caracas, Dakar, Lagos, Mogadishu, Djibouti, Mubai, Karachi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Cam Ranh Bay, Hanoi, Singapore, Brunei, Hong Kong, Manila, Cavite City, Taiwan, Guam, Oahu, Lahani, Hilo

Additional African Continetal targets

Tripoli, Cario, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, Alexandria

This list, of course omits the various oil ports in the Persian Gulf, Arabian Peninsula, Nigeria, & South America; other targets in Pakistan, India, South Africa, Asia, various port's of call that may have a British, U.S. or Soviet vessel present when the ballon went up.

The list is arrived at by looking at American or Soviet bases, probable "safe harbors" for one fleet or another, sources of strategic supplies, and other vital resources. The targets in bold are American, the rest are Soviet or local (e.g. India/Pakistan).

It is also important to note that, in the case of a full exchange, the likelyhood of biological weapon release, either intentional or accidental, is exceptionally high. These weapons are, without question, the most dangerous element of any full exchange as their actual lethality and spread in the wild is impossible to accurately predict (this is especially true in the case of "engineered" viruses, a subject of intensive Soviet R&D). The virtual depopulation of the Americas (North & South) & Eurasia is a distinct possibility, with a reasonable chance of serious losses in North Africa.

Lastly, it is critical to recall the overwhelming dependency of African (and, for that matter all large) cities on food imported from the Americas and Australia. Without a solid infrastructure, something that is sure to be disrupted by Global Thermonuclear War, these cities starve.

War Day plus 365, best case, figure 300 - 500 million survivors, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and rural Central Asia; worst case, closer to 10 million. In either case the progress of the last three centuries is gone & will be extremely difficult to replicate (easy to reach oil, minerals, etc. are expended, most remaining supply is technolgy dependent if one wants to gather them).
 
bascially the most survivors will be in the far northern/southern regions of the world, where it will probably return to a semi-feudal dark age state with numerous armed gangs fighting for control of different regions.

basically to sum everything up in one sentence: back to the stone age avec guns:rolleyes:

ever read steven king's "the gunslinger?":rolleyes:
 
how big a conflict would it hawe to be to actually escalate into full blown nuclear exchange?
are there rules? or some kind of nato chart or sistem?


it would be interesting to calculate how long the yearly production and suplies of conserved food, in a large capitalist surplus economy, would actualy last once martial law and rationing would start

also if you look at chernobil and other contaminated areas in the world, some of wich are ewen populated, its fasinating how well life copes with longterm exposure to radiation, althou it would still have to surwive more than that, and in greater amounts
 
That's probably one of the most accurate nuke war movies.

Why have hysterical portraits of glaciers on the Amazon (the more extreme nuke winter scenarios) or fallout killing everything when you've got something that's both terribly scary and realistic?

Because while Threads is true for the U.K., and other countries that are packed in tight with urban areas, the U.S. and some other nations have plenty of breathing room. Can we say Jericho?
 
Because while Threads is true for the U.K., and other countries that are packed in tight with urban areas, the U.S. and some other nations have plenty of breathing room. Can we say Jericho?

Jericho only had 25 U.S. cities taken out. The Soviets would be dropping hundreds, if not thousands, of nukes on us.
 
The only time the US seriously considered a first strike on Russia was back in the fifties when we had delivery systems that could reach Russia and they didn't have delivery systems that could reach us, and we had ten times the nuclear weapons they had.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, we decided to not fight a nuclear war.
The Russians didn't have the means to attack the Southern Hemisphere, we didn't have any targets, so Australia/New Zealand, Argentina/Brazil/Chile, and Azania would have survived as industrial states. Indonesia is possible, except that it was considered commie back in 1961.
Lots of survivors in the Northern Hemisphere of course. A nuclear autumn would only have killed 90% of the population by starvation, not all of them by any means. The Northern Hemisphere would have had as many survivors as the Southern Hemisphere had. The White and Asian population of the world would take a pretty good whack, but Africa would survive almost intact, and that's almost 99% of the world's gene pool. In the long run, no harm done.
 
Jericho only had 25 U.S. cities taken out. The Soviets would be dropping hundreds, if not thousands, of nukes on us.
Plus, they were ALL Ground-Bursts ...

Less Damage, Higher Amounts of Fall-Out ...

For Once Jericho's Realism Keeps it from being The Quintessential-Doomsday-Scenario!

:p
 
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