How would Africa and South America fare in a 1980s nuclear exchange?

How would Africa and South America fare in a full out nuclear exchange between the US and USSR in the 1980s?

How large of a death toll would we see from the initial attacks and the following effects (no more aid from either superpower etc)?
 

ben0628

Banned
It depends, were they going to be targeted? Southern Hemisphere nations other than Australia tend to be more or less either non aligned or third world proxies during the Cold War so they might not be worth wasting nukes on.

In any case, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa will become the worlds three major powers after a nuclear exchange. Apartheid Africa might face civil war however since a nuclear war obvious means the Afrikaner government will declare martial law due to what's happening and will no longer have to worry about international pressure to abolish apartheid. I could also see Argentina and Chile blowing each other up. Without outside help, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia could fall to drug cartels and warlords. This leaves Brazil as the only substantial nation in South America really.

In Africa, as said, South Africa could face a Civil War, and Rhodesia will descend into anarchy as well. Without anone to export oil to, Angola never prospers. North Africa is probably targeted during the nuclear war and see's a lot of fallout and radiation.
 
All Southern Hemisphere food exporters are going to come up very well positioned for world power status after a nuclear exchange.
This includes Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Brazil, to a lesser extent also South Africa. Southern Cone nations weren't dependent on foreign aid, in any case, they would need to deal with their internal problems but they were well-positioned to rule among the ruins of such a nightmarish world. In OTL 1980 Argentina had the same GDP per capita as Spain.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html

According to this pretty detailed and realistic scenario of a doomsday nuclear exchange, the new "major powers" after a massive nuclear exchange in 1988 (near the historical peak of total nuclear arms deployed) would be Australia, New Zealand, China, Argentina, and Brazil.
 
Without outside help, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia could fall to drug cartels and warlords.
I'm not sure. Without export markets, the drug cartels would loose a lot of financial firepower.

The problem with the '80s, as opposed to a nuclear war in the '60s or now, is that the USA and the USSR had too many nukes. So the first question, and none knows the answer, is whether South America and Africa were targeted and, if they were targeted, where.

Then we get into food production. First of all, we just don't know whether nuclear winter even is a thing and how hard it would hit. Second, food production and exportation require oil. Will the nuclear exchange leave enough POL facilities around so food can be harvested and moved around?
Again, we do not know.
 
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China is (a) not in the southern hemisphere and (b) is probably going to be hit by both sides. The issue with hitting Australia or New Zealand for the Russians is not the number of warheads, but the limited number of delivery systems they have that could reach that far. India and Pakistan might have a go at each other. South Africa had a few nukes at this time, and were loosely aligned with the west so they might get a few hits - the rest of Sub-Sahran Africa, probably not. Likewise South America will probably not get hit, of course Panama is toast for obvious reason as is Egypt as those canals are too important for the west.

Look at the distances, and see how many missiles the Russians have that can fly that far, not as many as you think. You can use boomers but they only have so many, and sending one to hit someplace in the southern hemisphere makes it useless for the major targets. Bombers, forget it - none have the range overall, and the USSR does not have a ton of tankers and they are needed elsewhere - look what it took to get a couple of V-bombers from the UK to the Falklands.

The scenario is also important. If it is wham bam from the get go, the southern hemisphere is safer. If there was an escalation some southern hemisphere countries may have joined one side or the other making them targets when it goes nuclear.
 

missouribob

Banned
Isn't there some issue in which if enough nuclear weapons are released particles like radium might kill all complex life on the planet even outside the normal fallout zones?
 

missouribob

Banned
I do not believe so.

Here these posts are essential reading.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/recovery-time-from-1983-world-war-three.404624/


Well, around the nuclear war it has accumulated a lot of myths. I will try to present my vision of her, based on the knowledge I have. Not knowing the strategic plans of the USSR, you can not assess where and how much of the missiles will be used. One can only speculate. Depending on the size and level of development of a hostile state to make its destruction need a different number of explosions. Country like France have been completely destroyed by the explosion of about 200 warheads. Additional 50-70 heads is needed to destroy strategic forces and the forces of such a State. However, the doctrine states that as a result of failure and the impact of the opponent to get to the real can only approx. 35% of the planned missile. As it would, in fact, difficult to predict. It is impossible to predict how many of them have been able to shoot anti-aircraft defense. Assume that 20%. So this ability to defend and faulty or inaccurate attacks should be devoted to the destruction of France around 350-400 warheads.

Soviet strategic forces would probably split more or less like this:
30% USA and Canada
15% China
25% Western Europe
10% Japan, Taiwan and South Korea
10% of the strategic reserve
10% of other hostile countries (Arab, Latino, etc.).

