That really depends on what people 'think' is a lot. About 7 million Germans died in WWII (civilian + military), clearly a lot, but still 'only' 10% of the population. The Ukraine military has reporter their own casualties as 3'000 men so far, which is huge, yet 10+ times that many people go into sport arenas every week. If nuclear war now would kill 50% of the global population, it would certainly define our history…
The problem we have today is that of specialization. I dont believe there is a viable scenario where only 40% of the population dies. We either lose something like less than 10% of the population or we loose over 80%. Food is the reason. In 1900 before the green revolution there were less than 2 billion people on the planet and huge portions of them grew their own food. After that point industrialisation and mass fos…
2 billion people today rely on subsistence farming, it's silly to think 90% of people on earth would die on account of that alone.
What happens to nuclear power plants if they’re destroyed by a nuclear blast? Or a nuclear waste facility? Wouldn’t that result in a Chernobyl like event, without the ability to contain it as quickly? How would the world handle a few dozen Chernobyls all at once?
>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…
Yeah, this is the same type of article that, from the comfort of the author's arm chair, says things like: "well humanity survived the black death, basically no matter what we're going to be fine." You can only shrug it off looking at the abstract numbers. You absolutely do not want to live through a period of history that's anything like that.
especially in a period that kills xx% of the population _due to scarcity of resources_.
in a black plague situation the following generations are almost guaranteed an economic boom of sort as there are more natural resources per capita, in a nuclear winter scenario I believe that many would die and the survivors would still find themselves with incredible scarcity.
I think it might be for the better that we think nuclear weapons are world ending in that it stops them from being used
I think it’s almost always better to have a more accurate mode of the world than a less accurate one. For example if Russia were to commit further atrocities worse than actual nuclear war, and the civilized world refused to call their bluff because the cost of imaginary nuclear war is worse still. Of course there are also scenarios where bluffs getting made and called are net-negative utility, and maybe you wouldn’t…
> if Russia were to commit further atrocities worse than actual nuclear war
Is this even physically possible? I mean imagine Hitler was winning WW2 and the only way to stop him was to cause global nuclear war with today's arcenal - are you confident which is the better option?
The US frequently inspects Russian nuclear facilities and vice versa per the New START Treaty.
Playing dumb here but there’re not going to invite each other to the secret nuclear warhead stash are they?
Russia has about the same economic output as Texas. Trying to keep a massive number of weapons is a stupendous expense already. That many more weapons is throwing money in a pit that you cant use for things like building an economy, or a palace for a dictator.
>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…
> So, it's exactly as destructive as I think. My thoughts exactly. Setting the world back 100+ years is a disaster of gigantic proportions. I also find it odd that the author didn't even attempt to provide an estimate of the possible victim count. I'm basically sure it would at least be in the tens, perhaps hundreds of millions. This is to say nothing about a possible future arms race that would increase the numbers…
A U.S. nuclear warplanner from around a decade ago (I can link you to him if you're interested) recently stated that he'd suspect that a typical full exchange between the U.S. and Russia would kill 95% of the people living in both countries within 18 months of the attack. Main causes of death would be complete collapse of infrastructure; no supply chains, no food production, no fuel, no heat, no power, no water, no medicine or health care. Most major cities would be destroyed, many cities along rivers would be under fast-flowing as water dams would be targeted to cascade fail most hydrology management, anything downwind of spent fuel storage for nuclear plants (which, in the U.S., are stored above ground near the actual reactors) would be uninhabitable for months to decades, etc. It'd be a very messy 18 months, too, as those left alive immediately after that attack and fallout, which would probably be around 2/3rds of the population of each of the countries, competed for limited resources. And his estimates assumed that nuclear winter was not a real thing. It goes downhill from there if it is.
One thing of note left out, re destruction of population centers: The article focuses on a most-likely scenario, and doesn't discuss a most-dangerous (to civilians) one. I'm curious how much devastation could be unleashed if weapons were targeted at population centers. Depending on how effective defense systems are (THAAD, PATRIOT etc), I'd bet huge amounts of people could be killed.
> 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.
> The financial hub of the world is definitely a much higher value target than another port in an armageddon type scenario. What? So civilisation is collapsing around you, and instead of a port and ships that can move grain and life-saving goods, you would rather have an army of bankers so that they can trade triple-A rated collateralized debt obligations for newly radiactive real estate?
But actually, why not target both? There are thousands of warheads from what I understand. It doesn’t seem like they need to be choosey.
There are some good points here mixed with some large assumptions. The good points: - Weapons fuzed for high-altitude air burst, which maximizes the damage area at the expense of not being able to kill hardened targets, are not going to produce dangerous fallout. - The typical warhead now is significantly smaller than the multi-megaton ones that were typical during the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The large assum…
"people who already knew how to farm without artificial fertilizers. Today we are nearly 8 billion and a much smaller fraction have any experience farming."
As if it were an expensive and impractical proposition for more people to grow a little food.
The reason fewer people engage in farming is that fewer people need to engage in it, and it is neither well-rewarded nor an intrinsically desirable activity for most people. It's nothing to do with not knowing how or being unable to learn.