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 Witzkatz wrote:
I recently learned that, in the last days of the war, the production of Bf 109 fighters was done to a significant portion by concentration camp labor. As jarring (and full-on cliché evil empire) as that is, it makes you wonder about how difficult it is to build reasonable airplanes if you have blueprints, an engineer who knows something about aviation, and a few primary tools and machines intact...

Its definitely doable. And easier if your labor force is a willing participant, even if they are unskilled and are only following rote instructions.

The truly difficult part is maintaining a supply chain that can keep you supplied with raw materials. Organizing the whole system is where the real struggle will be.

Yeah not to mention refining the oil for the fuel. But while we're dreaming I guess we can assume that will happen.

BTW, is anyone familiar with the old RPG Gamma World? Its prob gone through a couple of versions since the good old 80s. It was a pretty dark and scary concept when you think about it. Its hard to be a fan of stories like that or Mad Max and so on, when you consider the amount of destruction that has to take place for those stories to get going.

But it does make me wonder what the world would be like a couple hundred years after a full blown nuclear war. Lets say pockets of peeps survive in Africa, South American, South Pacific Islands, etc. Or maybe on all the continents. Imagine what the first empires might be like. Anyone familiar with SF3D?

https://www.google.com/search?q=SF3D&client=firefox-b&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNkfWP2vndAhXxTN8KHQhUAcYQ_AUIDigB&biw=1920&bih=946

So I am not taking in the immediate years following a nuclear war, but some time after it when what is left of mankind starts getting back on its feet. I don't think for a moment they will be as advanced as SF3D, but would they be able to build P-51s or something like it? Perhaps. Prob not many tho. But it is interesting to imagine what a second industrial age might look like.

Reminds me of. . .



And part of the problem for the survivors is how much is stored on computers these days. No one is going to be pulling information off of 200 year old hard drives. While you could dig up a scroll from 2000 years ago and read the news, the same isn't going to happen with a junk of plastic and rusted metal, with info in 1s and 0s that no one is going to understand even if they could pull any info off them. Old books will be the big deal, but I doubt the complex know-how knowledge is even printed anymore. So mankind knowledge would def be reset in a big way.

The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.

Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.

To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.

I think that would depend on your definition of "end of civilization". While I agree (and responded earlier to that effect) that we would not wipe mankind from the face of the Earth even in a full blown nuclear engagement, the world as we know it would cease to exist.

Eradicating the major world powers would turn the entire world structure on its head. Instantly destabilized world markets, massive refugee floods, striking poverty, loss of oil/natural gas/energy to major countries dependent on Russia, etc. It's fair to say that the way we envision human existence would be radically upended.

That being said, yes, humans would persist.

 Elbows wrote:
I think that would depend on your definition of "end of civilization". While I agree (and responded earlier to that effect) that we would not wipe mankind from the face of the Earth even in a full blown nuclear engagement, the world as we know it would cease to exist.

Eradicating the major world powers would turn the entire world structure on its head. Instantly destabilized world markets, massive refugee floods, striking poverty, loss of oil/natural gas/energy to major countries dependent on Russia, etc. It's fair to say that the way we envision human existence would be radically upended.

That being said, yes, humans would persist.

Fact is that there is so few nuclear weapons that even the major world powers would be merely heavily damaged rather than eradicated. They might lose their major population centres, infrastructure and a lot of their population, but a country can survive that (Poland and Belarus in WW2 are good examples) and recover quickly. You would get market destabilisation and massive refugee floods, but we saw that in WW2 as well without it bringing about the end of civilisation as we know it. Governments would act to prevent the destabilised market from destroying the economy as they did in WW2 (nationalisation of foreign assets, reducing reliance on import/export etc.) and shelter refugees. It would really damage economic growth and our prosperity, lead to scarcity and rationing for years etc. but to say our entire existence would be radically upended is a bit overly apocalyptic. The past has shown Humans and governments to be quite resilient.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.

Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.

To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.

One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.

And it wouldn't just be one, either...

 Vulcan wrote:

One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.

And it wouldn't just be one, either...

This, in a nutshell. The bombs are only a third of the picture. Radiation is another third, and starvation the final. Certainly here in Europe, the food supply chains would break down excessively fast. Those in the blast radius get killed, those on the fringes burnt and blinded, those nearby hit with sufficient radioactivity to ensure they'll be dead within a few years, and those outside the immediate radius have to deal with the lack of any support infrastructure and contamination of their land from prevailing wind/ocean.