Certainly would bombed all the cities of the size of 100 thousand residents or more, hubs, industrial and mining areas, areas of concentration of large military units. Most will be destroyed the major players - the US and the Soviet Union and all the nuclear powers. Strong blows would receive economically developed countries (Japan, Germany, etc.), very heavily bombed been China - its enormous population would be a great power in the "war after a nuclear war" - attacks have destroyed so the centers of population concentration, communication and industrial districts, leaving the surviving population of China the possibilities of movement and supplies. The worst place (or the best from another point of view) would be Moscow - Moscow area is a gigantic city, the capital of the empire, the seat of political and administrative, industrial, military area with a large presence of underground installations. Defense of Moscow is composed of missiles, which have a explode in the atmosphere, destroying incoming warheads shock wave - they also contribute to pollution in the vicinity of Moscow. All this makes for Moscow with nuclear warheads have fallen one after the other, and many of them it would be ground burst. In the event of nuclear war with Moscow will not escape even rats - turn it on equal ground radioactive rubble from time to time varied crater on the ground thermonuclear explosion and evenly covered with a thick layer of radioactive dust and ash. A similar fate indeed all the major cities of the USSR. Total number of heads that the NATO powers could be used against USRR ensures that no city would survive no more than 20 000 inhabitants. The exchange punches will probably not last more than 100 hours. Nuclear attacks will come dwindling waves to hinder the defense. After this time all the warring parties likely to agree to a ceasefire. Governments (or their successors in succession) will be too frightened scale of destruction and the need to rescue what was to continue the war. Despite the enormous hatred that will be felt for each other, further carry out activities of both nuclear forces and conventional forces in the face losses of 50-70 percent. units and total interruption of logistics is not just possible.

Everything that could be found in the vicinity of the explosion and has been subjected to thermal radiation would start to burn. In Hiroshima it was established phenomenon firestorm - gigantic fire that draws air from the area of the hurricane, fueling thus harder fire. Wind force is so great that it raises up even the roofs of buildings and cars. It also sucks oxygen from the surrounding area, killing people hidden in shelters. After the explosion in Hiroshima storm fire raged for six hours. However, modern concrete city are not flammable and should not be expected to develop firestorm, but many normal building fires and forests (depending on the season and humidity). The creation of mega fires involving forests and urban areas, often by picking on fire all the provinces, it is very unlikely. Only in favorable conditions (dry summer) lead to large fires. Nuclear explosion produces another effect - electromagnetic pulse. Particularly strong impulse can be induced by the explosion in the upper atmosphere. This phenomenon induces an electric charge in everything that conducts electricity to the giant fields - whole continents from a single bomb. For a man this effect is harmless and imperceptible, but all the equipment and machines will be damaged or destroyed. They will cars burn computers, hard drives will be erased. Only devices that are under the earth (about 1 meter), or hidden in a Faraday cage survive this phenomenon unscathed.

Passed away after the first impact of the explosion remains only one, though extremely unpleasant - fallout. Fallout starts at the explosion and settle on everything in the direction of the wind. The closer to zero the greater precipitation, as the most irradiated particles of earth and dust fall first. Wind directions are different at different heights, and the fungus is fallout on the many layers of the atmosphere. The shape of the fallout so resembles a hand with fingers rozcapierzonymi from the explosion site in the direction of the wind - mostly in the east. The most dangerous contamination occurs in the first few hours of the first day. The entire precipitation may be floating in the atmosphere for up to a month or longer, traveling through continents. If we are about a hundred or more kilometers from the explosion sites, we have at least a few hours before precipitation reaches us. For precipitation caused explosions ground (air causes much less precipitation) there is still contamination from damaged nuclear power plants, which in Europe are dozens (and the radioactive material contained in them will be sprayed by the explosion). The greatest pollution occurs at a distance of about 150 km from the power plant - which is deadly for the whole of Western Europe. Most radiation expressed in roentgens per hour. You can also be administered in rem (roentgen equivalent in man or mammal) where it relates to human or mammal of similar size. In this sense, it rem conversion roentgens on a living organism. For example, the radiation dose of 200 roentgens per hour makes a man after two hours of being in such a place is irradiated to 400 rem. The dose causing disease starts from 150-200 R, but rarely such a dose fatal. With the irradiation of 450-500 rem half the people dying. 2000 rem causes death after approx. Two weeks of virtually any irradiated. 10 thousand rem killed on the same day.

Protection against precipitation depends on where you hide. It is expressed in the protective value of PF (protection factor). It expresses how many times is reduced radiation dose in a given location in relation to the person who is outside - having PF 0. For example, PF 10 means that the amount was reduced 10 times. Those hidden in basements or inside large concrete buildings are protected from radiation protective value PF 40-50. Prepared specifically gives shelter przeciwopadowy cover even the PF 100-300. Professional military shelters provide cover about 1000 PF. Real contamination of surrounding fallout of 200-300 roentgens per hour, even those hidden only in the basement can easily survive. In this cellar should withstand at least several days, and preferably for a month.

