So... I guess it's okay if Russia nukes Ukraine? Does that explain the March 27th publication date?
How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
41–50 of 221 posts
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#42Yeah, but you know - if they start flying, we're dead.
I'm in the middle of Poland, it really won't be any comfort for me that USA will survive when I'll be dead.
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#43I'm not very comfortable with all the talks I hear or read about how nuclear war isn't so bad since russia invaded ukraine
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#44"Thought experiment" from Kurzgesagt: What if We Nuke a City? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#45>not an existential threat to humanity ... [but] it would be a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in human history, as the global economy breaks down and regions are pushed back on their own resources. This could easily kill more people than the war itself, particularly in densely-populated areas, but I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th/early 20th century and start back…
You should try this https://www.radzone.org/nukemap.php . Move the map on your location and see the impact radius.
This tells you nothing about number of people that would die as a result. Remember what happened to global trade when 1 ship was stuck in Suesz?
It takes a couple dozen nukes to destroy all large-scale deepwater ports in the world. Global Trade is crippled. UK and Japan depend on food imports, so people there starve.
It only takes a couple dozen nukes to destroy most oil refining capacity in the world. Czech republic has enough gas to last 6 days
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#46The conclusion: >Nuclear war is bad, and we should be very careful not to have one, but it is not as bad as it is often made out to be. Some of this is because the threat has routinely been exaggerated by anti-nuclear groups, and some of it is the result of arms control efforts over the past half-century, which have significantly reduced the potential human toll of a nuclear war It’s odd to me that he blames exaggera…
Internal US government documents estimate something like a 90% population loss after a war that only targets our ICBM silos. (Ie not one missile hits a populated area.) The fallout destroys our food supplies and wipes out livestock, making farming impossible: most of the US population starves within a year. There is a reason the US government doesn’t spend a lot of effort preparing the population for a nuclear war, a…
Studies done in the 60s and 70s were aimed at much larger scale conflicts than would occur in 2022. However the general sentiment is accurate. Food production post-nuclear war is a wildcard, dependent on both fallout pattern, global capacity to increase food production, global interest in helping countries devastated by nuclear war, and targeting.
The assumption that nukes would primarily target ICBM silos seems suspect to me, as it would seem pointless to target silos which have already fired their missiles. The assumption that both sides haven't done some planning for both scorched earth targetting approaches, and "survivable" exchanges also seems suspect. Who's to say that Russia wouldn't target conventional military infrastructure, and civilian population centers, having assumed that all deployable warheads would already have been fired? They could reasonably assess that the value of targeting silos which have already fired their missiles is low, and the need for post-war food production will be high.
Alternately, they could adopt a scorched earth targeting policy to maximize fallout and leave the US in a permanently weakened state. I'm sure all nuclear powers have tried to maximize their choices in how to deploy weapons in any conflict.
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#47No post body was provided.
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#48Posted earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31051354
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#49>not an existential threat to humanity ... [but] it would be a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in human history, as the global economy breaks down and regions are pushed back on their own resources. This could easily kill more people than the war itself, particularly in densely-populated areas, but I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th/early 20th century and start back…
I encounter a lot of people with the "species-ending nuclear winter" false belief, and their attitudes are usually something like, "Oh, what can you do? Just have a drink and enjoy the fireworks."
I get the sense the author is working against this line of thinking, because there is in fact a lot you can do (both in terms of preparing and in terms of responding).
Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?
#50> For instance, priority targets in New York City are likely to include Bayonne/Port Elizabeth and Red Hook in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan, as Moscow cares more about New York as a place where armies can sail for Europe than as a place where investment bankers live. This person is delusional. The financial hub of the world is definitely a much higher value target than another port in an armageddon type scenario.
Following a nuclear exchange, it is unlikely that a country without ports, airports, transit networks, or a military, would remain the financial hub of the world.