The world after the 1983 nuclear war

In this reality on September 26th 1983, Stanislav Petrov fails to stop the USSR from launching nuclear missiles at the US in retaliation for a fake US missile alert. The United States, Canada, Western Europe, Eastern Russia, Japan, Korea and populated sections of China are all annihlated. The only areas left untouched in the Northern Hemisphere are rural sections of Central Asia, Russia and America. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East fall into famine and chaos.

As nuclear winter sets in, the survivors are forced to flee south towards sanctuaries in South America, Australasia and Africa. Aside from harsh climates, the Southern Hemisphere is far more habitable than the Northern Hemisphere.

So what would happen to the world in the years following the 1983 nuclear war?
 
Don't think nuclear winter happens nuclear autumn sure but not a full blown nuclear winter ash clouds in the sky new ice age sort of thing. A few years of very cold temps and then temps slowly return to normal. I think a US remain slowly sets up assisted by returning US military units mainly navy as well national guard. and a few hundred provisional government.
 
World on 2017 would look very shitty place. Europe would had fall to tribalism and we might see several city states. and only few bigger nations. USA might survive but it is on very terrible condition.

Southern Hemisphere might be relatively OK and Australia and Brazil are rising great powers.
 
I doubt the USA would survive as a single political entity, because long-distance travel would be nearly impossible and there would be no central authority that everyone would adhere to. Things would become extremely localized, and quality of life, while universally worse, would vary from locality to locality. The fuel to travel long distances will not available, and the safety of that the government guarantees would be gone as well, so people will stay put and rely on whatever their small communities can produce.

Maybe you're a large landowner, or a county administrator who previously worked in a town of 2,000 people or so. Eventually when you don't hear from anyone on from the state government or federal government (who have either died or have bigger issues to deal with), you're going to start doing things like trading food for protection in your community. Lots of small towns will just die off of starvation, but in areas where they don't, eventually that former city administrator, large farmer, or other person who is trying to keep their small community together will start to resemble a warlord and have influence over a large (relative) group of people. Even if it was just meant as a temporary measure at first, the monopoly on force by the USFG will be gone at that point.
 
Basically a half to a full dozen larger towns (>10,000 people) and one or two mid-sized cities (>100,000) on the eastern side and double that on the Western side of the Mississippi survive to become the nuclei of survivor governments. Larger cities survive only because the bombs were duds or missed entirely. Eugene OR, Pocatello ID, Johnson City TN, and Valdosta GA are among the leading cities to survive initially though half or more will fall to thugs, riots, radiation, and starvation.

Half the population dies in the strike. Half of the survivors die of starvation, internecine violence, and disease over the next 6-8 weeks. Half of *those* survivors are dead by the end of the first year. By New Year 1985 things stabilize at 10-12.5% prewar population, about 25-30 million people with most being in Oregon, Idaho, western Texas, central and eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and the tip of Virginia, northern Tennessee, southern GA, eastern NC, and Maine. Other pockets may exist too. Expect the first decade to be harsh, infant mortality looks like it did two centuries earlier and trained doctors are more valuable than everything but water and food. Electricity is a memory for almost all survivors and hygiene is abysmal. Feudalism emerges in many areas while barter trade becomes the norm. Scavenging is dangerous but common, especially for metal and machine parts, while walled city-states of less than 5000 become semi-common. Children are apprenticed, formal educational systems may exist in a few places but by and large are a memory. Population will start to increase as soon as food allows and will see a generational spurt probably beginning about 1995 or so.

By the end of the century a few dozen Larger 'nations' emerge that will coalesce into 3 to 6 definitive nations by 2015. Technology remains a hodge-podge of World War 2, American Civil War, and even Revolutionary War levels for another generation. In the interim, governments remain largely reluctant to centralize at first but a few authoritative ones do so and trigger a larger war. Everyone agrees not to use nuclear weapons, it is the common thread that allows for negotiations of a continental trade union by 2025. At least one nation that emerges is fascist, one socialist, but most are variants or carbon copies of the good old USA.

Europe is a nuclear wasteland that becomes a reminder of the folly of man and warfare. Switzerland survives as does Austria minus Vienna, this Helvetian Republic eventually grows to include Bavaria, Trento, Bescanson, Granche-Comte, Baden-Wurtemberg, and Savoy. The rest of Europe is a graveyard with a few dozen policies of note, the largest is the Scandinavian Union out of Trondheim that is fiercely isolationist but will trade readily. By 2015 it is the second most powerful nation in former Europe with a resurgent Albania not far behind. The bulk of NATO countries are trying to coordinate some sort of European Union but to date can only agree that they want nothing to do with West or East ever again!