Since the beginning of the atomic era, people are convinced that nuclear war will end life on Earth. As a last resort, if even survive the war, it would kill us poison radiation Iodine-131, Strontium-90, Cesium-137. These poisons enter the human body and settle in the thyroid (Iodine-131), muscle (Caesium-137), bone (Strontium-90). There disintegrate, releasing radiation and kill people and animals radiation or cancer. Moreover, dusts and fumes from the cities and forests mask the sun and cause a nuclear winter, which may cause an ice age or even the effect of the Earth-snowball. The disappearance of the ozone layer will cause the death of the plant underwent excessive UV radiation and severe burns people after a few minutes in the sun and snow blindness.

Surely it would not be nice, but if you really so bad? Iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days. Even after a month of virtually disappears after a few months you can forget about it completely. Children need to give Lugol's solution to iodine from entering the thyroid their developing. If a month does not go out of the basement are safe, disappear and radiation from fallout and Iodine-131. Strontium and cesium have a half-life of about 30 years. Even if they land in the human body, it is only after about 15-30 years can cause cancer - in the post-nuclear war 30 years of age is an abstract length. 1000 will be the things that could easily kill than these elements. Most people have time to live his life and bring up the children before they develop cancer from these elements. Children will not be carried genetic defects than a few percent more than today. People die hard irradiated and irradiated the poor will not have damaged gametes so that there were genetic defects. Only developing fetuses at the outbreak of war can be damaged by radiation.

So how could it be?


The result of getting dust and fumes into the upper atmosphere may be or ten-percent reduction in sunlight. This will cause severe cooling and accelerated the coming of winter, even in the middle of summer. Periods of vegetation will be shortened. But there will be an ice age or snowball. There will be, however, the disappearance of the ozone layer. This will cause the skin, especially white men, would be within a few minutes had experienced sunburn. It should also be wear eye protection. You will probably need to go to the mode of night life, in the day to go out just exactly wrapped in materials and with glasses on his eyes. The same effect and fallout causes the death of many larger animals. Small animals spend most of their time underground and are active at night, so you do not suffer so much. Approximately 50-70% of the inhabitants of big cities will die immediately. Fallout kill the people living along its route especially if they do not know that they should hide and how to do it - blame is a common belief that this cataclysm can not survive.

As a result of the attack and the fallout, population of the US and European countries have decreased by about 25-50% in the first month after the war. To reduce the losses caused by nuclear weapons is essential awareness of the population - what to do to survive. Very important it is to prepare in advance for the survival and stockpiles of food and water (both personal preparation and in the framework of civil defense). Equally important as the physical preparation and supply is mental preparation - the will and belief in survival. Without this psychological effects can have equally devastating effects like fallout. All of these conditions are met, even now at frighteningly low. People do not know what to do to avoid the fallout, do not have stocks of food and medicines and are confident that all actions are meaningless, because the only chances of survival on Earth are hidden in secret government databases.

The first days and weeks after the war


People living in the centers of large cities would die in the first seconds and minutes. Those who live in the suburbs, burned, wounded and irradiated, they will try to escape the fallout. On foot, of course - no car will run (EMP effect), with the state of the roads will also be bad. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities will try to escape to the surrounding villages and towns - there will be greeted differently. Refugees passing through contaminated areas will be irradiated to death and die far away two weeks later. Without food, medical care, wounded and irradiated will not go too far - tens of perhaps a hundred kilometers from the city. If war breaks out in a cold period, most refugees do not survive the first days, having no shelter and proper clothing. Most either die or be accepted by the villagers. Part already become gangs of robbers attacking other refugees or single houses. Perhaps the government will try to arrange some refugee camps. With each passing day the situation in them to deteriorate because of problems with the delivery of supplies. The armed forces will quite quickly become distracted. Maintaining discipline in such conditions is impossible. The soldiers will want to find their families. Some of them will desert with guns, forming armed gangs. In the army will remain only those who will be believed that this gives them the best chance of survival especially not having family or assuming that the family was dead. With time, the government will lose more and more influence on the armed forces. No supplies, no fuels, difficult communication and transport will be gradually enfeebled ability to manage the state and the army. You will be a powerful wave of suicide - especially among refugees from towns and soldiers. People in the countryside, who have not lost neither homes nor families will commit suicide much less common, but many of them do it out of fear of the future or thinking that radiation sickness and death is inevitable.

Covering the sky by dust and fumes cause significant cooling in the next few weeks. Regardless of the season (summer or winter), many people will die as a consequence, lack of food and shelter - just one night in the cold for exhausted stressed people. Medical assistance will not work outside the camps refugees. Spread so will the disease, whose names have already forgotten, like cholera, typhoid and others. Accelerated the arrival of cold weather will cause the harvest this year will be very bleak. But probably enough to feed villages. Many livestock fall even in areas not affected by radioactive fallout. The same fate awaits animals in the woods.

