How destructive are nuclear weapons really? • Hacker News Board

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#91

Post by chakalakasp » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #21

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…

This is what a typical attack on the U.S. would likely look like. Attack 1 is an attack that attempts to hit the U.S. silos in addition to other U.S. military and civilian targets. It's what would perhaps be used in a first-strike scenario. Attack 2 assumes that the land based U.S. missiles have already launched, and only targets military and civilian targets, but doesn't worry about targeting U.S. land based missile silos.

Attack laydown 1: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP/main...

Attack laydown 2:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP/main...

The casualties figure is immediate, and doesn't include things like the breakdown of society -- this is just the casualties estimated from the actual war itself.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#92

Post by thomasahle » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

mupuff1234 wrote: post #30

> 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.

Also, according to the Nukemap website the author links to: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ you can hit everything from Philadelphia to New York with a single single Tsar bomba. With a bomb like that it hardly matters if you aim it at Port Elizabeth or Manhattan.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#93

Post by JacksCracked » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

poulpy123 wrote: post #43

I'm not very comfortable with all the talks I hear or read about how nuclear war isn't so bad since russia invaded ukraine

No post body was provided.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#94

Post by empthought » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #80

empthought wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They survive on subsistence farming because their near large urban cities don't. The moment those cities are not fed the terrible order they already exist in gets worse. A supersaturation even can only exist as long as energy is being applied. When that is lost (fossils fuels) then a corrective event occurs.

No, they survive on subsistence farming regardless of what any cities do. That's the definition of subsistence farming.

I agree that the situation in cities would be dire, but over 40% of people live in rural areas and half of them are already growing their own food.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#95

Post by tshaddox » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #57

mupuff1234 wrote: post #30

> 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?

It seems like you have the order of things mixed up. The point is that destroying a financial hub of the world is a more effective way of collapsing civilization than destroying a port.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#96

Post by chakalakasp » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

justinpowers wrote: post #82

chakalakasp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Please do provide that link

This is the guy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmteter

He's an engineer who's job was, in the past, to be one of the people who developed the U.S. nuclear warplans against Russia.

His open source attempt at using his understanding to build hypothetical target laydowns for Russian attacks against the U.S. is here:

https://github.com/davidteter/OPEN-RISOP

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#97

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #95

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It seems like you have the order of things mixed up. The point is that destroying a financial hub of the world is a more effective way of collapsing civilization than destroying a port.

Could you provide at least some reasoning, if not evidence, to support this counter-intuitive assertion?

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#98

Post by Retric » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

yeetsfromhellL2 wrote: post #75

happytoexplain wrote: post #10

>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…

If we go back to 19th/20th century tech it'll be a problem because all the resources which are easy to extract have already been got. Much of the resource extraction done today is only possible because modern technology enables it. We may not ever be able to get back to where we're at now if we have a setback like that.

Economies adapt to their resource constraints. A huge drop in global population means stuff like iron becomes less valuable as there is so much to extract from the remnants of our civilization.

People talk about the lack of fuel, but Hydro power was initially built in September 30, 1882. It further scales to plenty of energy to bootstrap a civilization to modern extraction techniques. 15.8% of total global electricity comes from hydropower there is a vast amount of it even if oil and coal where somehow unavailable.

It’s likely they would end up with a strange mix of technology in the short term and a different mix of infrastructure long term. Stuff like steel sailboats with small wood fired steam engines for radios.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#99

Post by gwbrooks » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

mupuff1234 wrote: post #30

> 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.

Counterforce vs. countervalue strategy. A limited nuclear exchange would almost certainly be counterforce, and focused on things like military targets and ports. A larger exchange would become a countervalue exercise focused on economic targets.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#100

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Apr 16, 2022, 6:47 PM UTC

The biggest problem I see with this rather sunny perspective is that it assumes all those "reserve" warheads are permanently out of action. In fact, we have to expect that they'll start getting pulled into service as soon as the first nukes fly. That is, after all, the point of a reserve is it not? So no, it's not going to stop at 3000 warheads.