I guess it depends on how irradiated the world is and what resources are still available. If there's hardly a single place you can be safe from the wind blowing the wrong way or a clean source of water, you're probably going to just buy yourself six extra months the people who died in the initial blasts didn't get. In that case, I'd just make sure there's enough gas in my car to lock myself in a garage and turn it on and maybe enjoy some happy floaty feelings (or a few minutes of miserable coughing and gasping, but whatever, it's not months of terror before the inevitable).
I think it's more likely though that there would be places in the woods and mountains near the source of a stream where you could not just survive, but maybe even give yourself a decent, somewhat long life (maybe shortened by those things functioning civilization can treat like cancer or heart disease) given the circumstances.
I don't think you understood the point I was trying to make; radiation absorbs into the ground and it stays there for thousands and thousands of years, the entire ecosystem would be destroyed. There's no point in trying to survive because there'd be nothing left to go back to. That's the point of the threat of nuclear war, that's what "mutually assured destruction" means; we're all going to die
Your point is wrong. Nuclear weapons are NOT the same as an uncontrolled reactor accident due to the nature of both explosions. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perfectly fine and are home to thousands of people who live, work, and indeed drink the water there. In an atomic weapons explosion, the energy is expended immediately and the radioactive material (uranium, etc) is expended quickly whereas a nuclear power plant is, in a state when it is NOT melting down, meant to continuously generate that energy (because it's a power plant) so when it melts down the same process happens, just uncontrolled. Chernobyl DID explode but the nuclear waste and reactor fuel (which is far more than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and nuclear weapons utilized today) mean that the radioactivity of the area is increased. There's also specifics on ground bursts vs air bursts, but we're getting into the weeds with that.
Mutually Assured Destruction was never the theory or the "Final Plan" in regards to nuclear warfare either. It was always about countervalue targeting, and the plan was never to expend all nuclear weapons immediately on the first salvo. It's about 1) neutering the Enemy's capabilities in firing his nukes at you and 2) destroy his command-and-control abilities completely so he is forced to come to the surrender table.
You've literally swallowed 60+ year old KGB propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
I never understood the idea of "kill myself since hard times", you are just being a pussy. Only if inevitable painful death or torture is assured then the option of self expiration is on the table.
It doesn't help that a lot of modern media is gung ho on group suicide.
I never understood the idea of "kill myself since hard times", you are just being a pussy. Only if inevitable painful death or torture is assured then the option of self expiration is on the table.
It doesn't help that a lot of modern media is gung ho on group suicide.
It largely depends where you are and the type of nuclear war. If you're in a city and it's a full strike, it's probably better to kill yourself then die from your injuries days later buried under rubble or from radiation poisoning.
If you are outside of major metro areas, industrial complex, key infrastructure, or military targets as well as clear of fall out areas then Yes.
I live in a part of Idaho that gets power from a hydroelectric dam that has never been even a tertiary target, has a lot of fresh water, large amounts of agricultural land, and is far enough from major population centers to avoid the blast and fall out.
From what I understand, a good majority of the nuclear arsenal of the planet has declined since the Cold War. It is wrong to think that governments are making nuclear arms stronger/larger when what has been happening are nukes have gotten smaller which is probably worse. Imagine if the munitions fired in the middle east, say artillery shells, were nukes the size of 3 litre coke bottles, a lot of devastation in a small package with minimal risk of uncontrolled fall out. Local devistation with minimalized risk to ground and air forces.
With that said, if I'm near the predicted epicenter of a blast and there is no way I can get to a safe radius away from annihilation, I'm rushing toward the epicenter. I'm gonna die either way and I'd rather have it happen quick than long and drawn out.
Stockpiles have stagnated, and bombs are not stronger than they were 50 years ago. According to studies, larger amounts of smaller (but still >500 kiloton) nukes spaced out are more devastating than the same TNT equivalent in bigger bombs, and are more likely to get past defenses. The most damaging nuclear isotopes are short lived, so if you can stay inside an intact building for 2 weeks, you might get to live in the new Hell World (upgrade from Clown World).
Something to note, a nuclear exchange won't result in the end of the world. Its if the governments of the world weren't bullshitting and actually have doomsday weapons tucked away for the occasion. Think dozes upon dozens of turbo-smallpox like diseases released, tectonic weapons turning anywhere that's near the subduction zones into literal hell on earth, or mass releases of deadly poisons into the atmosphere.
We don't really know if governments of the world have been bullshitting us on those or not, pray we never get to a situation where the bluff is called.
I suggest watching the movie "Threads" for a fairly realistic take on what would happen after a full nuclear exchange. The short answer is, unless you thrive on overcoming immense hardship, no it's not worth it.
