Who would survive in an all-out nuclear war?

My big problem with gloom and doom prophecies concerning nuclear winter with 50 nukes is that in 1958 there were over 100 nuclear tests, most of which were above ground and we didn't get nuclear winter. Now its true that testing environments are very, very different from actual combat use and specifically designed with safety in mind, but we're talking about 100 above ground nuclear detonations so the effects are not negligible.

Most of nuclear test were in desert or on tiny tropical island or in Ocean or underground.
not over populate city full of plastic, Wood, paper, petrol or surrounded by Forrest.
i have read the papers by Michael Mills and Brian Toon. There is a realistic chance for nuclear winter, if 50 city are nuclear hit.
it would like a vulcans heavily erupt and fill the sky with ash. only in bigger scale
 

BlondieBC

Banned
If it's from the CMC, the entire New World, plus all of Africa and Oceania, the Iberian peninsula, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Austria, the Balkans (except Greece and Bulgaria), the Mediterranean islands, and all of Asia outside the Soviet Union, Mongolia, the Koreas, and Japan survive. The New World because the USSR had too few ICBMs at the time to destroy a country bigger than Colombia.

Basically Agreed.

USA will come out hurt, but survive. The tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba will harm Southern USA and probably a few Soviet bombers or ICBM get through so we lose a few major cities.

Really in some ways a China/India/Brazi/Argentina wank.
 
My big problem with gloom and doom prophecies concerning nuclear winter with 50 nukes is that in 1958 there were over 100 nuclear tests, most of which were above ground and we didn't get nuclear winter. Now its true that testing environments are very, very different from actual combat use and specifically designed with safety in mind, but we're talking about 100 above ground nuclear detonations so the effects are not negligible.

The other problem I have with it is that the actual scale of nukes projected to be thrown around is - while huge on a human scale - not that large geologically, the total arsenal of both sides at the peak was about equal to the Mt. Saint Helen's eruption. Now admittedly they would be spread around more, and be hitting things that throw up lots of ash and dust (cities). But it is the scale that makes me wonder about the nuclear winter projections. There have been much larger and more energetic volcanoes than MSH - more of them at once also - that didn't cause the world to fall into an ice age. Just because the explosions were human produced...well you get my drift.

(Now I duck because it occurs to me this might be a tad controversial. )
 
There is a very bleak story on this called ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second Holocaust ‘ story by Robert L. O’Connell in the book ‘What If? America’.

The Soviet Union gets bombed and bombed and bombed again even to the extent of deliberately setting fire to the forests and ceases to exist, Cuba is left a smoking hole.

HMS Pinafore on Warships1 has based a storyline around it which has a Thor missile launched by Squadron Leader Blackadder's unit decapitating the Soviet Leadership with an Atlas launched by Lieutenant Colonel Gibbs finishing it off and as a result most of Western Europe gets off relatively unaffected.

The SU, Cuba and North Korea still get destroyed and Eastern Europe turned into a hole but most of Western Europe escapes attack and the US is only hit by one or two SLBM - this does make them a bit mad so they launch another attack on the holes they have already created.
 
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I'm looking at all the apocalyptic predictions here and coming up dumbfounded: to the best of my knowledge, the count of nuclear weapons was ridiculously tilted in favour of America (~1,000 to ~50). On top of that, the Americans had a 4-week turnaround in preparing warheads for combat; the Soviets, a 6-week turnaround. Though the Soviets would likely be able to put huge resources into building up their arsenal (as long as it survived an American first strike) if the war continued, the actual amount of destruction to America and Western Europe would be pretty small by comparison to Germany and the damage to the heart of the Soviet Union.

EDIT: Done my research, and the ratio is actually significantly larger: the USA had ~27,000, the Soviets ~3,300. However, of these, the Soviets only had 38 ICBMs. To facilitate the discussion, here's the link I used:

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp
 
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I see North America, Europe and Eastern Asia being heavily effected, if not outright destroyed, but the rest of the world should get by relatively fine.
 
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