Is Nuclear War an Existential Crisis?

[Airedale260]

Nuclear War will NOT cause human extinction, so please stop DOOMposting by Harry Leferts. The entire thread, but greatest hits include the implication that "our decendants can wait for a few million years for the empty oil wells to refill, that the greatest threat in post-apocalyptic America would be "Qanon militias" while everyone else peacefully collaborated and that "the global south would be spared" which would hardly be a comfort for survivors getting colonized by the CCP as the new dominant global superpower.

I’m reasonably certain that any nuclear exchange is going to drag the Chinese in out of spite and the CCP won’t be able to command a toy boat in a bathtub in the aftermath, never mind conquer and hold territory several thousands of miles away.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Nuclear War will NOT cause human extinction, so please stop DOOMposting by Harry Leferts.

"State's like California survive a lot more than they expected". Someone has played way too much Fallout.

Everyone in California lives in like 3-4 highly populated areas, and the state as a whole is dependent on water and resources from other states to survive. If a nuclear war happened anyone left would be totally screwed, if they survived at all. Which they won't, because again everyone lives crammed together in a few tiny areas that would be easily annihilated by a few warheads.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

Once you start playing the nuclear war game, the entire scale that you measure survival and "fine" on changes fundamentally and drastically.

For example, in a full scale nuclear exchange the US simply writes off EVERY urban area. Whether they are directly hit or not, the chaos and disruption caused by such an event means that the cities will not get the food that they need and that the chaos inherent in the population trying to flee will make them basically death traps populated only by bodies inside of a week or two.

Oil refiners are also all tier one nuclear strike targets in a full scale exchange. Effectively instantly, the entire gasoline production base in the US will be shut down.

The entire satellite grid is likewise gone, a full scale nuclear exchange will see the PRC or Russia simply writing off their own space assets as the price of crippling US space assets and they will do high atmosphere nuclear detonations geared to producing EMP's that will fry basically everything in space.

Natural gas pipelines are also targets, for the purpose of shutting down power plants.

Critical road and rail bridges are also priority targets, for the purpose of fracturing the food distribution network to the greatest extent possible.

So the nuclear exchange ends and the US population is left facing massive, crippling, issues with the food supply network. You are likely to see at least as many dead inside of a month from secondary causes as you are to see dead in the actual nuclear strikes.

Go global and the situation is just as bad or worse. If a proper nuclear war happens, there is not major power that doesn't get fucked. For example, the US and Russia nuke one another and both of them are going to spare a few nukes for the PRC as well (and Paris and London and Tokyo etc.). Full scale nuclear war makes it a game of national survival; you cripple everyone who is in a position to come after you while you are weakened from the exchange.

Even ignoring that, you are looking at global disruptions in EVERY market. Global shortages of every critical good and service. That is global famine that will kill one to two billion, at least, on its own. That is global de-industrialization as all of the needed input infrastructure is simply no longer available. You think a single major chip fab facility survives nuclear war, as just one example.

Then you need to account for the fact that a global nuclear war doesn't happen in a vacuum. Before or concurrent with it, you are going to see full scale, destructive, cyber warfare. Basically everything internet connected is going to end up bricked.

Would humanity survive all of this? Yes.
Would some of the nation states survive in a form that is recognizable? Yes.
Would it be the most destructive event, by any and every metric, in all of human history? Yes.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

"State's like California survive a lot more than they expected". Someone has played way too much Fallout.

Everyone in California lives in like 3-4 highly populated areas, and the state as a whole is dependent on water and resources from other states to survive. If a nuclear war happened anyone left would be totally screwed, if they survived at all. Which they won't, because again everyone lives crammed together in a few tiny areas that would be easily annihilated by a few warheads.

In the event of an atomic war California would be fucked as would most the country.

It would be devastating and it's debatable if the world's ecosystem could survive such an exchange in the first place, but even if for whatever reason it does your survival isn't guaranteed. The only state that may survive an exchange going by this map would be Maine although that's dubious, anywhere in the rust belt, California or Missile Silos in the Great Plains is going to be flattened and radioactive for a while.

Outside blast zones initially surviving radiation will be the most avoidable hazard provided people have some place to shelter even if it's in a home basement or hell even a Vietcong style tunnel leading underground as outlined in this video.


Although, truth be told the above while better than nothing at all would still be dangerous and far less than needed.

More Americans will die in a nuclear exchange than would be remotely necessary and the main culprit in rural areas which bombs missed outside necessities would be a distinct lack of awareness in how fallout works, or equipment required to measure it like Geiger counters or radiation dosimeters which in turn need recalibration according to YouTube every decade or so. Even most small-town that were fortunate enough to have shelters made in the 60's have been neglected in Maintenace and have been used mainly as storage for Christmas decorations or other odds and ends rather than kept ready for such an event.

 

[Jormungandr]

...Well, at least the SJWs, woketards, and Democrats would finally have a use -- as food.

Waste not, want not, and all that jazz.