Don't get me wrong, I know that there'll be blind spots. Nukes are targeted based upon population density and military need. Bangor and the Outer Hebrides will likely be just fine (out of prevailing wind, access to ocean for foodstuffs, etc). But in the UK at least, I'd expect to lose 95% of the population within the first two years. Just one single Dong Feng detonating over the top of London alone would have over two million dead and over three and a half million casualties. Replicate that on all of our major and intermediate population centres (that's what, sixty missiles?), and the UK would have effectively ceased to exist. The Atlantic Wind would ensure that anything which hit Cardiff and Bristol would sweep radiation over the south (along with the odd missiles whacking into places like Exeter), and you'd have much the same scenario up and down the mainland. Even Scotland would take a few hits around Glasgow to help pollute the area.

Wherever you wanted to go in the UK more or less, you're just driving into more irradiated territory and starving people. Most of us would never make it. At best, we'd die riddled with cancer five years down the line. The countryside would be picked bare by survivors in weeks. If it was winter, the starvation process would be quicker still.

I don't know about the US and the rest of the world, but over here in the UK? We're pretty stuffed. There'd be nothing left but bunkers and a handful of small villages/towns along the western and northern coast. And given that if we're hit Ireland likely has been too, the people on the West Coast/Wales wouldn't be too healthy either after a few years. Birth deformities, higher cancer rates, reduced lifespan, etcetc. No, we'd be reduced to a pastoral community level really quite quickly. I daresay the government has some equipment and installations appropriately placed with that in mind to co-ordinate whatever was left; but it really would be a handful of villages/ hi-tech bunkers with supplies. Thinking ahead to how we'd reconstruct is an interesting thought exercise though.

The logical thing to do would be to put whatever heavy machinery is still left into use in Northern Scotland/ the West Coast immediately to dig additional bunkers/regional hubs for the pregnant and young. Use them as an administrative labour resource to co-ordinate what's going on outside; whilst assembling fishing fleets (seafood would be the most uncontaminated and boats can be constructed of wood). Rationing would be immediately instituted. Try and place whatever animal livestock is left in the most uncontaminated regions; likely sheep/goats on the various Scotch islands and a few shielded valleys in Wales. Resume coal mining for a power source and get a station or two up and running. The environment is already ruined by this stage after all; and it's the most suitable natural resource. Get some small wooden frames airborne for emergency transport purposes; all they need is a few lawnmower engines (limited fuel after all), canvas and wood. Try and develop some form of domestic wind turbine to keep the lights on at a small scale.

No, thinking it over, it could be done. You could start to rebuild. But it would be very miserable and hard going for a good decade or two afterwards, with scant luxuries. It would take two hundred years to reach our current state again.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.

Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.

To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.

One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.

And it wouldn't just be one, either...

The dangers of radiation and nuclear fallout are often highly exaggerated as well. Chernobyl for example is far from unlivable. Crops grow in irradiated soil just fine. People in fact continue to live in Chernobyl with no significant problems, and the whole area is flourishing in flora and fauna. Sure, you might have a somewhat higher than average risk of developing cancer. But in the aftermath of a global nuclear war, will you care about that? Probably not. Same thing for cities like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, that were bombed directly. They never became unlivable and people continued to live there after the bomb fell.
The radiation and fallout of a nuclear exchange would kill plenty of people, but it would not have any significant effect on people not living near an impact zone. If Cheyenne Mountain gets nuked, radiation might very well spread across the Great Plains, but no one is going to care about that little bit of radiation. I mean, what are they going to do about it? Stop eating food and starving themselves to death? You would see a higher incidence in cancer and birth defects, but nothing that really impacts the viability of Human habitation in the area. After the Chernobyl disaster, radiation spread across most of Europe as well. It hasn't led to the abandonment of Europe or the fall of Human civilisation there afaik.

Vulcan wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.

Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.

To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.

One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.

And it wouldn't just be one, either...

Ketara wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.

And it wouldn't just be one, either...

This, in a nutshell. The bombs are only a third of the picture. Radiation is another third, and starvation the final. Certainly here in Europe, the food supply chains would break down excessively fast. Those in the blast radius get killed, those on the fringes burnt and blinded, those nearby hit with sufficient radioactivity to ensure they'll be dead within a few years, and those outside the immediate radius have to deal with the lack of any support infrastructure and contamination of their land from prevailing wind/ocean.

Don't get me wrong, I know that there'll be blind spots. Nukes are targeted based upon population density and military need. Bangor and the Outer Hebrides will likely be just fine (out of prevailing wind, access to ocean for foodstuffs, etc). But in the UK at least, I'd expect to lose 95% of the population within the first two years. Just one single Dong Feng detonating over the top of London alone would have over two million dead and over three and a half million casualties. Replicate that on all of our major and intermediate population centres (that's what, sixty missiles?), and the UK would have effectively ceased to exist. The Atlantic Wind would ensure that anything which hit Cardiff and Bristol would sweep radiation over the south (along with the odd missiles whacking into places like Exeter), and you'd have much the same scenario up and down the mainland. Even Scotland would take a few hits around Glasgow to help pollute the area.