To start off, no it's not the radiation that is the problem, at least in the medium to long term. People need to learn the difference between nuclear weapons and radiological weapons.
The purpose of a nuclear bomb is not to irradiate the land, rather, it is just using the vastly greater energy potential of a nuclear reaction vs a chemical reaction to create a much bigger explosion. Modern hydrogen bombs destroy almost all fissile material they use to create the blast.
Furthermore nukes are used in an airburst - that is detonated several miles above the ground - because that provides the largest blast radius and thus does the most damage to enemy infrastructure. This means any fissile material that does remain is unlikely to make contact with the ground and get mixed in with dust and shit.
Groundburst - detonations at ground level - especially with fission bombs, can present a substantial fallout risk but at the cost of much of their destructive potential. Since the goal of using nukes is to blow stuff up, not poison it, all nuclear powers go for the maximum destruction option - hydrogen (fusion) bombs detonated at airburst rather than fission bombs at groundburst.
With that out of the way, the truly dark fucked up shit begins shortly after the bombs have fallen. What really brings about the horror is the collapse of order, of production, of supply chains, of logistics, of society itself.
The bombs themselves will be targeting military bases, government headquarters, communications hubs, fuel depots, power stations, manufacturing centers, national infrastructure (ports, airports, bridges, rail hubs, major road junctions etc). Their goal is to completely cripple a nation's military apparatus and ability to replenish it.
Contrary to popular perception they will not simply be targeted at the middle of every major city. Indeed many major cities and their surroundings will not be targets at all, since people themselves are not valuable targets. Kill count is not the objective, rendering the enemy militarily neutered is.
The bombs themselves are estimated to kill, maybe, about 10% of the population. Most of those people will be dying in the days after the exchange, from radiation sickness. Relatively few people will be lucky enough to simply be vaporised or buried under rubble instantly. Many more are going to be suffering from 3rd degree burns all over parts of their body that were exposed to the thermal energy of the blast, injuries from being knocked down or peppered with flying debris, and agonizing internal burns and poisoning that take days to die from.
This is bad enough. But what will really hurt is the total breakdown of society that follows. There will be no power, no water, no heating. Food, fuel and medicine will be in very limited supply and run out very quickly. And when they're gone, they're gone. There will be no factories left to make drugs or petrol. There will be no mechanised farming to grow plentiful food. There will be no roads or rail or anything to move these goods if they were even available. The very systems that built and maintained these things will be gone too, so there is no prospect of rebuilding them for a long time.
So people are going to be sick, hungry, cold, homeless, with no means to provide for their basic needs. They are going to become horribly desperate and violent. What little remains of civil authority will be overwhelmed and collapse within weeks, and for however long they can maintain some control, they will have to do so in ruthless fashion (forget trials or prison - stealing bread will get you shot on the spot). So you'll have a state of desperation, tyranny, and then total lawlessness.
Millions more people will die during this period of weeks and months after the bombs have fallen - indeed this is where most of the dying will happen. These people will be dying primary of starvation and violence. You can expect about 90% of the original population to die off by the time this phase is done with. Many of these people will be fleeing from the cities to the countryside in search of food, and it will be a survival of the fittest lifestyle - people with the will and the means to kill, will kill mercilessly for anything they can take. The rest will simply not make it, either starving or being murdered.
There is some debate on how bad nuclear winter will be. In the worst case projections, the sun could be blotted out for many years by dust from firestorms, making food growing all but impossible. It's quite plausible humanity could go extinct if this is the case. More optimistic projections suggest growing food will be tough for a few years but possible. In any case the reduced sunlight plus lack of mechanised farming tech means agriculture will only be capable of supporting medieval levels of population.
Another problem is damage to the ozone layer, which will cause cancer, cataracts, accelerated aging, and other problems. Combine that with malnutrition and no modern medicine, and life expectancy will be quite low for everyone. You can expect many more tard babies and miscarriages as well.
If humanity can get past this, and vital knowledge is preserved, then we might be able to rebound in a century or two. But it's quite likely that the societal collapse will also stunt people's social and intellectual development to the point where much of what we know now has to be relearned over a longer period of time. After all even if knowledge is preserved, it is useless if no one can actually understand or implement it because there is no longer an education system to put meaning to words in a book.
So to be clear, no, you're not gonna have some grand Fallout adventure. If you manage to survive, life will be hard, miserable and short. The very idea of hope will quickly become an alien concept to you.
There is some debate on how bad nuclear winter will be. In the worst case projections, the sun could be blotted out for many years by dust from firestorms, making food growing all but impossible
Apparently the sun getting blotted out has happened a few times in our history, as well as the opposite, where the sun was intensely hot. We survived.