 

[Robovski]

It's been like 38 years since the Cold War was so "hot" that we were drilling in school, people were designated nuclear disaster wardens, and people daily lived in dread of the flash of light that might suddenly happen at any time. I should know, I grew up in this time, hunkering in a windowless hallway of the school like somehow I was going to survive if the war started in Chicago as a pre-teen. A lot has been forgotten and neglected. The siren systems and emergency broadcasts systems generally work, because we use those for disasters of various environmental forms, but the shelters are badly maintained (if at all) and if they are stocked at all likely with old stores of water, food, and supplies. We were never "ready" for a strike, but even less so now.

 

[Zachowon]

We never realized hoe close it could he.
I think the Cold War is back, and won't stay cold long

 

[Chiron]

I must say, this whole Mig debacle is both embarassing and rather vile to look at.

Its called doing your own stash. Never do your own stash.



Now for the Doc on how to survive nuclear Armageddon.

 

[Bassoe]

Is Nuclear War an Existential Crisis?

Yes, absolutely. We're already extracted all the oil and rare earth ores necessary for building technological infrastructure which can be extracted without preexisting technological infrastructure, if civilization collapses and we lose all our current infrastructure we won't be able to rebuild to current levels.

 

[Airedale260]

Yes, absolutely. We're already extracted all the oil and rare earth ores necessary for building technological infrastructure which can be extracted without preexisting technological infrastructure, if civilization collapses and we lose all our current infrastructure we won't be able to rebuild to current levels.

?

I’m not sure what you’re replying to but my actual comment was about claims that, in the wake of a nuclear war, the Chinese would invade and try to colonize North America, to which my response was no, they’d be hosed in such a war as well.

 

[bullethead]

The only time nuclear war is not an existential crisis is if, like in Joe Buff's submarine novels, nuclear weapon deployment is limited to low kiloton yield warheads at sea.

And even then, there's going to be tons of environmental damage and secondary effects from the fact that a tactical nuclear war happening that'll completely fuck up economies and societies.

 

[Doomsought]

Nuclear war is not nearly as bad as people think it is, radioactive fallout, especially after the first few months, will have extremely slow effects and be no more noticeable than things like lead contamination and the effect of smoking.

If you compare the effects of nuclear war on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the effect of communism on a city, being hit by a nuclear weapon is less devastating than communism in the long term. Hiroshima and Nagasaki both recovered in a few decades, but comunism has left a fallout of political and economic corruption that has not been cleaned up in any of the areas where communism left after the cold war.

 

[Sailor.X]

Given what we have seen of the state of Russian equipment as of late I have to ask this question. Does any of Russia's ICBMs actually still function? I mean if you can't maintain a Tank in a base near your population centers. How well maintained is an ICBM in the ass end of Siberia with only Musk Ox and wolves as it's neighbors? I am having my doubts about them.

 

[Captain X]

Wasn't the point of solid-fueled ICBMs that they could basically sit in their silo for decades with very little maintenance and still be ready if they were suddenly needed?

 

[Sailor.X]

Wasn't the point of solid-fueled ICBMs that they could basically sit in their silo for decades with very little maintenance and still be ready if they were suddenly needed?

My point is I don't think they get any maintenance.

 

[Zachowon]

I think that is the only thing maintained by Russia

 

[Bacle]

I think that is the only thing maintained by Russia

Yep.

Russia's conventional forces are rather shit, and I expect a lot of the Russian MoD's budget goes to keeping their nuclear forces operational.

 

[Sailor.X]

I think that is the only thing maintained by Russia

Yep.

Russia's conventional forces are rather shit, and I expect a lot of the Russian MoD's budget goes to keeping their nuclear forces operational.

Never underestimate the Corruption in the Russian Military. I bet good money a lot of those funds ended up in the pockets of various Generals.

 

[posh-goofiness]

In the event of an atomic war California would be fucked as would most the country.

It would be devastating and it's debatable if the world's ecosystem could survive such an exchange in the first place, but even if for whatever reason it does your survival isn't guaranteed. The only state that may survive an exchange going by this map would be Maine although that's dubious, anywhere in the rust belt, California or Missile Silos in the Great Plains is going to be flattened and radioactive for a while.

Did you read your own map? The yellow sections are "no shelter" levels of fallout. Hell, the worst of the projected fallout burns out in a months. Sure all the pop centers are dead (sucks to be me, I live on the outskirts of one) but ~75% of the landmass is not in all that much risk. The Southeast is blanketed in yellow, so they're survive fine. The blue, purple, and red is fucked though 100%.

 

[Marduk]

Wasn't the point of solid-fueled ICBMs that they could basically sit in their silo for decades with very little maintenance and still be ready if they were suddenly needed?

That's the advertising brochure i think.
They still need pretty expensive maintenance, just less often. The main advantage is that they can sit ready in silos at all, as opposed to liquid fueled ones that can't, because their fuel is corrosive, so before launch they need to spend a long time by the standard of a nuclear war timeline just to get fueled to launch.