FairlyUninformedGraduate
Gone Fishin'
But in peeling off the tarp, you disperse the fallout again, and as you are standing over it, breathe it in.
How would a post-nuclear world look like?
- Thread starter General Kenobi
- Start date
FairlyUninformedGraduate
Gone Fishin'
They were envisaged as command and control facilities to allow government and military personnel to continue running the country or direct a war. They were never meant to act like an ark, and almost none would have survived a direct hit anyway. Even NORAD would take damage from a direct hit. Most would be reduced to dust.
NATO and WTO did not plan to just stop after the missiles flew. Depend upon. Military forces are still functioning and still dedicated to fighting. The US Navy in the 1966-1970 period had between 19 and 23 aircraft carriers. Double what they have now. That force will still be active even after nukes fly.
The opposite .Deprivation causes more religious fervour not less. Atheism requires wealth and stability.
See any period time where war plague and natural disasters occur. People will turn to God precisely because humans are so terrible.
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Well they should have had better insight before Nuclear Holocaust almost ended Human civilization
Likely worse than that.
In a full exchange the Soviets would be very likely to release bioweapons against both the Chinese and Western Europe. It's unclear if they ever managed to engineer a pathogen that can survive an ICBM trip, if they did, North America would also be targeted
Nuclear winter wasn't a concept until the 1980s. In 1975 it's was still believed that the effect of nuclear war would be less than Krakatoa.
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Mind you guys. According to
en.m.wikipedia.org
More recent modeling suggests a Nuclear Autumn rather than Nuclear Winter. And keep in mind the OT is set in 1970 not the present.
Nuclear winter - Wikipedia
More recent modeling suggests a Nuclear Autumn rather than Nuclear Winter. And keep in mind the OT is set in 1970 not the present.
Hard to imagine ANYTHING being worse than the irradiated hellscape that was Britain in Threads
Well there one thing to imagine: "Horror of No Man Land across the World"
Regarding the southern hemisphere, the issue with making any predictions here is that we don't really know what would happen to a small industrial society like Australia or South Africa if it were cut off entirely from global trade, even in the 'best case' scenario of no direct hits and minimal regional fallout. To what extent can critical imports such as machine tools and computers be replicated locally, with no support whatsoever? If they can't, what does happen to the economy - total collapse, or some sort of permanent regression? Even if an industrial base can be maintained in some form, it is going to be vastly less productive than its pre-war counterpart, with all the resultant political problems this will create.
IMO while it's not implausible for a few technologically advanced places to survive the initial consequences of a nuclear war, it is going to be extremely difficult to maintain political stability in the context of a decaying industrial base and likely floods of refugees. Add in a couple of local strikes, which is plausible though not a given, and these societies will collapse too. They probably will bounce back in some new shape or form in the subsequent century, but maintaining some sort of technological outpost in a post-apocalyptic world is going to be extremely difficult.
IMO while it's not implausible for a few technologically advanced places to survive the initial consequences of a nuclear war, it is going to be extremely difficult to maintain political stability in the context of a decaying industrial base and likely floods of refugees. Add in a couple of local strikes, which is plausible though not a given, and these societies will collapse too. They probably will bounce back in some new shape or form in the subsequent century, but maintaining some sort of technological outpost in a post-apocalyptic world is going to be extremely difficult.
Most of the Northern Hemisphere is wiped out. South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, India, and Australia are your major powers with Mexico, Persia, Colombia, and New Zealand not too far behind - if Israel and Egypt don't tear each other apart they might be as well. Any surviving cities in the USSR, Europe, or USA/Canada become focal points for new governments, though more likely dictatorships than democratic republics. Any city of size that survives relatively intact will become a focal point for refugees and marauders so will either have to defend itself or fall into anarchy - perhaps half the major survivor communities fall this way with another half falling to starvation.