The first half of the year after the war

Radiation has virtually disappeared. It remains, of course, Strontium and Cesium, but they will be with us for the next few hundred years, so let us not think about them.
Depending on when will the war winter of this year will come quickly or be extended. Probably even half of the year will be snowy and cold. It will be devastating conditions for refugees. The villagers endure the winter quite well, trying to get as much information about the world. At late spring, farmers will sow. Animals economic hardly endure the winter - do not have enough feed. In the coming year will be missing fertilizers and insecticides and chwasto - no longer operating chemical plants and the transport does not work. Some farmers will have more stocks. Perhaps some enterprising individuals will organize a trade in these materials. Anyway, for sure there will be enough. Combined with weak harvest in the previous year, the strong UV radiation and reduced temperatures will exceptionally poor harvests. No operating agricultural machinery and the lack of liquid fuels of the few that will work, it will give a chance to work with urban refugees. They will work for food and howl because of happiness. Attacks band robbery will become increasingly severe. They spent the winter prioritize and recognition purposes. Moreover, hunger has increased their determination. In the spring they begin to attack villages and farms. The peasants organize self-defense force comes to getting bloodier fighting. The most dangerous bandit group made up of former soldiers, however, have the advantage and many villages are burnt. A group of rogue civilians will focus on attacking the lonely farms. The struggle between the people and getting worse harvest, along with the lack of medical care and medicines cause high mortality of the population. In many villages and towns explode epidemics. People slowly begin to learn to live in the new conditions. Any error or infection will be paid death. Increased threat to life, lack of contraception and the lack of other entertainment will result in increased birth rate. People will return to the natural cycle of having the first child soon after puberty.

The first year after the war

who was supposed to die, dead. People already know what works and what does not. They know how to get food, heal, attack and defend. Around the local leaders (whether or rogue groups defense) formed the team. Increased experience and skills of fighting on both sides. Vulnerable groups are eliminated bandit. After all, the population continues to decline due to food shortages, disease and fighting. It appears in the first generation of children after the war. The remaining towns become centers of trade and industry. Manages to repair many machines and devices. Slowly restores the long-distance transport in the form of steam-powered railways. The sky begins to clear. With the slow playback of industry and trade and improving the climate finally yields are sufficient. Local rulers organize teams to combat bandits. There are also a team of mercenaries. These teams they charge for protection - it becomes a new profession (often difficult distinguishable from bandits). Reborn wild forest. It is becoming easier to feed themselves with hunting and gathering. Slow play is political power. Perhaps at this stage it has been to create local-states and wars between them.

What future ?

The situation in Europe, North America and most of Asia resemble a combination of the Wild West and the medieval feudalism, improved is that people would have access to the knowledge of many modern technologies (in the form of books and other sources). They would be able to arrange the ruins of cities and industrial plants in search technology. They could also trade with the countries of the Southern Hemisphere, most of which have survived in one piece. The development would be rapid. Rapidly growing population, new social relations. Perhaps civilization to come full circle, but then abruptly fired by forward. Nuclear war would be the greatest catastrophe in human history. The worst day in the history, the worst all the plagues. Unimaginable number of people would have died a horrible death. However, not only did not end to life on earth, but even civilization would survive. There was a huge change that, similar to the fall of the Roman Empire. Civilization, which would be after the rose would have a different face, character and habits.

Sources:

- Bruce D. Clayton Ph.D, Life after doomsday, Paladin Press, 1979
- “Long term worldwide effects of multiple nuclear weapons detonations” raport National Academy of Sciences, 1975
- Samuel Glasstone, Philip J. Dolan, the effects of nuclear weapons, United States Department Of Defense And The Energy Research And Development Administration, 1977
- Worldwide effects of nuclear war - some perspectives, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1975.
- Center for Defense Information, www.cdi.org
- Captain John W. Dorough, Jr. Soviet Civil Defense U.S.S.R. preparations for industrial-base war survival Air University Review, March-April 1977

I pretty well agree with you except that your sources appear to be far too optimistic in pretty much disregarding the danger of radioactive fallout. They mention it, imply that a person can shelter from it for a few weeks and maybe months, then the problem is "in the past." What is the meaning of a remark like "Strontium and Cesium...will be with us for the next few hundred years, so let us not think about them."?!?!?

Your optimist sources might not want to think abut them, but wherever these contaminants accumulate the consequences will operate, whether they are being "thought about or not. Let us indeed think about them, if we don't want everything else you've said to become mooted!

You can say, "well, the levels won't be high enough to kill everyone so life goes on." And this might be correct. Or it might not be! Because we are talking about radionuclides that are scattered all over the Earth but then get into the ecosystem, being taken up by plants and passed on to their consumers in ever greater concentration, the nuclei are not irradiating animals and people from outside, they are inside, their weakest emissions still doing a certain amount of damage with every decay event. To say the levels are too low to kill everyone is to say that about levels that are in the human body and will stay there until they decay away or the person dies.