Wherever you wanted to go in the UK more or less, you're just driving into more irradiated territory and starving people. Most of us would never make it. At best, we'd die riddled with cancer five years down the line. The countryside would be picked bare by survivors in weeks. If it was winter, the starvation process would be quicker still.

I don't know about the US and the rest of the world, but over here in the UK? We're pretty stuffed. There'd be nothing left but bunkers and a handful of small villages/towns along the western and northern coast. And given that if we're hit Ireland likely has been too, the people on the West Coast/Wales wouldn't be too healthy either after a few years. Birth deformities, higher cancer rates, reduced lifespan, etcetc. No, we'd be reduced to a pastoral community level really quite quickly. I daresay the government has some equipment and installations appropriately placed with that in mind to co-ordinate whatever was left; but it really would be a handful of villages/ hi-tech bunkers with supplies. Thinking ahead to how we'd reconstruct is an interesting thought exercise though.

The logical thing to do would be to put whatever heavy machinery is still left into use in Northern Scotland/ the West Coast immediately to dig additional bunkers/regional hubs for the pregnant and young. Use them as an administrative labour resource to co-ordinate what's going on outside; whilst assembling fishing fleets (seafood would be the most uncontaminated and boats can be constructed of wood). Rationing would be immediately instituted. Try and place whatever animal livestock is left in the most uncontaminated regions; likely sheep/goats on the various Scotch islands and a few shielded valleys in Wales. Resume coal mining for a power source and get a station or two up and running. The environment is already ruined by this stage after all; and it's the most suitable natural resource. Get some small wooden frames airborne for emergency transport purposes; all they need is a few lawnmower engines (limited fuel after all), canvas and wood. Try and develop some form of domestic wind turbine to keep the lights on at a small scale.

No, thinking it over, it could be done. You could start to rebuild. But it would be very miserable and hard going for a good decade or two afterwards, with scant luxuries.

Modern nukes, because of how they both work and are deployed actually generate fairly little fallout. Airbursts, because they're more efficient at killing people, are preferred to ground strikes, which generate more fallout but are less effective when it comes to actually killing people and destroying targets.

For example, if one were to detonate a Dong Feng 5 Megaton Nuke in an airburst over Pittsburgh, you would kill approximately 470,000 people, with a further 580,000 injured, give or take. If you were to waste the nuke in a ground strike, you'd only kill about 400,000 killed and only another 300,000 injured due to topography and the limits of the overpressure wave. Also due to topography, you'd have detectable fallout as far away as Prince Edward Island, but dangerous levels only about as far away as Salamanca, NY, assuming a 15mph wind from SE on the day of detonation. Also, remember that the fallout does not cover all the land between these points, but rather makes a long, sort of Comet tail shape.

In contract that very lethal airburst? Negligible fallout. as in near undetectable levels even in the immediate vicinity. This is due to the fact that he altitude at which the missile is most lethal also precludes the fireball from touching ground, which is how it generates fallout.

Maybe for the US it would be negligible. For the UK? The mainland is really quite small. Even France is almost three times larger than us. What would be a tiny smear of fallout in Russia or China would be highly problematic for us. Duplicate it sixty to a hundred times over all our major to intermediate centres, and there's little of the UK not affected.

Indeed. Nuclear war would actually be far less devastating than pop culture would have you believe. Would billions die? Yes, but only because modern vehicles would cease to function due to the EMP frying the computers necessary for cars and trucks to simply turn on. Which would lead to no ability to get food from farms to the people who remained alive. Which would lead to billions starving to death in the space of a month or so.

Once that first few weeks ended though, anybody left alive would have an easier time of it. And even areas that received lethal radiation exposure in the blasts would be relatively safe to enter.

The US would actually probably still be relatively intact.

Russia has about 6800 nukes(but only approximately 2000 are deployed. The rest are in storage). China has about 270 nukes. North Korea is estimated to have 15 or so. These are the only Nuclear powers which would launch at the US. The remainder are US allies.

That leaves just over 7000 nukes that could possibly be aimed towards the US and Western Europe, if every last one of them was successfully launched and didn't have any complications. 7000 nukes would run out quite fast if you were going for both Military and Civilian targets. Most targets would need several nukes to simply cover the whole thing, and some extras just in case some of the missiles failed.

Just take California civilian targets. It would take 5-8 nukes just for the city of San Franscisco, and another 4-5 each for Oakland and San Jose. Sacramento would need another 2-3. Los Angeles would require around 10 for the greater metropolitan area. Same for San Diego. Spare another 10 nukes for the various cities in the Central valley. So just hitting just the major cities in California has taken around 50 and you haven't even hit any military targets or accounted for some of the nukes having technical failures. Europe is also way more dense than the US, so you'd be using Nukes up rapidly.

