Nuclear Desertification?

While it would not cause world-wide desertification, if you drop enough bombs during the height of the dry season in the middle of a forest with absolutely no adaptation to fire (the Amazon, Congo, or Indonesia etc) and if weather patterns play along you can get a positive feedback loop that may lead to desertification (well, savannah-fication) of large parts of the region. Rainforest trees generally regenerate very poorly in exposed locations and are poorly adapted to the constant drying out from air movement.

After the fires burn out, the trees on the fringes of the burned areas die from wind exposure and won't grow back (although the forest can regenerate over small clearings, larger clearings can't fully recover for many years). Since the forest itself generates much of the rainfall it receives, it gets harder and harder for trees to regrow and the dead spots expand. I remember reading somewhere that parts of the Vietnamese rainforest still hasn't recovered from Agent Orange and napalm. Grass quickly moves in and, because of its flammability, encourages more fires.

It would take a lot of bombs to make a dent in the forests (all those decades of logging haven't caused significant desertification AFAIK), so it's not exactly a very plausible scenario. Grass is much harder to kill since it is already well adapted to fire, regenerates quickly, and plants in general are much more tolerant of mutations than animals (that's how you can have triploid bananas and octaploid strawberries).
 
Nuclear winter is more or less a fraud.

The Amazon and the Congo are unlikely targets.

I agree with most of the posters above that a massive nuclear war would probably be good for nature within 10-20 years, but that the massive forest growth might trigger another Ice Age.

If massive nuclear war is bad for the environment, it would probably be a scenario where (1) there are lots and lots of survivors, but (2) the survivors are regressed technically enough that they have to burn wood for fuel and use less efficient farming techniques.
 
I don't know if it would take people that long to repopulate; just consider how fast the world population is growing now, when for the most part we're discouraging further population growth. If families with 5+ kids go back to being the norm and even encouraged in post-apocalyptic society, the population might bounce back very quickly. Of course, a lot depends on how much infrastructure survives/can be rebuilt to support such rapid population growth.


This is an excellent counterpoint.


It would seem to me that nations that are highly educated have fewer children in difficult times. Between birth defects, extreme shortfall of food supplies (to the point where nations suffer deaths to medieval levels) and at best a complete distrust of government (who else can possibly be blamed for the nuclear war?), I wonder how coherent an attempt to encourage higher natality would be.


There is also the strong possibility that further war is added to the causes of death. And I must admit, the events of a nuclear war would hit so hard as to promote new religious and national identities. Who wants to be an American when it means dictatorship, slaughter of innocent people and neverending military rule?


Some states may survive, but I suspect that there will be many, MANY problems between a nuclear holocaust and a full recovery.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
This is an excellent counterpoint.


It would seem to me that nations that are highly educated have fewer children in difficult times. Between birth defects, extreme shortfall of food supplies (to the point where nations suffer deaths to medieval levels) and at best a complete distrust of government (who else can possibly be blamed for the nuclear war?), I wonder how coherent an attempt to encourage higher natality would be.


There is also the strong possibility that further war is added to the causes of death. And I must admit, the events of a nuclear war would hit so hard as to promote new religious and national identities. Who wants to be an American when it means dictatorship, slaughter of innocent people and neverending military rule?


Some states may survive, but I suspect that there will be many, MANY problems between a nuclear holocaust and a full recovery.

Birth rate would automatic increase if the government collapse, of course for several decades it would be under the death rate. If government survives we will likely see a much more statist society, and abortion of deformed fosters are gioing to be common, and natalist policies would ensure a somewhat higher birthrate.

From as biologicaL POW, what's really going to b e interesting are the subble mutation, most would be increased chance to develop diseases later in life, but some may be beneficial and will likely thrieve, we may see a increase in human diversity as result of such a disaster.
 
The more complex the organism, the more debilitating the effect radiation has on said organism. Grass and vegetation in general has a relatively simple genetic makeup so yeah. No offense to grass and all that.