I note your sources totally gloss over CalBear's given concern, that of the toxicity of plutonium. Most nuclear weapons will consist largely of plutonium in their nuclear core materials. Now of course if fission is successful, the material is no longer Pt; it has fissioned into daughter nuclei averaging around half its atomic weight. But what process is ever 100 percent efficient? It is also possible that bomb designers accept very low fractions of material actually fissioning in many devices for a number of reasons. Thus the amount of plutonium released as an aerosol into the atmosphere is going to be less than that found in the mass of the nuclear weapons fired--but how much less? Will the total number of detonations average 90 percent, so it is 1/10, or 80 percent, so it is twice as much at 1/5? Will the weapons designers have aimed fanatically at high efficiency so that in most weapons the remaining unfissioned Pt is less than 1 percent--but still there will be weapons that either misfire or by their nature are inefficient ("dial-a-yield" bombs for instance) and these will supply the bulk of unfissioned plutonium in the atmosphere.

Once PT is released, it is going to combine with oxygen to make plutonium oxides; in this form it will drift as dust in winds, and settle in soil and ground water and be taken up in to the ecosystem, where like most poisons it will concentrate in predator animals higher up the food chain. The stuff will act as a poison.

And IIRC CalBear gives the half-life of Pt as some 20,000 years. In other words, we'd pretty much require an entire glaciation cycle of 100,000 years to greatly reduce the hazard it represents; in 10,000 years it will come down just a few tens of percent.

So a very important question your optimistic post completely sidesteps is, considering the total dose of radioactive nuclides dumped into the ecosystem by a full nuclear exchange in 1983, are these doses, taken all together, indeed lower than the threshold needed to sterilize either life in general or humanity in particular when spread outer the whole globe, and ingested over a whole human lifetime? In that case damage from fallout would be local and temporary, though I daresay a certain definitely reduction in quality of life would be a consequence of any level at all.

Vice versa--if the levels released are well above the minimal levels to threaten all human life everywhere, then we can conclude that human life will be extinguished unless someone can make a shelter in which a protected population can rely on cleaned air and water and food grown from clean sources. Such super shelters did not exist before the war, would be targeted heavily if any did exist, and in the northern hemisphere anyway between the devastation of resources and the intensity of fallout, there could not be time to improvise after the war.

In the Global South, there might be time perhaps for someone to devise such shelters, but it is a slim margin to bet on. Chances are that while most radionuclides will not persist more than a century or so, enough bad stuff (like Pt) will remain to preclude simply opening the doors and resettling the land for thousands of years to come. Either humanity adapts to living in sealed moon colonies, or some extremely active program of global clean-up must be undertaken.

Your sources appear to sidestep the whole question, which is crucial. What level of radionuclide release will a total 1983 war produce? How would it compare to the cumulative mass of radionuclides released during the above-ground bomb test era? There is of course controversy over how much damage that fallout from tests did already. It is not something that can be dismissed with a "let's not think about it!"

I am open to the idea that even a total war in the mid-80s might have released insufficient radionuclides to doom the species, in which case I would lean on my original notion that the Global South will be the germ of recovery. Alongside the rise in relative prominence of the formerly Third World nations, I expect rather better survival of civil society of a sort in even the mutually targeted 1st and 2nd world nations, especially the former, since I suspect that surviving soldiers will be more a force for order than disorder; that they will seek to enforce an acceptable, sustainable peace where they settle, and will defer to chain of command to reform a national hierarchy of sorts.

All this depends on fallout levels being low enough for people to survive without elaborate precautions. Where that is not true, things will be much grimmer. I'd hope that over the first few years, such regions will be evacuated completely--if there are relatively safe places to evacuate to, and these can be able to accept the evacuated surplus population.

If the world on the average is at the fatal level of contamination, then only a few lucky spots here and there might possibly be refuges for human survival.

If it is well over that level, I'd say we are essentially doomed, barring some secret super-shelter program that would itself surely become a target if anyone else knows about it.

You just have to face the issue of contamination levels with more than a "duck, cover, dig a hole in the ground" approach. Do the math, show me that the average global levels are well below what prevents human generations from reproducing, and I can accept your scenario--however, I still can't believe in a town in Poland surviving, because Poland is in the middle of the prime battlefield, and radionuclide levels well below those needed to poison the whole Earth are going to be more than sufficient to promptly kill everyone in the battle zones of Europe. The town might get by, except everyone dies of radiation sickness within 6 months.

I don't know the numbers. CalBear has offered some suggestive facts but has not related them to any study of actual levels of radionuclides we'd expect released in the 1983 war. You have not offered the numbers.

Does anyone know the numbers?