So what realistically happens is the large urban areas of the targeted countries suffer direct strikes, killing large numbers of people but leaving the vast majority alive. Most if not all medium and small sized cities aren't targeted at all and only suffer the effect of the EMP, and minor fallout damage if any. The government and armed forces suffer great losses, but continue to function. Though they will lose control over many areas simply because they don't have enough manpower. Several states, particularly the ones worst hit by the bombs, probably cease to exist in any meaningful way. The smaller populated states, and thus those that aren't huge targets, would still function and remain part of the US government, though possibly broken up into smaller organizations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:
Maybe for the US it would be negligible. For the UK? The mainland is really quite small. Even France is almost three times larger than us. What would be a tiny smear of fallout in Russia or China would be highly problematic for us. Duplicate it sixty to a hundred times over all our major to intermediate centres, and there's little of the UK not affected.

Yeah, Europe would have it worse off because you are more urbanized. More people would die due to starvation in the weeks following the war.

 Ketara wrote:
Maybe for the US it would be negligible. For the UK? The mainland is really quite small. Even France is almost three times larger than us. What would be a tiny smear of fallout in Russia or China would be highly problematic for us. Duplicate it sixty to a hundred times over all our major to intermediate centres, and there's little of the UK not affected.

Ketara, let me try and explain this again: you probably have a puddle on your street that would mass more than the total fallout of a 5 megaton bomb. Assuming that the fireball did not touch ground.

For argument, I ran the number for dropping 32 5 megaton nukes on England. While casualties ran about 11million dead and 16 million injured, and not a single major city was left standing (For god Sake man, i was reduced to dropping a nuke on Swindon to try and drive the numbers up a bit), your fallout levels were.... well, maybe a bin full. You have to understand that a nuke detonated at optimal altitude incinerates most of it's radioactive material. If the fireball does not touch the ground, then fallout from a 5 megaton blast can fit in a gallon bucket.


If it's a rainy day in England, you may have black rain at ground zero, but would not have any appreciable fallout at all outside the blast zone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Just take California civilian targets. It would take 5-8 nukes just for the city of San Franscisco, and another 4-5 each for Oakland and San Jose. Sacramento would need another 2-3. Los Angeles would require around 10 for the greater metropolitan area. Same for San Diego. Spare another 10 nukes for the various cities in the Central valley. So just hitting just the major cities in California has taken around 50 and you haven't even hit any military targets or accounted for some of the nukes having technical failures. Europe is also way more dense than the US, so you'd be using Nukes up rapidly.
.

Your numbers are a bit high because you're using small nukes and/or trying to fit the entire metro area into the 75% kill zone. A single Dong Feng 5 (which I'm using as my standard Chinese nuke here) can cause minor casualties (20%), if detonated over Point Park, Pittsburgh, from Greensburg to Aliquippa,with increasingly more lethal results as you approach ground zero. Several blocks away, PPG would have literally melted, flooding market square with boiling glass.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed. Nuclear war would actually be far less devastating than pop culture would have you believe. Would billions die? Yes, but only because modern vehicles would cease to function due to the EMP frying the computers necessary for cars and trucks to simply turn on. Which would lead to no ability to get food from farms to the people who remained alive. Which would lead to billions starving to death in the space of a month or so.

That is of course, assuming that nobody fixes the computer, gets cars to start without the computer or simply has an older car without computers at all. Starvation would be an issue immediately after a nuclear exchange, but given that food production tends to occur in rural areas and therefore is unlikely to take major hits, it is an issue that could be quickly resolved provided that some form of central government survives to set up the distribution.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed. Nuclear war would actually be far less devastating than pop culture would have you believe. Would billions die? Yes, but only because modern vehicles would cease to function due to the EMP frying the computers necessary for cars and trucks to simply turn on. Which would lead to no ability to get food from farms to the people who remained alive. Which would lead to billions starving to death in the space of a month or so.

That is of course, assuming that nobody fixes the computer, gets cars to start without the computer or simply has an older car without computers at all. Starvation would be an issue immediately after a nuclear exchange, but given that food production tends to occur in rural areas and therefore is unlikely to take major hits, it is an issue that could be quickly resolved provided that some form of central government survives to set up the distribution.

While the farms themselves will survive the nukes, they would still be affected by the EMP as those have an insanely large radius. And for that reason any nuclear exchange will have a few nukes explode high in the atmosphere with the sole purpose of sending out the EMP. Heck, you could have almost the same effect as directly detonating nukes on the ground just by having them high in the atmosphere to cripple infrastructure with EMP. It just kills everybody in a few weeks instead of a bunch of people immediately and more over the weeks to follow.

You actually have to have very very old vehicles that wouldn't be affected by an EMP, and certainly any vehicles which you could transport large quantities of food with would be vulnerable.