South America is where the powerhouses of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (now with Peru and Bolivia) reside. They have formed the Trimuvirate Pact that coordinates technology transfers, research, and infrastructure together with a military alliance and free trade zone. Embraer has begun producing it's own jet aircraft and Brazil's air force is the strongest in the world. Triumvirate Pact members now include all of the continent save Venezuela and Colombia (which are observers along with Cuba) as well as Panama, Costa Rica, and Trinidad/Tobago.

Mexico is a power but got hit by EMP backlash rendering much of the northern half of the country unusable for industry until the machinery for making electricity could be replaced. Upon doing so it recovered quickly and made forays into the bordering US states, unchallenged until the Greater Texas Directorate began reprisals of the bloodiest kind. Even today tension remains.

South Africa is a powerhouse flirting with implosion after it's apartheid policies were disbanded barely three years after the war. Civil war had chafed much of the country and JoBerg was already lost. With both sides fearing what else might be lost a federation of three governments came to be: a Zulu state in the east, an Afrikaan state in the north, and a Union state in the West. They play nice because they fear what a true all-out war will do to themselves and the Union state plays referee with the other two. In the interim, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar, Angola (both sides of the Civil War surprisingly willing to make peace after the bombs fell) , and Swaziland have joined as 'partner states' (satellites) to build more railways and highways to further develop the internal ecomomy. Synthetic fuel plants were already built here and are being expanded to make the Union of Southern African States a top diesel/petroleum exporter and a top 5 industrial power. Along with Australia, New Zealand, and IndoThai (Indochina, Burma, Thailand, Assam state, and Bangledesh merged for fear of annhilation from a desperate China) it is one of the Big four powers that counter the Triumvirate and police the 'Old World'.

China is a living nightmare consumed by civil war, starvation, and a return to 17th century technology levels. While the Korea's are all but a memory and Japan's condition unknown (none who go there return though overhead high-altituse reconaissance flights indicated *electric* lights visible at night before recording a radar signature and target lock before turning around at high speed). Eventually a Pentax of governments emerge, the remnants of the old Communist government in Manchuria and the central coast opposed by the Canton Confederation, Xiu Empire, Tibet, and Uighuristan. Yunnan is an indeoendent state considering a union with IndoThai within the year.

India and Pakistan survived thebwar in excellent shape with a chance to lead the world as two big powers. Sadly the War of 1989 proved both were nuclear powers and the Union of South Asian States struggles to rebuild as well as clean everything up around a 300 mile radius of the Indus River. Its economy is only beginning to show the signs of dynamism hoped for in 1990 and it will remain a second tier power as a result.

Australia lost Sydney, Darwin, and Pine Ridge but miraculously the missiles intended for Melbourne fell short and the one that landed in Brisbane was a dud! They are still exactly where they fell and no one cares disturb them. Australia has emerged quickly as a world leader along with New Zealand which survived the war intact. A strict non-nuclear policy is in place but standards of living here are among the highest in the world with Wollagong as one of the top universities in the world now (alongside UNAM, University of Sao Paulo, Federal University of Rio de Janiero, Federico Santa Maria Technical University, Indian Institute of Technology, and University of the Witwatersrand).
 
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My personal hunch is that a disproportionate percentage of the survivors in the USA will either be current military (regular forces or Guard) or anyway military veterans, and that they will tend to cooperate in reforming some shadow of the USA, over the whole continent. Chain of command is fairly simple and transparent after all. If rivals for claimants to inherit US government authority emerge, it will become plain enough which one has the stronger claim. The worst case would be that the ones with the strongest claims are also the most lunatic; if we bar that scenario as not being extremely probable, then someone will emerge with the highest rank in the Presidential succession. In the very accidental war the OP describes, it would be less likely than usual that either the President or VP would be protected to survive, but even with a war that comes as a great surprise like this one, I'm sure some individual well up the chain of succession would be kept alive, and once that person emerges, the majority of those US regions that enjoy some sort of organization will fall in line with that leader, at least on paper. If the central leadership has some benefits to offer, however meagre, the reunification of the nation seems pretty well assured to me. Certainly standards of living for the very few survivors will be horribly low and stay that way for generations, but if the reformation of some sort of organized US power seems associated with some incremental improvements, however token, I think the majority of local regimes will welcome this sort of normalization and admission to a larger world. Trade may be reduced to a mere percentage of the pre-war per capita levels, for instance, but that one percent might be seen as a tremendous leap forward in quality of life, and evidence of hope for a still better future.