The resistence to radiation varies wildly across the spectrum, totally independent from how simple or how complex the genetic makeup is (even though smaller and more simple organisms tend to be more resistent). Peculiarly enough, actually most other mammals appear to be somewhat more resistent to radiation than humans (for instance, bears have been doing quite well post-Chernobyl). A specific and rather drastic exception are bats, which, IIRC, can take about 1000 times the lethal radiation dose of humans, and this is very probably a specific adaptation to radiation since many bats hibernate in caves, where they are often exposed to higher radiation concentrations that stem from the presence of radioactive radon gas that leeches out of the surrounding rock.
 
If it is a full on exchange say in 1984, the destruction is immense to populated urban environments and there surrounding areas, long term desertification no. EVEN IF you have nuclear winter of some kind, the radioactive yellow snow will melt and the plant life will return.

There will be plenty of deaths of both human and non human animals during the first 4 or 5 years. I could even see some expansion of current dessert areas but not much, maybe even a reverse if nature is left to reclaim itself by the destruction of large scale damns and other river diversion projects.

a good example would be the movie Threads to some extent. 10-20 years later humans live in medieval like fortress towns as Modern civilization begins to rebuild to 1950's standards. Birth rates would naturally go up due to high infant mortality and lower length of life expectancy.

Not all civilization is doomed though, there will be large swaths of the planet that were not hit initially, The primary areas that would be screwed would be Russia, Europe, North America and parts of Asia. but even at that not every town gets obliterated. Not saying the whole planet would not be affected, but primarily only those areas listed.

So basically live in the areas that were nuked and it sucks to be you.
pripyat is a good example of how things might look minus of course blast damage.

now for the kicker...
Lets throw in the massive biological and chemical arsenals, then you get even worse results with weaponized smallpox, anthrax, plague, and other nastiness that i don't even want to know about. that could set that 10-20 year estimate back 100-200 years or more.

once again in a full on suicidal onslaught (both Nuclear and Biological ), I look to threads as a moderately accurate representation of the world several years later.. not mad max. The Road is another good example of how things might look (though they never say what happened to cause the issues at hand)
 
Rational thought needed...

...Nuclear weapons are (1) expensive (2) suffer degradation due to radioactive decay (3) have finite effects.

Carl Sagan disgraced his quialifications by doing a Lysenko on the 'evidence' for a Nuclear Winter. I recall that myself and others were pointing out in the late 1980s that it would need stratospheric injection of vast amounts of soot. Anything under the tropopause gets rained out.

A common misconception of nuclear weapon targetting and size (in the UK, at least) came from UKWMO exercises in which every Royal Observer Corps Post needed to make readings for training purposes. As a result, the bomb tote was ludicrously large and the bomb distribution bore no relationship to warfighting targets.

But I think I'd better stop - I had to study nuclear war as a professional emergency planning officer, knew it was no picnic, but disagreed with CND on purely scientific grounds.
 
...Nuclear weapons are (1) expensive (2) suffer degradation due to radioactive decay (3) have finite effects.

Carl Sagan disgraced his quialifications by doing a Lysenko on the 'evidence' for a Nuclear Winter. I recall that myself and others were pointing out in the late 1980s that it would need stratospheric injection of vast amounts of soot. Anything under the tropopause gets rained out.

A common misconception of nuclear weapon targetting and size (in the UK, at least) came from UKWMO exercises in which every Royal Observer Corps Post needed to make readings for training purposes. As a result, the bomb tote was ludicrously large and the bomb distribution bore no relationship to warfighting targets.

But I think I'd better stop - I had to study nuclear war as a professional emergency planning officer, knew it was no picnic, but disagreed with CND on purely scientific grounds.

I do not disagree with the assertions that the report was a bit askew.. also most bombs fell in the 230kt to 2mt range.. bombs like tsar bomba where one offs so it wasnt like a crap load of 25 megaton devices were going to be exploded. but as i said.. most 1st world major urban centers
would be uhm.. pretty useless after a full bore exchange and the effects would be felt over large areas. let alone multiple EMP type devices, and the effects of radiation along with the other nasties would make for an experience i would not want to enjoy and felt that threads (though not entirely accurate) brought the issue home better then the day after which by comparison looked like hey .. we can do this!
 
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