And while the damage from an EMP can be repaired, that requires places that were not themselves affected to be able to send the replacement parts. You could in theory jury rig some vehicles as well. However none of that would come in time to prevent mass starvation. The government would be a little too busy trying to get the remaining military forces back together and functioning again to mobilize any recovery efforts in time to prevent it. Largely because a huge chunk of the government's assets will themselves have been rendered inoperable by the EMP. They might save some people in some areas, but the vast majority will simply starve. Or resort to cannibalism. Either way, lots of people die.

The food distribution system in modern economies is insanely fragile because there is no long term food storage. All types of food retailers have only a few days of food stored up. Thats why when stuff like a Hurricane occurs you see stores empty almost instantaneously. Not to mention the methods of harvesting food quickly is dependent on machinery to harvest the fields, machinery which will not function after the EMP. If you had to harvest the massive fields we have today by hand most of the food would spoil before it was harvested. The food rots in the field while millions die of starvation and/or fighting over the few scraps of food they can find.

So unless the government is able to step in within a few hours of the nuclear war occuring, with a magic fleet of semi-trucks that somehow survived the EMP, you're not going to be setting up any sort of emergency infrastructure and food will disappear.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Ketara, let me try and explain this again: you probably have a puddle on your street that would mass more than the total fallout of a 5 megaton bomb. Assuming that the fireball did not touch ground.

For argument, I ran the number for dropping 32 5 megaton nukes on England. While casualties ran about 11million dead and 16 million injured, and not a single major city was left standing (For god Sake man, i was reduced to dropping a nuke on Swindon to try and drive the numbers up a bit), your fallout levels were.... well, maybe a bin full. You have to understand that a nuke detonated at optimal altitude incinerates most of it's radioactive material. If the fireball does not touch the ground, then fallout from a 5 megaton blast can fit in a gallon bucket.


If it's a rainy day in England, you may have black rain at ground zero, but would not have any appreciable fallout at all outside the blast zone.

Looking into it in more detail, I dropped sixty nukes (my starting premise) and Britain got whacked like this:-

http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=3802b3117cc62602ba775e80071eb237

That's using the Chinese nukes. China's arsenal isn't huge however, and the odds are that I doubt we'd get more than that (possibly even less) in a war with them. They'd need to reserve more for whacking targets in Europe and the US; rather than Watford.

On the flip hand side, if it was Russia (the far more likely culprit), we'd probably be looking at at a few more nukes than that. On top of that, given the Russian propensity for tactical nuclear weapons (and weapons malfunctioning to detonate later than intended); I imagine a chunk of them would burst on the surface. We don't live in a large country after all, and you only need a handful (maybe six) detonated like that to cause some real problems. Here's the map with six ground bursters added at likely locations (London, Barrow-in-Furness, etc)

http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=b28d72537118a5cdbe5f9fb25ba5d263

There really isn't much of mainland England left. In line with my original predictions, you're looking at chunks of Scotland and Wales.It would be a good day to be living in Inverness!

 Ketara wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.

And it wouldn't just be one, either...

This, in a nutshell. The bombs are only a third of the picture. Radiation is another third, and starvation the final. Certainly here in Europe, the food supply chains would break down excessively fast. Those in the blast radius get killed, those on the fringes burnt and blinded, those nearby hit with sufficient radioactivity to ensure they'll be dead within a few years, and those outside the immediate radius have to deal with the lack of any support infrastructure and contamination of their land from prevailing wind/ocean.

Enviromental effect also.

 Grey Templar wrote:
While the farms themselves will survive the nukes, they would still be affected by the EMP as those have an insanely large radius. You actually have to have very very old vehicles that wouldn't be affected by an EMP, and certainly any vehicles which you could transport large quantities of food with would be vulnerable.

Aye, modern large-scale farming is a bit more high-tech than people might realize. Any but the oldest or simplest farm machines will be just as knocked out as a modern car and animal production is also highly automated - cows are fed and watered by machines and sometimes even milked automatically. The modern farm (farmer plus family) doesn't have nearly enough manpower to sow, harvest or tend animals manually. Unless they got massive help within a few days the people at a larger dairy farm could drop dead from exhaustion and still not be able to feed, water, milk etc all the cows.

Grey Templar wrote:

While the farms themselves will survive the nukes, they would still be affected by the EMP as those have an insanely large radius. And for that reason any nuclear exchange will have a few nukes explode high in the atmosphere with the sole purpose of sending out the EMP. Heck, you could have almost the same effect as directly detonating nukes on the ground just by having them high in the atmosphere to cripple infrastructure with EMP. It just kills everybody in a few weeks instead of a bunch of people immediately and more over the weeks to follow.

You actually have to have very very old vehicles that wouldn't be affected by an EMP, and certainly any vehicles which you could transport large quantities of food with would be vulnerable.