The first three to five years are lean and there may be a heavy religious backlash against 'immorality' and technology in general. Modern medicine is all but gone especially once the drugs run out and what industry remains will be either recycled or jury-rigged. Horses will proliferate and along with bicycles likely be the main mode of transportation until the end of the century. Illnesses all but wiped out by vaccinations will return and death will be a common encounter for the survivors. Starvatio will be as well, especially for those surviving urban areas with little farmland, very little knowledge of agriculture, or a very short growing season. Communication will be word-of-mouth though perhaps telegraphs arise, railroad steam engines will probably start reappearing and be an evolving form of mass transit within a decade or two especially as new governments arise and trade resumes.
By our time I figure between one and two dozen governments in what are now the USA and Canada with perhaps as maby in the former USSR. Europe is *slowly* rebuilding and the new UN equivalent has a great deal more teeth. Electricity islland running water are regularly available in the developed areas but seen as a luxury or decadence in about half the aforementioned areas. Much of China has survived but a civil war prevented them from arising as a new superpower while Japan is rabidly isolationist once more. A new world order based in New Zealand (safe, isolated, defensible, and self-sufficient) has definitively banned nuclear weapons save for those under New-UN Security Council control to be used only for dire reasons. Technology is only just emerging into the 1980s in some areas
Understood. Incredibly depressing movie, with absolutely zero hope.
However, throw in Smallpox, Anthrax, Botulism Toxin in lakes, and possibly a pathogen that attacks wheat along with potato blight.
That is what a Full Exchange would entail, possibly even today (the Soviets/Russians signed off on both the Bioweapon and CW Conventions, but there is sufficient evidence in even open sources to demonstrate that they never stopped production, much less active experimentation with engineered pathogens and toxins).
I see the post-nuclear environment in a post-1966 as a curved sliding scale of possibilities. Call it the "nuclear horseshoe" if you will, at least as far as probability goes. On the far end of the scale, you have "total human extinction" from all the second-order effects: nuclear winter, disease outbreaks, famines, civil breakdown, etc. On the near end, you have a "brokenback war" scenario, where due to a variety of factors, the nukes maul the countries involved but don't actually collapse them (at least... not immediately), leaving them with just enough to sort out the remains and keep fighting. Both of these are possible - in so far as we can tell - but seem unlikely. There is, of course, not much point to discussing the "total human extinction" scenario, but the "brokenback war" scenario is extremely underexplored in my experience.
Between these two improbables we have varying levels of national/societal collapse, with all the attendant human dieback that entails. This could range from only the directly engaged countries collapsing, to second-order effects collapsing every nation outside regardless of proximity to the war. Most likely, what we'd see is something of a mix, with all the directly involved countries collapsing, second-order effects collapsing a number of the not-directly-involved, and the rest experiencing some period of instability, hardship, and probable reduction of living standards before managing to orient themselves. Naturally, the largest and most powerful of the survivor states in that last scenario would be the best positioned to dominate the post-nuclear world. Who they actually would be is a matter of speculation.
Between these two improbables we have varying levels of national/societal collapse, with all the attendant human dieback that entails. This could range from only the directly engaged countries collapsing, to second-order effects collapsing every nation outside regardless of proximity to the war. Most likely, what we'd see is something of a mix, with all the directly involved countries collapsing, second-order effects collapsing a number of the not-directly-involved, and the rest experiencing some period of instability, hardship, and probable reduction of living standards before managing to orient themselves. Naturally, the largest and most powerful of the survivor states in that last scenario would be the best positioned to dominate the post-nuclear world. Who they actually would be is a matter of speculation.
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As if such an apocalypse is "cheery", regardless of the survival and recovery; and besides Calbear's right about the film being depressing, especially with those clips I saw before, and then some (regardless of there's any "hope" to be had in it).
A new UN equivalent with teeth, especially in a world lacking a definitive superpower, would probably be able to do so very easily. Given that much of the planet was destroyed and maybe 1/2 to 4/5 of humanity killed due to such foolishness I doubt anyone would stop said military anyway, at least for the first twenty or thirty years.