Those going hungry, getting violent and desperate are those in the west, from the big cities and small towns. No farming community in the arse-end of Russia will be affected. Neither will chink farmers, nig-nog african spear chuckers, abbos, skimos, amazon cannibals, arabian camel fuckers, phillipino snake catchers or pacific islanders. We may even see a resurgence of the Native American peoples as a dominant force again, as their knowledge of living off the land is only one to two generations old.
As for survival, move to one of those areas, far, far away. Take a machete, a lighter, some rubber and a Ray Mear's book of survival. Life will change, but it won't be hellish or short.
I guess it depends on how irradiated the world is and what resources are still available. If there's hardly a single place you can be safe from the wind blowing the wrong way or a clean source of water, you're probably going to just buy yourself six extra months the people who died in the initial blasts didn't get. In that case, I'd just make sure there's enough gas in my car to lock myself in a garage and turn it on and maybe enjoy some happy floaty feelings (or a few minutes of miserable coughing and gasping, but whatever, it's not months of terror before the inevitable).
Apparently the sun getting blotted out has happened a few times in our history, as well as the opposite, where the sun was intensely hot. We survived.
Those going hungry, getting violent and desperate are those in the west, from the big cities and small towns. No farming community in the arse-end of Russia will be affected. Neither will chink farmers, nig-nog african spear chuckers, abbos, skimos, amazon cannibals, arabian camel fuckers, phillipino snake catchers or pacific islanders. We may even see a resurgence of the Native American peoples as a dominant force again, as their knowledge of living off the land is only one to two generations old.
As for survival, move to one of those areas, far, far away. Take a machete, a lighter, some rubber and a Ray Mear's book of survival. Life will change, but it won't be hellish or short.
I tend to agree with the sentiment that "life finds a way". I do think that even in the worst case scenario of nuclear winter, even if it's a tiny fraction of humanity, some people will find a way to adapt and get through it. However it won't be fun for them and it's not much consolation to the billions who do die and everything we've built and lost in an afternoon.
I think you underestimate just how interconnected the world is and just how dependent your life and the lives of even rural Africans or whatever are on modern trade, supply chains, manufacturing etc. There is not one country on Earth right now that has a sustainable population for a pre-industrial lifestyle. And in the event that a nuclear war between the West and Russia were to happen, that is most of the world's economic activity gone with it. This is far more severe than even those really bad 'global disruptions', everything falls apart.
That's not even getting into the direct effects fallout, ozone depletion and nuclear winter would have on the rest of the Northern Hemisphere which were not directly hit by the bombs. Or the fact that billions of desperate people are going to be making their way to wherever people have it less shit to kill them and take their stuff. Forget food insecurity or high oil prices - shit will completely hit the fan everywhere.
I should have added to my original post that for countries in the Southern Hemisphere, they will be less affected and could probably maintain some semblance of normalcy. The effects of fallout, ozone depletion and nuclear winter will be far less severe there and these countries are unlikely to be targeted by bombs themselves. They're still going to be a bit fucked, and a lot more fucked by the total chaos unfolding in the rest of the world. But countries like Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, South Africa etc could keep going if with great difficulty.
Any hopes for reconstruction in the north would likely depend on their survival and cooperation.
I appreciate your back and forth and my posts will be a discussion, not a slap-fight or autistic screeching. I do disagree with these statements though, to a degree.
There are tribes out there that are worse off because farmland is encroaching on their native, thousands-of-years-old hunting grounds. Those farmers are pushed further into new territory because of expanding cities in Africa, caused by globalisation. The trade would kill the cities and see the tribes of old prosper and grow like they haven't in millennia.
Yes and no. There are lots of countries that only rely on post-industrial lifestyle for ease, such as metal tools. They could, and would be able to, go back to pre-metal tools once they wore out, or at least be able to scavenge to make new ones.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of tribes and civilisations that only use modern tools as a convenience, not a necessity, with some not choosing to use them at all.
That's not even getting into the direct effects fallout, ozone depletion and nuclear winter would have on the rest of the Northern Hemisphere which were not directly hit by the bombs
I see you answered this with an addition to your post. The Southern hemisphere is friggin huge and would be largely untouched, especially south America and deeper parts of Africa.
Of course, in a nuclear war, China, Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan, NK, Japan and US would all be wiped out. But outside of them, there are vast, vast, vast quantities or land. I do mean vast.
Mongolia may even see another empire rise from the ashes of the west. The ancient aztec and inca way of life would flourish.
Outside of the human settlements, America and Europe would be a breeding ground for new super-mutated apex predators; mostly rats and cockroaches, to breed and thrive unabated. The early weeks and months after the bombs fell, the hardy rats would breed quickly enough to adapt to the new environment, while having millions of tons of food at their disposal.
