Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

ProShortKingAction t1_ja8ut3u wrote

Reply to comment by Deep-Mention-3875 in China accuses U.S. of ‘disinformation’ over warnings it’s considering sending artillery and ammo to Russia by diana321

I guess you are both correct because I was very vague in my initial comment. You are correct that for example 100 Hiroshima sized nukes if they were dropped in a desert would not end the world. However those same 100 nukes which are much smaller than what countries are capable of building today if dropped for example in heavily populated areas in Pakistan and India would cause a level of global famine that would bring every country on the planet to its knees, worse than any other famine in world history.

But even that might not be the end of the world to you, the end of the world was a pretty vague way to describe it on my part and for that I'm sorry. I meant more the collapse of everything that we currently rely on to survive. Countries falling apart, countless dead from starvation in even the wealthiest nations of the world, global trade collapsing, resource wars both regional and international, freak weather phenomenon, etc.

And that's not even considering how much more powerful modern nukes are than the one dropped on Hiroshima

2

bpooqd t1_ja92n6n wrote

Technically we can't literally delete all of humanity even in a nuclear winter scenario, but you are correct of course.

I think in more recent times people began to be less afraid of nukes for some reason. Perhaps its just war propaganda clashing against realities, like a constant stream of "look at this terrible thing X country does!" clashing against "no we can't actually start a war with X, they have nukes".

This hatred and moral grandstanding then makes people say unhinged things like "Nukes aren't so bad / we shouldn't be afraid of them / we shouldn't nukes let us stop doing the right thing / they wouldn't actually use nukes if it comes down to it / oh their nukes are not working anyway just look at their tanks / oh we can deflect their nukes anyway / etc.".

This also reminds me a bit of the constant screams for an Iran war like 10 years or so ago, clashing with the reality of what a clusterfuck that would actually be like.

I don't know why war propaganda was so different during the cold war, there was a constant stream of "look at how horrible the soviet union is!" but there was also a constant stream of "nukes suck, like a lot, they are really really really fucking horrific, be scared of them!". And as is very apparent now, the latter was really necessary in hindsight, it might have prevented the cold war from going hot actually.

2

ProShortKingAction t1_ja95pc5 wrote

Honestly I think a big part of the difference between Cold War propaganda and modern propaganda on the subject is simply time. A large chunk of the people who were so into the idea of conflict with Russia also remembered the day that the Newspaper showed them images of a single bomb wiping a major city off the face of the Earth. People now a days don't have that type of reference. I have a feeling if a city like Kyiv (God forbid) got obliterated by a nuke people would not be so dismissive of the idea of nukes being something to scared of

Edit: I'm just using the city of Kyiv as an example because the idea of it being nuked has regularly been in the news and dismissed as an impossibility by regular people

1

Cold-Change5060 t1_ja9qe6o wrote

> would cause a level of global famine that would bring every country on the planet to its knees,

No, it would not. Even 10 thousand nukes in a WW3 scenario wouldn't effect parts of South America at all.

> I meant more the collapse of everything that we currently rely on to survive.

Then why are you doubling down when that's not what you said?

0

ArmChairAnalyst86 t1_jaax6vr wrote

10,000 nuclear warhead detonation wouldn't affect South America? You don't really believe that, do you?

I am confidently sure of one thing and one thing alone. We lack the ability to model our planet 10 years after 10,000 nuclear detonations in a short time. Esp considering they won't be of the 14 kt Hiroshima variety.

I am reasonably sure that 100 nuclear detonations on the planet would significantly alter the world as we know it, and maybe we can model the atmospheric effects, but we cannot model all of the effects, including disease, food disruption, animal disruption, weather disruption, and most importantly social economic disruption.

Also, 100 missles seems like a good hypothetical number, which is a limited exchange by all accounts, but each missle likely has between 3-10 individual warheads as well.

Honestly, the whole damn thing is just unthinkable. It's a useless thought exercise. Humans would likely survive in some capacity no matter what short of every single region being nuked, but it wouldn't be anything close to life now. OUR world would have effectively been ended, for a new, much scarier, and horrible world.

1

ProShortKingAction t1_ja9qtdc wrote

How young are you that you didn't grow up learning about the possibility of a nuclear winter?

0