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Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

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Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#41

Post by codekilla »

landfish wrote: post #28
codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

I wrote this post, and the point is to improve discussion of societal risks. As others have pointed out, nuclear war doesn't have to kill everyone to be extremely bad and worth avoiding. I spend a lot of my time thinking about risks from nuclear and biological weapons, and downplaying these risks is not my purpose. One problem with assuming nuclear war kills everyone is that this discourages anyone from preparing for…

> extremely bad and worth avoiding

Shrugs???? What exactly do you mean? Quantify this, how bad...with respect to AGI?

> discourages anyone from preparing for potential nuclear wars

Interesting, what would be your suggestions for preparing? Mine would be: AT ALL COST AVOID. (I mean it...ALL COST).

Anything else, and I would classify it as a species wide failure to adapt to technology (In this case EXISTENTIALLY dangerous tech). Further, there is no way to grasp or accurately predict confounding factors of post total nuclear war that would put humankind at further risk.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#42

Post by austhrow743 »

codekilla wrote: post #29
austhrow743 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilisation can be rebuilt. Focus on existential threats over far more likely civilisation collapse threats is done by those who view unrealised potential as loss. So it’s 7 billion humans vs the trillions that could exist if we keep spreading and growing and start colonising other planets. Here’s a good review/summary by a rationalist of a book on the topic by someone who if not a rationalist (I don’t actually know…

> In my view, the greatest risk to humanity’s potential in the next hundred years comes from unaligned artificial intelligence, which I put at 1 in 10. One might be surprised to see such a high number for such a speculative risk, so it warrants some explanation. The above is from the article you link. Where.....oh where....are you getting the 1 in 10 number? This is pure, and I mean pure...uncut conjecture . This is…

It’s a review of a book. Presumably it’s in the book.

Even if you don’t care to read it and doubt his ability to estimate, add the amount of zeros in there that you think appropriate. If you think humanity has the potential to get in to the quintillions like Toby and friends, then the negative EV of it is still going to be far greater than any non existential threat.

Then consider elsewhere where it’s mentioned that humanity spends more on ice cream than preventing existential threats. Maybe some of that ice cream money would help increase the accuracy of his statistics.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#44

Post by adventured »

landfish wrote: post #31
elil17 wrote: post #26

Who are the people that actually claimed "that a full-scale nuclear war is likely to cause human extinction?" I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. It would cause societal collapse, perhaps even an extinction of civilization, but not a literal extinction of our species.

I've heard a lot of people say this. Wikipedia has a decent summary of the history of this position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust#Origins_and_...

In several decades of seeing stray discussions online about nuclear war, including here on HN, I've yet to see a discussion where human extinction wasn't a commonly assumed outcome.

It's almost always thrown out as a matter-of-fact inevitability, it's assumed. It appeals to the self-hating cult of 'humans deserve it.' I'd wager the people that float that theory more often than not tend to hate humanity and are lusting for its destruction, so that appeals to them, they want it to happen and are projecting irrationally outward.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#45

Post by monocasa »

merpnderp wrote: post #20
ghostcluster wrote: post #5

Between the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first gulf war, and many more country-sized forest fire events, we've learned that Nuclear Winter is not a likely scenario. In fact, the very scientists who coined the term in the 1980s have backed away from it. Nuclear war would be awful, and certainly the radioactive fallout would be bad, and the damage to thriving historical cities, not to mention the human toll. But extinction…

Given how much crop land would be ruined, it is likely that global starvation would end most of humanity and not much of civilization would survive. Sure there would be people wondering around a hundred years later, but they might not know how to read, write, speak real languages, or reason abstractly. 99% of humans starving would make for some crazy times.

Yep, see the bronze age collapse for an example of this.

Reading and writing lost. People living in cities that had flourished for a thousand years just a couple centuries before, but the current inhabitants didn't know the name of.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#46

Post by leetcrew »

codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

> What is the point of writing a post like this?

if nothing else, it paints a more accurate picture of the issue. is there something wrong with that?

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#47

Post by lwneal »

Today, the 1950's era "Duck and Cover" drills [1] are sometimes laughed at. However, in the event of an actual nuclear blast, some simple preparation would save lives. When a bright flash lights up the sky, people indoors will naturally run to the nearest window to see what happened. This is the wrong thing to do, because the bright flash of an explosion is followed a few seconds later by a pressure wave, turning the window glass into a fast-moving cloud of shrapnel.

Just getting under a desk or table away from any windows improves your chances of survival. The advice is useful even if the flash is not caused by a nuclear weapon. Most of the injuries from the Chelyabinsk meteor [2] in 2013 were caused by window shrapnel.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60&t=81s

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#48

Post by goatlover »

shams93 wrote: post #6

What about the Nuclear Winter effect? I would think going like 100 years without being able to grow food would cause everything but the heartiest life forms to die out including humans who are much harder to keep going than simple bacteria.

It would only take a couple years for the dust to fall/rain out of the sky, and not everywhere will experience as great a temperature drop.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#49

Post by toast0 »

ghostcluster wrote: post #25
newfeatureok wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you really comparing COVID to a hypothetical nuclear war? COVID barely disrupted the supply chain because people who actually work those mission critical jobs had to continue working on site. This wouldn’t be the case if nukes were dropping

In my mind, the most likely candidate for a nuclear war right now comes in a chaotic escalation of the conflict between Pakistan and India. I think this scenario would be horrible, but its damage to the rest of the world's supply chains? Probably less than COVID? The other conflict that worries me is a major provocation by China towards Taiwan. This is the foreign policy scenario that frightens me most, and feels lik…

Of note, India and China also have a simmering conflict with each other. My understanding of it is meager, but it seems to me while unlikely to boil over on its own, conditions could change if a conflict you mentioned happens.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#50

Post by throwhypothetic »

codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

In the context of civilization collapse, I think the author is overestimating how likely it is that people will be able to figure out subsistence farming using only locally available materials before they starve. Does anyone on Earth still do that, i.e. with no reliance on materials shipped in from elsewhere?
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