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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?

#211

Post by tsimionescu »

onecommentman wrote: post #127
landfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is mostly Herman Kahn redux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn When there were 3 TV channels in the 1960s, in prime time programming you would often hear discussions just like this, from Kahn himself at times. Topic and people inspired the movie Dr. Strangelove and was at the forefront of the national consciousness in the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s. As a set of ideas and concerns, it was beaten to…

> Nuclear weapons are weapons of policy, not weapons of war

That almost sounds plausible if you don't know the long history of nuclear weapons being almost used and avoided by sheer luck. Your thesis also breaks down once you remember that the USA is building 'small-scale' nuclear weapons with the precise intention of making them usable in current conflicts.

Not to mention that the US have recently unilaterally withdrawn from the disarmament agreement with Russia, under a supposedly Russia-friendly president.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#212

Post by TeMPOraL »

pmachinery wrote: post #204
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people don't "choose to have children." They feel like fucking so they do, and children happen afterwards. I wouldn't expect that to change after a nuclear war, especially in a world without contraceptives. That aside, there really needs to be more understanding of the difference between species extinction and cultural extinction. Humans could survive for hundreds of millennia in a devolved state. They wouldn't…

If all humans aren't eradicated by nuclear war, I don't see why all memory, books, hard drives, other archives, computers, power plants, machinery, or even all contraceptives would be.

Computers and hard drives have half-life counted in years, and need energy and communication infrastructure to operate. Post-collapse, once all the computers break down, that's the end of XX-century technology. Nobody is going to make new ones, because to build and maintain machines that make computers you need working computers. Same for mining and refining necessary resources, controlling chemical processes, etc.

Whatever technological knowledge survives in the books, most of it will be useless for centuries, as we regress into pre-industrial level of technology and can't climb back out - we've already mined out all easily-accessible high-density energy sources that are necessary for reindustrialization.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#213

Post by gonzo41 »

eloff wrote: post #120
landfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Very few things could actually make humans extinct at this point. It would take an impact like the one that produced the moon to finish us off. We're so adaptable that some of us will survive and rebuild. If we can ever get back to technological civilization without easily accessible fossil fuels is debatable, but I think we'd find a way - it would just be a lot harder and take longer. What worries me is not extincti…

I think the same about about CC. Humans as an animal, will survive. Humanity may not.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#214

Post by jostmey »

Human extinction from nuclear war hinges on whether or not there would be a nuclear winter. I'm not convinced the article successfully refutes the possibility of a nuclear winter. The linchpin of this article is that the matter is under scientific debate, but I don't see any new evidence to support or refute the possibility of a nuclear winter being presented

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#215

Post by kristopolous »

This may be unconventional but if an exchange ever happens I predict there will be between 0 and 1 warhead detonated

The people tasked with the counterattack will like their predecessors when falsely convinced of an impending attack, fail to counterattack because their obligations to humanity are greater than they are to a nation.

A follow-up attack from the belligerent will be political suicide and there would be great political pressure from the belligerents own citizens and the global population at large to somehow disable or destroy any inflight warheads.

I thought I had read somewhere during the Norwegian rocket incident that US officials encouraged Russia to take necessary action on the rocket if they believed it to be an accidentally fired offensive warhead but I may be thinking of another time.

Anyways, despite the blustering of MAD and first strike and all the planning of how it would go down, I think the hard evidence of how humans have responded to close calls in the past 70 years points to zero - one detonations followed by global dismantling and abolition.

An interesting logical property about this prediction is either it's right or there will be no evidence it was ever made.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#216

Post by leoedin »

eloff wrote: post #120
landfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Very few things could actually make humans extinct at this point. It would take an impact like the one that produced the moon to finish us off. We're so adaptable that some of us will survive and rebuild. If we can ever get back to technological civilization without easily accessible fossil fuels is debatable, but I think we'd find a way - it would just be a lot harder and take longer. What worries me is not extincti…

Honestly Covid-19 was actually quite reassuring for me. There was a few brief blips of panic buying, and a bit of "flee to the countryside", but broadly things kept functioning. People and organisations stepped up and kept things moving.

All those people who fled to the countryside eventually got bored and returned to the city, where things hadn't really changed much.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#217

Post by [deleted] »

mola wrote: post #198

This is just an argument against a straw man. Nuclear war, is bad, any mass killing is bad, any society collapse is bad. It means actual prolongated suffering for most humans. Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome, I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse. It's like the back talk against climate warming, trying to down play it as a non extinction event. Well th…

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#219

Post by spurgu »

TheUndead96 wrote: post #218

While it might be true that nuclear war will not end the human genome, it could set may communities back to the bronze age in a relatively short amount of time.

Which wouldn't matter much in the grand scheme of things - we'd get back to where we are (if we wanted to) faster than we did the last time around.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#220

Post by baybal2 »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #206
mola wrote: post #198

This is just an argument against a straw man. Nuclear war, is bad, any mass killing is bad, any society collapse is bad. It means actual prolongated suffering for most humans. Nuclear caused extinction is actually a preferable outcome, I'd rather just instantly die than live in a brutal post sociatle apocalypse. It's like the back talk against climate warming, trying to down play it as a non extinction event. Well th…

Spot on. In the entire scenario it seems we forget recent pandemic, and what happen few days in. In the case of nuclear war exchange there won't be any toilet paper, period. :) Joking aside, we forget how hooked we are to industrial society. Any such event would mean world without shops, internet, new version of anything... no progress... for at least one human lifetime. Back to stone age. Everything we are used to a…

You don't need a nuclear war for all that to happen.

As I once read in one defence publication, USA is only 4 biggest fertiliser complexes away from the famine, assuming the assailing party can blockade the country to prevent food importation.

The same is for the biggest oil, and fuel manufacturing complexes.

USA is also "just" 50 power stations away from the grid becoming useless. USA is though much, much better off than most countries on this, as its power generation is much more decentralised, thanks to largely private operation.

USA has domestic capacity to manufacture small, and medium sized turbines, but largest ones used in the superplants mentioned above are made by GE Energy in France, and some even in Japan, and China.

The same for big, top tier transformers for the grid.

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