As I say, we need numbers on the fallout. This is beyond me to guess with what I have at hand but I daresay there have been serious studies on the matter; one has to read them with careful attention to bias of course. Overoptimism would underestimate the amount generated or the effects of it; over pessimism is also possible. People doing these studies would tend to be from one of the superpowers and preoccupied with their own nation's chances of survival. CalBear is being realistic about the chances of Europeans or Soviets surviving, maybe a little too pessimistic about Americans--depending on the fallout numbers which I am hoping someone will nail down for us. It is tricky as I've said because probably but not certainly, the plutonium is the critical thing, and ideally a nuclear weapon would consume all of it to get the best yield, but it may be that realistically one can't do better than some percentage which might be low or high, and realistically there are certainly weapon designs that won't come close to the theoretically best efficiency such as dial-a-yield bombs. The only reason I think near-perfect fission can be achieved is because I assume most weapons are fission-fusion-fission and the neutron flux from the fusion stage can be designed to thoroughly fission all the fissionables. If we had someone using pure fission weapons they'd probably get pretty low efficiencies, 50 percent or less. But I don't see why an advanced nation would do that. Except for small "tactics" weapons! Which there would be a lot of.

So one would really have to have a security clearance of high order to get a proper inventory of how much Pu remains after the bombs have gone off, and probably "need to know" prevents anyone except someone commissioned precisely to determine the probable Pu levels in case of such a war from being given the information. All we can do is guess orders of magnitude and estimate how close the planned mutual exchange of 1983 would have come to the critical level at which everyone dies.

It is futile, for contaminant levels high enough to kill off the globe, to say "well, most targets are in the northern hemisphere so the south should be OK." We know from the chlorofluorocarbon research I mentioned up thread that pretty much everything reaches both hemispheres in a matter of decades at most. If enough Pu is released to kill the globe, the whole globe will be poisoned well enough to do that eventually, within half a century at most.

If the release is well below the critical "kill everyone" level, whatever that is, then I am optimistic that the global South (much of which is in the northern hemisphere, technically, but northern South America for instance is not going to be in immediate fallout plumes from much) will get along pretty well and dominate the next centuries. If it is well above, then everyone dies since I think any pre-built shelters will be identified and targeted by the enemy. Perhaps if the southern hemisphere has a decade or so before fatal levels of fallout seep over there, some peoples there can improvise shelters to survive in, but i doubt it very much since there is no way they can afford to protect everyone, and anyone left out is going to become an enemy.

With relatively low fallout levels relative to what it takes to kill people off, I'd put the long-term survival percentage well above 1 in 20 globally. Why should India die off more than say 50 percent for instance? They had little margin in 1983, but I believe most food Indians ate was grown there. I don't believe the majority of Indians relied on intricate high tech to stay alive. They'd suffer from whatever degree of nuclear winter happens, and of course from someone or other targeting their major industrial centers and ports, and the violence and terror involved in 700 million people scrambling for enough food and other goods to sustain half their number would be terribly damaging, but after a few years the situation would stabilize with some large fraction of Indians still alive, if horribly wracked by post-traumatic stress and guilt.

A similar story would be happening throughout most of the Third World, particularly the nations that are not major oil producers or otherwise producing strategically vital stuff. Even these would suffer mainly in those mining regions only. All over the world, everyplace is probably well above its autarkic carrying capacity, and there will be under and disease due to the breakdown of modern sanitation and war will be even more devastating, but when the dust settles, some finite and large percentage will be left with more than ample carrying capacity for their reduced numbers, and all of these peoples would be able to adopt governments that organize sustainable survival and expansion of capacity. All of them would be able to adopt technologies that were not economically rational in the integrated global capitalist system; they are no longer being outcompeted by established First World industries nor by "Tigers" elsewhere in the Third World. I'd guess from 1/4 (optimistically) to 2/3 of their population would be lost, and the remainder would be very traumatized, but much much larger taken together than 1 percent of the pre-war world population.

Deliberate release of biowar germs would change the picture considerably of course. But in terms of reducing humanity to pre-industrial tech, I think it would have the opposite effect, unless the fatality rate is well above 90 percent and the disease can spread despite attempts to check it to every population. If we have something like the Superflu Stephen King imagined in The Stand--even then the survivors would have been numerous enough (leaving aside the supernatural factors dominating that fantasy novel) to congregate and begin restoring 20th century level tech society. Indeed the massive death rate leaves available to them a great surplus of resources relatives to their numbers.

More likely, even an aggressive biowar attack would probably leave something like a tenth the population immune, and patches of the world would never see the super-diseases introduced at all.

So biowar knocks the survivors down an order of magnitude or so, down from say 1/4 prewar to to one to 5 percent, and this slows recovery--but largely by lowering its urgency! Many surviving communities would be well off enough to reproduce 1980s tech at their leisure.

Fallout well above the levels necessary to kill everyone assure extinction of our species.

