Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

navalgazing.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 221 posts

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#201

Post by t-3 »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #198
chakalakasp wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. That gets you to stay alive for a few months. Now, imagine a world in which there will no longer be any agriculture, fuel, easy access to clean water, electricity, heating, medicine, health care, communications, government, supply chains, or law enforcement. The food supply that was available at stores and in homes has now run out. Fertilizer is no longer available, contemporary farm machinery that runs on petrol…

> It's really just slow, heartbreaking death from starvation and disease, with horrible violence from desperate people and regional warlords mixed in. Think "The Road", without the extreme environmental destruction. Yeah. People do live through those kinds of times, though. And I'd wager at least a few end up thinking it was worth it! Perhaps the Black Death was comparable in that sense, in that it killed 30-50% of E…

> Everyone alive will have pretty deeply inculcated norms around fairness, cooperation, and institutions.

Sorry, but this is extremely naive. Take some time to talk to people who live in high-crime areas and learn about what life is like without those norms. Now imagine everything 10000x worse, because modern society and infrastructure means starvation just doesn't happen all that often. People kill each other over money today, when food becomes more valuable, you don't want to be there...

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#202

Post by ben_w »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #178
ben_w wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you expect that? Nagasaki and Hiroshima were both rebuilt, cancer levels in those cities in people conceived after the bombs is indistinguishable from places that weren’t nuked: https://k1project.columbia.edu/news/hiroshima-and-nagasaki

Much dirtier and more powerful bombs have been developed since 1945.

While explicitly high-fallout weapons have been made, most of the more powerful bombs are less dirty, both because fusion boosting is inherently so, and because the maximum destruction radius is a different function of altitude than fallout, so destroying a city is incompatible with poisoning it.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#203

Post by r3dneck »

Sadly, we have two study cases about "how destructive are nuclear weapons" and yes, really, they are Hiroshima and Nagasaki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a... I've read this article quickly but there is no mention to those events, the author only compare the power of a modern nuke with Hiroshima bomb. So, how can this article be a reliable source ? About the author, I don't see his name and after a quick google search, I can't find any endorsement to that website as reliable source. This is the second article I see on HN of the series "nukes are bad but no so bad" that are no more that blogger opinions, INMO. As usual, being liked transform anything on Internet in authoritative information by induction and this is bad.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#204

Post by koheripbal »

chakalakasp wrote: post #77
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How do you prepare for the complete breakdown of society and 200 million survivors competing for resources that will support maybe 15 million people in a blasted, utterly destroyed landscape with no infrastructure or production.

Easy. Buy a small plot of land in a remote area and stockpile 2 years worth of food and water. It's really not that hard. A human can live off of a small two acre garden. Even if you might be downwind of a major population center, you can build a simple fallout shelter for cheap.

That's the point. It's entirely survivable if you prepare.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#205

Post by pharke »

discreteevent wrote: post #85
afiori wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> in a nuclear winter scenario Did you read the article? I think you are making its point, which is that it is bad but not as bad as most people think.

> I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th/early 20th century and start back up

This is the part you should be concerned about even if a nuclear winter doesn't or can't occur. Ask yourself how many people were alive at the end of the 19th century / early 20th and then compare that to today. Remember that it wasn't for lack of trying and that this was pre-birthcontrol. Then imagine what would happen if you saddled that technology level with 2x, 3x, or 4x the number of mouths to feed.

After a nuclear war the biggest killer would likely be famine. We never think about it since we have escaped it's clutches for so long but it is one of the biggest killers in human history. A nuclear war would destroy our current global supply chain and likely much of the national supply chain as well. Billions of people around the world would starve.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#206

Post by pharke »

oneoff786 wrote: post #166
happytoexplain wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically what I hoped the parent might be alluding to. However, while I believe you about what you're describing, my personal experience of people wanting more tangible military action has not been "I think we could win a nuclear war", but rather, "I don't think it will come to nuclear war" (not sure if that's a better or worse attitude). Related: I usually find these conversations kind of gliding around wha…

Yes, obviously this. I support stronger military action. I don’t want nuclear war. Again, obviously. All that blob of text is pointless. NATO need merely declare it has no offensive ambitions. Which it doesn’t. Then there’s no existential threat. Whether Russia chooses to use nukes, likely against kyiv, is really independent of that distinction. Whether the west responds with nukes is all but assuredly “no”.

> NATO need merely declare it has no offensive ambitions. Which it doesn’t. Then there’s no existential threat.

Let's examine that from a counterfactual standpoint. Let's say that during the invasion of Iraq Russia had decided to impose a no fly zone and then proceeded to shoot down American aircraft when they violated it. They of course declared that they have no offensive ambitions, they're simply helping to defend a sovereign nation against a larger aggressor. Would that have caused the United States to attack Russian forces?

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#207

Post by pharke »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #172
oneoff786 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, obviously this. I support stronger military action. I don’t want nuclear war. Again, obviously. All that blob of text is pointless. NATO need merely declare it has no offensive ambitions. Which it doesn’t. Then there’s no existential threat. Whether Russia chooses to use nukes, likely against kyiv, is really independent of that distinction. Whether the west responds with nukes is all but assuredly “no”.

It's like everyone is afraid of stopping the bully beating up on a weak kid because the bully also threatens to respond to intervention with a gun. Yet the bully also knows if they actually use the gun they'll be put down like a feral dog before they have time to reload.

That's a terrible analogy, nuclear weapons are more akin to everyone being armed with grenades and trapped in the same room. You're going to get hit no matter what so as soon as one person pulls a pin their target is going to do the same and everyone is getting hit by shrapnel.

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#208

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

chakalakasp wrote: post #200
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to some people / papers / where these people hang out? I'd like to do some reading

Sure, here are a couple of resources, both for Russia and the U.S. For the U.S. plan to attack Russia, the NRDC did an interesting hypothetical attack around 20 years ago to show the impact a U.S. attack would have on Russia. (It's hypothetical because the actual attack plans are classified to the point that even Senators on the big committees don't get to see them when they angrily ask for them.) The report on that…

I really appreciate this!

Re: How destructive are nuclear weapons really?

#210

Post by matkoniecz »

zzzeek wrote: post #65

"Again, 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." What kind of person gets up in the morning and decides this is the thing they need to write about and tell the world today? How are we served by this?

1) Some like to believe in things consistent with reality

2) Typical people would prefer to avoid nuclear war

Which part you consider objectionable in what you quoted?

Post reply on HN