And while the damage from an EMP can be repaired, that requires places that were not themselves affected to be able to send the replacement parts. You could in theory jury rig some vehicles as well. However none of that would come in time to prevent mass starvation. The government would be a little too busy trying to get the remaining military forces back together and functioning again to mobilize any recovery efforts in time to prevent it. Largely because a huge chunk of the government's assets will themselves have been rendered inoperable by the EMP. They might save some people in some areas, but the vast majority will simply starve. Or resort to cannibalism. Either way, lots of people die.

The food distribution system in modern economies is insanely fragile because there is no long term food storage. All types of food retailers have only a few days of food stored up. Thats why when stuff like a Hurricane occurs you see stores empty almost instantaneously. Not to mention the methods of harvesting food quickly is dependent on machinery to harvest the fields, machinery which will not function after the EMP. If you had to harvest the massive fields we have today by hand most of the food would spoil before it was harvested. The food rots in the field while millions die of starvation and/or fighting over the few scraps of food they can find.

So unless the government is able to step in within a few hours of the nuclear war occuring, with a magic fleet of semi-trucks that somehow survived the EMP, you're not going to be setting up any sort of emergency infrastructure and food will disappear.

While I'll grant that interstate food distribution in the west and south west would suffer, most of this should have a lot '*' next to them that say "*depending on region".

Oh, and it's not a secret, so, let me introduce a 'magic truck' that gives no feths about emps or even the availability of gasoline.



Your government thanks you for your ignorance of our actual capabilities in this scenario. I can think of at least two full depots of these suckers in the middle of nowhere.

Ketara wrote:

Looking into it in more detail, I dropped sixty nukes (my starting premise) and Britain got whacked like this:-

http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=3802b3117cc62602ba775e80071eb237

No, it wouldn't, because no one would ever use nukes like that. I mean, maybe Thatcher, but you're basically ignoring the most important targets to hammer every small town you can think of. Scotland would be hit much, much harder than this, for example.

I mean, not even one Nuke on Scapa Flow????

Spetulhu wrote:
Aye, modern large-scale farming is a bit more high-tech than people might realize. Any but the oldest or simplest farm machines will be just as knocked out as a modern car and animal production is also highly automated - cows are fed and watered by machines and sometimes even milked automatically. The modern farm (farmer plus family) doesn't have nearly enough manpower to sow, harvest or tend animals manually. Unless they got massive help within a few days the people at a larger dairy farm could drop dead from exhaustion and still not be able to feed, water, milk etc all the cows.

You and I clearly have had very different experiences living on farms. It sounds like you think they all run like factory farms.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

No, it wouldn't, because no one would ever use nukes like that. I mean, maybe Thatcher, but you're basically ignoring the most important targets to hammer every small town you can think of. Scotland would be hit much, much harder than this, for example.

I mean, not even one Nuke on Scapa Flow????

Every small town? Hardly. Have you actually travelled the UK? I hammered the major landmarks first (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff, etc), then moved onto secondary (Liverpool, Exeter, Bristol, Sheffield, Brighton, etc), then threw some at the major naval/military targets (Barrow in Furness, Portsmouth, etc), then the well-populated-but-less-known ones (Hull, Plymouth, Colchester, etc). I daresay a handful of them would go elsewhere than I predicted (I'm not cognisant of every military installation), but a lot of the more major military targets ( the JSCSC, RAF Henlow, Andover, etc) are covered by the existing spread. Scapa Flow, by the way, has been defunct since 1956 as a naval base.

Regardless, you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing now . The point is well made; that sixty to seventy nukes, adequately dispersed with a handful set for ground detonation, would make a bit of a mess of the mainland.

EDIT:- Having looked further into it, looks like I missed one or two bases on the periphery. Otherwise, it would seem Scotland get off almost....scot-free?

 Ketara wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

No, it wouldn't, because no one would ever use nukes like that. I mean, maybe Thatcher, but you're basically ignoring the most important targets to hammer every small town you can think of. Scotland would be hit much, much harder than this, for example.

I mean, not even one Nuke on Scapa Flow????

Every small town? Hardly. Have you actually travelled the UK? I hammered the major landmarks first (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff, etc), then moved onto secondary (Liverpool, Exeter, Bristol, Sheffield, Brighton, etc), then threw some at the major naval/military targets (Barrow in Furness, Portsmouth, etc), then the well-populated-but-less-known ones (Hull, Plymouth, Colchester, etc). I daresay a handful of them would go elsewhere than I predicted (I'm not cognisant of every military installation), but a lot of the more major military targets ( the JSCSC, RAF Henlow, Andover, etc) are covered by the existing spread.