I don't know how likely it would be to be in the marginal zone, where it is low enough there is some hope of some human communities somewhere but high enough to guarantee even the luckiest southern hemisphere peoples are in for a very hard time due to fallout alone. In such a world, sealed-off artificial ecologies, somewhat contaminated, would gradually become the norm I guess, and then the future is a very science fictional story indeed. In such a world I can see that nuclear aggression would be repeated--the survivors are those who have belatedly built the shelter economy, and might gradually so strongly bunker their little sealed arcologies that they dare use nukes casually even in the face of retaliation, since they figure their cities will survive direct hits. Earth becomes completely uninhabitable except for people living at a tech level considerably higher than the world average in 1983.

The survival percentage are almost impossible to estimate 20 years post exchange.

As noted, the number of modifiers is so high as to be nearly impossible to lock down.

Best case you could see 60-70% survival, with a noticeably reduced life span globably. This is a pure military/civilian C&C node exchange. This sort of engagement leaves most population centers undamaged globaly, and even leave the majority of the population of North America alive, if in a notably reduced state. This is also, by far, the least likely scenario. Once Beijing, London, Moscow, Paris, and Washington DC, along with places like Leningrad, Seattle, San Diego, Portsmouth, Toulon, and Qingdao have been destroyed, along with the rest of cities near major military bases, the chances of all the players simply accepting the damage without lashing out further is extremely low.

IMO the likely case, assuming a degree of restraint (which the few open source scenario studies largely discount), is a 20 year survival of 30-40% and 60 years being OLD. This is after a serious exchange, including strategic locations outside of the main Western European targets (potential naval bases/shelters for the forces of all the players, allied countries outside of western Europe like Cuba, India, Japan, Pakistan, ROK, Vietnam's Cam Rahn Bay, etc.) and of serious secondary targets (this includes both major industrial sites and, perhaps most critically every nuclear reactor on Earth). Survival will be mainly in rural India, the PRC, and sections of Sub-Saharan Africa (although huge swaths of Africa will go down due to famine without the grain shipments from North America and Australia). This still leaves 1.8-2.4 billion people to rebuild, although they will be critically short of fuel and much in the way of materials, including even basic medications and fertilizers.

Then you have the full exchange scenario, where all the players unload, leaving a SSBN or two in reserve as a negotiating tool. This includes bio-weapons. This is where you get into the really fuzzy math since the spread of the biological agents is something of a hit & miss (although the experience of the post contact Western Hemisphere serves as a rather terrifying example of how quickly communicable diseases can spread in even extremely isolated and slow movement scenario among vulnerable populations). In this scenario you wind up with a very thin crust of survival among those with critical knowledge (mostly in shelters) and most other survivors being in extremely isolated small groups, largely in very remote regions or in near family group. This where you run into a serious chance of the end of the species since you fall below a sustainable population size in the individual groups. Without bio-weapons (which, BTW, can be released accidentally after a nearby strike that breaks containment, either of a Soviet manufacturing facility or any of a number of Western research centers that work with Level Four pathogens) you are looking at 15-20% survival, with pretty much all of "civilization's" infrastructure gone.
I do not believe so.
 
I don't think we'd have been that lucky in Australia in a 1980s exchange - Canberra (seat of federal government, HQ of several intelligence agencies), Brisbane (nearby major airbase, some port and refining facilities), Sydney (nearby major airbase, port facilities, de facto commercial capital), Melbourne (major port facilities and refining facilities), Perth (port facilities, repair facilities for US Navy vessels) and the US signals intelligence post at Pine Gap would have all been incredibly lucky not to eat a MT or several-hundred KT range warhead each.

(note: all the noted airbases and ports hosted US forces from time to time, whether for training purposes or friendly visits).
 
I'm not sure. Without export markets, the drug cartels would loose a lot of financial firepower.

The problem with the '80s, as opposed to a nuclear war in the '60s or now, is that the USA and the USSR had too many nukes. So the first question, and none knows the answer, is whether South America and Africa were targeted and, if they were targeted, where.

USA and USSR were in the 80s a lot of nuclear warheads, but little means of their delivery (intercontinental missiles, submarines with launchers, bombers long range). In addition, they had to reckon with the fact that a lot of rockets and planes will be shot down by enemy air defense systems, or that some nuclear warheads accidents and will not explode.

Generally, after the resignation of the US doctrine of MAD large cities have ceased to be a priority objective. Changed the doctrine of use of nuclear weapons as well as the weapon itself which led to multiple reduction of power heads, a way of detonation eg. In order to reduce the losses for the attacking military / strategic located on sensitive in this respect areas planned to use special heads of explosions underground where the target had to be struck / it destroyed the seismic wave and not a low explosive overhead line. I don't think that participants of World War III turned back his head Latin America and Africa. Perhaps they bombed by national capitals, to eliminate their governments, but that's all.

Isn't there some issue in which if enough nuclear weapons are released particles like radium might kill all complex life on the planet even outside the normal fallout zones?