I suppose there will be pockets of resistance, on various fractal levels. Some local "warlords" will enjoy petty tyranny, others will be terribly paranoid about any outside contacts, others might be ideologically convinced for any of dozens of contradictory reasons that replicating the old ways is a terrible idea, and some of these may have the confirmed opinion of local majorities backing them up. But I believe the dominant pattern would be reunification, either skirting around the larger trouble zones or invading and crushing and absorbing the smaller ones or ones that are particularly in the way.
 
There could still be river communication, which could enable the central US (ie the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri valleys) to get back together after a while. Once some sort of US government was re-established there, it could go on to re-absorb (what was left of) the east and west coasts.
 
Aside from harsh climates, the Southern Hemisphere is far more habitable than the Northern Hemisphere.

Barely, the sort of cooling effect produced by a 1983 nuclear war is going to be devastating for the Southern Hemisphere as well. It won't snow much, but it won't rain much either.
 
Under this Scenario that Stanislav Petrov fails to stop the USSR from launching nuclear missile,

On September 26th 1983, the USSR Radar system had error in electronic and gave alert of one ICBM fly from USA to USSR
here the USSR launch so called Counterstrike before US ICBMs reach there targets.
3~15 minute later NORAD order to Counterstrike the USSR, once massive wave of soviet warheads show up on radar
around 10,000 Mega Ton TNT in form of several thousand Nuclear Warhead will be used
"Lucky" for situation that those are Small caliber Nukes in size of 15-10 KT TNT, but they use thousand of them with multiple strikes on targets

There is argumentation about if Nuclear Winter will happen or not
With 10,000 Mega Ton TNT drop all over the World, there will have serious effect on climate


And how gonna look this world ?
allot like in movie "The Road" a grimm and brutal survival story
 
Petrov didn't save the world though. The story is a pop culture myth.

Please consider the condition of Soviet leadership at the time and who was at the helm. Andropov was literally on dialysis at the secret clinic at the Kremlin. I woild argue given his history the man would have relished the chance to strike anyway. Thus I think Petrov saved the world.
 
1983 Doomsday is set on this basically.

So is my timeline which is basically the future timeline of 1983: Doomsday itself.

I come from one of the areas prospering in their scenario and was alive though young at the time. We might have actually made it given the strike zone and our family's own plan even with that little notice. While I agree that area would do better than most the rate of recovery for the US and Europe seems a little fast while the rate of tech advancement in South America (a crude internet by 2000 and other advancements beyond 1983 without Europe or Russia or the US seems about ten to fifteen years premature) is a bit...optimistic. Also with Kentucky and Virginia in their scenario I think either they have a war over miscommunication at first contact or end up as policies dominating a regional union of allied nation and city-states *very* quickly.
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
Please consider the condition of Soviet leadership at the time and who was at the helm. Andropov was literally on dialysis at the secret clinic at the Kremlin. I woild argue given his history the man would have relished the chance to strike anyway. Thus I think Petrov saved the world.
I disagree with the belief that Andropov would have done so. That is not my point though. Petrov didn't save the world. He wasn't in the position to.
 
I disagree with the belief that Andropov would have done so. That is not my point though. Petrov didn't save the world. He wasn't in the position to.

If you are saying Petrov was not on the position to say whether or not a response would be launched that is correct. He was in the position to determine what information those men acted on, however, and his judgement delayed the leadership of becoming aware of a tenuous, potentially apocalyptic situation. This in turn prevented a potentially civilization-ending response based on incomplete information and a malfunctioning computer system. I respectfully disagree with your position though believe I can understand the point you wish to make.
 
1983 Doomsday is set on this basically.

So is my timeline which is basically the future timeline of 1983: Doomsday itself.

It has the US president and the entirety of cabinet jumping on a plane to Australia for god knows why has Mount Weather surviving for some reason or another and is proabab;ly the most blatant Australian wank I've ever seen doomsday is nothing more than a story realistic in some points off the wall ASB in others
 
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