Regardless, you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing now. The point is well made; that sixty to seventy nukes, adequately dispersed with a handful set for ground detonation, would make a bit of a mess of the mainland. You are of course, free to believe that an enemy would bother to aim half a dozen nukes at a defunct naval base (since 1956) with nothing but a visitor centre and a handful of oil tankers for company.

That is not how you use nukes. In reality, you'd see tons of nukes lobbed at high-priority targets such as London, airfields and military bases, and none at small towns at all unless they have important industries or cultural significance. You don't just trust the radiation to take care of it. You really want it all covered under the direct destructive blast radius, to ensure your target really is gone. You also want to use multiple nukes for the same target to ensure at least one of them hits in case of malfunction or interception (expect at least 2 nukes for every target, and up to 10 for larger ones). Small towns are very low-priority targets, you don't want to waste your rare and precious nukes on them. Neither Russia nor China nor both of them combined have enough nukes to target even all large cities in the US, UK and other NATO countries, let alone small towns. In a nuclear war, they'd go after military targets rather than just nuke cities. They just don't have enough weapons to do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:


EDIT:- Having looked further into it, looks like I missed one or two bases on the periphery. Otherwise, it would seem Scotland get off almost....scot-free?

That map was made based on Soviet doctrine though. The Soviets had tens of thousands of nukes standing ready, and so could afford to nuke pretty much every little town in the entire NATO. Russia's arsenal is only a small remnant of what the Soviet arsenal was, so expect only the higher-priority targets on that map to actually get hit in a present-day nuclear war. That is not to say that the survivability of a large-scale nuclear war in southern England wouldn't be quite low compared to that in Scotland of course. But the UK as a whole would survive it.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

That is not how you use nukes. In reality, you'd see tons of nukes lobbed at high-priority targets such as London, airfields and military bases, and none at small towns at all unless they have important industries or cultural significance. You don't just trust the radiation to take care of it. You really want it all covered under the direct destructive blast radius, to ensure your target really is gone. You also want to use multiple nukes for the same target to ensure at least one of them hits in case of malfunction or interception (expect at least 2 nukes for every target, and up to 10 for larger ones). Small towns are very low-priority targets, you don't want to waste your rare and precious nukes on them. Neither Russia nor China nor both of them combined have enough nukes to target even all large cities in the US, UK and other NATO countries, let alone small towns. In a nuclear war, they'd go after military targets rather than just nuke cities. They just don't have enough weapons to do that.

Point acknowledged, but:

a) The end result is actually more or less the same in terms of spread (I linked the British government's expectation of targets above)
b) The same argument which dictates that nukes will be followed up with multiples to cover malfunctions correspondingly implies the secondary result of such happenings (namely nukes exploding too soon/too late/veering off course). You might well end up with more (or less) ground detonations than you wish for.
c)Not to mention that Baron was arguing Scotland (which is more or less made up of small towns) would be hit much harder than I (and the British Government) painted it as; so the two of you are actually in contention there.

That map was made based on Soviet doctrine though. The Soviets had tens of thousands of nukes standing ready, and so could afford to nuke pretty much every little town in the entire NATO. Russia's arsenal is only a small remnant of what the Soviet arsenal was, so expect only the higher-priority targets on that map to actually get hit in a present-day nuclear war. That is not to say that the survivability of a large-scale nuclear war in southern England wouldn't be quite low compared to that in Scotland of course. But the UK as a whole would survive it.

Russia still has several thousand nuclear weapons. I put seventy odd total on my initial estimate above. The map subsequently linked had just over a hundred. I daresay that Russia has that many and a bit besides to spare for one of the primary military forces of NATO if hostilities break out. An eightieth of their arsenal is not huge when weighed against the vexation the UK can cause as compared to say, Portugal.

 Ketara wrote:
. Scapa Flow, by the way, has been defunct since 1956 as a naval base.

As a naval base, sure, but Flotta Oil terminal makes it a highly important target all the same. Hit it and Sullom Voe and you've more or less ended access to North Sea Oil.

Getting back to the F-35: wouldn't the easiest way to eliminate the F-35 be to stop all shipments of rare earth metals to the US? Given the rate the thing goes through parts, they'd be out of commission on their own in a few months.

Well, back to the ground again!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45827795

Yep. Fuel line issues. After twenty years of development, they haven't even got the fuel situation straightened out.

This from the company that went from the P-80 to the SR-71 in the same amount of time.

 Ketara wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

That is not how you use nukes. In reality, you'd see tons of nukes lobbed at high-priority targets such as London, airfields and military bases, and none at small towns at all unless they have important industries or cultural significance. You don't just trust the radiation to take care of it. You really want it all covered under the direct destructive blast radius, to ensure your target really is gone. You also want to use multiple nukes for the same target to ensure at least one of them hits in case of malfunction or interception (expect at least 2 nukes for every target, and up to 10 for larger ones). Small towns are very low-priority targets, you don't want to waste your rare and precious nukes on them. Neither Russia nor China nor both of them combined have enough nukes to target even all large cities in the US, UK and other NATO countries, let alone small towns. In a nuclear war, they'd go after military targets rather than just nuke cities. They just don't have enough weapons to do that.