No elaboration of which read, it does not provide for such a possibility. Of course, in theory, could contaminate the whole earth, for example, using a bomb with a cobalt coat. But who would be stupid enough to do such a thing?
 
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A couple of things here. First off the amount of fallout will be dependent upon whether any particular detonation is an air burst or a ground burst - the former produces essentially no fallout, the latter is the one producing a good bit depending on the size of the weapon. The spread from any detonation depends on the winds, and if it rains/snows which will bring the particles down more rapidly. The longer term problem with contamination is the fact that as you move up the food chain contaminants are concentrated - plants will concentrate some, animals that eat the plants means more concentration, and animals that eat the animals concentrate more. The same goes for fish - concentration of radionuclides will be higher as you go from plankton to tuna.

Any chemical weapons used will degrade fairly rapidly, even "persistent" chemicals are only persistent comparatively. As far as biowepaons, you may see spread early on but with time as communications become more difficult, spread will be significantly slowed (look at the difference in the spread of Bubonic plague in the 14th century compared to the spread of the "Spanish Flu" in the 20th. Spread from hits to biolabs will be minimal and very local, the odds are anything that wrecks a bioweapons facility will destroy the pathogens and/or kill the folks who work there who might be vectors for spread. Frankly standard diseases will do an excellent job of ravaging survivors. The lack of sanitation and clean water will be diseases like typhoid, typhus, and cholera will be widespread in those exposed - some will survive due to fortuitous immunizations. Bubonic plague will reappear where it is endemic as lack of hygiene will make the flea as ubiquitous as it used to be (1). Diseases which we don't see as particularly dangerous like measles, chicken pox, mumps, flu will not only spread widely as non-immunized or those whose immunity has worn off, but malnutrition, low level radiation sickness and other factors will depress immune response and they can be quite serious - note measles killed many native Hawaiians when first exposed. Lack of medical personnel, facilities, and medicines will mean treatable conditions won't be treatable. Of course folks with chronic conditions like diabetes will soon expire due to lack of necessary medicines. We forget that before the 1920s relatively minor bacterial infections could spread, induce sepsis and death without antibiotics.


(1) As an example, Bubonic plague (Yersinia Pestis) is endemic in the 4 corners area of the US as a zoonosis (endemic in animals) with the reservoir being prairie dogs and other wild rodents. A few human cases are seen every year in hikers/campers or some of the Native Americans in very rural areas. A reservoir like this, in the scenario of the post-nuclear world, can act as a focus and result in widespread infection.
 
What would come of Egypt in such a scenario? Would they become a great power as well?
Assuming they don't get nuked, did Egypt produce enough food to feed all its people in the 1980s? Even if there is worldwide food trade, I'm not sure too many ships would dare the Mediterranean in the aftermath. With the likely collapse of most of the surrounding nations, the Mediterranean can become a piracy hotspot and will be crawling with refugees.
 
I read what has been written and I have some comments on warheads used and the supplies of food. The number of warheads used in the attack depends on what is target by that missile. The number of targets in an area could directly affect the number of warheads carried on a particular missile. Consider taking out a target like Amarillo TX a worth while target given its population sized and being the center for a rich agricultural region as well as a number of food processing plants. It worth a nuke but given most nuclear missile mount multiple warheads would you put more than one or maybe two warheads on that missile. So if a missile is designed to carry three or four warheads it full potential is not being used so less missiles used in the attack on the United States and I am sure there are a lot of other targets. Also a certain degree of overkill on certain targets like New York City which might get hit with, ------- choose the number of nuclear warheads used.

As for the long term effects on a population, look at the western United States. There were over a hundred nuclear tests in Nevada and the effects of those tests give you an idea about what could happen. Admittedly it was over a ten year period of time and it was an under populated region of the country. But it does allow a person to make certain conclusions about the fate of the general population post war in regions not hard especially hard hit by radiation.

As for food supply, depending on the time of year you might be very surprised at how much grain were stored on the farms of American. Especially late summer, fall and early winter. Now while barley, oats and corn would be large portion of the grain stored and meant for livestock, it could be quickly converted to feeding people. The farm I grew up on had a barn converted into eight grain bins say ten by ten by twenty ft tall. There was a central space down the center of the barn ten by forty and you could store variable amounts of grain depending on the year and the quantities of grain produced. We also had two large metal grain bins the quantity they could store I don't remember but the grain bins were thirty feet across and a good two stories tall as well as a smaller wooden grain bin. The farm I am talking about was medium sized and virtually every farm as some storage capacity to smaller or larger amounts and all the grain elevators that by winter could be jammed full waiting for the right price to ship. Even in early summer supplies would be still available since some farmers and elevators would not sell until so supply of food would be around no matter what time of the year. So some areas would be short of food and other area would have extremely large surpluses. How the food supplies look for the next year would be different depending on how much ground could be planted and how the growing season goes and that can be extremely variable.
 
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