Death toll of a full nuclear exchange in 1983?

Death toll of a full nuclear exchange in 1983?

  • 10% of world population

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 25% of world population

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • 50% of world population

    Votes: 13 44.8%
  • 75% of world population

    Votes: 10 34.5%
  • 90% or more of world population

    Votes: 4 13.8%

  • Total voters
    29
If a full nuclear exchange occured in 1983, what percentage of the world population (4.68 billion people) would die as a result of nuclear/chemical/biological weapons, starvation, disease etc?
 

CalBear

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This is one of those "define full exchange" questions.

The answer is very different if it is straight up U.S./USSR nuclear exchange than if it is all the known nuclear powers having a go. That answer is also far different than if the Soviets (and whoever else might be breaking the BW Treaty) release those agents (or have the agents released as a result of secondary damage from a special weapon). Does anyone go with Cobalt (or gold/sodium) jackets on any warheads, if so, how many and what yield.

Absolute worst case is over 90% (multiple, intentional, engineered bio-weapon releases AND "salted/jacketed") with very small, but above zero possibility, of species extinction.
 

CalBear

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Would Soviet bioweapons really have a large impact in the event of their use?
Potentially?

Designed bio-weapons mean that NO ONE is immune except those who have received the specific vaccine (assuming one can even be produced). There is 100% certainty that the Soviets had produced AND weaponized modified ("mutated") small pox by the early 80s, and considerable, very compelling, evidence that they had also produced other agents, including pathogens aimed at both mammals AND plants (different agents of course). That is what has leaked into the open press, hell, the Soviets had actual fatal lab incidents at least twice (with Small pox in 1971, anthrax in 1979) only the extremely isolated location of the facility and the Soviet Union's overall restriction on movement of individuals prevented a full out wildfire. God alone knows what is still being closely held, but there is evidence that the Soviets had the capacity to produce hundreds of TONS of bio-weapon agents a year (think about that one for a second, hundreds of TONS of material when a few ounces could start a pandemic that would make the Black Death look like SARS).

What's worse is that bio-weapons, by their nature, tend to be subject to on-going mutation (this is a natural part of the virus life cycle, its why you need a new flu vaccine every year, the 2017 bug isn't exactly the same as the expected 2018 bug). Once released into the open there is a very strong likelihood that any agent would change enough to jump any fire lines (i.e. vaccines) put in place. While the most likely impact would be a death toll in the mid eight figures, even in a well planned attack, there is a reasonable chance that the figure could be much higher, especially in a scenario where there has also been a nuclear exchange and basic medical and sanitary services have broken down.

You may have missed the use of jacketed/salted weapons. The increased long term "hot" fall-out from a Cobalt or Sodium jacketed/salted warheads can be used as long term (as in a century or more) area denial. While not nearly as radioactive as the immediate by-product of a regular ground burst, a warhead with Cobalt-60 built into the casing will leave a lethal signature over the spread area of the fallout cloud for generations. Did/does any of the nuclear powers possess the capacity? AFAIK no open source has made a airtight case, but the actual design requirements are very simple, frighteningly so, compared to the other steps that are necessary to produce the physics package.

These are just a few of the variables that fall under the "full exchange" heading. Real question is just how willing is one of the player's may be to to all the way to "win" (i.e. be the last ones to die on a poisoned planet). Now, that question seems insane on the face of it, mostly because it is, but attacking/responding to an attack with a few THOUSAND nuclear weapons is already off the "mad as a hatter" chart. If you are going to kill 200 million human beings, all the decisions after that are sort of moot.
 
On bioweapons it must be remembered that while even deadliest of epidemies can be mostly cured by good hygiene, good nutrition and quarantine measures the conditions in a post-nuclear attack country might be a little - challenging to say at least...

My rough guess would be that USSR would mostly utilize bioweapons in Northern America, as they would be biologically isolated from Eurasia, rather than in Europe which would be conquered, sorry, liberated, by the Red Army.
 

CalBear

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In 1983 the US had over 20,000 nuclear weapons and the USSR had over 35,000. The question is would they actually be able to deliver all or most of them to their targets in the event of a nuclear war?
Under 50%, perhaps as low as 30%, including all possible delivery methods. Many of the warheads were of very limited utility (the nuclear warheads on various torpedoes and other ASW systems, the warheads for the various AAM (Genie in the case of the U.S., the U.S. had a couple thousand of these in inventory until 1984) and various SAM (U.S. Nike variants alone had over 3,000 in inventory), all of which were still in the active inventory in the early-mid 80s. All told something like 1/3 of all U.S. weapons fell into these sorts of highly specialized categories, so the max, in perfect conditions, the U.S. could deliver was around 13,000. Soviet figures are, obviously, much murkier, but if anything the Soviets had a higher percentage of warheads with specialized tasks than the U.S..

There are a couple other major factors including fizzles/failures to initiate (this is inevitable, although the total number is unknown), destruction of the manned platform en route to target, flat out misses (no one has ever fired a ICBM straight over the Pole (for obvious reasons), so there is some question regarding proper guidance, and most critically counter force. Whichever side attacked first would have managed to catch more warheads on the ground, but even the initial attacker would have reserved some weapons for a second strike (or to ensure that a third party didn't take advantage of the situation) and these would be subject to counter force.
 
It depends how large-scale war it would be and which countries would be hit. But in worst case I think that immediately death toll would be between 30 - 40 per cent. But due radiation, nuclear winter and famines it will rise even higher. So might be that there would be anything between 50 and 70 percent.
 
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