Point acknowledged, but:

a) The end result is actually more or less the same in terms of spread (I linked the British government's expectation of targets above)
b) The same argument which dictates that nukes will be followed up with multiples to cover malfunctions correspondingly implies the secondary result of such happenings (namely nukes exploding too soon/too late/veering off course). You might well end up with more (or less) ground detonations than you wish for.
c)Not to mention that Baron was arguing Scotland (which is more or less made up of small towns) would be hit much harder than I (and the British Government) painted it as; so the two of you are actually in contention there.

That map was made based on Soviet doctrine though. The Soviets had tens of thousands of nukes standing ready, and so could afford to nuke pretty much every little town in the entire NATO. Russia's arsenal is only a small remnant of what the Soviet arsenal was, so expect only the higher-priority targets on that map to actually get hit in a present-day nuclear war. That is not to say that the survivability of a large-scale nuclear war in southern England wouldn't be quite low compared to that in Scotland of course. But the UK as a whole would survive it.

Russia still has several thousand nuclear weapons. I put seventy odd total on my initial estimate above. The map subsequently linked had just over a hundred. I daresay that Russia has that many and a bit besides to spare for one of the primary military forces of NATO if hostilities break out. An eightieth of their arsenal is not huge when weighed against the vexation the UK can cause as compared to say, Portugal.

Hey you guys mind keeping this on topic? The mods are chomping at the bit to lock threads that go off topic.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Well, back to the ground again!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45827795

Which existing or recent existing fighter would you prefer to use instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F-15_losses

http://www.f-16.net/aircraft-database/F-16/mishaps-and-accidents/airforce/USAF/

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/dblist.php?AcType=f18

http://www.topedge.com/panels/aircraft/sites/mats/f14-history-crash-date03.htm

I mean, come on. gak is going to happen from time to time.

In other news: https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/10/10/spacex-left-out-of-next-stage-in-air-forces-next-generation-rocket-program/

Think this is fall out from Elon smoking it up with Rogan? Thought Space X was getting tight with the military, and part of the reason they shot a car into space.

 KTG17 wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Well, back to the ground again!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45827795

Which existing or recent existing fighter would you prefer to use instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F-15_losses

http://www.f-16.net/aircraft-database/F-16/mishaps-and-accidents/airforce/USAF/

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/dblist.php?AcType=f18

http://www.topedge.com/panels/aircraft/sites/mats/f14-history-crash-date03.htm

I mean, come on. gak is going to happen from time to time.

In other news: https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/10/10/spacex-left-out-of-next-stage-in-air-forces-next-generation-rocket-program/

Think this is fall out from Elon smoking it up with Rogan? Thought Space X was getting tight with the military, and part of the reason they shot a car into space.

The F-16. It is effective with a high payload to weight ratio, pretty maneuverable (though not as much as MiG or SU fighters), highly versatile in almost every possible role and relatively cheap. And it looks super sexy. One of the best US jets ever designed. Sure, any jet is going to have accidents. But if you lose a F-35 in an accident that is a financial catastrophe, whereas the loss of an F-16 is much easier on the budget and can be replaced quite easily.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

The F-16. It is effective with a high payload to weight ratio, pretty maneuverable (though not as much as MiG or SU fighters), highly versatile in almost every possible role and relatively cheap. And it looks super sexy. One of the best US jets ever designed. Sure, any jet is going to have accidents. But if you lose a F-35 in an accident that is a financial catastrophe, whereas the loss of an F-16 is much easier on the budget and can be replaced quite easily.

Not only that, but if you look at Number In service/accidents and losses, it has a fairly solid level of reliability compared to the F-35. Granted this is skewed, but...

And how many of those aircraft losses were over something as basic as a bloody fuel line failure... on an aircraft in development for two decades.

 Vulcan wrote:
And how many of those aircraft losses were over something as basic as a bloody fuel line failure... on an aircraft in development for two decades.

Not many. Leading causes seem to be pilot error and doing insane things like overloading the weapon mounts far past their safe weight limits, and then taking her up and then performing a 9 G turn while inverted and overloaded. Pilot reported difficulty in maintaining level flight after that one, probably from the loss of several key aircraft components. Like big sections of the wings.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
And how many of those aircraft losses were over something as basic as a bloody fuel line failure... on an aircraft in development for two decades.

Pilot reported difficulty in maintaining level flight after that one, probably from the loss of several key aircraft components. Like big sections of the wings.

Yeah, I can see how that would reduce the effectiveness of an aircraft somewhat